You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media.
Jenny, today we’ve got a spotlight episode Tim Moral, the president and CEO of the San
Antonio Zoo.
Yeah, I’m really excited to talk to Tim today. He’s going to share a lot of his experience
coming from the theme park space. He spent 20 years at SeaWorld Parks. Then he’s now been
at the San Antonio Zoo for about 10 years. Over those 10 years, he’s done some really
exciting things and really brought the San Antonio Zoo to become one of the top attractions
not only in San Antonio, but the state of Texas.
Yeah, if anybody knows Tim, especially if you’re in the zoo world, Tim is like a volcano
of ideas. What are some of the big ones that we’re going to highlight today?
Yeah, we’re going to talk to Tim about some actionable steps that you can take to really
position your nonprofit as a top attraction as they’ve done in San Antonio. Then how
to constantly innovate packages to not only drive revenue, but more importantly to really
meet your guests, to give your guests the expectations that they’re looking for.
Yeah, I do. Take advantage of that.
All great ways to help drive revenue.
Tim, lastly, just how he’s taking inspiration from the theme park space to really evolve
how zoos operate and again, provide those unique experiences for guests.
All right, let’s get to the interview.
Jenny’s super excited to bring in Tim Moro from the San Antonio Zoo. Tim, welcome to
the show.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Yeah, this is a long time comment. I remember when we first met way back then. So thank you.
We really appreciate the time. We gave you a little intro before we hit record here, but
want to just take a minute. Tell us a little bit about you.
Sure. So people ask me all the time. Of course, when I tell you know, what do you do for a living?
I say, as we say, work at the zoo and they’re like, what do you do? And I say CEO. They’re
like, wow, did you always want to do that? Did you plan to do that? And I, my answer is
no.
If my career has been a complete accident, I really started off wanting to do law enforcement,
which my dad had done. So I started going to school for law enforcement. At the same time,
I was, I moved to San Antonio. They were just opening a theme park called Fiesta, Texas.
So I said, I’ll go be a lifeguard there for the summer. And then the next summer, they
called me back to come back and be a trainer. I said, no, ended up going back. And then
the supervisor the next year said, no, I ended up going back and I kept getting promoted.
I got two degrees in criminal justice during those first four years. I was at working at
the theme parks.
And then I said, okay, I’m switching to my university now for my major. I’m definitely not going
to do the city more. This is not what I want to do. And then C-World called me out of the
blue and said, hey, we really want you to come on our water park in some areas of C-World
in San Antonio.
And I said, no. And so I went out there for, they’re like, well, at least come tour and let
us show you around. And so I went out there. And again, I’m like, okay, we’ll have nothing
else to do this summer. And I ended up being there for 19 years at work my way up to vice
president.
I was in the city of San Antonio, but a couple years in Orlando, opening Discovery Co,
which was a really great experience. And then fast forward to 2014. And I had a hundred
reaches out to me about the zoo job. And I said, no, I just did it. And then I came to walk
the zoo one day and I grew up at the zoo as a small child. And then as my oldest son was
a child, I brought him here. So I’ve been to demo really three times. And so I was like,
you know, I could really help that place. And I think all the things I’ve learned working
at the attractions were really helped me here at San Antonio Zoo and lift our zoo, which
in turn will lift our city. And I really love this zoo and this city. And so I think it’s
been a big win for me. And I have a great team here at the zoo. We’re doing amazing things.
We’re writing an amazing chapter in time for our 110 year old zoo. And it’s been really
exciting and fun. But you know, people reach out, hey, I’d like to talk to you about your
career path and see how I could be cut. Oh my god, I’m not the guy to talk to you about
that. This was an accident. But it was definitely meant to be.
Yeah, I’ve got the book for you. The story of Tim, the accidental CEO, like we can
do. That’s a great line.
All right. So, you know, when we talk about zoos, we talk about aquariums, you know, sometimes
the story of how do you get to the top? It’s, well, I came to the animal side, you know,
animal care. That’s so passionate about it. Your story is a little different. You’re, you’re
from the criminal justice side, which, sure, um, yeah, I tell people all the time, I’m
an obstacle. So I really was working on operations at the attractions. And then probably the turning
point was when I went to Orlando to help open discovery. Because I really got to get involved
there in the design of that park. Um, and having to have this mindset of how are we getting
guests as close as possible the animals in a safe way? It was a very interactive park.
