In October of 2024, my partner and I officially opened Screechy Cat Media. Our goal with launching this agency was twofold:
1) to work with nonprofits and very small businesses; to help them any way we could, using my tech and advertising experience, and my partner’s experience working with not-for-profits;
-and-
2) to find a way to turn that into a viable business plan.
Making progress on our first goal came a lot quicker than either of us could have imagined, thanks to a couple of local meetup groups, Chamber connections, and a chance social media message or two–but, it was largely due to the welcoming, caring, and all-around genuine good nature of the people we’ve met here in the Central Coast. And so while we knew we needed we accomplish goal #2, it was also imperative to us that we did so in a way that allowed us help as many nonprofits, solopreneurs, mobile businesses, and chambers/merchant associations as we could.
And roughly 12-16 weeks ago, though I couldn’t pinpoint the date right now if I tried, we believe we came up with a way to do both, while also providing us a roadmap to reach our goal of training and hiring local talent from here in our own communities.
The TL;DR of How We Got Here
Working with our clients over the past 9 months or so have been some of the most enjoyable of my professional career. My partner K has encouraged me to get out of my shell much more than I am truly comfortable with, and the results have consistently been positive. We have met folks that I know we’ll still be seeing regularly decades from now.
The past 9 months have also been expensive; Screechy Cat Media has operated in the red every month since we registered our domain in March of 2024, with no foreseeable change to that based on our current advertising and marketing services.
Fortunately, we didn’t come into this blindly; and we knew that offering advertising, marketing, and general “Joe, can you help me with x” requests (which I love, btw, so please don’t stop those) wasn’t a real business plan. Several loan rejection letters reaffirm.
But what we were able to do during this time is make some absolutely amazing contacts, and get some valuable insight into the digital operations side of our clients’ organizations, and that led us to find common roadblocks–roadblocks that largely exist due to a lack of resources available to manage the many tools and services required to maximize operational effectiveness.
Because, not only did we get valuable on-the-ground knowledge by working so closely with nonprofits, but we were running a business, too. And for our small team—much like yours—we found ourselves a lot of time managing the business of managing the business, leaving little time for anything else.
That’s when we decided to try something that was at the same time completely different but exactly what we set out to do.
Introducing the Centralized Growth Suite
In July, we will begin beta testing a cloud-based hub designed specifically for not-for-profits called the Centralized Growth Suite. The first version of the Centralized Growth Suite, or CGS for short, will act as a unified UI between such platforms as your CRM/email marketing platform, your fundraising platform, your event management platform, with an integrated social media scheduler, docu-sign functionality, an embed or linkable mobile-friendly event calendar, and volunteer management. And there will be marketing automation, web push, and SMS components, too. We’re also pulling in all of your marketing, advertising, and fundraising reporting as well, so you can see that in one place.
And with this beta version, folks, the wheel is not being reinvented. We’re creating something new by tying together a bunch of not-new things that not-for-profits are already or should be using.
But this is where the real work begins.
Our Vision for CGS
I have spent much of my career working with advertisers that can afford to spend $500k+ per year on digital advertising (not to mention marketing, traditional, etc). These enterprise companies have someone like me, or a small team like me, to manage just advertising; then, people, or again, small teams, to manage things like email, social media, eCommerce, and they also have powerful business intelligence tools that they have someone trained to take advantage of.
Not-for-profits, if you have all of those resources available to you: bless you. You probably don’t need us. The CGS wasn’t developed to replace the experience of working with a well-trained team of experts using world-class technology.
The CGS is being developed to be the world-class technology that allows small not-for-profit teams to be their own business intelligence experts, working both internally and through Screechy Cat Media & other local providers on specialized services.
Oh, and we’re going to price it for nonprofits, too.
CGS 1.0 Beta Test
Over the coming weeks & months, we will be sharing much more about our vision for the Centralized Growth Suite—for now, we are excited to share initial plans for CHS v1.0
Beta testing is scheduled to begin late July. During the beta, not-for-profits should expect the following integrated UIs/features:
- A centralized contact view showcasing data from your CRM, email, fundraising, and event management efforts
- CRM/Email integration with Brevo, MailChimp, HubSpot, Constant Contact
- Fundraising/Event Management integration with Give Butter and OneCause
- Document e-signing/sync to CRM via DocuSeal
- Social media content planner/scheduler
- Shareable, embeddable, linkable event calendar powered by your event platform
- SMS, Marketing Automation, meeting scheduler, chatbot, and Web Push via Brevo
- Centralized marketing/advertising/fundraising reporting via Looker Studio dashboards
A waitlist has been created for nonprofits to join; note that we are still finalizing pricing information for the beta test.
What’s Next
Our focus in the coming weeks is finalizing things before the beta test begins. While signups for the waitlist are open, demos likely won’t begin until the second or third week of July. Our plan is to begin onboarding clients the final week of July.
We’re incredibly eager to share a lot more with you about the Centralized Growth Suite. Keep an eye on our socials, blog, or come see us starting July 18th through August 8th, every Friday at Lompoc’s Old Town Market!
