Advancing Nonprofit Impact Through Smarter AI Engagement | Kelly Perry from Stratus Live

Rick: Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to su to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in the buying journey separates you from the competition Online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.
Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Letting AI do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual, check us out on Pathmonk.com. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Today we’re joined by Kelly Perry. She’s the Digital marketing manager, senior digital marketing manager at Stratus Live. Kelly, welcome to the show.

Kelly Perry: Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much for having me, Rick.

Rick: Of course we’re excited to speak to you, k Kelly. And, maybe we start with the basics, right? Sure. What’s the big idea behind, stratas Live? and if you were explaining it to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what you do?

Kelly Perry: Sure. so Stratas Live is a software for social good company and. Simply our mission is to drive change and increase impact. And how we do that is through a nonprofit industry cloud solution. So this is an integrated platform that allows fundraisers to connect with their donors, to offer them ways to engage with their nonprofit organization, through a variety of different modern digital fundraising efforts.

Rick: Okay. Sounds. I, like it. It’s a noble mission, and especially when it, whenever I speak to nonprofits, there’s always some good background story behind how everything started, is there anything you’re excited about that’s coming up? we’re towards the end of the year, so maybe you’re working on, next year initiatives or, whatever the case may be. what’s in store for Stratos Live and for you personally?

Kelly Perry: Sure. Now there’s, the, end of the year is certainly a, busy time for all of us, especially for nonprofit organizations. They are just hands down implementing their end of year fundraising campaigns. So it’s, really critical that they have their technology partners there to support them throughout the busy end of year fundraising season. for now it’s really important that they have their systems up and running, that they’re ready to engage with their donors in ways that, that are acceptable to those donors. And making sure that process is as seamless and as easy as possible. as we’re looking ahead to 2026, it’s, we’re continuing to think about from a technology perspective, how are we implementing AI driven features within the Stratus live suite? In particular, implementing AI agents into our systems, nonprofit organizations. they work with limited resources there. Typically, they can be very short staffed. they have a variety of tasks that they’re responsible for, and the more that they can leverage. Technology systems and AI driven solutions to help them take off some of these manual processes or elevate their, the data that they have within their systems, telling them these are, this is a good segment of donors for you to reach out to. maybe you haven’t talked with this donor in a while. They’ve been really engaged with, your content that you’re sending them through email. They participated an event at the end of last year. Allowing AI to help surface some of those individuals so that they don’t get necessarily, hidden within the sea of all their donors and then get them into the right journey, the right path for continued engagement. So that’s something in particular that we’ve focused on throughout 2025, but into 2026 as well, is ensuring that there are, automated systems and AI agents that can help them make their lives a bit easier.

Rick: Yeah. it’s such a huge, time saver, right? Absolutely. When it comes to resources and time. I love that you guys are working on it. You’re many comp companies working on it. Now, the important thing is to, plan it out properly and, and kick it off bit by bit instead of just going all out with the AI craze, right? Yes, because, a hundred percent,

Kelly Perry: and I’d say typically, our, the nonprofit industry as a whole can be very risk averse. which is. appropriate donors, donors wanna engage with causes that, that they deem are trustworthy and, are sharing the results of the outcomes of their donations. So it is really important for nonprofits to, to do things right, do things ethically, do things transparently. And, so they are, can be skeptical sometimes at new technology or new advancements. And, it makes sense to have, as you’re saying, a really strategic, thoughtful approach. there are movements within the nonprofit space all about, how to do AI ethically. and it’s really important for nonprofits to consider that. Are they ensuring that they have privacy standards that are up to date and, they’re respecting the needs. Of their donors and re honestly respecting their constituents. the communities that they serve, these are vulnerable communities. So it’s, really important that they have that in, in place before they think too much about how to implement ai. So I, I appreciate you bringing that up.

Rick: No, of course. and listen, I’m curious, maybe we get a little bit more technical now we get into the marketing stuff, But Right. your ICP right. these organizations you work with, how do they discover you? Exactly. And, I guess in a way there, I would love to understand if there are any marketing channels that become your go-to for bringing in more of those organizations than having more business for Stratus live.