You know, big legumes, we swam, we raise and fish, dolphin encounters, aviaries were birds
are landing on you and your feeding birds and then having to weave operations through that
and keep their guests safe and make that an amazing experience. So I started getting involved
in kind of the design at that point and really working closely with animal care. Um, and
then from there came back to Texas, the sea world, San Antonio. And I had a really amazing,
uh, boss named Dan Decker who kind of would put me in departments to fix them. And so I had,
I got to do almost everything in sea world over my course of 19 years there. So a different
times I would have three or four areas, but those included things like running the water park,
running the entrance front gate, running rides, landscape, um, our in high service, Clizetales
and hospitality house. We used to go away beer, a consumer events, concerts, festivals,
PR, um, park quality. I mean, you name it. I got to do it at sea world. So I tell everybody,
I’m a master of nothing. I’m a total mud, but I’m an obstacle at heart, but I have a mud
as far as the other 10 divisions of what basically takes to runner zoo or aquarium
or theme park. Um, and so I’m smart enough and aware enough to know, I need to hire people
smarter than me. And in my meetings, I should be the dumbest guy in the room and that, that’s
not a high bar for me. Um, so, but I have surrounded myself with really good talent that are experts
in their fields. And I think that’s really helped us, uh, become a successful zoo and the
things that we’re doing here. But, um, I think that’s part of the key is, uh, I know when
I don’t know. And I just ask a lot of questions and, and kind of move us forward that way.
And let’s talk about that. So, you know, our audience here, it’s maybe the marketing manager,
the social media marketing person, the marketing director. And you’re kind of living at a
bigger level. Like, could you maybe talk about a day in the life, which could look completely
different or the same every day? Yeah. What should we know about the role of a CEO and specifically
in what you’re doing? So mine is really morphed over time. I’ve been here almost 10 years
now. And so I, I would say the first five or six years, I was pretty hands on operationally
and with the physical facility of the zoo, getting, raising the standards of our guest experience,
raising the standards of animal care, raising the standards of our habitats and the natural
spaces we’re creating for these animals, creating a better experience, um, lifting the staff
up and pushing the staff forward to really grow and get better and really understand how we’re
a major attraction in Texas. We are one of the big, what I call the big boys and I really
acting like that and knowing our role in tourism in San Antonio, in education in San Antonio
and conservation around the world, knowing all those things. As we have transitioned kind
of from getting the zoo up to the standard it needed to be at and the operational level
it needs to function at, my role has transitioned to more fundraiser, governmental affairs, uh,
and support of staff. And I always say, you know, I showed upside down, be with my hands
all the time. People said my work structure is an upside down being on the bottom, kind
of supporting everybody else, but, uh, it’s really transitioned and what it’s helped is bringing
in people that are really good at their jobs in operations, in animal care, in education,
all the departments and we had a lot that we’re already here before. So molding those groups
together, moving them forward has allowed me now to step out of some of the day to day or
most of the day to day and really focus on, uh, building and working on the business,
not in the business. So fundraising, uh, we have a big capital campaign going right now,
it’ll be ultimately probably about a 250 million, $300 million campaign and getting city
if you support and county support and donors and corporations to really buy into what we’re
doing and help us grow the facility.
Could you talk about, you know, maybe that transition five, six, seven years ago, you know,
you talk about stepping into a role on a, you know, a hundred year plus zoo. Maybe there’s
some kind of story or anecdote that you could share on kind of how you helped transition
the zoo mentality to that, you know, that big boy, is there something like you’re kind of
most proud of whether it’s a new facility or new attitude?
Yeah, I have a, I could, I would definitely will write a book on this someday probably.
That’s a lot of stories. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, the accident on CEO, but I’m right now above my head, I’m looking at a sign that says
cameras and film, I’ve got it over my door. So I’m walking to the zoo my first couple of
weeks and the sign is on one of the gift shops across from the right when you walk in
the interest is the first sign you see. So my question was to the team like, when is
the last time we sold cameras here? And they were like, probably 10, 15 years ago. And at
the time, I was with one of my brand new VPs, I created a guest experience department. She
was about 28 years old probably. And they were talking about says cameras and film. She’s
like, I’ve never even put film in a camera. Like I don’t even know what that means. And so
it’s been my kind of reminder to always see things through a fresh eye and have the staff
see things through a fresh eye. And I also have it over my door because when I was with
C-World, Mr. Bush, one of his big things was, never forget to look up. People always don’t
look up. And so you’ll look up and see cobwebs or dirt and those things. So that’s kind of
a reminder every day of, I know, never stop seeing things and always looked up. But probably
what I’m most proud of is the first, probably within the first year, I started hearing comments
out in the community like, wow, seeing changes at the zoo, I’m really liking the physical
changes. Adding color, we’re adding this, we’re adding the landscape was incredible. I
have a tadip rage of starting to happen. But even more impressive, probably year two on.
