Tag Archives: Board development

Nonprofit Radio for March 22, 2021: Build Your Best Better Board

My Guest:

Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi: Build Your Best Better Board
Gene Takagi returns! He’s got strategies to help you build the diverse, effective, thoughtful, appropriately-sized, well-trained board you deserve. He’s our legal contributor and managing attorney of NEO, the Nonprofit and Exempt Organizations law group.

 

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[00:01:39.64] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast, and I’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with dyskinesia if you gave me a taste of the idea that you missed this week’s show. Build your best Better board. Jeanne Takagi returns. He’s got strategies to help you build the diverse, effective, thoughtful, appropriately sized, well trained board you deserve. He’s our legal contributor and managing attorney of Neo, the nonprofit and exempt organizations law group tony State, too. Podcast pleasantries and planned giving accelerator. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o. It’s my pleasure to welcome back, as it always is. Jeanne Takagi. These are legal contributor, managing attorney of Neo, the nonprofit and Exempt Organizations Law Group in San Francisco. He edits the enormously popular nonprofit law blog dot com and is a part time lecturer at Columbia University. The firm is that neo law group dot com, and he’s at G Attack Gene, welcome back to the show.

[00:01:41.84] spk_1:
Thanks, Tony. It’s great to be back. How are you?

[00:01:59.94] spk_0:
I’m doing well. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure. Many, many years. It’s a pleasure. Each time you’re you are teaching us what’s important, what we need to keep centered. What’s, uh where are ships Should all be facing in the same direction. So what direction is that? You keep us. Keep us on the straight path. I appreciate it. I know our listeners due to thank you.

[00:02:06.34] spk_1:
Thank you, Tony.

[00:02:23.84] spk_0:
Let’s get started with your building. Your best. Better board. We’re not We’re not gonna We’re not going to settle on nonprofit radio for your lackluster better board. We want your best, Better board. And I think the place to start is with board roles. So what are we expecting our board members to do?

[00:02:52.74] spk_1:
Yeah, I love this conversation, tony. It’s actually one of my favorites. And yeah, it was probably Gosh, it was early on, I think when we first talked a little bit about boards getting sort of distracted from doing the financial oversight and forgetting to do some of the other things that boards are supposed to do. Um, and, you know, part of what we talked about could have been, like 78 years ago was like, Hey, somebody should be over overseeing. You know, whether the program’s doing Are they having an impact or not? Are they really furthering your mission in the way that you want them to?

[00:03:11.94] spk_0:
You know, I have to remind you you and I did a mock board meeting one time, and either you threw me off the border. I walked out. I forget

[00:03:15.22] spk_1:
which

[00:03:30.04] spk_0:
back in the old studio was many years ago. I don’t know what we’re talking about. Something board related, obviously. But, uh, yeah, either I got booted off or I walked out and quit. I forget, uh, we’re trying to avoid that. We’re trying to avoid that in our best better board,

[00:03:32.54] spk_1:
but we’re definitely going to try to approach any of these things with extreme tact

[00:03:37.84] spk_0:
I lack, which I often lack. I probably walked out. I probably quit or something.

[00:06:01.14] spk_1:
Yeah, just just overall, the same financial diligence is great. So take a look at the financials, make sure you understand them and make sure that the organization is able to pay off its debts that they become do that you’re not sort of bleeding money and just managing your financial assets. But non profits exist more than to produce a financial bottom line, of course. So you know in the for profit world boards and probably got a different duty, maybe a little bit more. I mean, everybody has to act in the best interests of the corporation, right? That’s a fiduciary duty. But what is the best interests of the corporation for for profit? Oftentimes it’s associated, at least in large part the benefit of its owners or shareholders. But in the non profit, there are no shareholders or owners, right? It’s for the benefit of advancing the mission. And that’s what the board has got to remember, that it’s got to be purpose driven. It’s got to be, um, acting in furtherance of the mission ahead of everything else. Um, and the one caveat I’ll add to that which we may have talked a little bit about before, as well is you’ve got to add values to that statement, so their values probably baked into your mission statement but also baked into the organizational culture. So if our mission is to feed people who are experiencing homelessness or a lack of income, resources or we’re not just going to throw food out in a trough, right? You know that might be the best way or the most effective way to get as many people fed as possible. But that would be completely inconsistent with anybody’s values. Or so values and mission sort of go hand in hand, and focusing on that is really important. So not just financial oversight, the programmatic oversight the role of the board has got to look forward to. You’ve got to set the path with those values and mission for the organization’s future, not just looking behind you, but looking ahead, um, and so guiding the organization with those thoughts, acting as ambassadors, getting the feedback from the environment about what challenges and what opportunities may be out there. Those are all things the board can bring back to the executive and to the staff, sort of to help them do their best.