Kelly Perry: No ab Absolutely. So typically we work with enterprise nonprofit organizations. So we consider those to be organizations that have pretty comprehensive and, complex fundraising strategies. They, might have upwards of, $10 million in fundraising revenue that they’re generating a year. so these are highly sophisticated organizations that need. Pretty, pretty complex and comprehensive systems to help them manage and maintain all of their donors. so they’re focused on everything from donor acquisition efforts. How are they attracting people to, their cause, and then how are they supplying them, and channeling them down a donor journey that’s really specific to their interests. And then even having comprehensive plans to how to find major donors or plan givers, those that are gonna give a significant amount of money to the cause, those folks need very hands-on experiences. they need a very comprehensive, data-driven platform to be able to handle that. traditionally, many nonprofits have been laid in with just. Poor technology, antiquated technology. a lot of them are using, legacy systems that might not necessarily fit, the needs of modern donors. And some also, they’re using a hundred different tools. They’re engaging with their volunteers on one platform. Folks that are attending events in another system, and that’s not really, designed for a good donor experience or a user experience. so we’re really looking to engage with organizations that want to take a, comprehensive, platform approach and a, a long-term investment and technology.

Rick: How much does, does your website play? how much of a role does it play in, all of this? I’m trying to understand a little bit about. whether you see things that you got your eye on, improving or maybe things that you think are working really well, whenever these people come to you and, they have the information at hand, that, that allows them to make a decision, enables them to do that.

Kelly Perry: Sure. and I know you also mentioned about, the channels, how they’re finding us. so much of that has been initially, offline sources. It, we work really diligently to build relationships with technol, our technology partners, and also nonprofit consultancies who are assisting large organizations in the buying process. so that’s a big chunk of, channel acquisition and lead sourcing. As far as the website goes, of course it’s really important for us to accurately, portray what our service and product offering is. it’s as I mentioned, a comprehensive platform, so it’s really on our marketing team to think how are we conveying our value proposition in a way that, is offering the right benefits to our end user. We, we don’t wanna solely just. Focus on feature functions. it’s really important for us to convey, what the overall benefit is of our solution as of late. we’ve put a lot of focus on how Stratus Live is showing up, within, chat, GPT, Claude Gemini, the generative engine optimization, and we’ve had some good success. Lately in kind of restructuring, our core website pages, as well as our blog posts, so including q and a at the end, or, charts, those have performed well for us, really focusing on niche industries and segments within the nonprofit space. Thinking about how if someone were to go to an AI. Or to an LLM to conduct a search. What are those long questions, long tail questions that they’re asking there? And writing content that aligns with that. So this year in particular, we have certainly started to see a growth in that and, would encourage other marketers, if you have not yet to explore how you’re showing up on, LLMs, it’s really important to, to consider that because we in particular have started to see a lot of growth in, lead gen from those channels.

Rick: That’s pretty cool. I like the bit about LLMs because, And especially what you mentioned that you’re trying to mirror that language, right? That people are using to search. Because I find myself searching on, say chat GPT, for example, or something else, and I tend to. Give more context, expand more, as opposed to a Google search where I’m trying to say, okay, what are the key words I’m looking for?

Kelly Perry: exactly. And

Rick: so, that’s pretty interesting the way you guys are doing it. And it sounds like the blog post itself might, have more of a human language, if you will, than, optimizing for SE

Kelly Perry: Right, Oh, absolutely. And those core SEO best practices are still so crucial. that’s why it’s really important for us to gain and work, gained, earn media placements, work with public, like other nonprofit publications to where to ensure, again, we’re showing up as an authority in this space so that all these various platforms get to know that yes, stratus live. Is an expert. they know nonprofit technology. some of those key pieces are still there, but you should absolutely think about, how are your customers trying to find you how are they engaging with Google, with, LLMs and exploring with, long tail conversations. ’cause you can get really detailed there, in, in sharing what your specific problem is.

Rick: Yeah.

Kelly Perry: Who you’re trying to serve. and they are speaking in, everyday language.

Rick: No, that’s a pretty interesting, as an approach. Now, Kelly, we’re going towards the back half of our episode here. So I would love us to jump into, more of a, personal, let’s say and lighthearted, section. And as we jump into our rapid fire segment, I would love to ask you about your day and, a few of the things that you think about typically when you go to work. Would you be ready for that? Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. what are the three main things that you focus on your typical work day?

