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Nonprofit Radio for April 15, 2016: 8 Areas of Nonprofit Excellence

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Michael Clark & Melkis Alvarez-Baez: 8 Areas of Nonprofit Excellence

The Nonprofit Coordinating Committee Excellence Awards are based on tough criteria that reveal the right way to run your organization in areas like fundraising; management; board; financial; and diversity. This is from the show on March 6, 2015, when Michael Clark was NPCC’s president, and Melkis Alvarez-Baez was their director of programs. They explain all the standards.


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host it’s tax day. I hope that doesn’t make you cringe just think about next year when you’ll have until april seventeenth, two extra days next year see how generous the irs is to you. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into thrombosis, ida pina, if you dealt me the low blow that you missed today’s show eight areas of non-profit excellence the non-profit coordinating committee excellence awards are based on tough criteria that revealed the right way to run your organization in areas like fund-raising management board, financial and diversity. This is the show from march six twenty fifteen, when michael clark was and pcc’s president and melkis alvarez-baez was their director of programmes. That explains all the standards on tony’s tech too our contributors, we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com here are michael clarke and melkis alvarez-baez with eight areas of non-profit excellence, i’m very glad teo welcome it’s, a pleasure to welcome michael clarke and melkis alvarez-baez to the show, michael is president of the non-profit coordinating committee of new york. He has thirty five years of training and experience in urban issues, public health and non-profit management, and they are at n pcc. And why on twitter melkis alvarez-baez, director of programmes at non-profit coordinating committee of new york, one of the programs she directs is the new york community trust non-profit excellence awards that we’re talking about today and she’s at melkis alvarez-baez michael melkis welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. Pleasure. Pleasure. Tio be able to spend the hour talking about some, i think extraordinary guidelines. Eight specific areas. That non-profits good. Very much benefit from michael, our president and pcc, new york. Where were these eight areas of excellence come from that? The awards are based on well, it’s. Funny. You should ask tony. We we actually little karin answer for that. I didn’t prepare nasco and not only prepared but it’s the truth. Ten years ago we looked around the country and we realised there are thirty six regional associate state and regional associations of non-profits like ours, representing a total of about twenty five thousand non-profit organizations and nineteen of them have developed their own standards for what are the key areas of management that you have to do really well, so that your organization performs at a high level and as a ceo so you don’t get fired. So the point is we took a look at those we identified even though they don’t quite agree with each other. We said we’re gonna fight eight areas that that they all had in common. Okay? And we decided to use those eight areas to build a slightly different kind of programme. Most of those are certification programs. You take a workshop, you passed the test, they say, okay, you’re certified in financial management. You certified in this, we thought we would create an aspirational program, one that really talks about what did the excellent practices and financial management look like? What did the excellent practices and communication look like? Because i think these days, most people are trying to figure out how to make the organization’s perform better. So these air guides to how to make your organization perform better in those areas and quite well detailed. We’re gonna have time since we have the full hour. Get into some of the detail of it. Um, now, only nineteen of the thirty eight organizations had had standards of sometime. That’s only that’s, only half. Yeah, that’s all within the last five or ten years. It’s a trend that they’re gradually developing these program or more. Yeah. No kisses, nothing. Yeah, i think last time i checked, it was actually twenty one of them that had some sort of standards program. It’s growing. I just came from our national conference, and we talked a lot there about standards of excellence programs and also about the excellence awards program and where they were one of only two organizations that has an excellence award. Strauss cool. All right, the other one is washington d c right now melkis this is a lot more than an awards ceremony, right? Maybe there’s let’s talk about the workshops that aaron get involved all year. You’re raising really the level of lots and lots of non-profits whether there in the awards competition or not. Yeah, we actually like to say that the awards is uneducated schnoll program disguised. As an awards program on and it’s quite lengthy process from march to november, culminating in that final award ceremony where we sort of announced three winners but really the entire process, even the application is meant to be educational for applicants, so that there’s something for all of the organizations that go through the process, even those that don’t win, right? And the idea is that by going through this application process, they’re learning about their management practices and how to improve them. At the end of each awards program, we also put on a siri’s of workshops that are actually going on. Now they’re called the pathways toe excellence workshops in the idea with those is to really disseminate the best management practices in each of these eight key areas that we’re going to talk about from past winners of the awards. And it was that award ceremony last november that motivated me tohave the two of you on the show because i was i just was so taken by how no, how the organizations had risen to the to the challenge of the eight areas that there were three organizations on stage, but i know there’s lots. Of lots of organizations a z i said, i mean, even even beyond the ones that are in the competition, there’s lots of organizations learning a lot about very, very good practices. Andi was just i hadn’t i hadn’t heard of the awards. Sorry to say i hadn’t heard of them before i was invited. Okay? All right, well, i’m too i’m helping you. We’re getting it out to ten thousand more people. Yeah, i was invited to go boyfriend hey. And i went and i really was was taken by the descriptions of the organizations out there with the three that were on the stage, the finalists and just the overall explanation of the eight areas. So welcome. I’m glad i’m glad i was there going. You’re the practices. The good thing about the program when you come to those awards and when you sit through the best practices workshop is you’re listening to people that have actually had to implement these things. Yes. So this is not somebody’s theory about how to do this stuff. This is this is just a lesson straight from the field, right? How they think it has a has a i think non-profit managers recognize that right away it has an authenticity that you wouldn’t necessarily see if you read a lot of books. There are something over seven million entries and google for non-profit excellence. Okay, it’s, a confusing world let’s start to get it let’s start to get into our eight because because there are eight, and i want it just as an overviewing i’m going to take them off, okay, if you’ll allow me great. So people know what’s what’s coming up, the first we’re going to talk about is effective and ethical fund-raising and resource development overall management focus on results, governance structure that moves the organization forward strong, transparent and accountable financial management, diversity and culturally competent organizational practices. Enlightened use of human resource is that’s interesting, enlightened use appropriate and reliable information technology it systems and regular ineffective communications and use of communications technology. That’s where we’re headed let’s start with thea the fund-raising and ethical effective unethical fund-raising and resource development let’s start with you, michael, the one of the things that there’s lots of bullets under all of them. And we obviously do not have time for all that for each bullet. That’s impossible, but let’s ah, let’s talk let’s. Look at a couple like fund-raising revenue streams are as diverse as possible. What are we looking for there? Why is it important? You’re looking for something that looks like a pyramid and a lot of non-profits finances looked like an inverted pyramid are the words you’re looking for some money coming from private donors, some money coming from foundations, some money coming from the government, some money coming from corporations and that there’s a very simple reason for that. If you have only one source revenue, then you’re extremely vulnerable to changes in politics or changes in foundation trends or changes in whatever that one sources so better toe have you that that’s very risky? Yes. So you you know, just to keep it to be a sustainable is posits a big word in the nonprofit sector. Sustainability to be a sustainable is possible. You want tohave as diverse range of sources of money as you can get the the board. So i’ll tell you what we’ll may well go back and forth. So you know michael will cover. Well, michael will cover the talk about the fund-raising and then melkis will do the next area. Okay, we’ll be all right. But then chime in two, you know, i mean, let’s have a conversation. I don’t mean to shut you off milk if you want to add something about effective ethical fund-raising please do. Okay, um, the board overall responsibility for raising funds to meet the organization’s needs the responsibility fund-raising resides with the board, michael, it actually does. You know, there are three basic principles built into non-profit law about what boardmember we’re supposed to do, and one of them is called the duty of care, and that involves making sure the organization is sustainable and has revenue. A lot of board members walk onto boards and never realized that we do a lot of training with board members and coaching on they say, really, i’m supposed to help them raise money? Absolutely it’s part of its part of the job of being a boardmember so, you know, boardmember is frequently represent very different kinds of backgrounds than the managers, but they bring a lot to the table, and we’re looking for one hundred percent annual giving on the board. A good standard is tohave one hundred percent above board giving something personally. Some board set up a number something just say, give something that’s meaningful to you, but somehow you one hundred percent giving you what that is that if your board members aren’t giving, then it’s hard to convince others to give to your organization. Sure, they’re your key, your key volunteers right there. You’re a prime stakeholders if they’re not doing it, why should others? Yeah, cool. Um, let’s say i’ll tell you what, let’s let’s go out on a break and when we come back, we’re going toe we’ll get through our next area, which is going to be overall management focused on results, and we’ve got six other areas after that, so hang there with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s do live listener love let’s do it early because we got a lot manami wisconsin love it, my nominee. I love that st louis missouri would bury new jersey, new bern, north carolina will be there in a couple weeks in north carolina. Anyway, new york, new york live listener love to each of you will go abroad a little later on got to send out the podcast pleasantries, people listening in the time shift on any device, anytime podcast pleasantries to you and our affiliate affections love our affiliates throughout the country, lots of affection going out to them melkis let’s, look at this overall management focus on results and why a well defined mission statement is important. Yeah, i mean, i think mission statements contend to be kind of cloudy sometimes they’re up there, right? And this area really has to do with organizations defining the difference that they want to make people’s lives in the communities that they’re serving, and then setting sort of milestones and benchmarks to assess and track their own progress towards that difference right towards the impact that they ultimately. Want to it? See? And there’s a point made that it’s ah it’s. A well defined mission statement so narrowly focused. Ah, what else? Well defined geographical focus also, you know, in terms of when it comes to what the selection committee is looking for, a strong response in this in this question, they’re looking to get a sense from the mission statement. What an organization does, right. And ultimately, if an organization has to take a paragraph toe, explain what they do, then perhaps it’s worth revisiting the mission statement. Okay. You mentioned the selection committee. Who is the selection committee for the awards? Yeah. The selection committee is a group of about thirty two consultants non-profit leaders. That’s a big committee. Yeah, many of thirty two. Yep. And the idea is that we have about four people strong in each of these eight areas. Okay. Oh, i see. All right. So there’s target over their teams. Some committee’s subcommittee. Oh, excellent. Okay. Um, expert consultants and technical assistance air used when they’re needed. Yeah. What’s what’s a focus their you know, this is an area that can get really expensive, you know, to do long term evaluations for example, and so consultants provide a service that allows organizations toe improve upon this practice, especially if they can’t do it. I’m themselves. Last year, rome, new york, during their site visit, spoke about their use of consultants and row in new york was one of the three finalists. Yes, that i saw on the stage. Three winners for one of three winners, right on dh. They spoke during their site visit, which is the final stage of the selection process about how they had used um ah, consultants teo improve their own performance in this area to assess thie impact of their work. Remember what kinds of consultants they were using? Let’s. See? So in one area they were working to improve their boards performance and making sure that they were setting expectations on dh, that the responsibilities were clear. So, you know, this area about tracking results is not just about program results, but also about organizational results as well. Yeah, okay. The organization uses reflective learning. What is that? It’s an organization. You know, it’s a practice that organizations are being mindful of what they’re seeing, and then reflecting back on that. So saying, well, why did that work a certain way, or why didn’t that work a certain way? As we expected, perhaps, and then coming back and trying to take steps to sort of address whatever you know, they did see what the result wass, you know, so they’re not just resting and great results, for example, but they’re trying to see how can they be even greater? And if something doesn’t work, then how can we improve upon it going forward? All right, how about we go to aa governance structure, michael governance structure that moves the organ move the organization forward, that’s what we do, yeah, we do more that i functional agreement, our experience high performing non-profits and i say this without exception all think of the relationship between their board of directors and their top manager, usually the executive director of the president as a partnership. I say that because when i came into the sector thirty five years ago, there was a tendency to see the board as the governance body, and they made the decisions, and they made the policy. It never really worked like that. But it sounded nice on paper. But the truth is, if they’ve got to work together because both of them play essential roles in making sure that the organization is is working at its optimum. And there are a lot of details to that, as you know, but the point is, you know, it’s it’s just to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and we’re all moving in the same direction, and that we have some markers for determining whether we’re getting there. One of the standards is that the individual board members and the board overall is regularly evaluated key huge print, huge thing people think, well, the board should be evaluating the executive director of the year it’s true that’s true, right? The government governance committee or some other body should be evaluating the performance of the board as a whole and the performance of every boardmember because it really is a job. And you want to make sure that everybody’s playing on the team think of think about rowing about like rome. New york does every day and you get imagine if eleven people are growing really well on one person’s decided that this is lunch time. You’re not gonna have a high performing rowing team? Yeah, teamwork. Is what non-profits take toe work effectively. Um, new board candidates get a recruitment prospectus and site visits. It’s a big deal. What should be in that recruitment prospectus? We look well, a lot of things that expectations. Ideally, you’d have a job description for board members. You have some sort