[00:06:44.34] spk_0:
And these are all very, uh, lofty. And and, um, I don’t want to say pedagogical, because that makes it sound like they’re not grounded, but But these are these are very we haven’t even talked about. You know how many board meetings you have to attend in a year. And how many subcommittees you have to serve on? You know, we haven’t gotten to that yet. You know, we’re talking about the the ambition, but it has to be centered. It’s It’s like you said. It’s the mission and values of the organization. I mean, if someone doesn’t respect those, then you’re not gonna get your best better board. You’re going to get a crappy person. Maybe it gives a lot of money, but ultimately, the ships are not sailing in the same direction with all the board members on each one.

[00:06:50.14] spk_1:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And I loved your introduction about having the best Better board. Not this lackluster,

[00:07:13.34] spk_0:
lackluster better. But yeah, that’s for other podcasts, not on the radio. We don’t tolerate lackluster mediocrity, mediocre better boards that we want to. We want the best Better board. All right, so So it really it really does start with loft and ambition around around Mission and values.

[00:07:15.74] spk_1:
I definitely think so.

[00:07:29.44] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. So now let’s drill down. I mean, in terms of what we’re expecting the board to do, you have to be up front with what these expectations are and that that happens in recruitment, right? Not not in their first board meeting. You should be explaining the expectations while you’re talking to somebody about joining the board. Not after they have joined.

[00:07:41.54] spk_1:
Absolutely. And too often. I see tony and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this as well, but somebody tries to recruit you onto the board and they go, It’s really not that much work, you know. It’s easy. Um, well, that’s going to get you a lackluster and maybe not even a better board. So,

[00:07:59.57] spk_0:
um,

[00:08:45.54] spk_1:
yeah, so it really is about setting expectations of Hey, you really believe in this mission and you have the same values that we’re trying to move forward with. Let’s do something great with this organization. Let’s make a great impact here. This is These are the kind of things that we expect of our board. This is how often we meet. You know, this is, um, what we expected each board member in terms of attendance and in terms of maybe making a meaningful contribution. I don’t like set amounts because that can hurt diversity and inclusive inclusion. But a meaningful donation to to the organization it could be in time if not in money or in other ways. But the expectations, I think, need to be spelled out in front before you actually invite somebody onto the board.

[00:09:00.24] spk_0:
And when you’re spelling them out, I mean, do you Do you like to see a writing a document with, you know, Please take this home with you and consider consider, as we’re having our conversations about about you being on the board, consider all these things like you give them a document to read or just a conversation.

[00:09:24.64] spk_1:
I think both tony. So I I you know, it may depend upon the organization how formal they get, but if you do actually have a recruiting sort of policy or procedure or recruiting committee in place, I like to put some things down in writing just to make sure that we’re all on the same page and letting people know what the organization’s expectations are and how often boards meet. And if there is a meaningful contribution, expectations all of those things up front. So if somebody is not interested, they can right away say, you know, this isn’t for me, you know, I like what you do. But it’s not for me and another person who might say I’m really interested in doing all of those things. You know? I’d love to be a part of your board,

[00:10:11.94] spk_0:
All right? So be upfront about expectations. There’s no point in in concealing the work and the requirements, only to have the person blindsided when it comes time around, when it comes time for each board member to make their annual contribution. And and And they didn’t know that it was supposed to be a meaningful gift or they didn’t know there was a board giving requirement of any sort. You know, when it comes time to assign committee. So I didn’t know I was gonna be on a committee. I thought I just came to board member board meetings four times a year. Now we have committee meetings to I didn’t know about that, and then you set yourself up for a disaster.