Kelly Perry: Great, question. we’re a small marketing team. I hate, like we wear multiple hat. I hate when people say something like that, but we do, we wear multiple hats. We juggle a wide range of responsibilities, so I have a dual focus in my role. some demand generation activities like. content development, planning webinar campaigns. That’s something that’s a, takes a big core of my, focus ’cause that allows us to engage with our partners, engage with our clients, and showcase more of our technology solutions. The other side of my role, I work, have a product marketing role as well. working on go-to-market plans, messaging templates, doing product gap analysis to ensure that. we’re meeting head to head with our competition, but also how are we advancing our product. and then I also do some, work within Rev on the revenue operations side. So ensuring our, HubSpot system is, up to date with everything that is advancing on the AI side. and with marketing technology, it’s a great time to be in our field, but it can be quite overwhelming to ensure that you’re keeping up. With everything that’s going on. those are the key buckets, I’d say of my role here.

Rick: Okay. That’s, you call your ans full, that’s for sure.

Kelly Perry: Yes.

Rick: but speaking of, you, you said overwhelming, right? there’s a flood of content out there. Yes. So what’s your way of, and let me, just shorten the question. when it comes to content, do you prefer watching, reading, or listening?

Kelly Perry: Oh, it’s, I find that it’s more difficult for me now to focus on, like a long form blog post or a long guidebook. my attention span, I know as many of us is just, if you’re not engaging me right away, I’m moving on to the next piece. So I enjoy video. I enjoy, listening to podcast too, so I might have that up. on, on one screen while I’m working on a task on the other. so I think it’s really important to have, if you have one core piece of content, think about how to spread that out into different mediums and different lengths, content lengths. Because someone might not have a whole lot of time to be able to digest a, a 30 page ebook. It has to be in a way that, that they can access it. and. Yes, e everyone’s totally on the go all the time. And as you’re saying it, there’s so much content, so much intake that it is certainly difficult sometimes to stand out.

Rick: Yeah, I that I would agree with that. okay, this is an interesting one. So if you had a magic wand, I could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech. Sure. What would it be?

Kelly Perry: right now what’s been, what is tough for us occasionally is lead qualification. I talked about our ICPA little bit at the beginning of this conversation. We have that pretty well-defined, but occasionally I’d say as a product driven company first, we have hard and fast rules on who we think is a good prospect for our organization, but sometimes there might be a lead that, could fit our services. So we need to think more. We need to think about how we’re expanding that, ICP, in a way that’s aligning what we think is a good fit for a prospect, but what they might be looking for as well. So we’re trying to find ways to blend customer intel, product knowledge and sales and marketing feedback into that process so that we can accurately. qualifier leads. We have automations in place, That are just assigning them. But occasionally it takes time to have a couple of conversations with a prospect before we think, it’s a good fit. so you know, that would certainly be something that, would make our lives a whole lot

Rick: easier. Yeah, just getting all that information together and just, compile something that. Let’s, okay, good fit, bad fit, or yes, without having all that back and forth, which of course, the, conversations are, invaluable. But

Kelly Perry: yes, at the

Rick: same time, you, if you ever, if you have so many of ’em, then it becomes easier when you have something that, okay, I like that. I like that. That’s really good. Kelly, I want to thank you for, being on the show with us today and just talking about Stratos live, what you guys do, what you stand for in a way, and also who you work with and how you think about marketing. It was really interesting. I also wanna give you the last word as we wrap things up. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is the one thing that it should remember about the work you guys are doing?

Kelly Perry: Oh gosh. I’d love for anyone who’s listening just to think about, how can you get involved? How can you engage with nonprofit organizations that are in your community? Because there are so many worthy causes out there, and there are easy ways to get involved through volunteering, and there’s more detailed ways that you can get involved by, joining a board. but it’s such an incredible way to, to spend. an individual’s time is in service. So love, love for, folks to think about what those causes are that really mean something to them. Whether that was something that happened to them personally, to a family member, whether it’s just, caring about. The environment or caring about animals, whatever that might be. There, there are incredible ways to get involved. So if you’re not someone that traditionally thinks about being involved philanthropically, I would just encourage you to, start just exploring that as a great way to spend your time.

Rick: that’s a good one. And if someone wants to get in touch with you guys and see if there’s a potential fit, work with you, how can they do that?

Kelly Perry: Sure. of course, just head over to our website, stratus live.com. we have a newsletter there, resource page blog content there. We, offer, webinars every month. and would love to have everyone head over to the site and just, see what we’re all about.

Rick: Sounds good. we’ll put that in a show notes, hopefully, you, get many of them now. again, Kelly, thank you again for your time and it was a, great conversation. I appreciate it and I wish a wonderful day.

Kelly Perry: Thank you so much, Rick. Enjoyed being on the show.