[Top Agency Series] Empowering Nonprofits Digitally With David Pisarek of Wow Digital

David Pisarek is the CEO and Founder of Wow Digital, a Toronto-based web agency dedicated to serving nonprofit organizations, charities, and NGOs with top-tier digital marketing and website design. With expertise honed since the early days of the internet, David is committed to helping these organizations enhance their impact through innovative and strategic digital solutions. Beyond his agency, David actively contributes to the nonprofit sector by coaching other agencies and sharing his insights as a speaker and workshop host.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:34] Why choosing the right niche for your agency can significantly influence your success
• [06:19] The roots of David’s extensive knowledge in coding and web design
• [08:18] The key roles David filled to grow his agency and the traits he looked for in candidates
• [10:37] Why communication skills are vital for an account manager in a digital agency
• [12:52] Common website mistakes that could be hindering a nonprofit’s outreach
• [18:45] The importance of building trust using website testimonials from real users
• [27:47] Creative ways businesses can collaborate with nonprofits for mutual benefit
• [33:04] David’s favorite resources for personal and professional development

In this episode…

When it comes to making a difference, technology and digital solutions are often at the forefront. But is your online presence truly aiding your mission, or could it be holding you back? How can you leverage digital tools to maximize your impact and outreach effectively?

Digital guru David Pisarek explains how web design, branding, and marketing can be tailored to ensure that nonprofits not only reach their goals, but exceed them. With a focus on common pitfalls to avoid and simple, powerful changes that can increase engagement and donations, David emphasizes the importance of a well-structured website, mobile optimization, and expressing gratitude to supporters. He also shares insights on choosing the right niche, building a team that aligns with your organization’s culture, and the mutual benefits of collaboration between businesses and nonprofits.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews David Pisarek, CEO and Founder of Wow Digital, about leveraging technology and digital solutions for nonprofit organizations. David delves into detailed strategies to improve digital outreach and discusses the role of technology in expanding the scope of nonprofit work. He emphasizes why it is crucial for nonprofits to adopt a business mindset when it comes to their operations and how to efficiently communicate your value to potential partners and donors.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• David Pisarek on LinkedIn
• Wow Digital
• How to Get Corporate Sponsors for Your Non-Profit
• Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast
• Hooked On You: The Genius Way to Make Anybody Read Anything by Mr Ian Harris
• Exactly What to Say by Phil M Jones
• Entrepreneurial Mindset in Non-Profits with Alex Charfen on the Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast
• How Do I Lead a Team of Creatives in My Non-Profit? with Anthony A. Dicks, Jr. on the Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast
• Perplexity AI
• ClickUp

Special Mentions:

• ParticipACTION
• CARE Canada

Related episodes:

• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “You hire for fit — you can always teach skills.”
• “Nonprofits should run their operations with an entrepreneurial mindset.”
• “A website is more than an online presence; it’s a bridge to your audience.”
• “Say ‘thank you.’ The simple act of gratitude can significantly increase donations.”
• “Engage locally with a nonprofit — not just to help, but to align with your missions.”

Action Steps:

1. Focus on website accessibility to ensure inclusivity for all visitors: This promotes equal access to information and enhances SEO.
2. Prioritize mobile optimization for your website: With increasing mobile device usage, this step is vital for engaging visitors and improving search rankings.
3. Express genuine gratitude to donors and customers: A simple “thank you” establishes an emotional connection that can lead to repeat engagement.
4. Content audit your website to declutter and enhance relevance: This helps maintain a focused message that resonates with the intended audience.
5. Consider corporate partnerships with nonprofits to create mission-aligned marketing opportunities: Enhance your brand while contributing positively to the community.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have David Pisarek of WowDigital.com, and before I formally introduce you, David, I will put out some other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series I had on Jason Swenk, he actually had him on twice. He talked about how he built his agency to eight figures and sold it, and then what he’s been doing to buy up agencies. He also has an agency group where agency owners go there and help each other out and mastermind. So check that out. That episode, also another one: Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey actually helps pair private equity with agencies. He helps sell agencies. He’s got the Second Bite Podcast, and he talked about, again, the kind of the valuation space, the agency space, what he’s seeing, and it’s Second Bite, David, I didn’t know this until I talked to Todd, is that, you know, they sold their agency, when they sell the private equity, the private equity sells again later on, sometimes those founders make more on the second bite than they do on the first bite. So that’s really interesting. Adi Klevit, that was a favorite episode, too. She is a done-for-you for SOPs, for companies, right? All that sexy stuff that makes things work. So she goes into companies and helps basically detail out all of their SOPs. But we geeked out on our favorite software productivity stuff, and that was a good episode as well. Check out more on InspiredInsider.com 

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. David has a podcast. We’ll talk about that. We do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. So David, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host so they can develop amazing relationships and run their company. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to Ris25.com or email us at [email protected] 

I’m excited to introduce David Pisarek, a passionate advocate for nonprofits. He’s been using his tech expertise to drive social change since 2000. David’s actually the founder of WoW Digital, and he’s on a mission to empower 5000 nonprofits to impact 10 million lives through smart digital solutions. They actually provide marketing, website development for nonprofits. He’s coached and mentored over 200 agencies, and one example that I read, David, I’m sure, among many, he saved a hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars through just IT innovations. So David, thanks for joining me.