of description of the kinds of functions of the different committees on the board. How will you be evaluated a year from now? So people know what they’re working against. You know what with what will this test cover, as they say in school and, you know, it’s it’s way give people in our organization we give people the last six meeting’s minutes so they can sort of get a flavor for how the board talks about things. We have ah, charge to every one of our committees that says not only what its duties are, but sort of what its goals are. Our contribution should be, i presume. Non-profit coordinating committee of new york is adhering to these eight standards we try, we were working in its very aspirant. They’re very aspirational really mean. They are it’s and it’s. A constant, innovative process. I can’t. Exactly. And the exciting thing. Tow us is about fifty percent of the people that apply now have applied before that’s exactly way we structured. The weight is fifty percent of the organization’s. Oh, oh have r repeat people keeping one of they want they want to do more. They want it. They want to come back to the inn are most positive. Feedback comes from people that don’t win. They say this is the best thing we ever. It was an enormous amount of lorts cream it’s the best thing we ever went through it’s better than strategic planning, you know it’s it’s ah it’s better than anything else. We’ve tried and we and we didn’t win this year, but we want to go through again next year. We have part of a big part of the reason too. That is melkis gives everybody on our toe now on behalf of detailed feedback in a conference call after the committee of the committee of our two hour and a half, you here’s here’s what the committee said about your communications here’s what the committee said about your financial management hears so mary’s where you need to improve that’s what would cost most? Non-profits a lot of money and, you know, and paid consultant and how many organizations do you do that for? Its offered to everyone that applies. So, for example, in twenty fourteen, we had seventy seven applicants. I’ve done feedback calls with fifty three of them so that’s, about seventy percent of them. Okay, that’s, a big commitment on our part, you know, toe invest that time. But as she said, it’s, really from our point perspective, a training and consulting and coaching program mohr than a competition in the competition is it’s like the voice, you know, see the voice on television. You know, the big payoff in the voice is not whether you win that particular cycle, it’s, that you get to be part of some, you know, master, musical persons team, and you’re going to learn a mountain from that. Well, we hope you learned a mountain from our whole application process. All right, excellent. Um okay. Another one just under the governance structure. That expectations are understood by board members, i guess. That’s part of that probably reflects on the prospect. The recruitment prospectus. Yeah, it does. But it’s it’s also something that needs a constant refresh because board members, i think a lot of them have sort of fallen into ah, dreamlike stand trance where they believe, you know, my job is to come and make sure that the staff’s doing a good job and pat him on the back well, that is part of their job. But there are a lot of other parts to their job, and they they need to do it. And sometimes i need coaching and coaxing and and help and all sorts of stuff, all of which is part of the picture. But staff does a lot of the driving of that process. But boardmember sze have very definite responsibilities just ah, quick. When do you think that these this the recruitment prospectus would that be something that signed by the boardmember i acknowledge that i’ve received a copy and i understand it. Is that that important? It some organizations do that. Some organizations have an annual commitment. Statement where every boardmember signs a commitment that this year i will help raise this amount of money this year with individualized goals. Yeah, this year i will attend at least seventy five percent of all the board meetings, committee meetings and so on. It’s not a light thing. You know, i had a governess, board chair, governance committee chair at a previous organization who used to say it’s the reverse of the old army slogan which used to say it’s, not a job. It’s a journey. He said, this is not a journey at the job. Yeah, it really today running a nonprofit corporation has never been more demanding, but it’s also, you know, one of those things where it’s really closely related toe having board assessments and having a report card, you know, of the entire board or individual boardmember because that’s another way to die, checkin on whether they know what is expected of them on and to remind them when they are not performing, and to acknowledge them when they are, you know, performing you know, i love the annual commitment document or something like that. And and of course, the individual boardmember zehr all being reviewed? Yeah, cool melkis let’s stay with you for ah, accountable financial management. What? Why don’t you? Why don’t you point out what you think is important there? Yeah, i think in this area what? And michael said, one of the buzzwords earlier sustainability, right? So the selection committee is really looking for organizations that are financially healthy and that are that are making smart choices in their finances so that they’re around five years from now, ten years from now, long long term write the other thing that they’re looking for here is how their mission is informing their financial practices. And sometimes we tend to think that those two things are separate, but are the finances informed by what is important to the organization? Right? So, for example, with leek and watts, who was our gold prize winner last year, they were really focused on making sure that their programs were being maximized because beds that weren’t full meant dollars were being thrown. What you tell us what we can watch those? Yeah, sure. So lincoln watts has a school up in yonkers. They also provide tons of programs and services for juvenile justice, youth or kids that are involved in the juvenile justice and students with disabilities. They have programming for them as well. So it’s a pretty multi service organization. All right, so you want to see that alignment between financial priorities and mission and that correct mission statement? Yeah, exactly. Okay, um, adequate cash reserves. Yeah, the protect the organization against contingencies about that. Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of ties back to what michael was talking about earlier about having a diverse revenue stream. It’s all about making sure that you’re protecting yourself and having that cash available is critically important. This election committee looks for a minimum of three months of cash reserves, but ideally at least six months. And of course, you keep saying the selection committee, but we know that this is for all non-profits whether you and to the end of the competition or we’re just or not, it has been an area of serious advancement in the nonprofit world of management of governance. In the last twenty five, thirty years, there was a time when people thought, well, they should operate in a break even, you know, they should just barely make it out because we don’t want a pile of money in the closet. And the truth is, you do that and you’re putting your entire mission at risk. It’s a very silly way to do business. In fact, there’s a standard here for ah working, striving toward a budget surplus each year. Yes, you should. You should want one of the simplest ways. And people don’t think about it is one of the simplest ways to build a surplus is to put it in the budget every year. Contribution of the surplus. Fifty thousand dollars on contribution of the surplus one hundred thousand dollars and treated as an annual recurring expense. And next thing you know, you look up in five years. So it’s not just an afterthought, right? Exactly. Well, not just what’s left over what’s left at the end because non-profit people tend to always could think of more needs and more things they can do and more activity. But you got to think about preserving your organization. I don’t like your own personal finances. Budget for savings? Yes, not just save what’s left of the exactly. Exactly. All right, all right. I’ll stay with you, michael. For ah, diversity and culturally competent practices. Well, this is a very rich area. The truth is diversity. I think most people understand what that means, but diversity’s important, we believe, for all kinds of companies, not just non-profit companies, but in the nonprofit sector where were frequently dealing with such a diverse communities it’s especially critical that we have boards that represent that staffs that represent that, and those are some of the questions that we and the practices that we focus on, representing the communities, that they’re serving exactly the populations, but there’s another issue in here, which is cultural competency, which is a little newer, but i think in many ways is more on point, and that is, if you’re working with populations that are that are each have their own cultural and language and other kinds of barriers to perhaps to dealing with you, you know, it’s part of your job to make sure that you can communicate with him in ways that are understood and that you understand enough about the culture and the language to make sure that not only are you getting the word out, but also you’re getting communications back. Yes, there is, and i think we’re going you have it in one of those standards, regular feedback from the communities that you’re serving. Yeah, there’s a great example. There’s, an organism wonderful organization, bronx works that that about five years ago applied and when asked about diversity said, well, you know, they’re in the bronx and they said, well, you know, we have several people on staff to speak spanish, and i think at the time, they thought that was a good answer, but the selection committee actually dinged him on that because the bronx today represents a very diverse number of ethnic communities, and it goes way beyond the sort of historic image of the puerto rican south bronx. So we came back this past year, and i asked them that same question, and they explained that they had the capacity now to trance simultaneously translated thirty four languages, that they had people on staff speaking nine of the most frequently spoken languages in the bronx. And they want outstanding that’s. That what that’s a what a great story. That’s. Terrific. Um, you have about a minute left before we, uh, we take a little break. Um, the organization regularly assesses in response to emerging needs. So that’s. That’s a big part of that feedback you’ve gotto do you know what your community’s needs are? Yeah, because the truth is not a static, especially in new york city, no place like new york city, where neighborhoods turnover constantly in terms of ethnic and demographic, another composition just look at brooklyn or queens in the last ten or fifteen years, so what you want to do is keep making sure that the geographic area is serving on the issues that you’re working on, connect with those realities outstanding. All right, mohr with michael and melkis coming up first, pursuant and crowdster i’ve talked to their ceos, both of these guys, you are focused on small and midsize shops just like this show, and just like i am, trent recur at pursuant, he has thirteen years working in small and midsize non-profits he gets your fund-raising challenges he’s lived them day in and day out and that’s. Why pursuing tools are made to overcome those challenges so you will raise more money pursuing dot com over crowdster the ceo there, joe ferraro, he and his wife, hanna run a small charity, and he used to be a marketing executive at t he knows your challenges also living them now each day and he’s at crowdster applying corporate marketing to overcome these challenges. That’s why, they added apple pay for mobile donations they’re peer-to-peer micro sites, they’re simple to set up elegant crowdster has terrific support. You are not going to be doing this alone just ah, talk to joe yourself. Joe ferraro, joe dot ferraro at crowdster. Dot com talk to the guy now. Time for tony’s. Take two. I am so grateful to our three regular contributors, amy sample ward, maria semple and jean takagi. They are by no means regular, like ordinary. They’re exemplary. The time they put in to prepping were even before prepping. But just thinking about topics, you know they’re always out thinking about topics emailing me here. This could be good. How about this? And nine times out of ten, whatever they come up with is outstanding. And i say, yes, let’s, go with it. And then the time that they spend preparing and then actually doing the show, you know they have to arrange their schedules around that. Obviously so, you know, very very grateful. Ah, i’m thanks. Latto have amy and maria. And jean on the show, month after month, it’s been for years, all of them jean has been the longest, like he was on one of the very first shows. So that’s, almost latto what we’re coming up on five years, six years come upon six years in july, and maria and amy, like four years or something, you know, it’s just enormous gratitude to the three of them. Thank you so, so much that’s. Tony’s take two now here’s michael and melkis continuing with eight areas of non-profit excellence melkis i think i think it’s your turn all right, let’s sound right for the enlightened use of human resource is what’s enlightened use? Um, so enlightened use means that that organizations are sort of maximizing the talent that is available of them, that they are taking care of their staff. And what else? That they’re sort of using their staffs experienced, tio benefit the organization. Okay, uh, another area in that and there is making sure that your risk level for your staff and three organization is as low as possible so that you don’t allow your organization be blown off course because of something didn’t expect and for that matter, you don’t subject your staff too. Such stressful conditions that it’s bad for them. So it’s it’s, really? The karen nature nurturing of your staff, as well as optimizing with one of the standards, is professional development opportunities, internal and external melkis yeah, so that’s something that the selection committee members really look for in strong organizations is that they’re investing in their staff, right? And so that khun b you know that can take the shape of online universities almost that are created for larger napor imitations and their staff, or something as simple as belonging to end pcc and sending your staff to the workshops that we put on that’s that’s you know something else that a lot of organizations tower in their own applications? Um, that there that there is a whistleblower and conflict of interest policies. Now i noticed those those specific policies appearing to two different standards. What? Why are those specifically mentioned whistleblower in conflict of interest? Well, one one big thing is we just wait. Just finished passing the first revision of the new york state, not for-profit corporation long forty five years and i served on the attorney general’s task. Force that created much of the draft for that and the truth is so so i’m only i’m only two levels. I’m only two degrees of separation from new york state attorney general, two degrees of separation. Well for mr snusz wish i had known you als, but the upshot is it requires now used to be recommended and now requires that every non-profit have a conflict of interest policy and a whistleblower policy, and not everyone was civil or you have to be above a certain budget level. But the point is that there’s much more law undergirding those doing policies. What conflicts of interest are we talking about this between morgan over primarily material conflicts of interest between your sister is the treasurer, right or or the money, you know says we’re paying we’re paying an insurance company. This is an actual example. We’re paying insurance company to ensure all of our operations, but it turns out you’re paying the insurance company more than they really charge, and they’re taking the extra and kicking it back to us. Executive director is just a couple of examples of flagrant abuse that’s about somebody just went what prison last year? For okay, for eleven years of that kind of behavior. And the truth is ah, it turns out this is far more important even than the audit. We actually raised the threshold for audits in the state from two hundred fifty thousand up to a million starting over the next few days. Give a break to the smaller organization exactly on it for what it is not because an audit is not it. You know, every one of the organizations that you’ve read headlines about people stealing money in the last fifteen years, they had a clean audit here before. So the point i’m making us it’s. Not that the auditors weren’t doing their job. They were. And on it is a very limited tools to assess the finances. Okay, and the conflict of interest part are we also thinking about conflicts between boards? Boardmember is doing business with the organization? Yeah. That’s part of what’s covered. Okay. Has a whole list of things. If your mother, brother, sister, grandfather, any people like the any relatives, children, you know, life