And what I hear today, probably 90 plus percent of the time is the passion engagement of the
staff and the knowledge of our staff and the willingness for them to want to help guest
and engage with guests. And that has been the core of what we have has made it successful
is really having this culture of we treat our employees like family. We call ourselves
a zoo crew or we call ourselves family every day. And we treat our employees, right? We
put that before the guest. We’re going to treat the employees like family and the concept
is in turn, they are going to treat the guests like we treat them. And that has worked for
us. It was a lesson I learned from my old mentor. I mentioned Dan Decker back to see
world San Antonio, but it’s really worth for us and people. I tell people, we’ll be behind
the scenes tour. We’re going to take someone to pet or Rhino or feed a hippo or meat no copy.
And I said, they’re going to leave talking about you. The human being that took them back
there and shared their knowledge and passion about that animal. And it’s almost 100%
of the time. That’s the comments we get. So for me, the biggest win has been the culture
change. And that’s really that’s really helped us drive forward because people are really
buying into what we’re doing here at the employees. One of the things we did was divided our
departments into we are mission-based organizations. So we have mission delivering departments
of education, conservation, animal care. Everyone else kind of wonders what their role is in
that at a nonprofit, I think. And how am I helping if I’m in finance, how am I helping
the mission to find my service or worship? We’ve kind of branded those the mission enabling
departments. So they understand what you do is enabling those three departments to care
literally physically and literally carry out our mission. So it’s helped align everybody
with understanding the role in the nonprofit. But we are very much a family at San Antonio
Zoo and take care of each other. You know, we are very proud to make them COVID with not
one lay off. Everybody sacrificed hours and pay and we were able to surprise everyone
to pay them back that all that money that they’ve given up and the bring of 21. And so
we’ve had some great moments in the zoo and I think the loyalty is too way here. They
understand leadership is here to support them. And then we understand how hard our staff
works and how dedicated and passionate they are about what they do.
Trying to literally fighting to save the world on a daily basis.
Well, I go on there and I think that’s solid gold here. I’m going to dig into the mission
enabling departments. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Is it everybody as the
employee is kind of on team A or team B? What were you? Tell me out there. Yeah, really it’s
one team, but you know, if I’m a brand new employee and I’m working at ticket-loom selling
tickets in the back of my mind, I’m like, oh, I know the zoo does all this conservation
work and education. We have a school and we have, we do all this care for animals, but
I’m just selling tickets. I don’t have anything to do with the mission, but they do because
first of all, they’re the frontline talking to the guests and the guests will ask about
conservation and things went on the zoo. And then by selling the tickets or whatever they’re
doing, that, those dollars are coming in to help support the funding of the mission.
So what I talked to people about is a new modern zoo, a credited zoo. The zoo visits
just one little part of who we are. The ice cream underwater image you all know. So that
top of the iceberg you see out of the water is our zoo visit. And it’s really funding
and enabling everything under the water, which is, which is those mission delivery departments.
So we joke here, we should have a t-shirt that says, I had no idea because when we take people
on tours of our school or our conservation department and our conservation labs and our
behind the scenes where we’re doing endangered species work or just the care we give animals
generally literally like, I had no idea. I have only known the zoo as a guest coming to
see animals and learn about animals. I had no idea all those things were happening. So
that’s true for our employees. A new employee at the zoo too is like, I had no idea that
we did all these things. I just came to work here because I thought it would be fun. It
just happens to be where a nonprofit with a great mission and how do I fit into that role.
So that’s what we’ve really tried to find for them. So they understand and buy and can
speak to our mission and our vision to guest or whoever in the community that asked them
about working in San Antonio Zoo because you definitely get asked those questions when
you say you work at the zoo.
All right. I had no idea. That’s a good working title for the book as well.
Yes. That one might work too. Yeah. You already got the shirt, right?
Yeah.
You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit
attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts
are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of attend media. Attend media is a media planning and buying
agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information please
visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny.