David Pisarek 3:31

Thank you so much for the introduction. Hi everybody. Hope everybody is doing well today. 

Jeremy Weisz 3:37

So just, uh, start us off and talk about Wow Digital and what you do.

David Pisarek 3:44

So my agency, Wow Digital, check us out. WowDigital.com. We do websites and redesigns, that’s probably about 90% of what we do, as well as traditional graphic design type of services. So think logos, branding, PowerPoint presentation, stuff like that. We are niched, or niched in Nonprofits and Charities, and that’s what we do.

Jeremy Weisz 4:10

Talk about, that I know, before we hit record, we are chatting. And by the way, if you’re listening to the audio, there’s a video version. You can see we have Wow Digital on here. Since David is a website master, we’re going to poke around. He’s going to share some of the stuff and why he does it, and some of the behind the scenes. But talk about the niche, choosing the niche, and how you chose nonprofits.

David Pisarek 4:34

For me, it was pretty obvious what I should go into. So for a large part of my life, I started doing web stuff in ‘91 just as we got like dial up internet. When I graduated from college in 2000 I started working at a college, post secondary, higher ed. We also opened up a university. Over my time there, I had done seven website redesigns, I think, six or seven for the college, two for the university. And when I left there, I went into healthcare, and I was there for about five years before I was restructured. And when I left, just because of who my connections were, so if you think LinkedIn, right, like, who am I most connected with? It was people in nonprofit, healthcare and education, and for me, I reached out to them, and I said, Hey, look, I’m looking for work. You’re looking to hire? Well, we’re not really looking to hire, but we’ve got this project. Oh, really cool, awesome. Let’s talk about that. And I just kind of ramped up my freelance. I always did a little bit on the side, here and there, but I just ramped it up. I had interviews, but I think I really kind of like fit. And I was like, You know what? I’m going all in. I’m doing this focusing on my business. I can’t it’s a full time job to look for work, and it’s a full time job trying to run a business, right? And I can’t be split that way. I need to go all in, and that’s what I did.

Jeremy Weisz 6:07

So David, are you a master coder? Because in ‘91 there weren’t the solutions that we have today where you can press a button and implement WordPress. So do you have a very technical background? 

David Pisarek 6:19

I do, yeah. So I started with Notepad way, way back in the day, and just taking a look at the source code of websites that were out there and trying to figure it out. And I did. And I remember making animated GIFs for some banking companies in the US, really super early days with, I think it was called animator GIF Pro, or something like that. And I ended up in between my years of college, over a two month period, I worked at a startup in 1999 so this was like the big dot-com boom. I was their lead developer. I think I was their fourth employee. So there was, like the owner, the director, and then myself and a friend of mine, who was a designer over there. Over a two month period, we raised a million dollars in capital funding and went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It was like wild times, absolutely wild times back then. 

Jeremy Weisz 7:11 

What type of company would it do?

David Pisarek 7:14

They eventually, once they went public, they went public for nothing to do with web. The company, what we were doing was we were doing ecommerce type of sites, and we were doing a lot of flash development for ecommerce back then. I think we ended up winning some award for having the first flash ecommerce cart checkout type system. But when they went public, it was for gaming. So think like AMC movie theaters, where you’ve got, like, the actual games and stuff there, that’s what they ended up going into. 

Jeremy Weisz 7:48

What’s interesting, I could see the beginning of the journey you went to get these jobs, like, and instead of getting a job, they just gave you a project, and that seemed to actually be the seeds that started your business. Talk about, so I could see how you can get your first clients. Talk about the first key hire. Like, obviously, right now you’ve built a team. What was the first and it doesn’t the person, but like, position, what were some of the first key hires you put in place as you built the agency?

David Pisarek 8:18

Well, I knew when I started the agency, I really, I mean, at that point, it was, I don’t know, 16 years of working full time doing web development and design. I was like, All right, enough. I don’t want to do that. So I reached out to people that I had worked with before. Hey, do you want to moonlight? Do you want to do a little bit of design work, things like that on the side? Cool. So I hired them on kind of like a contract freelance basis to help out with stuff, and I was doing the project management. But at one point there was just too much, too much information that needed to flow back and forth. My first key hire was a virtual assistant and having them pass information back and forth, come with me to client meetings, come out of those meetings with notes so that they can take these actionable things and run with them. And it’s, it’s incredible. I’ve got this amazing person on my team, Daniel. He’s fantastic. He’s basically, not basically, he is my operations manager now, and he started as a VA.

Jeremy Weisz 9:19

What were some of the other pivotal positions you had to put in place to grow the agency?

