the marketing attractions podcast

Conversations on How Nonprofit Attractions Drive Attendance Through Marketing

Spotlight: Tim Morrow, President and CEO of San Antonio Zoo

Tim Morrow shares his perspective on how ticket revenue can help spread the mission for nonprofit attractions. He aims to make San Antonio Zoo not just the top zoo in Texas but the top attraction in the state. He spent 18+ years with SeaWorld and talks about what he’s brought from the for-profit side to the nonprofit side.

We talk about…

  • How zoos can learn from how theme parks are marketing and selling tickets and guest experiences
  • The power of ‘repeatability’ and creating a year-long calendar of events
  • Different pricing packages to enhance the guest experience and increase revenue


This podcast is produced by attend media.

attend helps nonprofit attractions drive visitation through paid media. Download our free guide to media planning for nonprofit attractions at our site – attend.media

Episode Transcript:

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 thank you for listening to the marketing attractions podcast if you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show please visit our website at marketing attractions podcast.com