All right. So let’s talk about that. So your background in the for profit attraction world,
I like what she said, the visit, the ticket revenue, that is funding the under the water,
the big part of the iceberg. What are some things that maybe you could share with the rest
of the zoo, nonprofit attraction world? Everybody wants to sell more tickets, right? But how do
you prioritize that? How do you share that idea to say this feeds the mission? There’s some
kind of tactical things that has worked for you. Yeah. The nice thing is coming from that
for profit side. I really had a good understanding of not just tickets, but products and packages
and things and coming from the operational side. Here’s what the guests want and they’re
asking for inside the facility and of course they want ease of purchase. They want convenience.
They want a seamless exhibit, seamless visit and those kind of things. So I think helping
that create those packages which a lot of nonprofits don’t live in that world. You’ll see a lot of
museums or smaller attractions. They just sell a ticket. That’s all they sell. But we’re
working with our vendors of our register systems and our point of sales and our website.
We want upgrades available because the guest wants to have all this before they get here.
They don’t want to buy a ticket and then have to come to the zoo and get another line
to buy the behind the scenes experiences and all that thing and waste their time that
they paid for now at the zoo to really get into their day and do those experiences. So I
think having a good understanding of what your guest expects or what they’re looking for
and part of that is be a consumer yourself. We have a pretty robust zoo duty manager program
here where all of our managers, directors and vice presidents act as a duty manager for
the day and part of that is being a guest. You go stand in line in the restaurant, how
long did it take? Was it easy? What places were open? What were the pain points? So we kind
of look at the zoo through an eye as a consumer as well, which I think is really helpful.
But bringing that mentality of, we are a nonprofit. We are a five-once-eat-three. We say that’s
our tax status, our business model is for profit. So that’s been another thing for the
staff to learn is, hey, the more we make revenue wise, the more we get to put right back into
the mission and upgrading the facility and increasing and fixing pay rates that have
been traditionally low in the past. So it’s been feeding and they’ve seen the buy
and I know there was some, there was some nervousness those first couple of years and I remember
bringing in zoo lights in 2015, 12 months, less than 12 months after I started, we started
zoo lights. We expanded our zoo boo event from two nice to six weeks straight. And one of
the comments I heard was like, this used to be our like down time, slow time. And I said,
we don’t really have that anymore, especially in a city, we live in a city in San Antonio,
one of the few cities in the country with two major theme parks. We have a sea world and
six lights not to mention the Alamo, the riverwalk, natural bridge caverns, Inesco, rural heritage
sites with missions, a blossoming food scene. So there’s a lot of competition for time here.
So we have to kind of be in that mode. And it took a little bit of ramping up for people
to understand it, but they’ve seen the benefits of what that has brought to the zoo to their
own personal lives and to the facility and the reputation of the facility. And that’s
been key. But I think really key is understanding consumer want needs and be a consumer yourself
get out and go visit other locations and other places and steal and best practice ideas.
One thing I can’t say enough about the zoo world and the zoo committee is how open we
are with each other on new ideas, on concepts, on designs of habitats. I mean, I could take
our grill adorance in the country. And we’ve been doing this for a couple years now and
they will shoot holes in it. I wouldn’t do this. Here’s what we would do better next time.
So very collaborative. We’re not necessarily competition, maybe a little bit in some regions
where you may have some regional closeness. Texas is very spread out, but overall being
mission based organizations, it’s a very open community versus the theme parks where everything
is very secretive and everyone wants to be the first and the biggest in the mid and
wherever category they’re trying to own. It’s a very different role, which is very refreshing
to be in this collaborative environment.
So we talked about upgrading the ticket experience. You’re having upgraded ticket packages.
I love the idea of having your employees be that guest. Talk about getting just kind of
on the boots. This could be better. This could be better. But it’s, and then you also talk
about adding events. And I’m assuming that’s, is that just out of curiosity? Is that more
like a premium event ticket, a separate ticket or is it these are, these are actually events
included with your zoo ticket or membership, which we leverage to sell membership. So we
actually started our holiday program off as an after hour separate ticket event as was
our zoo. And we strategically moved towards getting our pricing for memberships and ticketing
to the right level and then included that. So it became a bigger benefit to the guest.