David Pisarek 9:27

Account managers, those are really the big ones. So they’re meeting with the clients. So I meet with them, I do kind of the front end sales, that type of stuff. So if you, if you think of this as like a restaurant, you’ve got the front of house and the back of house, right? So I’m running the front of house, and the account managers are running the back of house. So once the project comes in, they’re the ones that are meeting with the clients. We meet with them every week. So instead of a two week sprint cycle, we’re doing a one week sprint cycle. They’re doing all the back and forth between our designers and our developers. They’re hopping in to, we build primarily off of WordPress so I’d say 99.9% is WordPress that we do. So they’re sometimes hopping into the sites and doing some of those small little updates and things as well, but they’re the ones that are really getting the projects done. 

Jeremy Weisz 10:17

What do you look for in a good account manager? I know friends who, they sometimes have a hard time relinquishing that at first, because they’re worried, you know, the client’s gonna want me, and you know, now I’m handing them off to someone else. What do you look for in an account manager?

David Pisarek 10:37

So quick little note before that is it took, it was the most mind boggling thing, not being involved in the projects. I’m very much like an A type personality, and I need information, I need to know, like what’s going on, and that’s really the, one of the main things that I need. I need somebody who can really clearly communicate that understands what we do, understands what the client wants, and can figure out that bridge. And if you can’t figure out, that’s fine, but we need to meet so that I can help you sort that out, so that you can also learn or not you, but our account managers can also learn about what is that process? How do we get from A to C? What’s that B step in the middle?

Jeremy Weisz 11:20

From a personality standpoint, what were you looking for?

David Pisarek 11:25

There’s a quote, I don’t remember who said it, but it is, You hire for fit, you can always teach skills. I believe that you hire for fit, and maybe 50 to 60% of the skill I need somebody who can kind of start to hit the ground running, maybe about a month in. If you think about your own journey as you’ve worked at different places, there’s a learning curve that happens. I can’t expect somebody to come in and just hit the ground running and know exactly what to do, how we want everything done. And we have our SOP libraries. We’ve got our onboarding training, but there’s still time. It still takes time.

Jeremy Weisz 12:08

David, you know, obviously, you know you help and you have this technical background. Also, you create websites for a lot of different companies, from the design, branding, marketing. Talk about some of the mistakes that people make. You go in. I’m sure you’re evaluating, by the way, here’s some good, really good webinars, right here you can see, if you go to WowDigital.com webinars, I watch one of them, and you kind of break down some of these sites. What are the common mistakes? And again, like you were talking before we hit record, it’s not just, I mean, obviously you focus on nonprofits, but this, you know, basically, is universal for any site, so it applies to anyone. What are some of the big mistakes that you see out there?

David Pisarek 12:52

Yeah. I mean, yes, to your point, we’re focused on nonprofits and charities, community groups, whatever the reality is, the work that we do can be applied across any sector. Website is a website, you’re going to have the same pitfalls. So some of the biggest pitfalls are around accessibility, making sure that your site is accessible. And you know, just like if you had a store, you wouldn’t want to have a barrier at the entry that prevents people from getting in. So what I mean in terms of website accessibility is, there are people who are blind, there are people who have physical impairments or handicaps, I don’t remember what the appropriate terminology is. But they don’t surf the web with a mouse, right? They might use a keyboard. The coolest one that I saw was a braille reader. So it’s kind of like a book type thing, but they would run their hands on it and would turn the copy into Braille. So imagine that you’ve got, if you’re a larger organization, you might have your annual report on your website, right? Imagine you’ve got your chart of accounts receivables and payables, and this that whatever. If that was a graphic, how could anybody who uses a screen reader, which is just software that’ll read out the text. How can they understand what that graphic is, right? You’ve probably come across a website at some point where you’re looking at and you’re like, really straining your eyes to read it. It might be like, white text on a yellow background is a really great example. For proper accessibility, you need to have a four and a half to one color contrast ratio for AA compliance. There’s the WCAG guidelines around that for AA.

So there’s some like, really low hanging fruit in terms of accessibility. There’s a lot more technical pieces. But what’s really neat about fixing accessibility problems is it also helps you with your search engine optimization on the other side of it, to drive more traffic into your website, to connect with more people who are your ideal customer or your target that you’re trying to connect with, to rank higher in search results, to get them to come to you.

Jeremy Weisz 14:58

So accessibility, actually, you know, I did have a guest, Dr. Hoby Wedler, who came on and is blind. So you know, definitely, even guests, you know, and I was sending him emails, he responded to emails. So I’m sure he’s got some very sophisticated software and things that he uses for that. So besides accessibility, what other mistakes do you see people making? 

David Pisarek 15:26

You want to make sure that your site works properly on mobile. That’s another really big one. Google has actually said, John Muller, who’s like way up there in the Google ranks, has come out and said that if your site is mobile friendly, that it will actually rank higher. They want to have a great mobile experience. And I think during the period of covid the two and a half to last four years, right? People are sitting on their couch. They’re using their devices more and more these days, and you want to be able to have a great experience for them on those devices as well. 

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