partners or people are also being paid by the organization. Then you have to. You have to do a declaration. You have to fill out a form. Okay? Succession planning is a part of this too. That that’s part of risk is it is you don’t want an organization that has suddenly hit from sideways because executive director dies. Gets run over by a truck is the favorite example. Yeah, or just, you know, gracefully retired, whatever it is you want to know about that, you want to plan for it in advance. You want to have process established for how it’s going to work on big organizations. You might even have somebody in waiting in smaller organization to at least know what the plan is, you know? And it could even be a you mentioned could be retirement. Retirement could be corixa. Resignation could be sudden. And ideally, the person would stay until the replacement is in place. But maybe there next-gen job doesn’t allow that. Thinks that i mean, that could that could shake things up pretty seriously when the ceo walks in and says, you know, i’m only gonna be here another three months yet big deal. Okay, okay. I’m going back to melkis because you took over work-life. Um melkis information technology. This is this is big reliable we have reliable. So if we’re using windows x p still that’s ah, we probably do not have, which is totally unsupportive and has been un supported by window by microsoft. For i think a year now or something that’s, not a reliable system. Ok, yeah. So this area actually focuses more on like it. T infrastructure has a hole, right? But also i’m shallow, shallow examples of so here we’re looking at, you know, making sure that you have the technology that you need to make sure that the organization is efficient. That it’s, you know, sort of making everyone’s job a little bit easier. But also, you know, what roles does technology play in advancing your mission related goals? A cz. Well, so we often hear about how organizations are trying to use technology. Teo sort of helped deliver the programs and services that they offer. So eh? So i guess this this area is twofold. It’s about building that infrastructure to support your staff, but also the infrastructures to support your programs as well. Yeah. Ok. I see that disaster preparedness and disaster recovery planning is a part of that. One of the interviews i did we’re gonna have? Ahh we’re gonna have ahh half a show devoted to that because it’s one of the end and tcs reviews i got was exactly that. Why? Why so important? Well, we saw it with sandy firsthand, right? Organizations that didn’t have that solid infrastructure were unable to return toe work on dh basically were not able to provide services on dh programming organizations that had a more solid infrastructure we’re able to, even though they might not have been able to return to their offices physically were able to continue their work with pretty minimal interruption because they were ableto work remotely from home on. And we saw that, you know, with our own organization where a lot of us were able to work from home even though it was difficult toe commute into the into the office. Okay, andi, even if you can’t maintain fool full operations, at least you khun, you’re functioning, you’re in communication with each other, you can you can communicate outward to the people that you’re serving mean, at a minimum, you know, i think those things are important communications. What was your michael? What was the ceo there? President there? What was the post sandy like for ah non-profit coordinating committee? Well, it was quite hectic because a lot of organizations were, you know, trying to scramble to come up with solutions to problems that varied all over the map from literally being underwater toe having some of their system’s knocked out toe, having clients that were stranded in communities that were heavily impact about the hurricane and one of our winner is actually in the excellence awards program redhook initiative had had had the foresight four years earlier to build a wireless network in the largest public housing project in brooklyn, and it was it was done for the right programmatic reasons, the very reasons melkis just mentioned so they get communicate easily and cheaply out toe people that lived there, that’s the low income population so that those people could talk directly back to bradrick initiative and say, we need a program that does this, and we need some economic work on this and so on it’s very rambunctious programmed as a lot of stuff, and they didn’t plan it. I don’t think that’s a disaster response mechanism, but when the when the flood hit and then i think fourteen thousand people stranded in all these buildings with no elevators and very difficult problems with medications and food and stuff. They were all they were able nonetheless, in most cases to communicate, at least with every floor, and they were able to talk to people going to get people out, bring stuff in. So, you know, you forget sometimes you think of it and wireless services, you know, that stuff that you have to have a certain level of influence for, but, you know, when used public broadband and things like that, you can actually make it quite cheap, so non-profits air finding very innovative ways to use it, i think, okay, augment their mission, all right, and it’s part of the standards melkis thea, there should be a technology plan shouldn’t just all be happening haphazardly. We should actually should be planning our use of tech. Yeah, i mean, this is something that i feel like a lot of organizations don’t do but it’s a worthwhile investment, it helps you sort of monitor the systems that you haven’t place and thinking about where you’re going in the future and what sort of investment’s in you’re right, you’re going to need to make right. And that also sort of gets the different parts of the organization involved in talking about it. T as it relates to them as well. So, you know, it should not just be the Job or responsibility of 1 person, but really, it should be integrated until the entire, you know, organisation and its functioning. Yeah. Including the people who are doing the program work, everybody’s feeding in at least to the to the person who has the responsibility. Um, there was something that oh, yeah, the confidentiality standards, privacy standards. That’s a little about the importance of thinking about this. Yeah. And and this becomes a bigger issue with the following area as well. Communications. But, you know, there are organizations that do health related work that need to really be mindful of the hip standards on dh, the responsibilities that they owe to their clients to make sure that their information is protected and kept confidential. Okay, michael, anything you want to add on the on the side? No, just obviously, with all social media that are exploding. And with all the various ways in which people network these days non-profits have to be at least keeping up with that and making sure that they’ve got the ability to reach people and at least a lot of those ways, and this would this would flow back to the financial management. I think that should be budgeting for it for the support, the play and that we need to have in this area exactly it it is a growing budget item in a lot of non-profits lives, sure, and it cuts across communications and just basic infrastructure of technology. But it’s it’s pretty much an indispensable assumption today that you need that you think we’ll do with live listen, love, we got more new york, new york joined us welcome, welcome additional new york city people and madison, wisconsin joined us live listener love going out there to medicine let’s go abroad! We’ve got we’re in china! We’ve got wenzhao and tajol china ni hao, seoul, korea and young son korea love went south, south korea so loyal, always, always south korean listeners, please, on your haserot and going to japan, konnichiwa to honda and masato kenichi while we got hungary with us, we can’t see your city, hungary, but we know that. You’re with us live. Listen, love going out to hungary and bringing it back to you to the states. Middleton, middletown, middletown, delaware, joined us live, listener love, of course, those podcast pleasantries always and the affiliate affections so, so important. Okay, um, we’re moving on can hear me turning pages, uh, where we now with michael, right, michael, tends tio take over a bit, but really, sam, we got a minute for a break, ok, it’s melkis astern. Okay, melkis, we’re going tow. I’ll tell you what, let’s, go out for a break. Now. I think it makes sense to have our break now, when we come back, effective communications that melkis was just alluding to stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent and since we did the live listen love wigan uk joined us welcome, wigan live listen love out to you, marcus, you’re up communications and and use of communications technology why is this important? Yeah, so with this area were really focused on not just how organizations are broadcasting their own work and the services that they provide, but also, you know, going back to that piece of feedback, how are they asking their different stakeholders? Not just their clients, but they’re funders there? Other donors, they’re boardmember zeev anon volunteers? How are they asking them for feedback? And then what our organization’s doing with that feedback? So our communications out, and then we’re also listening in writing to be listening to our stakeholders, right? So there’s that focus on the two way communications bond with the stakeholders it’s not just about communicating with all of them and the exact same way there should be the communications practices should really be tailored towards the stakeholders and you would know, you know what works with them by sort of tracking the effectiveness of your communication strategies and also just by listening to them, right? So what is what is it that they like to hear about? How do they like to be communicated with all right? Critical? I mean, you know, you’ve got to go to where people are not not the channel that you want them to be on, whether it’s email or social media or your sight or you’re a blogger or live events, you’ve got to do where you gotta go, where they are, right, and with social media it’s not even just about, you know, being on everything that’s available, right? It’s about being really mindful about about how you use each forum. So, for example, the washington heights corner project was a finalist last year, and they talked about how they use social media for the purposes of of connecting with city officials, right? So if they attend events and didn’t get to shake a hand, they will tweet at the city official and say, sorry i missed you hope we can reconnect at some point, all right? So that’s a very smart use on very targeted use of one particular media and your point about not being in all of them just because they’re exist when i was it. Ah, again non-profit technology conference this week few people mentioned, you know, avoiding shiny object syndrome just because there’s something new and shiny, a new network, a new social channel doesn’t mean that you need to be on it. Are your people there? Do they want? Do they want to hear from you? There doesn’t make sense for the age, the geography, the other demographics of the people you’re talking to it might not make sense for for your audience. I noticed that there’s something mentioned about formal and informal communication strategies. This could be just meeting people in the building where they live all right, right? Right? Or even, you know, mapping out sort of ah, touch strategy. Right? For particular people, for donors. Maybe where you’re going to map out, how many times a year going to speak to them and whether you know you want to make sure that, especially with funders this is true. You don’t want to make you want to make sure that each touches not an ask, right? So one of them might be, you know, how’s your daughter doing is she liking college? Write something very simple like that that’s that’s an informal check in but something that could go a long way right and says also a lot about how you communicate with with your you’re different audiences making the form nine ninety available is mentioned in this standard thiss area. And in a couple of others to teo to one or two others. Well, what you looking for? That nine? Ninety? It speaks the transparency of the organization. Is the organisation willing to put its finances out there for the public to review? Andi, think, michael, you can jump in here, but i am seeing that more and more of them are available online because it’s a testament to how the organisation sort of holds its self accountable by putting out there it’s, you know, it’s finances or others to see michael anything when we actually did a national guide to how to read the nine ninety and figure out what it means. Because it’s a complicated form, the iris requires it it’s not just a financial form and asked you to talk about are you still pursuing the mission that you were created for? Are you getting results? What is your board looked? Like it’s, it’s, a pretty exhaustive look at your organization from different angles, and they are all indeed online. But the truth is, you know, not every organization puts it on its own website was that my question would be where, where they’re accessible at the national level from an organization called guides guide star, of course, is that but for the for the committee, like now, i am going to focus on what the committee is looking for. Is that sufficient? If it’s if it’s killing one guy, they want ideally, they want to see your nine ninety on certainly they want to see it referenced on guide it’s our maybe a link or from your site? Yes to it on god, because the guy it’s different than a financial form because it gives the organization a chance to talk about its mission. It’s progress, it’s it’s ways of tracking progress and that sort of stuff. So you know non-profits have a cz jim collins once said, i really have to bottom lines. We have a financial bottom line and we have what they call a return on social investment and that’s the way in which you are are not fulfilling your mission. Are you changing anything in the world? And you should be able to track both of those things every year. Ideally, you’re nine, ninety and a certain sections of it that will help people figure that out. Are they making progress? So they helping more kids? Are they getting the kids not only into high school, but into college or they you know that sort of stuff? I had a guest. Ah, a couple of months ago. Now c p a huge tomb and the the conversation was about using the nine. Ninety as a marketing tool. The narrative sections instead of just copying and pasting from your mission statement, you use the narrative two to beam or if you save about what? About what your what your work is because because it is so widely available, use it as a marketing tool. Right? Um, all right, we just have a couple minutes left, and i want to talk some more about these workshops that are that that you conduct or are they strictly in person events or they on the web that others can take advantage of melkis pathway, sexson’s workshops are in person events. But what we do is we post the materials that are distributed at each of the sessions on our awards website, so folks can still i have access to all of the tools and templates that we share in person. Okay, cool it’s called pathways to excellent pathways. And, of course, the site organs of the sorry the organization site is n pcc. And why dot org’s? And where would people go to find the resource is you’re talking about melkis yeah, so actually, they would be on the awards microsite, which is np excellence dot f d n y dot or ge and there’s a a section for that on pathways to excellent say that. Say that you’re ill one more time, it’ll slower for the for the awards. Microsite yep. It’s n p excellence dot fc. And why dot or ge? Okay, i think there’s a link to it and the pcc. And why dot org’s? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You’re raising the level of ah, lots and lots of non-profits minutes. It’s important for people to recognize. This is not just ah, a competition. All right. And and those have start the workshops have started. You said march to november. So there started, right? We yeah, so we’ve conducted three of them to date. So the one on fund-raising one on results in one on human resource is going to more coming up. And for those folks who are in new york when what’s the date of the ceremony, i very much hope to be there. We might be talking about that, michael. Yep. So for the twenty fifteen awards, the date is november nineteenth. A location to be determined. Okay, excellent that’s. Michael clarke is president of the non-profit coordinating committee of new york and melkis alvarez-baez director of programmes also at n p c c and they are at n pcc. And why on twitter? Michael melkis thank you so, so much. Thank you, toni. This has been great conversation appreciate. Thank you. My pleasure. Next week, i’ll be back live, probably with mohr from the non-profit technology conference. Got over thirty interviews from there. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? Hyre? I don’t know. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by dina russell, and our music is by scott stein. That’s right, scotty, be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for April 1, 2016: Digital Metrics & 1Q16 Fundraising Metrics