[00:10:46.54] spk_1:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And if you if you start to um, the danger of it is is you don’t want to just sort of create this list of these are the things you have to do for the organization to run. You’ve got to always again relate it back to the mission and values. This is why we love to contribute as board members to the organization. Because this is what impact we can have. And this is the direction we see ourselves going to be able to have even greater impact. So you just keep reinforcing that message to get your best board members.

[00:10:55.74] spk_0:
You let me ask you a question. Are you Are you, uh Are you by any chance, playing with a pen or or anything?

[00:11:02.14] spk_1:
I am not rocking back and forth on my chair.

[00:11:06.44] spk_0:
And I know there’s, like, a little clicking, and I’m not. I know you’re not. I know you’re not typing like you’re not writing a document while we’re talking

[00:11:13.94] spk_1:
about you’re

[00:11:14.15] spk_0:
writing a client agreement or something.

[00:11:16.51] spk_1:
Typical things you expect from a lawyer, right?

[00:11:32.14] spk_0:
Yeah. You double bill your time, right. You get $800 an hour billed to clients at $400 an hour. You’re sitting in one’s office. You’re doing the work for the other. No. Okay. No, you’re not. Your hands are free, okay? I don’t know. There’s, like, little the mice are clicking or

[00:11:33.26] spk_1:
something. Maybe I’m rocking in my chair. I will try to hold back my enthusiasm.

[00:12:18.04] spk_0:
Okay, Alright. It doesn’t It doesn’t sound like that. Okay, Well, listeners, I can’t identify the sound of the but I’ll call it out because I’m not going to keep it quiet because we all hear it, so we’ll talk about it. Well, I don’t know what it is. This little tapping, clicking my mouse sound. Let’s talk about diversity. This should be a value. You and I have talked about this. We’ve had heartfelt conversations a couple of times about white male power and using that power and sharing power. And so let’s talk about diversity as a value for your board. How does that play into what we’re talking about? Your your best. Better board?

[00:14:50.74] spk_1:
Sure. You know, for the organizations who have responded to sort of this increasing understanding and awareness that diversity is an issue in various aspects, not just on board composition, but in the way our infrastructure as a country and even as the world is designed where, um, people who are in positions of power, no matter what race or gender or whatever, whatever they are tend to create systems that keep themselves in power. And so diversity has this great benefit of saying, Let’s take other lenses and look at what we’re doing. And look at the world that we’re in, um, for nonprofits, especially the world that’s directly impacting what we’re trying to do out there for. The people were trying to do it for what is impacting it, who is being affected the most, Um, and if that’s important to to organizations and their leaders, then I think they’ve really got to embrace diversity, not just by saying it, but by actually putting action steps into what they’re doing, Whether that’s going to be building it into true board diversity with inclusion. So not making people feel, you know, like they’re they’re just a simple tokens of taking a better picture but really being able to contribute to the power of the organization to address things that other people may not have seen. So, you know, I may identify with people who I relate to, but I may have very little understanding your perspective of people who are different from me who congregate in different circles who have different ideas. Um, and we have to think about all of those things, especially for serving a classic. Beneficiaries that are board members may be far away from. So if we have a board that’s more privileged, and we are helping a lot of people who don’t have some of the privileges that the board may have in terms of representation, how will we ever see the world through their lens? How will they understand? How will we understand where services are doing from their eyes? So trying to to get that diversity in an inclusive matter for purposes of increasing equity, I think, is a value that non profit should strive for.

[00:16:11.94] spk_0:
It’s time for a break turn to communications relationships. They’ve got the relationships with the media outlets so that when you need to be in the news, when there’s a news item that you need to comment on, your voice needs to be heard. Turn to has the relationships to get you heard. It’s not cold calling. They have the existing relationships. They give it like gifts. You get a lot of gifts from cold calls. Do you get any gifts from cold calls? You get your best gifts from cold calls. If you’re doing cold call fundraising. No, you don’t. Of course, it’s the same with media. The relationships are in place. So when you want to be heard, turn to picks up the phones and leverages those relationships That way you’re gonna get heard. Turn to communications. Turn hyphen. Two dot c o. Now back to build your best. Better board. Diversity has to be centered. Um, but And you wanted to go deeper than just like the board should reflect the community or the board should reflect those we serve. You mean you’re looking for something deeper than just reflecting an environment?

