We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Privacy Overview
Login
Your Role
Challenges You Face
results
Learn
Resources
Company
Our Culture
It's all about the mission.
No joke: Every decision we make gets run through this lens: “How will this decision support our mission?”
May seem corny, but this simple premise allows us to do away with individual political agendas while fostering a team atmosphere.
Here’s a peek into how we parlay this focus into a culture of value, respect and success for all.
Value
There’s the value that we offer our clients. The value that our clients offer us. The value our employees offer each other. Even the value that our employees extract from their positions for their own personal growth!
Here, we consistently review relationships and processes to ensure that the ultimate value is achieved all the way around. Sometimes it means ending existing partnerships. Sometimes it means revamping current methods. When it comes to pushing the bar on value, we’re always game.
Leadership & Personal Responsibility
Leadership is not about titles and hierarchies. It’s about initiative. It’s about integrity. And it’s about empathy: for the team, the customer, the donors. At MarketSmart, we are driven by the personal obligation to do our own jobs, and do them well. And we are obsessed with ensuring that we don’t hinder anyone else’s ability to get work done. We care about results. We take responsibility for ourselves. We help others succeed. Because we know that helping others is the best way to help ourselves.
Success
We know it’s against the grain, but we don’t believe that success is the achievement of worthy goals. Rather, it’s the pursuit of them! Success is a process— not a destination.
Seven Keys to our Success Here at MarketSmart
- Pursue worthy goals
- Build a unique brand around value
- Measure everything
- Focus on the 80/20 (Pareto Principle)
- Coach on systems and processes
- Breed sticky recurring revenue
- Kill complacency at all costs
Assess Then Re-assess
The core of all of our accomplishments rests with our regular get-togethers to plan our goals. What are they? How will they be achieved? Who will help?
We prioritize. We team up. We get ‘em done.
Mastermind Challenges
Mastermind Challenges invite internal groups of two or more to solve an issue. They last five seconds or five hours. They’re efficient and effective. No drama allowed.
Peer Review
The anonymous review of coworkers is therapeutic. It allows folks the opportunity to provide candid feedback and helps people improve and grow professionally.
No peeing in the fishbowl
We’re a growing team, but we’re tight— like fish in a bowl. We spend a lot of time together. So we hope you, too, loathe backstabbing, gossip and gotcha games. Our no-drama policy and culture quashes self-serving ulterior motives. Let’s keep it clean so all of us can play in a very friendly, team-oriented sandbox!
How we hire
When we interview, we’re not simply trying to plug holes in our organizational chart. Hiring is important. We have big goals. And we know we can’t achieve them without the right people. That’s why we developed a process that encourages you to take an active role in determining if a position here will be a good fit for all of us.
Our process is easy and deliberate:
Last thing— trust your gut.
Are your insides telling you that you’ll be productive here? You’ll add value to our mission? You’ll learn here? You’ll grow here?
We want you to be happy because then, all of us will be happy. Take a job that doesn’t feel right and BAM! Everyone’s cranky. Who wants that?
HOW YOU’LL GROW
Most companies have hierarchies: pyramids in which only a small number of people can fit at the top. And what happens in hierarchies? Back stabbing. Politics. General ickiness.
At MarketSmart, we’ve turned the pyramid upside down. Our growth structure is anything but icky. In fact, your potential is wide open from Day One.
Let’s say you start as a college intern. You finish school (congrats!) and you come back to MarketSmart as, say, a Front-End Production Solutionist (Jr. Developer… by the way, we’re not big on titles here). Over time you welcome the opportunity to take on more responsibilities. Poof! Now you’re a Developer/Programmer. Soon thereafter, you choose to become a team leader. Now you’re coaching the future generation of MarketSmart leaders, motivating and inspiring via personal successes and failures, earned industry expertise and a proven enthusiasm for the MarketSmart vision.
Does every MarketSmart leader start as an intern? Of course not! Your current qualifications can land you an Account Manager or Business Development or other position from the get-go. But this exercise illuminates the beauty of we have reengineered an age-old business operating system— the hierarchy.
Here at MarketSmart, it’s all about setting goals in line with our mission and values, achieving them, and growing so everyone benefits.
Get the book!
Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
Want to help more people make impact by facilitating their acts of philanthropy but feel like too many obstacles keep getting in your way?
Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
Get smarter with the SmartIdeas blog
Subscribe to our blog today and get actionable fundraising ideas delivered straight to your inbox!