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Meico Whitlock & Rebecca Reyes: Digital Metrics

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Meico Whitlock & Rebecca Reyes at 16NTC

There’s so much you can measure, where do you start? Meico Whitlock and Rebecca Reyes answer that, and: What data does almost every nonprofit need to capture? Which deserves weekly attention versus monthly or annual? Plus, they have lots of resources! Meico is digital communications consultant and associate director of communications at NASTAD. Rebecca is digital marketing consultant at Spring Media Strategies. We talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference last week, hosted by NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. This is the first of 32 smart interviews from NTC.

 

Rob Mitchell: 1Q16 Fundraising Metrics

Rob MitchellHow did 1st quarter fundraising go and what’s changed in the full-year forecast since January? Atlas of Giving has the data and CEO Rob Mitchell shares all. Rob will be with me at the end of each quarter for analysis.

 

 


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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host it’s friday, april first. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the embarrassment of galata phobia if i heard you laughing as you told me you missed today’s show digital matrix there’s so much you can measure where do you start? Mika whitlock and rebecca reyes answer that and what data does almost every non-profit need to capture, which deserves weekly attention versus monthly or annual. Plus they have lots of resource is miko is digital communications consultant and associate director of communications at nass. Dad rebecca is digital marketing consultant at spring bdo strategies. We talked at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference last week, hosted by n ten non-profit technology network, and this will be the first of thirty two smart interviews that i got from also one q sixteen metrics world about metrics today. How did first quarter fund-raising go and what’s changed in the full year forecast since january? Atlas of giving has the data and ceo rob mitchell shares at all. Rob will be with me each quarter at the end for that quarterly analysis on tony’s take two. My blue pedicure challenge we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled. You’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com here are miko whitlock and rebecca reyes, and this is actually the very last interview that i did at ntc, but we’re kicking it off with them. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc, of course that’s, the non-profit technology conference in san jose, california, where in the convention center and this is also port of sixteen. Sorry of port of ntc conversations. My guests are miko whitlock and rebecca reyes, and their session topic is digital metrics. What to measure how and why we’re going to get to that very shortly. First after high like the and, oh, auntie si swag item for this interview, which is a t shirt from service analytics. Design there, you could see that there’s uh, some artistry to this sametz analytics swag final swag altum for the conference, this joins our swag pile unceremoniously thrown into the pile, and we are wrapping up our coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur last of thirty two interviews, which will be playing over the next many months on non-profit radio with me rico whitlock he’s, digital communications consultant and associate director for communications at nass, ted and s t a t we’ll get to that masek and rebecca reyes she’s, digital marketing consultant at spring media strategies become rebecca. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Have you want non-profit radio? We call what is nasty? Nasco is the national alliance of state in territories, directors and that’s. Just a fancy way. Territorial aids directors, directors and that’s. Just a fancy way of saying that we are a national association that represents public health officials focused on ending hiv and hepatitis. Okay, so we work in all fifty states and the u s territories. All right, rebecca, how about spring dea strategies? Were they about? We do digital marketing strategy and campaigns for non-profits. Okay, focus on an environmental organizations. All right, all right. Digital matrix how do we know we’re back-up let’s start with you. How do we know what we should be measuring for? Our organization’s obviously varies across. It definitely varies. There are a couple of metrics that just every organization should mention measure in your website, email, social media. But it really comes down to what kinds of things are you looking for? What matters for your particular organization. Okay, what are your goals? Who are your audience? All right. And we’ll get to the ones that apply toe on what you say in this description. Almost every organization. But how do we know? How do we decide? What’s what’s? Best for us. It comes down to your goals. So we’re looking for gold. What were you trying to achieve with your website? All those channels you mentioned exactly. Okay. And i would extend that doesn’t so it’s essentially a formula, right? So you understand who your audience is? Our and a hint here is that the general public is not your audience, so you won’t be as specific as possible. And then the other part of his what rebecca said, which is? You want to understand what your goals. With the audience, what do you actually want them to do once you’ve identified them? And in the last part is what does success actually looked like? So when you bring the audience in the girls together, what a success look like when you’re able to figure those things out, then you know, roughly what are you looking for? Based on the platform that you’re using it as a metrix? Okay, so some of our outcomes might be more volunteers five thousand signatures on the petition exactly ten thousand calls to senators throughout the country exactly more dollars raised. What? Whatever whatever outcome is for our organisation. Maybe for a particular campaign and all those things i mentioned could be in our individual campaigns. Yes. Alright. What are we trying to achieve? And i guess in how long? Yes, maybe a timeframe. Ok? Yeah. So exactly. So you’re smart objectives, right? So you want to you want to make sure that you have focused goals, but that they are also time bound time. Marriageable, right? Was that sports chant for hyre? Measurable, right s measurable, achievable r i forget he is a time. Yes, yes, i remember. We’ll talk about smart, smart stand for i’m using smart lower case e putting on this clock. All right, i don’t know, but they have smart goal. Yeah, it z z o way to go. All right. Okay. What are the ones that every organization or to be measuring nico let’s go nufer this or nearly every organization should know something. Something yeah, so let’s, start with the basics. So if you’re an organization, you should have a website. The and the very basic right. And if you have a website, a couple of things you won’t be looking for, you want to know how many people are coming to your website. So that looks that you sort of unique page views. You want to know how long roughly people are staying on your pages? You know, are they digest in your content and you want to know where traffic is coming from? Is it coming from google? Is it coming from facebook? Do you have a partner organization that’s using a news owner that’s that’s promoting your materials and your partner’s got a really good job driving puts you a website. You want to understand those basic measures so that over time you can begin to understand how you make adjustments, so if you want to extend your reach and you have this party organizations really good job of pushing your things out, well, can you partner with a similar organizations that are doing as good a job of helping you drive people to your website? And again, you want to be very clear about making sure that the numbers don’t exist in a vacuum as well. So you want to go to compare them to a previous time here. So it’s not enough to say that we had five thousand web site visitors this month because we’re right previous month, right? So exactly so you want to compare to the previous point in time, okay? And if you’re just starting out it’s okay, if you don’t have those benchmarks, you’re gonna build that overtime. Yeah, all right, let me point out that there’s noise behind us because and t c sixteen is coming to a close as it is for cliffs pulling apart dahna boots and there’s there’s traffic back-up for that as banners get stored but non-profit radio persevere, we’re here, we’re here for the duration. We’re not back-up early. Like like are we are co located booth across the way i won’t. I won’t say which video, organization and site that is, but they’re huge on dh. They’re close to wrapping it up, not us, not radio. Go on, bek are staying with me. Thank you, hyre rebecca, are these things that it was my voice again, cracks like, i’m twelve these things that we could just describe, referring traffic and how long people staying on the site, etcetera, is this stuff we can all we could get all from google analytics, or, or or elsewhere. Absolutely. Google analytics is kind of industry standard. I’m there are a lot of tools out there, there’s, you know, you can get into really deep, you can get into reporting, you can, um, combined it with google sheets and put on adam for google analytics, so, you know, create those nice reports for yourself, but there also some third party tools that can really, you know, send them all of their great information to your emails. You don’t even have to go into google analytics to see that kind of information, but one thing is there are there’s a difference between the kind of data that you just monitor on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And then there are some more advanced kinds of things that you want to take a look at it just kind of everyone started maybe quarterly or yearly whenever you get a chance so you can really dig a little bit deeper and take action on those things. Help us understand what, what we should be looking at weekly or monthly versus quarterly. Which one? So you want to kind of, you know, take a look at your bounce rate or your time on sight? How many visitors are you getting those air. Kind of some of the very basic things you just want to keep an eye on. And if you see a spike or you see a dip in the numbers that’s gonna be red flag, but you can go a little bit geever and look at those some of those basic analytics alongside some of the other kinds of metrics, like landing pages or exit pages. So you know what? Air you top landing pages. Two people spend a lot of time on those pages. What are your say? You have some really important sections in your website? Um, i’ve found websites, you know, have an average of, um, some the websites that i look at having average of, say, a minute and a half for overall time. But some very specific sections have maybe an average of five minutes, which is really great. And that tells you okay, there really? Digging into the information and really taking the time to learn about your organization. Okay. Okay. Now you mention the bounce, right? That is how many? Not how many people leave after viewing only one page. Is that the bounce? Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I know a little something not trying to take over fighting. Okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Now. Okay, wait. Record. You mentioned? You know how long people stay on the safe? That you know, a minute and a half? Two minutes might not be bad if the site has first of all, it’s not marketing anything. Maybe there isn’t. A donation function means an education type site. And the poster short or the videos are short. Maybe a minute and a half to two minutes. Maybe that’s not so bad that it definitely. You know, this is the time on sight. The average has slowly gone down, you know, because people spend more time just going jumping around two from site to site. Especially if your traffic, a lot of it is coming from, you know, paid ads or organic search there going to be really cold leads. And so you’re gonna have a lot of people that, you know, it might not be quite the right fit and they are going to leave. But so that’s, why? It’s important to dig a little bit deeper and to see. Okay, maybe a minute and a half. That’s not, you know, super awesome. But if you have really high time on sight for some of the internal pages that really matter. If you are able to convert a lot of those people, you know, it doesn’t matter if they only spend thirty seconds. Okay, okay. Go, go. Yes, toe after that, i think it’s two things important to keep in mind. The first is what? Your goals. So people come to the website. What do you actually want them to do? R are they filling out a form? Teo, sign up for the email list. Are they watching a video? And that has to be aligned with your analysis of the time on page. The other part of it is his relative, right? So you need to be able to compare it to something else, get it having the time unpaid in isolation doesn’t really mean anything. Well, your point earlier that compared tto what’s. The trend over over a year, six months, exactly. Doing yeah, you may have different. May have different goals for your sight in a different periods over exactly pains. Yes. So two minutes might not be bad if donations are on the run. If the donation pages seymour or traffic? Yes. Okay. What about it? Yeah. Okay. Think about this. Okay. Anything? More and want to say about the metrics that nearly every organization should be following wait, so we just talked about the website, but there’s also social media there’s there’s snusz fund-raising there’s video on dso in the session that we that we covered, we sort of walk through each of these types of platforms of sort of want people through here the basic metrics that you need and hear the advanced metrics so people check out the session, notes they’ll find the slides where we sort of breakdown all of this information, ok, where the session notes i’m so that if you go to the intern website and you start for our session of digital metrics, there is a link to it they’re so intend out orders where you want to go and search for our session, okay, and the title again digital metrics what to measure, how and why, and the session hashtag is sixteen dig metrics d i g metrics with dejan metrics yes, and lost a great information on twitter if you’re following the conversation using that hashtag oh really? Yes, did you get a lot of session? A lot of live tweeting during the session? Lot allowed treating a lot of a lot of feedback and actually will be sending out the slides and alerting people to that through using that hashtag okay, okay, excellent xero forgot. What did you promise people? Tools and processes for collecting, reporting let’s not talk about some tools, rebecca, you start to touch the surface a little bit scratched. Serviceable what other tools do you? You both recommend well, very basic tools like i’m either google sheets or excel spreadsheets. That’s a really great place to just start, you know, identify the top five or ten things that you want to monitor over time that really matter to your organization and your organization’s goals just keep it, keep trucking there and then you know, whatever email tool you use. You know, facebook hasn’t really great analytics, twitter, youtube, they all have really great analytics built into the system. So whatever social media tool you use, you know, check that out. Also scheduling tools like who’d sweet buffers about social. They all have some really great analytics built into them. So that’s a good place to start. Just it, you know, see all of your social media information in one. Place. Okay. Are there any analytics tools that you like beyond what’s what’s imbedded in each of the sites that that go go even deeper? Yep. There’s some reporting tools that i really like if you check out springing a strategies dot com i have an under the block in the tool section. Um, some free tools for facebook, twitter, youtube, um, and interest. So you can see it’s, um, there’s a lot of tools out