Oh, I have my membership. It went up $5 this year, but I also get six weeks of zoo lights
and six weeks of zoo light goes much as I want. So we have strategically layered events
over almost the entire year, probably 90% of our operating days have some sort of event
happening. And if you think about the zoo, you grew up in as a, as a small child, it was
kind of the same experience you went every time like you would animals you wanted to go
see everything with the same every day. It didn’t have repeatability for a kid it did,
but maybe not for the parents. And so coming from the theme park or attraction world where
we are doing a lot of events, a lot of capital coming over here. We’ve kind of brought
that mentality here. So probably 90% of our days are overlaid with an event. So this summer,
for example, we have dinosaurs for six weeks of spring. We have ice age animals for spring
break. We do something with live music and then we have going to zoo, boo and zoo lights and
then we have an official feast event, which yes, is our marty girl on Santa. Clean a clean
family version of marty girl in San Antonio. And so there’s a lot of events happening. We
do have some after hours, kind of fundraising events that are separate and not necessarily
even the demo or the market. We wouldn’t even market this to the zoo population. This is
where fundraising gala is in those kinds of things. But most of our events are included with
admission and membership. And we really use that to drive sales of those memberships and
takes. And we’ve been really focused on adding benefit to memberships. We have three levels
of memberships now with varying degrees of benefits like free care. So right is one of
our benefits on our highest level is the one reason everybody buys that that membership.
We also have monthly memberships now. So you pay a monthly fee and that’s kind of a subscription
fee. You know, it’s said and forget it. Concept of like there’s going to keep rolling until
they cancel those kind of things. So we watch what our competition is doing. And for us,
really, we’re watching thing parks because we know they are more advanced in ticketing and
processes and bundling and those kind of things. And we’ve taken that back to other zoos
now. I’d be like, look, this has been really successful for us. If you should try this,
if you can, your system will do it in those kind of things. But this is what has made
us a lot of money in the guest to really excited about. I’m going to get into the weeds here.
What ticketing system are you guys using? We currently have what is our ticketing system
that we just changed. So it is. It’s going to come to me. It’ll come to me. I’ll keep sure
it will come to me. But we have changed. But that’s a good example. We, I’ve been here
nine and a half years now. We have changed three times. So we have gone up and I look at
the levels we were before. We know where we had one system that was doing front gate,
merchandise, and food, did food and merch, okay, not so much on the front gate. Then we
went up another level and the other thing that zoos at the is we have to tie in this nonprofit
software to this tracking donors and we can run lists and these things. We’re tracking
all this so they all have to tie together. So a little bit different beast than, you know,
I didn’t realize how good I had it at the bean porcelain were doing their own software.
I got IT department. Have you want the front gate to be able to do this and they make it?
That’s fair. That’s fair. So we have, we’re just started our new third new system probably
in the last year and it will come to me and I’ll have to name it before we’re done talking.
But we’re already like, okay, are we already starting to outpace and outgrow what this one’s
doing and what would be next? But we’re looking at, okay, this was a former six flags operating
system and those kind of things. So they understand what we’re saying because our original
systems were a little bit of what I would call maybe some museum mentality of just we want to keep
it very simple, sell a ticket and be functional and we are not. We’re pretty aggressive on. Hey, we want
packages. We want upsells at the end. We want everyone to be able to spend as much as they want to
before they get here because we also know spending is going to increase when they get here.
If they’ve already spent that money all upfront, they’re not having to do it when they arrive at
the front entrance. So that’s been a big part of our growing these systems and be able to track.
You know, we’re looking at using Vanguard now with the RFID system so people can tap and pay,
put accounts for their kids with their budget on there and then that would be your entry into the
zoo. We’ve gone to digital memberships now so if you pull up to the zoo, your membership pops up
on your phone. So we’ve pushed way past where we were 10 years ago, but we still have a lot of room
to grow and we’re really excited about. We really are often probably the nonprofit pushing these
developers and sometimes time to like, no, I promise you everybody is going to want this if you have it.
They just don’t know that they want it yet. So that’s been a big part of what we’ve been doing.
