AFP Greater Madison Member Spotlight: Ash Collins

The AFP Greater Madison Chapter is comprised of so many fantastic fundraisers and we are excited to feature one of these individuals this month – Ash Collins.

Ash is the Influencer Relations Specialist at Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization. In Ash’s role, she partners with social media influencers to promote the work her organization does to “Save Them All!”

During Ash’s six-year tenure with the AFP Greater Madison Chapter, she has served in various roles. Ash started as a member of the Young Professionals Committee, served on the Board of Directors, and now sits on the Mentorship Committee.

While working at Best Friends Animal Society, Ash has been introduced to working with crypto currency and NFTs (nonfungible tokens). These donation methods are becoming more widely accepted by organizations and Best Friends Animal Society began accepting cryptocurrency last year. Since beginning to accept these donations, Ash has been directly involved with stewarding two NFT-related gifts, totaling more than $500K!

“I encourage fundraisers to look into accepting cryptocurrency at your organizations now and develop a process for this, as it will only continue to grow,” said Ash. “Crypto appeals to donors of all demographics, so do not assume your older donors do not want to get involved or are not already in the crypto space.”

Ash will be taking her experiences to the AFP ICON stage this year and will be presenting with her colleague, Emily Tolliver, in a session about “Nonprofits and Influencer Marketing.” During this session, Ash will be sharing the benefits of an Influencer Program for nonprofits and the collaborations that she has been part of during her role! She is extremely excited about the opportunity to share the benefit of Influencer Marketing, which is a relatively new space for many organizations.

When asked about what Ash is looking forward to for the future of fundraising, she said, ”I am so excited to see how the younger generations will get involved in fundraising and how the platforms they utilize, like Discord, Twitch, and TikTok, will continue to evolve to help them get involved in causes they care about.”

If you would like to nominate someone to be featured in an upcoming Member Spotlight, you can submit here! More about AFP ICON (coming up on May 2-4) here.