there. So i tried together some of the really best ones. Um, a lot of them are either free or very affordable because non-profits obviously on a tight budget. Another tool that i recommend checking out is k p i dashboards. So that’s key performance indicators. So this will really help you track, you know, from beginning to end. What? Uh, truck conversion. So if you really care about donations you’ll be able to see, you know, across your platforms, what’s working and that’s gonna be really great tool to bring everything all in one place. Okay, how about you make you got tools so you could recommend? Sure. So i would just echo what were rebecca mentioned? So we do use koegler analytics. For our website way, love it way also use about social in terms of the management, and i’m a really big thing of keeping it simple. And so we use google drive and the google sheets a za way to track metrics. And so those are some of the favorite tools that we use and in terms of the just basic principles, i would encourage folks to keep it simple. I think sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect tool to get the job done. And the truth is that there isn’t a perfect tool because the audience and the goals are different for each organization is sometimes even within the organism nation that’s going to vary from campaign to campaign. And so there is no one tool that tells all of that. And so, my my recommendations for folks to find a few good tools that work and you souls ok, ok, but ntcdinosaur coming down around us. Matt hall, there’s trucks, there’s forklift, there’s there’s a manhole. That man lifting up the ceiling! Take him down. That was hanging from another boot. But we’re persevering. Wait another five or six minutes ago, okay? But very good advice, teo. You recognize that each organization going to different and and really you know what i mean? Don’t be afraid to try something. Yes. I mean, this is analytics. Yes. So try try a tool if it doesn’t. It’s not yielding what you need, then scrap it. Try something else, right? Yeah, and hard to fail it. Exactly. So and don’t remit the will. Right? So there you are in a community of organizations that are doing work similar to you. Ask someone that’s what intimacy is all about. Have someone. And if you have something that you can share with someone, share it. We grow stronger together and intent is very good about that. Yes. Over communities of practice. There’s got to be community back-up around analytics. There is one for digital communications. Okay, so okay. Are you in there? I am apart. Okay. Rebecca, you in there to get alright. And ten. Very sharing. Okay, even if you’re not a member. You khun? Yeah. There’s so much you could get from intense. Exactly. Then the membership was so during inexpensive anyway. Yeah. Amy sample ward he’s gonna say it’s cheap it’s, affordable, accessible that’s. Accessible? Like seventy dollars for a whole organs for everybody in the organization, you’ve got to be a member. All right, that’s sufficient and ten shot out. Um, okay. We still have a few more minutes together. What else have we talked about from your session that we should. So we spent a lot of time talking about strategy and process. So we we talked at the very beginning of our time together today about understanding people goals in your missions of success. That’s going to be very important because today or tomorrow, you know, there might be another equivalent to facebook. Everyone is sort of jumping on the bandwagon for yeah, if you understand your people, your goals and what you want to achieve, you can understand why they’re not that flat from actually makes sense for you. The other part of the session that we talked about was process in terms of how do you actually make this work day today before we go. Teo. Rebecca. Anything else you want to add about? Sure. We got time. Thank you. I just wanted to give a few examples of how people can go a little bit deeper. Eso you know we talked a lot about ok, these are the basics for monitoring, right? But you really want to make sure you find data that you can take action on. So that’s where, you know, combining the time on site with the top lining pages, for example, also really good easy practice to do is to take a look at your top. Paige is most visited pages or pages with a highest time on sight or whatever kind of metric you want to compare it to that particular day and look at your top ten and your bottom ten and put them side by side because you’ll likely see some differences. You you might spot cem patterns between the most popular and the least popular in that particular category. So then you can really, you know, once you spot those differences, definitely take a look at all of the rest of your articles and see if that trend holds true throughout your sight. And then you can stop doing things that don’t work and start doing things that really do work. Okay, i love the idea of comparing top to bottom. You’ve seen this and you found correlations? Yes, so things like headlines, for example, you know, obviously headlines like numbers or how to do really well versus things like questions or things that are really long and not very descriptive don’t do very well, and the difference can be huge, you know, from just five or ten klicks to an article versus hundreds, yes, okay, so buy-in top five ways to increase your facebook ad revenue versus social media strategies exactly, and of course, you want to have a variety of headlines you don’t wantto have Numbers and every single 1 but at least, but i’m just, you know, stop my head, mention numbers, okay, so no interesting. All right? Topic. Comparing kapin bottom. Excellent. Anything you want, teo. So you had some you said you have a couple of examples of another. Another strategy example. Um, let’s. See? Well, for one of the organizations that i worked with issues, they have a lot of different issue areas that they work with. So it’s really important to track, um, you know, just kind of keep the pulse on the issue. Areas that are most popular, so could be education or health care or youth was kind of a unique non-profit in that sense, and so for us, since issues are so important, that’s one thing that we really track in those, you know, nice spreadsheets. And over time, you can see in the grafts, you know, sometimes issues creep up, and sometimes they kind of drop off and that’s a really great indicator of okay. Maybe we should, you know, step back from the issue, this particular issue for a little while and focus on this other one because you’re really listening to. Then what is your audience want? And you, khun, sometimes see some trends happening before theirs. A national event that occurs, dahna okay, become anything you want, teo. No. I mean, if we were ready to sum up, i can sort of give cem really quick sort of high points that people should start focusing. Not quite. Okay. You said you were a strategy and process. Yeah, probably. I cut you off. You wanted to go to rebecca because you have a strategy. Okay. What do you say about process? No. So it’s about keeping it simple. And so we we work in a space where many of us where many different hats and we’re doing many things. And so rebecca touched on something earlier about, like, how often you should be doing things weinger you know how often should be looking at. So how certain metrics exactly versus exactly so you’re once you sort of built up practice of doing this. You have what? I have some general benchmarks in your in your mind. So you’re able to do what i call a spot checking where you are, maybe on the on a weekly basis sort of looking at your website numbers you’re looking at what’s happening on social media, and then you were able to dahna really quickly say, oh, well, that looks a little off. From where we were last week, where we were last month, i wonder what this is and you can sort of determine how you invest your time. And i think the something else to keep in keep in mind is there are lots of resources that are out there, you know? So buffer has a really great block on they talk, i think, in a very nuanced than assessable way for folks about metrics, and although they’re one of the capital tools that help people manage social media platforms, they’re also really good about sort of talking about where they have sort of fall short and where other tools might be. Ableto pick up it’s over yeah, buffer. Okay, about for dot com they have a really wonderful block where they talk about metrics. Beth cancer has a wonderful blawg and john john death camp has been on this show many times, including from yesterday, yesterday and here it ntcdinosaur before through and john hayden is also he’s. A wonderful resource is well, so they both have resource is specific to this particular topic. Um, it had been on the show also including this year at ntc. Been on before yeah. Okay, now we can wrap it up. Okay? Let’s. See, rebecca, you want to get the final word, but, uh, what’s a measure of how and why digital metrics i just want to echo what mika had said earlier of you really want to look at your particular organization schools and contextualized your data there’s lots of tools out there that well, come and go. So that’s, why i don’t. I’m a little bit hesitant to recommend very specific tools because they’re here today gone tomorrow and tomorrow. There’s gonna be lots of other great tools out there. So as long as you know what you were looking for, you know, what do you want people to do? And, um, take that time every once in a while to dig a little bit deeper? Have those come couple basic stats, you know, five, ten metrics that you just keep an eye on, make sure things are going well throughout the year and then, you know, maybe quarterly spent some time looking a little bit deeper. Like i gave some those examples about landing pages and headlines just so you can find out what works for your organization, okay, we’re gonna leave it there. That was rebecca raya’s, she’s, digital consult. Digital marketing consultant at spring media strategies. And also miko whitlock, digital communications consultant and associate director for communications. At nasty on what, again is nasty at the national line. So state in territorial aids directors. Thank you very much, vic. Oh, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc wrapping it up with the, uh, the four cliffs and the people movers and the union guys are all here. Tto back-up sixteen ntc, thanks so much for being with us. Rob mitchell and one q sixteen metrics coming up first. Pursuant, one of their tools is prospector. It uses your existing data to find your highest priority. Potential donors. You know who to focus on it identifies which of your donors are most likely to upgrade their giving, which is cool. Because then, knowing that you can prioritize your cultivation, you got limited time. And you need to raise more money. Prospector shows you who to focus on that’s already in your database. Not bringing in new names already in your database. Check out prospector at pursuing dot com what’s going on at crowdster dot com they have a deal for non-profit radio listeners get thirty days free or fifty percent off, you can try a crowdster peer-to-peer fund-raising sight completely free for a month or get fifty percent off. That means pay for a month and get another month free or sign up for two months and get two months added on free. You can claim your deal at crowdster dot com in the chat window, tell them you’re from non-profit radio and choose your deal it’s that simple. Now tony’s, take two my blue pedicure challenge back in two twenty thirteen my dark age of social media when i thought facebook likes were the most important measure of success. Um, the non-profit radio page then had about one hundred fifty, likes, and since i was stuck on this vanity metric and it’s very suitable, but we’re just talking. We’re talking about metrics all day today, this silly metric i wanted more one hundred fifty seems it was embarrassing, i thought so. Two friends from high school, barbara massey and lisa martin, challenged that they would double the number of lights on the page, so they would get me to three hundred, and we agreed that if they did that, then i would get a blue pedicure. I don’t remember how we settled on that as the bet, but that’s what it became and they had to do it within. I think it was pretty short campaign was like two weeks or two or three weeks, and they did it, and so i kept up my side. I went across the street from the studio on west seventy second street in new york city, and i got a blue pedicure, and you can witness that because i shot video naturally, this is not something that you want to let go. I want to preserve this forever because it’s so important family memories. So the video is up at twenty martignetti dotcom my blue pedicure challenge that’s tony’s take two. I’m not really, you know, live listener, love podcast, pleasantries, affiliate affections. I don’t really feel it today. I don’t, uh i just, uh i’m sure they’re out there, you know, the live listeners, but no, no, i’m not. I’m not feeling up to it for on dh same thing with the podcast listeners your you know i know you’re there. Um, i’m not, and the affiliate affections, yeah, am and fm. I know you’re there, okay? You know, there’s, there’s, some gratitude. Rob mitchell, rob mitchell, you with us, right? I am with you, tony, i’m always with you. Thank you. You’re the ceo of atlas, of giving it atlas of giving dot com and of course, you’re also on twitter at philanthropy. Man, how you doing? Welcome back to non-profit radio. Hey, thanks, it’s. Always good to be with you, tony. Thank you. Always good. I think this is this the first time that you’re not in the studio. But on the show i said, i think this might be the second time i’m not in the second. Allright, i love coming to the studio for the whole new york experience in the upper west side experience. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s irreplaceable. But, tony, today, after the show, i’m leaving immediately to drive to houston to go to the final four. So that’s, that is my excuse today for not being in the studio with you. Final four is that is that is that one baseball? No, that that would be a collegiate. Basketball. Basketball. Ok, is that the one with the free throws and the field goals? Basketball is that grows field goals and lots of yelling, screaming and bands. Playing in-kind people being interested because they want to find out if they’re going to make money on there on their march madness brackets march madness. All right, that sounds like more like illness than ah then, uh, then something you better okay? You’re a sports guy. I, uh i’ve heard of sports. Okay? S so you’re going to come on every quarter now, the end of the quarter, and you’re gonna tell us what has happened in that quarter and then how that has affected your forecast? The atlas of giving forecast for twenty sixteen. So i’m very excited about this. Good. We’re going to use every quarter. That’s cool? Yeah, i’m excited about it, too. I think i think it’s a good way for listeners and listeners, whether they’re live podcast or or affiliate, i think it’s a great way to peak to keep up, keep their finger on the pulse of american philanthropy and that’s what we like to say we’re doing at the alice of giving we have an atlas of giving twitter page at atlas of giving as you mentioned my twitter pages at full answer, man and we have analysis of giving facebook page and google plus page. So there are a number of ways for people to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in american philanthropy. Okay. That’s ah, that’s. More self promotion than i generally allow. So that’s it. We cut that off. Now that we’ve cut off. All right, let’s, talk about some data. The number is not good for january. Through where we had january through march. Right? I assume january through february. Okay, just just finished march yesterday. Were quick, but we’re not that quick. Okay. Okay. So january february. The number is not good. No it’s, not it’s. Ah it’s. A disappointing number. The the through february e-giving as down nationally. One point, four percent, which some people would argue it’s flat some people may argue is yeah, but it’s not since since the atlas of giving has been around, um, since the depression, this is the first time we wait. Have we have seen two months of consecutive, um, downs down data? Altum and it’s there’s. Some explanations for it. Okay, it’s worrisome. Alright, first first time you’re saying the first time in how long? That way. So the first two months of the year have been down. When did this last happened? Two thousand nine. Okay. Depth of the recession. Okay. All right. So it’s gets down sector while yeah, nationwide. One point four percent. And what does that mean for the forecast for twenty sixteen? Well, the forecast has also taken a dip um, off of our original forecast and our forecast from last last month. The forecast today. And you have to understand that we we keeping our finger on the pulse of american philanthropy and the factors that are involved in charitable giving, including economic, demographic and event factors. We’re looking at a broad spectrum, and our forecast for calendar year two thousand sixteen is that two thousand sixteen, at least today is forecast to finish down to percent. Yeah. Okay. All right. And the point is, you know, this gets revised every single month. I mean, you’re you’re going to be coming on each quarter, but each month you revise the forecast. So, you know, this is the most the most recent data that you can analyze, which is up to one month old. Exactly. All right. And then next month, maybe maybe it’ll continue to decline. Who knows? But all right, now, what way? Not now. What was the forecast? Have to refresh? My recollection is you were on talking about it. What was the twenty sixteen forecast back in january? When when you were on the show? Well, it was a modest too. It was a modest two percent growth, two percent growth. Okay, so we’ve lost four percent from from then. Yes, because now we’re showing an annual decline of two. So okay, all right, well, you know, we keep our tracking the i mean, the news can always be good. And who knows what will happen at the end by the end of the year. But, you know, this is what this is, what data analysis is so people should be aware that the first two months were we’re tour. Okay? You have some suggestion as to why this maybe yeah, there there are several signal we’ve we’ve looked at the data, and we suspect that, um, the reason the forecasts has changed so well, i don’t want to say dramatically because that to me, four percent plus or minus i mean, if you think about political polls, they’re off four percent plus or minus so i don’t want to say dramatically that’s that’s that would be no being just keeping that stoploss that four percent of the reason that the forecast has changed from up to down is that, um, the the guy, the really smart guys who are looking at us gdp, gross sametz really gross domestic product have lowered their forecast for two thousand sixteen, and as every as most people know, gross domestic riel gross domestic product has a major is a major contributor, two charitable giving so that’s one reason. Okay, the expectations in the forecast for the united states stock market has been lowered. Also, not if you think about this time last year we were waiting for a correction, but instead of a correction occurring, the stock market was soaring at this time last year. And so instead of instead of revising numbers down, we were revised your number’s up. And so the the expectation and forecast of the stock market has been lowered so that that is that’s a contributing factor. Recent oil price increases now depends on where you live if you like that or you don’t like that. But for most americans, it’s being reflected at the gas pump, and what that means is that they’re paying more for their gasoline when they go to fill up and they have less disposable income. And since individuals account for seventy three percent of all giving, when when individuals have less disposable income, they have less to give. Yeah, so also get rob rob the objective gases such a a common commodity. I mean it’s like food. I mean, you know, in our car culture, you’re filling up, you know, once a week or something, you’re seeing this increase every week or maybe even more often, and it influences your your opinion of how much disposable income you have, it does absolutely, it does. The same thing is true for other things, like taxes when taxes go up, there’s less disposable income and i don’t care if it’s local taxes or national state taxes or national taxes. It’s, it’s all for individual givers, it’s all about disposable income, okay? And i’m just saying i’m pointing out gas because it’s such a a commodity that people buy so frequently that you know, people jog around and monitor oh, it’s one eighty seven there was one eighty nine over. At the place where i usually go to send mean people compare these pennies and if you see the penny’s going up week after week you ah, i guess you are less wealthy and you feel less well. Okay. Yes. Then then there is then there is the presidential political campaign and i have seen at least two reports from what i would consider to be reliable sources that say campaign e-giving does not affect charitable giving. I am. I am not in a position to say to you today that it does, though we are studying it and and are preparing a report to be released in june about the implications of political fund-raising on charitable giving. But what i would say to you is that campaign interest and uncertainty about future leadership is leaving potential donors on the sideline. Okay, all right, now, let me ask a question about that. How does the atlas of giving study this? How do you do that? Well, way. Have. As you know, tony, we have sixty five algorithms, and those algorithms are based on economic, demographic and event factors. And so, as as we look at each of those sixty five algorithms, whether they’re for a particular source of particular state or a particular sector durney we’re able to get a read on what is what is causing charitable giving to do what it is doing and that’s why we say, we’re keeping our pulse on american philanthropy, and right now, you know, if you look at if you look a campaign giving in terms of it’s out geever its volume in comparison with charitable giving, it’s it’s not very it’s, not very large, but when people are wondering what the leadership of the country is going to do, what taxes are going to do when there’s uncertainty, which there is a great amount of uncertainty today. Um, in both in both the democratic and republican parties, there’s talk of brokered conventions and so forth, people are more cautious, and they tend to stay on the sideline and and that’s what we’re seeing, yeah, so amazing in our algorithms. So it may not be so much the money that people spend on the presidential campaign. E-giving but the attitude of the feeling of uncertainty that’s what you’re suggesting absolutely ok, we’ll get a i think we’ll get where we’re going to. Is we’ll have you back in july because then that’ll be the end of the second quarter, and then you’ll be able to, um, talk about your june paper on on the impact of the presidential campaign on giving. How does that sound? Sounds great. Ok, we’ll take a break now we’re not wrapping up. I don’t want you think, tien, you got more to go, but we’re gonna take our break, and you and i are going to continue our convo, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trans sounded life that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i am his knees. Carmela and i am his nephew, gino. Oppcoll no fools. My sweet niece and nephew. They listen to non-profit radio that they have no choice. But so that right, that that was really cool. Okay, rob mitchell, you want to share some other? Ah, some of the reasons so well is the oil and the gdp and the stock market forecast down the campaigning. What? You got other other other potential reasons or way exhausted our okay, what else? Give us one. Okay? So church e-giving, which is the largest sector accounts for the largest sector of giving in the u s that’s. Like was declining at a faster rate than the national e-giving right raid. The religion is what about a third? Right? Thirty two. Thirty three percent. Something okay now. It’s. Always it’s. It’s, i think. Now remember, tony, that about ten years ago it was about fifty percent. Yeah, well, that’s, sort of the point. I was going to make that you after year when you and i have been talking. I’m not sure it happened in twenty fifteen, but i know twenty, thirteen and fourteen. It was losing aa percent. It was it was losing market share one percent a year. I forget whether that happened in twenty fifteen i can’t remember, but i don’t expect you to remember, but but it’s been declining? Yeah, and now you’re saying it used to be fifty that was before me, but or before i used to pay attention to the stuff. So all right. And then so now, in the first two months, it declined. You think it declined faster than the one point four percent nationwide, right? I mean, sector across the how much? How much did church giving decline? Church e-giving declined. Hang on one second here, jesus was not church e-giving declined look at that rate of three point four percent three point four that’s more than double the one point four across all sectors, yes, wow! And since it’s the largest sector that we measure its impact on total national e-giving is bigger. So it is a very it’s, very significant to look a church e-giving look att gifts to religion and and really study what the trend is on trend has been that fewer and fewer americans for associating with congregations of any kind. They’re going to the they’re going to the church of trump. Well, they’re worshipping a new yorkers. So i’ll leave that worshipping at the feet of donald trump. I don’t know how relieved that you know, but what what what do you think you know this is this is because three new yorkers that are putting aside cruise it’s three new yorkers, but we don’t do politics. I’m sorry, let’s see, oh, the church giving. Why do you think church giving his declining thie elderly or dying and what the measurements have been very consistent over the last two decades, and that is that fewer and fewer people are so our affiliating with churches are attending. Church is are joining churches and altum if you’d like an analogy, look it look at western europe because i think we’re headed to the to the same. We’re sort of headed in the same places western europe. Religion is becoming less and less a significant part of american life, especially for younger americans. Millennials particularly, are not affiliating with churches at the same rate as their parents. Yeah, okay, okay. Let’s, see? All right. There’s. Some other things. Tony two interesting. Okay, but we also have to spend time with sametz commendations for what non-profits should do with this. So let me ask you all right? So let’s, move on me when we need to do that. Okay. Let’s, meet teo. I want to go now. Tio what’s happening across other sectors aside from religion, are things constant or or things changing there too? In the first two months that things are, every sector is down and giving dafs laid for two. Ok. One is the environmental sector which is up and the human service. And by the way, the environmental sector has, um, for the last five years been growing at a faster rate than any other sector. It’s call it. Call it awareness. Call it what you want. But the environmental sector, though it is the smallest giving sector is growing at the fastest rate. Um, the human needs sector are the human services sector is also growing off. All the rest all seven other sectors are in are in decline this year. Okay. Okay. Environment is that now that they have the smallest share i have your your pie chart here, environment is that two percent? Right? So so even a big increase how much is ah, how much is the environment up by how much? The environment is by two points up two point, two percent two point two and human services is up one percent. Okay, human services has about thirteen percent of total giving across all the different sectors. And that what we call an allocated, which also includes donor advised funds, is that zero percent growth. Okay, all right, let’s move to some recommendations for non-profits what? What do you suggesting? In light of what we know from the first two months of the year, it’s it’s time to use extreme caution and planning fiscal year budgets. Heimans as you well know, tony from the non-profits that you’ve worked with that you’re associated with or worked for, um, chances are the but the income budget is set by somebody sticking a wet finger in the air and saying, we’re going to do better than last year by x percent. Now, this is not the time to do that kind of planning. Uh, non-profits need to be especially careful in planning their fiscal year. Budgets it’s also time to consider delaying the launch of new capital campaigns until conditions improve. Lastly, i would say if you’re in, if you’re in mid year in your fiscal year, it’s time for you to modify you’re fiscal year budget in order to prepare for reality. So if your fiscal year, if you’re fiscal year budget was calling for an inn was with based on an increase in charitable giving of eight or ten percent now’s the time to welcome to reality it’s not gonna happen, mom now’s the time to adjust your budget to reality and to really situations. And so it means that you should cut back on your on expenses. How you cut back on expenses is a bonem organization by organization decision. But i would never recommend cutting back on fund-raising cost, because now more than ever you need your fund-raising staff out there trying to raise money for you. Yeah. Alright now, rob, we have just about a minute and a half left. So you need to keep that in mind. Now. What happens though if in the next quarter things rise and you know the forecast is now for, like a three. Percent increased for twenty sixteen. I mean hyre we can’t keep adjusting budgets down and then up, and we can’t work like that, either. Well, tony, i would disagree. I would say that the i s i would say that these organizations that are going to do the best in the future are those that are nimble enough to adjust their budgets toe what is really happening in the charitable giving economy. And so if i come back to you next quarter and say, we’re projecting that giving will be up three percent for the for the calendar year, i’m going to have a different message for you. But i do think that the the organizations that are nimble enough to to follow what is going on in the charitable giving economy are those that are going to have the best result. Okay, all right, we’re gonna leave it there. Rob mitchell that’s excellent. You’re going to back that’s a planet for july when we’ll talk about the second quarter and your paper on the political campaign and and and how it affects charitable giving, you’ll find rob mitchell at atlas of giving dot com and although also at atlas of giving, and he personally is at philanthropy, man, or is that like to point out at philantech roman? Either way, thank you very much, rob mitchell. Thanks, tony, my pleasure and watch for me on tv at the final four. Okay, i’ll, uh, i’ll be rooting for the mets next week. Next week, more from the non-profit technology conference amy sample ward on why non-profit technology network deserves your attention and volunteer training long distance what if all your volunteers can’t always come to your office? If you missed any part of today’s show, i don’t care what you do do whatever the hell you want, it’s april fool’s day and i know you didn’t buy that nonsense about live listen love podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections, apathy i know you didn’t my feeble attempt tio good, thank you. If you missed any part of today’s show, i endure you find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go? I am still groping for the way forward. I don’t know. Maybe i need religion, but religions giving his down that’s a bad sign for me, perhaps responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. And our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gifts. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for March 25, 2016: Lead and Matching Gifts & Corporate Matching Gifts