Tim, you seem to be on the forefront of this because some of these ideas you’re talking about,
we don’t hear a ton from different zoos, you know, working with museums. They’re definitely not in
this type of attitude. What would be your advice like how an organization who’s listening to this saying,
okay, this is really cool. I can see how this can increase revenue without having to make a big
capital expenditure or bring in 10 different new animals. Yeah, where’s a good place for an organization
to get started? Like, why don’t I have our association meetings? There’s a lot of great speaking
or listening opportunities and the sessions that they do. There’s, I think I’m doing two on revenue
generating this year. All right guys, we’ll see you in Calgary. You know, see too. That’s right. Make sure
you have your passport. I wonder how many people are not going to be a passport ready when they
realize it’s in Canada. I checked mine like four months ago. I’m like, okay, we’re good. Yeah, I had a
renew mine this year. I also think that I think that sometimes maybe smaller facilities don’t think
that they can do what the big facilities do. Maybe because they think, oh, we don’t have the money
they have. But there’s lots of little things we’ve done that were basically no cost that are
generated. It’s a ton of money. I also think it’s a big deal for the bigger zoos like us to learn from
the smaller zoos who are still doing it efficiently and on a tighter budget and really working to find
unique ways to get things done. So I think it’s a two way street that the big zoos should be also
be learning from the little little guys and the little guys need to be learning from the big guys. But
one thing about nice, I mentioned about this world is the collaboration is very nice. So I’ve done,
last year I spoke on fundraising for the zoo this year. I think I’m doing how the CEO fundraises.
I didn’t know I was doing that session until a lot of week ago. And then a revenue generating ideas
one and a lot of it is having the right partners in. We’ve done a little thing like we have where we sell,
we have all these experiences like a flamingo feed or a lora keat feed or a giraffe feed and carousel.
Okay, what do guests want? They want one-stop shop. They don’t want to go buy a six-to-perl location.
So we’ve launched a fund pass now. There’s three different levels of fund pass that include
you know five seven or ten experiences that you can do and you can do it all year it doesn’t inspire
and so that we’re really pushing fund pass now and then the next concept is or the conversation is
everywhere we sell one of these tickets we need to be selling and pushing the fund pass for ease
for the guests and also it locks locks that guest in to do five seven ten things. And so just
trying to make it easy for the guest. But that’s an example of something in a zoo that has a
couple of experiences can do. You’re going to increase your sales and revenue because they’re buying
a package from you instead of one experience it’s a better deal for the guest and it’s a win for the
zoo and so those kind of things I think those little conversations need to be happening because we
all need to be helping each other lift all boats. I love it and I’m only going to ask this out of
a tradition but I think you’ve given like 14 examples already but in terms of marketing,
ticket sales, revenue generation what do you think? Not profit transactions should be doing more of
like I said I’m laughing as I’m asking the question because you hit on a few of them. You got any
any other nuggets you can share with us. I mean I talk we just left a movie with someone that’s
doing the animal film festival that wants to get involved with this a meeting and talk about how
we can do this integration with the movie film festival that comes to San Antonio in September
about animal in November by animals but my comment to them is like we have so much to say it’s
our biggest challenge there’s so much content coming out of the zoo with conservation wins the
animal birth that the great things that are happening at the zoo promoting the zoo but not being
we try not to use our social channels to over promote the zoo so be more strategic you know online
in the way we’re targeting ads and targeting ticket sales and those kind of things but I think
storytelling especially for zoos and we I say we have the greatest content ever animals and kids
we have unlimited content and great stories to tell so I think storytelling also probably my biggest
lesson coming out of Seawold and what Seawold went through my last couple years with not responding to
you know fake movies and fake news and those kind of things that you really have to be telling your
story all the time not don’t wait till there’s a crisis to start trying to tell your story and then
like I said we try to make it fun here so we know people come to visit the zoo because it’s fun
they probably come to work here because it’s fun so that Eric or let’s keep it fun keep it light
we are very serious scientific based organization focused on all these things but it’s also fun
and so that is top of mind and then for nonprofits it’s to be asking and and our zoo had kind of fallen
behind on asking and disconnected from donors and there was kind of this philosophy of you know will
do a capital campaign every 10 years or so and then we’ll leave the donors alone for a while when I
got here starting to be done is like we haven’t heard from the same 10 years like so we give our
money to other places there’s still going to give away money every year and donate money but if
you’re not if you’re not there telling your story and talking to them and asking for them to
support your story then they’re just gonna give it to somebody else and so I think asking for help
as a nonprofit to either grow or improve and those things that think is key and a lot of people don’t
ask they kind of just say you know we take donations we’re five ones three but it’s that we have found
through our social campaigns and our online campaigns or email campaigns that having specific
asks out help get those goals reached and celebrating the reaches when you get there and those kind of
things and so you’ve got to be targeted and focused and and have a plan for social and for marketing and
for asking for money tomorrow president CEO of the san Antonio Zoo thank you very much
well thank you guys for the time it’s been a blast
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