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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John List: Lead and Matching Gifts

Professor John List from the University of Chicago chairs the economics department and founded the Science of Philanthropy Initiative. No longer must fundraisers rely on tradition and conventional wisdom in campaign planning. You have rigorous science to guide you around lead and matching gifts. How big should a lead gift be to impact giving? Will a 1-to-1 match raise as much as a 3-to-1 match? (Originally broadcast on Feb 8, 2013.).

 

Chuck Longfield: Corporate Matching Gifts

Chuck Longfield, chief scientist at Blackbaud, has lots of simple ways to increase your matching gifts from corporations. Tap into the annual $1.4 billion from 20,000 companies. Did you know that volunteer hours are also dollar matched by many? We start with sector benchmarking and go from there. Recorded at Blackbaud’s 2012 bbcon conference. (Also from 2/8/13).

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host. I have to welcome again our new affiliate station love it w l r i ninety two point nine fm in lancaster and chester county, pennsylvania lanchester welcome, i love our am and fm affiliates throughout the country. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the annoyance of otitis media if i heard the words you missed today’s show lead and matching gif ts professor john list from the university of chicago chairs the economics department and founded the science of philanthropy initiative. No longer must fundraisers rely on tradition and conventional wisdom in campaign planning, you have rigorous science to guide you around lead and matching gif ts how big should lead gift be to impact e-giving well, a one to one match raise as much as a three to one match that was originally broadcast on february eighth, twenty thirteen and corporate matching gif ts chuck longfield, chief scientist at blackbaud, has lots of simple ways to increase your matching gif ts from corporations tap into the annual one point four billion dollars from twenty. Thousand companies did you know that volunteer hours are also dollar matched by many? We start with sector benchmarking and go from there that was recorded at blackbaud cz twenty twelve bb con conference and also originally broadcast on february eighth twenty thirteen on tony’s take two i’m at the non-profit technology conference we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money hey pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay mobile donation crowdster dot com here is professor john list on lead and matching gif ts my pleasure now to welcome john list he’s the homer jay livingston, professor and chairman in the department of economics at the university of chicago he’s expert in the science of philanthropy and his new project, the science of philanthropy initiative spy is funded by the john templeton foundation. It’s, a research and outrage venture and we’re going to talk about his research and spies, outreach to charities and how you can participate. Professor john list welcome to the show. Thanks, tony. Thanks for having me. It’s. A pleasure to have you from chicago. You getting snow? Out there, the way we’re getting inundated, died here in new york. Not too much, but it is pretty icy here. So it is. It is difficult driving conditions here, tony. Okay, well, i’m glad you’re safe in your little office. I was, you know, i like to picture academics. You know, my major was economics that i was an economics major at carnegie mellon university. That’s. Why you’re so smart now, that’s. Because i was rejected by the university of chicago. I hope you were not share in nineteen. I would have been applying in nineteen. Eighty. I hope you were not chair in nineteen. Eighty. I was not. I was actually in eighth grade in nineteen. Eighty rock. Okay, well, you’re a little younger than me, but you don’t look it from your photo now, okay? Let’s, talk about spy. This work is very interesting. Like i said in the in the lead in no longer must charities rely on conventional wisdom? Let’s, start with your methodology around campaigns. What are you doing? I think that’s right. I think when i first i became interested in this area. Tony what i what i found was that you had a bunch of really good people, a bunch of really good hearted people who were basing their decisions, mohr on anecdotes and gut feelings right, then the actual scientific method. So when i say scientific method, what i mean by that is basic basic experiment. So in that basic experiment, it’s always important to have a control group, because then when you have, ah, treatment groups such as some people might get a one to one match, you want to always compare that to a group of people who did not receive a match. Okay, that’s all right, that’s, the control group. Watch out. I have george in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio you you scared it closely, but you then you defined control you defined control group, so you’re clear. But watch out. Okay. All right, so so we have this is this is the scientific method. We have a control group in a test group or treatment group. And how have you been applying this to campaigns beyond matching? Sure, sure. So when i first started, i was presented with a problem at the university of central florida. So at the university of central florida, the deen challenged me to start a center to do research in environmental policy and what the dean said it is. John, you are responsible for raising money to start the research center. So of course, the first question becomes different in need of resource is for a capital project. What are the first steps i should take? And the fundraisers will tell you you should secure a fraction of the money privately before going public. So, as an economist, i asked a simple question. Well, what is the optimal fraction? What i essentially found? Wass ah, bunch of anecdotes about what that fraction should be. For example, the fund-raising school recommended that forty to fifty percent of the goal should be pledged before the public campaign begins. Other hand books recommended figures between twenty and fifty percent. Right around the same time the university of wisconsin was building there. Cole center, which houses the basketball team in the hockey team. And what they had done in the quiet period is they had gone. Out and gathered twenty seven of their seventy two million dollar goal. So if you could see that the evidence is sort of scattered all over the place and i simply asked, how do we know which fraction is correct? And very few people had actual scientific evidence to back up their claims that a certain fraction was actually the correct fraction to gather in private before going public. Okay, so he looks like justin is i didn’t set up a direct mail solicitation, and i split ten thousand households into different buckets or different groups. In one group i advertised, we’re looking for money for our center for environmental policy analysis here at the university of central florida, and we already have ten percent of what we need. We already have that from an anonymous donor. You know, another group of households received a different kind of letter. It was identical in all respects, except it said that we already have thirty three percent of the of the goal. And another group received a letter that said, we have already received sixty seven percent of the goal and then the fourth group, which is our control group i received the letter. But there was no mention that we have received upfront money. Okay? And so this was to our knowledge to your knowledge, is was the first scientific method rigorous test at least that you could find of different match is having an impact on thie outcome of giving? And what did you find that’s? Exactly, right. So what we found is that over that range from ten to sixty seven percent that the more you advertising seed money, the more gifts that you will receive. So in this particular study, what we’ve found was that most people gave and those who were going to give actually gave mohr so the more seed money you have, you wouldn’t do it more people to give and those people who would have given anyways they actually give mme or when you have ah hyre level of seed money. Okay, interesting. And so you did this work. University of central florida. You were then stolen away, recruited away to the university of chicago for more sophisticated work. E well, i don’t know about that, but, you know, there were a few stops in between. I ended up going to the university of arizona, and then from there, i went to the university of maryland and well, i was at the university of maryland. I spent a year working in the white house at the council of economic advisers, and then after that, i came here to chicago to get smarter, okay? You work your way north from from two very south locations, work your way to the northeast and then the frigid chicago area. We’re going to take a break right now, john, and when we come back, we’ll talk about that more sophisticated work and how it’ll applies to charitable giving. Stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna welcome back. We’re talking with professor john list from university of chicago about leading matching gift in your campaign. I have to send live listener love somebody, somebody in chicago was listening. John, you’ll be gratified to know that there’s a listener in chicago and it was very good. New bern, north carolina, bethlehem, pennsylvania and washington, new jersey live listener love going out also to taipei, taiwan and shang zhi change china. I don’t know how to pronounce it. C h a n g s h z chung’s. We’re doing the best we can here. China s o tio taiwan and china ni hao. All right, professor john. Now that you’re at the university, your work has expanded and you’re doing work now with some pretty large charities. Want you describe that that’s, right? That’s. Right, tony, um, you know, after you established that upfront money is important, you can ask yourself, well, should we be using that money is simply an announcement like i did at the university of central florida? Or should we be using it as an announcement and is a match? So, for example, you could say an anonymous donor just gave us one million. Dollars now we will use those funds is a match. So, for example, for every dollar that you give, we will match with a dollar of this donors. So we ended up taking that idea, which, of course, is a common idea in fund-raising to a simple, direct mail experiment with the sierra club of canada and what we were interested in there it was simply testing the idea of announcing money, which i did at the university of central florida campaign versus announcing money and using it is a one to one match. And what we found there again, we’re we’re sending out tens of thousands of letters two households essentially using the normal ask that the sierra club uses. But here some households receive a letter that has, for example, no mention of this upfront money and that’s, a control group. Other households received the match other households received. We have some money. But there is no match campaign. And what we found there is that again. Seed money works quite well. So what i mean by seed money is that if you have up front money that’s very effective in generating people to give but the interesting. Thing there is that the one to one match worked about as well. Is the seed money treatment in both of them worked much better than the control group. Okay. Okay. Now, the one to one match. This is with the sierra club of canada. The one to one match, you said worked a little bit better than the leadership gift announcement. Actually, they were the leadership gift announcement. Worked slightly better, but they were okay, but they were statistically the same. If you look at them through a statistical tests, they were about the same. Okay. Okay. And that was a one to one match. Now, what do we know about the what have you learned about the differences between different levels of match? One, two. One, two, one. One, two, two, etcetera. Exactly. You know, tony that’s a great question. Because that’s that’s, clearly the next step in the research agenda. And when you look a man, i should have been a professor of economics. I did. Well, carnegie mellon. I have no shot having gone there so way. Always have a spot here for you at the university. Thank you. Look at this. The deed that i know you’re not the dean, just the department chair. Well, just lonely department there. Department chair. Well, i’ll use you for my letter of recommendation, right? Absolutely. Okay, what do we know about how these different levels of matching compare? Yeah. That’s a good question, because you know, the anecdotal evidence out in the field is that obviously a three to one match should work. A lot better than a one to one match in a three to one match, of course, is, for every dollar that you give, the charity will match with three dollars, and the one the one every dollar you give, the charity will match with a dollar. But of course, when we went out to the literature, we could not find any scientific evidence that indeed a three to one match was better than a one to one mad again. Just a lot of conventional wisdom. And this is the tradition. Absolutely. Okay, absolutely. Which, of course, drives an economics professor. Not what we don’t have any data or scientific evidence to back up that finding. All right. Here’s. Where we? Yeah, here’s. Where we part company c i should probably just settle for an honorary ph d from the university because it hasn’t driven me as nuts as it has you, but i’m glad it has go ahead. Absolutely so this time we teamed with a national liberal non-profit in the us, which does political and socially oriented work, and i have to be careful because i cannot mention the non-profit due to a non disclosure agreement that we made with them, ok, but essentially the background is that every month they send about fifty thousand letters, too. They’re regular donors, and they asked them for money and essentially what we did is, again, we put the households into different buckets or different groups. In one bucket, you had households that received a one to one match offer. In another group, households received a two to one match offer, and in a third group, households received a three to one match offer. And then, of course, we compare that to a fourth group, which is the control group, right? No match, no match at all, which they receive in a typical letter that says, we’re looking for money to help the cause, so to speak. Okay, so what we found here is that if you just look at the data amongst those households that received a match offer versus those households that did not receive any match offer. You raise about nineteen percent more money in those matching treatments compared to the control group. And the interesting part is that effect occurs entirely on what an economist calls the extensive margin. And what i mean by that is that nineteen percent occurs entirely because the response rate went up about twenty two percent. So more people decided to give. When there was a match available, they still gave the same amount per person. But more people give when there’s a match available. So so the effect is not because people are giving mohr, but because more people are giving exactly. And this and then the level of giving doesn’t change among among all the people who give versus the control group that’s, right? So if you were going to give anyway, on average, you give the same amount. But you just get twenty two percent more people to give some money rather than give nothing. And is that impacted at all by the level of the match? Exactly. So the other finding that we that just jumps out at you in the data is that the three toe won the two to one and the one to one match groups perform identically. Are you sure about that, e? I mean, nasa has made mathematical errors, and they forgot to convert you forgot to convert fahrenheit into celsius or something like that. Are you sure about this? I mean, it happened, you know, if you hadn’t. If you haven’t double check your math, i’ll understand. I’ll tell you what, i have double and triple checked my math, and i’ve also gone to other charities, and i’ve done the same kind of experiment with amnesty international with bly, robida, children’s hospital. And what we find over and over again is that having match dollars, really? That really matters a lot. But the size of the match does not matter. Uh, that’s. Very interesting, very interesting. And contrary to all that conventional wisdom that we were talking about. Okay, so the one to one match poles well has has the same effect as the three to one match. Okay, sure. Okay. What about the one, two two or one two three, where a dollar gets fifty cents. Or something like that or those types of matches. Exactly that’s very good questions. So we have now extended that original experiment all the way down on the other side. So we’ve looked at one to two and we have looked at one, two, three and again one, two, three and one, two, two are the same as one to one. So at least over the range that we’ve experimented with. Oneto one all the way down to one, two, three and all the way up to three, two, one we find the same result that people give the same amount of money. No, i think we need to take care here, because if we would go all the way, say, for example, to one to one hundred, if you give one hundred dollars, we will match with one dollars, i’m pretty sure that would not work very well, although that’s a gut feeling, so i i i i don’t want to break my own rules, right? Because that’s, just my intuition that suggests if you go that far, you can actually hurt your capital campaign, but i don’t have any empirical evidence for that, okay? John list is the homer jay livingston, professor of economics and chair of the department at the university of chicago, and we’re talking mostly about his work through the science of philanthropy initiative at the university spy, which you’ll find at s p i hub dot or ge, and we’re going to talk about working with it’s by very shortly. All right, john. So now we don’t know one, two one, two a one hundred match that would i guess you would expect that be different than a one to one match, but we don’t have any evidence of that, right? That’s correct. Okay. Do you plan to test a match that that that’s that largest to see if there where? Where the boundary is that the one to one effect breaks down? You know, i would love to. And just exactly as you mentioned of always looking for partners to try ideas such as that one. And i think that’s exactly. The next step that the research will take is is where does the match the effectiveness of the match actually break down? I think it’s a great research question and one in which i do wish to explore. Okay. Okay. Interesting now. You have some evidence of how this works on ah ah, warm list versus a cold list. Why don’t you describe those and what that what those outcomes are exactly exactly so when we think about warm list, what the way that we differentiate people in data sets is a warm list is a person who has given to our cause within the last three years. So if you’ve given ten dollars or ten million dollars within the last three years, we label you is a warm list person. Ah, cold list person is a person who has not given to our cause in the last three years, so that just gives you some definitions of the way that we think about cold lest versus warm list. Now you’re exactly right to pinpoint that feature in our data. What we find is that the cold list people are more influenced by the match, then the warm list people it’s not that the warm list people are not influenced by the match because indeed, warm, less people are influenced by the match. They’re just not as influenced as much is the coldness people? Okay, okay, and they’re influenced. In what way? The proportion of giving is greater, right? Because we’re talking about more people giving not people giving mohr money exactly it’s exactly proportion all about the number ofthe coldness people who give above and beyond the number of coldness people who give in the control group. Okay, okay. Interesting. All right, let’s, move to. Well, let’s, let’s spend a little time talking about the partnership. We have more to talk about your research in terms of leadership gifts. We’ve just been talking about matching gifts, but you’re you’re actively looking for charity partners to work with, right? Absolutely. So, you know, we’ve just we’ve just begun. We’ve just started spy hub dot org’s is you mentioned earlier, and even though my own research, i’ve been doing work in philanthropy now since nineteen ninety eight, we have just received a very generous grant from the john templeton foundation that allows us more opportunities and more time toe work with those charities out there who are interested in partnering with us remember, you’re going to have to put up with our craziness because we’re academics, we have crazy ideas. Yeah, you should see our listeners. If you go to my block, you’ll see, you’ll see john’s, head shot and there’s all kinds of mathematical equations behind him on a blot on a blackboard is not even a white board. I was surprised that i would have thought for sure university chicago would be using whiteboard technology, but not in your classroom anyway. Unless it’s an old photo it’s it’s chalk on a blackboard and you have the end use lambda in your and some of your equations that would know lambda always scared me as i was as i was doing economics, studying econometrics and regression analysis. I don’t know why just lambda lambda just seems intimidating to me. Lambda i don’t know a couple of land is behind you, so yeah, i looked at your picture way. Linda brings up everybody still old school here. I’m sitting in my office right now and i actually have a blackboard in my office which has lambda written on it. You do see that’s. Why i’m getting a bad vibe. I’m goingto have to bring out the love crystal here. Couple of a couple of shows ago someone held the crystal court’s love krystal i’m getting a bad vibe tau lambda it’s a lambda thing for me? I don’t know why i just since my econometrics days, lam does giving me trouble. All right, we have just a couple minutes before break. So let’s, keep talking about eso charities. Should charities that are interested in putting up with you go to s p i hub dot or gq? Or how do they get information? That’s, right? I think that’s a good spot to go to or, you know, you can actually google me if you google john list. You know, i promise you i’m not the mass murder. That guy will come up first. I’ll probably come up second. Zoho is there one of those? Okay, yeah. You know, john list is a very unfortunate name, but, you know, my email address you can email me here at the university of chicago, it’s j list at u chicago daddy to you. And, you know, we can begin discussions about forming a partnership. Our bottom line is this we don’t charge for what we do, but what we expect is that we can use the data that is generated from the cause you know, from the telephone or the direct mailer or the or the banquet that we could actually use those data when we write academic papers or we do radio interviews or television interviews or what have you that that’s really the only cost is that you allow wass to work with the data and pushed the knowledge frontier in this particular sector because that’s really what we’re in it for, we’re not in it to make money ourselves way really want the sector to undergo a scientific revolution because we believe so strongly in this sector. Okay, on dh, this can be done anonymously, right? The charity named doesn’t have to happen in your research. Okay. Okay. Professor list. Wait. Told charities how they can get involved with you. Let’s, move to your research on leadership. Gif ts. What was that about? So? So what the leadership gives essentially are about is that if you receive upfront money, there are many different ways to use that up front money. You can simply announce it is we did at the university of central florida. You can use it as a matching gift is we just talked about, or you can use it, for example, for small gifts, you know, small donor, jess teo. To give to people who actually give to your cause or you can actually use it for lottery prizes if you wanted teo link people’s contributions to a possibility tto win a large prize. Those are other ways in which you could use up front money as well. Okay, interesting. Yeah, go ahead. What we’ve been finding is that if you actually link the donation to ah probability of winning a prize that you khun considerably increase e-giving rates, in fact, is much is one hundred percent, and most of that result is actually on again the extensive margin more people are giving when they have a chance to win a prize. Okay, and how does how does this type of e-giving compare with the one to one match? You know, this type of giving is in the range of a one to one match, so if you are ah, if you’re thinking about going out and using up front money, what we’ve been finding is that a one to one match works about as well is ah lottery, where you where you give away a large prize, say a thousand dollars to one of the donors it works about. Equally as well as a one to one match. Okay. Okay. These are too different types of inducements. This is interesting. Is that the, uh one to one match is conditional on the person giving and the the other is not it’s it’s? Definitely what? Why that? What is that difference mean, exactly. So what we’ve been finding you pinpointed a very important fact in our data is that on the one case one to one match, those dollars essentially are conditional in the sense that you have to give one hundred dollars to have the anonymous donor give one hundred dollars. We’re a leadership gift is essentially the lead daughter giving money that’s unconditional. So what we’ve been finding is that that unconditional gift tends to be slightly stronger, a slightly stronger signal to donors. Then the match gift is, and we think that’s because the signaling value off that gift and what i mean by signaling value is this anonymous donor probably knows mohr information about the charitable cause than i do. So if i see her giving a large amount of money for the cause, that sends a signal to me that charitable dr is a good one it’s. A good signal of charitable quality. That’s. What our data points to time in and time again, that the leadership gift is a very important signal of the quality of the charitable dr. Okay, okay. Let’s, i want to talk a little about what you’re what you’re doing next. You have some interesting research that you’re working on your next project, the one one and done right? Yeah, right, yeah, that’s good that you bring that up because this is a project that right now has a lot of my attention, and this is a project that we’ve worked in partnership with smile train so smile train is a wonderful organization that takes care of cleft palates of of the youth overseas, so they send doctors overseas to take care of this very dreaded birth defect. And with them, we’ve developed a program which we call once and done and essentially it’s a direct mail solicitation. But within that direct mail solicitation, it says, give now and we will never bother you again if you check this box. John, we have just a minute left. Give, tell us briefly what? What? The impact of that is sure what we’ve been finding we’ve sent to about eight hundred thousand people in what we’ve been fighting is that if you use once and done, you can raise about three times more money, then you can with the control group, only thirty four percent of the people will actually check the box. And when you look into the future, you don’t actually lose donors. You raised just as much money in the future. Is you raised from the control group in the once and done group. So, in essence, you raised about three times more money in the initial mailer, and it does not compromise future fundez from those people. Okay, we have to sort of leave it there. I think you should call it one and done, though not once and done. You’re missing the good alliteration opportunity wanted done. No one gift and you’re done. Remember how many economists not an english professor? Would you go for the goal for the liberation? I don’t have more punch one and done. I think you should rename it one and done. But obviously, the impact in the outcome is what’s. More important, dahna one. Thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you very much. Look forward to talking to you soon, tony. My pleasure. John list, chair of the department of economics at the university of chicago. You confined him at s p i hub dot. Org’s spy hub dot or gq, and he and i will be in touch to schedule the date for my honorary ph d ceremony. Corporate matching gifts with chuck longfield is coming up first. Pursuant, they help you raise more money that’s your objective, you need to raise more money, they help you do it, they’re online tools or ala carte you choose what you need like velocity to keep you on task and goal oriented. Now, some people would say goal orientated, but it’s oriented let’s not get into language pet peeves i just i’ll keep you appraised, and prospector is another pursuing tool that helps you find your highest priority potential donors. So you know who to focus your scarce time on all at pursuant dot com crowdster they have a deal for non-profit radio listeners, you get thirty days free or fifty percent off. This means you can try a crowdster peer-to-peer fund-raising sight completely free for a month or get the fifty percent off offer. That means you pay for a month and get a second month free or sign up for two months and get two more months free for a total of four, which deal do you want? Let them know what crowdster dot com in the chat window, tell them you’re from non-profit radio and choose the deal now. It’s time for tony’s take two. I’m at non-profit technology conference and tc this month lots of very smart people helping you use technology in all the different ways that i hope you are using it throughout your organization day to day, you know, way beyond just fund-raising but marketing, communications and volunteermatch judgment and program management, you know, outreach, all the social media topics, all this stuff at ntc, i’m doing probably thirty, maybe even a little more than thirty interviews in the three day conference, some of them that i’ve got coming. Our digital disruption seven habits of highly risky non-profits communications, mythbusters be a google adwords superhero and a ton more interviews all four non-profit radio video and the list of all the interviews is at tony martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two got to send live listener love. I am pre recorded this week, but the live listeners do you know who you are? Because you’re listening live right now so the latto live listener love is going to you, even though i can’t shout you out by city and state, but i love is going to make no question about that love goes, i just don’t know exactly which city it’s going to, but you know, because it’s where you’re sitting podcast pleasantries are over ten thousand podcast listeners, whatever activity, whatever device, whatever time, whenever it fits into your schedule. Thank you, thank you for being with non-profit radio, most likely on itunes, but there are lots of other platforms. Stitcher ah pod bay pod pod player on even one in delaware, delaware it’s not d not told where. Germany in germany there’s a there’s, a podcast site that it’s podcast dot d and they’re listening and i saw one in aa in, uh, in spain. I can’t remember the name of that one, but we’ve got listeners in spain listening via podcast so podcast pleasantries to each of the podcast listeners and, of course, the affiliate affections. Where would we be without our am and fm stations throughout the country? Deep, deep affections to our affiliate listeners. Thank you so much. Here is chuck longfield. We have corporate matching gift. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit. Radio coverage of b become twenty twelve blackbaud conference where outside washington dc gaylord convention center with me now is chuck longfield. Chuck is chief scientist for blackbaud chuck, welcome. Thank you. Nice to be here. It’s a pleasure to have things very much. Your session topic yesterday was don’t leave money on the table. Ten proven practices for success with magic gift let’s start with a very basic why should a charity spent time with matching gift is your forms there’s compliance there’s going to be back and forth with companies? Why is this worth it? I’m currently about a little over a billion dollars a year is given by corporations to matching gifts, but one point four billion dollars it’s about twenty thousand companies in america that will match their gifts, about half of the fortune five hundred have matching gifts, they’ll match donations, and a number of them will also match volunteer hours. So, for example, if you volunteer at a non-profit you work for microsoft, they’ll actually pay you fourteen dollars for every hour that you don’t pay the non-profit fourteen dollars for every hour they volunteer and some companies if you give them a thousand. Dollar donation or one hundred dollar donation, they’ll match it. One, two one two to one, three to one. So it’s in a sense, it’s kind of newfound money caused fundrasing isn’t all that high. There are some compliance issues and paper forms and such but that’s getting easier. So in general there’s there’s a big opportunity and i’ve done a lot of research that has shown that most companies are not doing nearly enough in this area and they could be substantially increasing their revenue several percent if they pursued some of these practices. How recent is the reimbursement of volunteer time? It’s been a it’s? Been in place for a while now. It’s a relatively new thing but it’s it’s been in place for a while. Okay, so it’s worth the small administrative time that’s right in the past. The way the process worked was the employee was encouraged to go to the hr department. More recently go to the internet at their company. Get a form. Fill out the forms sent it into the non-profit. The non-profit indicates that they indeed got the donation. They send it on to the company. The company over time has been outsourcing this to other companies to do the paperwork. So it’s actually been someone burned some authority, but the internet and a lot of links now have made this easier. So most employees now just encouraged to go to a a site. They can indicate that they made this donation and the paperwork is all done. So, for example, there’s, a company in new jersey that jake group that worked with many of the fortune five hundred companies, and they have a website called easy match. And if you use easy match the processing for the nonprofit for the employees, for the corporations made much easier. Okay, give listen is the name of that company one more time? The company actually is kind of in the background, but their website is called easy match. Zizi match dot com. No, i’m sorry. E a s y m a c h dot. Okay, hyre so what was what was the first piece of advice that you shared on building this magic gift? Well, so well, one of the pieces of advice, which actually wasn’t the first, but i’ll start with it is to benchmark with against your peers. So in different organizations i have different resources. There are organizations that have probably like yours that that dahna realize a greater percentage of matching gift dollars, and so when you’re actually looking at the opportunity. So for example, if your university there are many universities now that a matching five, six, seven percent of the total revenue with matching gifts. So if you’re doing one percent in your university, you’d say, well, how are they getting five percent family getting one percent? If you are a public broadcasting station, good public broadcasting stations air getting three or four percent, but most public broadcasting stations are getting well under one percent, so they can look at their numbers and they can say, well, why am i not getting three or four percent? So it’s a good way by benchmarking first, to quantify the game that you might realise it really it does vary considerably. Sounds like across different charitable vision. Well, it doesn’t infect the public broadcasting stations could probably achieve five, six, seven percent that they would need to actually start doing some of the things that comes more easily to a university, like knowing where their people work so university can collect that more easily where’s, the public broadcasting station, might have more trouble finding out that you work for ibm. But but still, the real issue is that if you know how well some of your better peers are performing, you can actually estimate what how much money is at stake for you. And then the actual practices are relatively easy. I joked in my presentation that there’s, a surgeon, a tool go on who wrote a great book called checklist manifesto, and he pointed out in the book that if doctors washed their hands, they would get ten thousand fewer patients a year, would die of infections. And doctors don’t always wash their hands in fact, of the substantial numbers don’t even match and gives. The analogy is that if you want substantially more matching gift dollars, all you have to do is remember who matched last year and remind them when they give this year to match again. So it’s, not rocket science. But if you do it, you actually would boost your matching gift there’s. A few practices like that that are relatively straight forward, okay. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My share another yes, sure. Lovely, simple, fun latto i consider this fun exit simple and fun that’s, right? So another one is is that a lot of people now moving, too websites to make donations it’s relatively easy to put on your website another line which says that if you work for a matching gift company, please match and you can actually hyper link it to the list of matching cos the twenty thousand companies so somebody, if they do work, they can click, they can look up apple computer, they click on apple computer indicate that they work for apple and the process can begin. And in fact, with somebody like apple, the next thing you’ll be directed to do is click on easy match and the process basically would be finished. Type in your employee i d number indicate that you made the gift and be off. Is that a list of twenty thousand proprietary? You have to be working with a company piela hyperlink. Yeah, super vis yes, it’s actually it’s a very low cost and smith it’s made available by two companies, blackbaud is one kapin isn’t now the gp is another and it cost. About a thousand dollars to license the soft with the list of companies and an awful lot of companies already licensed, it put it on their website, but yes, a small and midsize non-profit that’s not doing that should do it because it’s relatively easy, and then the donor is self serving, servicing themselves, they’re indicating it moving on. Your mother would like he’s fun. Well, another one is, is that if you’re a regional non-profit so say europe non-profit in the houston market, houston, texas market and exxon mobil is a big employer in your market, or if you’re a bank of america and urine that their market, you can actually get their blank form. And if you know some of your employees work for exxon mobil, when you thank them, you can actually just send them the form or send them an email hyper linked directly to the exxon mobil website so they could go on make a donation and it’s relatively easy to determine that some of these people work for exxon because they might already have volunteered their email address and their email address might be chuck it exxon dot com really pretty simple research making. It so much easier for the donor that’s correct that’s, right? And in fact, if you look at the university’s universities that are getting this five, six, seven percent more money aren’t doing anything more than these basics, plus making sure they find out where you work. Okay, what our strategy for finding out where you work mention public radio probably doesn’t know that how can i help the small net size shop get that information? So probably the best way is, is that if you doing phone of bronze or any type of telemarketing speaking with your donors, so for example, in public broadcasting, they have pledge drives when the person calls it in pledges, you simply ask one more question, where do you work, whether your company matches and you’re off and running if you do telemarketing you, khun called sometimes organizations calling thank their donors and you think you could ask him if they work for matching company? You can buy this data from sung third party vendors. That source isn’t so great yet that that there isn’t really an easy way to give them a list of your donors and for a third party to actually tell you where they worked, but those companies are trying to get better at that. Linked in, obviously, is a source, and so sometimes you can simply go online. And what a small and midsize non-profit could be encouraged to do is just go online and look up your major donors. You’re bigger donorsearch sabat e-giving five hundred thousand dollars. Type them into lincoln’s, see if you can find out where they work it it’s, a matching company pursuit for a matching gift. So i made you die aggressive, too easy and easy to find. Back-up are there other strategies? Wanna share that geever topic you’re talking about? Dahna no, you know, actually, i think the ironic thing about many of these things is that they’re actually relatively straightforward, you know, one of the things that is more complex and could actually make it easier, but easy matches is kind of doing away with it is some organizations can actually take the form, fill it out, file you, send it to you and all you have to do it, sign it and send it back in on dh if you’re a national non-profit that’s hard because there’s so many matching gift forms, but it turns out in most cities in america, major cities three or four five companies represent eighty percent of the matching gifts in that area. So in many cases, you don’t have to work that hard for it. One other thing you could do, which is probably true of a small local organization. That’s, right? That’s, right, it’s just, you know, most of the money is coming from the big employers in town. Now, one of the other things you could do which is kind of a clever thing is, is that say, you know, you have a lot of people who work for a company. And it doesn’t match gifts. But you may have twenty or thirty employees that worked for that company. What some people have found success in is actually just making a list of who those thirty people are, and going and visiting the company in their corporate relations and talking to them about what would you make a donation to us, either, because you’ll match your employees gifts, or you’ll just make a donation, advertise it, and you’ll know thirty, of your employees is gonna be thrilled because they support the organization as well. And so it’s, another way to engage companies and promoted and again universities have gotten very good at that. Practice is well and end up pursuing people. You have just about two more minutes, okay, just gonna throw it out. What else would like to share around? Pretty simple teo to build a scale that you give? Well, the one thing thiss isn’t the technique, but just to show the opportunity when i said that there’s one point four billion dollars donated that’s about ten percent of corporate philanthropy, so corporations make many other donations to non-profits, but about ten percent of it is matching gift contributions one point four billion that is less than and in most cases fairly well, less than one percent krauz when i said that there’s a five to seven percent opportunity and so there’s tremendous room toe actually raise total corporate philanthropy, matching of france will be by a billion or two billion dollars. I had a question this morning about what that actually lied, um, corporations to cut back on their match and give program if all of a sudden what people were doing it and i’ve talked to people both work in the company’s as well as other knowledgeable people, and they joked that it’s still such a small toe, a percentage of total corporate philanthropy that we could easily double it and the corporations really wouldn’t balk at it. So why definitely encourage non-profits to go after this money? And i think it’ll be there, take that rationalization. Off the table, you’ll end up cutting us back if we do more often. Hm. Chuck longfield is heimans, chief scientist, scientist for blackbaud. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for spending time with pleasure. Thankyou. Tony pleasure. Thank you. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage pecan twenty twelve next week, rob mitchell, ceo of the atlas of giving he checks in about how first quarter fund-raising has gone and how the forecast for twenty sixteen may have changed in the first quarter. If you missed any part of today’s show, i urge you find it on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world still still ambivalent about this, we’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com our creative producers clam meyerhoff sam liebowitz is on the board as the line producer gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by dina russell on our music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.