[00:18:17.04] spk_1:
I think so. So it is reflecting different perspectives as well. So I think traditionally, we thought of it as a skills based diversity. Like we need a lawyer. We need an accountant. We need a financial manager, a fundraiser on our board. And then we became all a little bit more woke and we said, Hey, we need racial diversity in our organizations. Um, but we didn’t say why that was or many of us didn’t say, why do we need racial diversity in our organizations? Is it simply to make it look like we embrace diversity and we take the better picture? Or is it because we want a true understanding from somebody else with a different lens and perspective? Who could tell us if there are gaps in our services for their communities? If there are gaps in the laws that are creating inequities that affect our mission as well? So the more we get these other perspectives, whether it be from a racial diversity angle from a disability angle, which I think is increasingly a really important thing to look at as we are facing an older population where disabilities are highly, you know, they make up a great percentage of our organizations and they’re kind of sort of the the unseen Group in many ways, um, we’re just getting started on addressing some of those concerns. But, um, the way we serve people can really miss many of those that are impacted, that that would be true beneficiaries of our service if they could access our services. But if we don’t make it accessible to them, then we just missed them, and that may be completely unintentional. But if we don’t have people who can identify and spot those things because they live it, um that would be, you know, short a shortfall in leadership. And that’s where we have to sort of address, Um, taking a look with a much broader lens and not just in our boards, but in our programming, in our staffing and just getting more awareness and bringing more lenses to what we’re doing.

[00:18:55.54] spk_0:
Let’s talk about bringing someone new to the board because we’re gonna be recruiting our new board members that are going to be part of our best better board. So now if we’ve recruited the right people, we need to socialize them to the organization. It’s more than I think. It’s more than just formal training. You know, the the organization has a culture. The board has a culture. Hopefully, they’re healthy. Let’s assume, but let’s take that. Let’s assume that these are healthy. Culture is not. Not. Cultures were trying to reverse, uh, you know, like intolerance or something. But healthy cultures. There’s a formal training and an informal training.

[00:20:26.74] spk_1:
I absolutely agree with you, so you know orientations can start even at recruitment. But once you decide that you want to elect somebody onto the board and they want to be part of the board and you elect them. I think it really is important now for them to be ingrained in what the organizations and the board culture is, what the priorities are getting a better sense of what the programs are. I’ll confess. I’ve been part of boards where I may not have a very good understanding of some of the programs. I get lost in some of, you know, again, the financial reports and maybe one program officer. You know, a year shows up and describes their program well, that that’s not really giving me a full sense of what the organization is doing. So more of that, um, is really going to be beneficial. Um, it will also help in sort of preventing there from being this wall between who the board is and who the staff and who are. The people that are actually implementing the program are other than the executive director, so boards often just meet with the executive director. But in an orientation or training, I think more deeply getting ingrained and that’s a board staff retreat. Joint retreats are good things. Board buddies and maybe a board staff buddy system could also

[00:20:31.34] spk_0:
is that like is that a mentoring board board buddy?

[00:20:53.34] spk_1:
Yeah, I think it could be partly mentoring, but I think the relationship really extends both ways, right? We can get more information from an outsider’s perspective to help the organization, and when they have fresh eyes, they may see different things. So instead of just saying, I know more than you, I’m going to mentor you. We can be buddies and learn from each other.

[00:20:56.64] spk_0:
And then you mentioned staff buddies, too.

[00:21:21.34] spk_1:
Yeah, I I don’t think it’s a bad idea for boards again to get more involved with their staff. We don’t want to micromanage. So there is this fine line there. But just getting an understanding from the staff about what they see in the organization, I think is important other than the executive director who may be the one who attends every board meeting. But if we just see one other staff member once a year, that really isn’t giving a sense of what is going on and what the organizational culture is. We might know what the board culture is, but do we really know what the organizational culture is?

[00:22:10.34] spk_0:
If it’s a staff buddy, it’s not only micromanagement, from the board member down. But then you also have to be conscious of the staff member trying to leverage a relationship with a board member like trying to do something or avoid doing something that the CEO may want or their vice president that they report to may want or something. You know, uh, that just it has to be managed. That’s all. Just You have to be conscious of the possibility of somebody exploiting and a relationship with the board members saying things that are inappropriate. The board members.

[00:22:52.14] spk_1:
I think this has to be designed with a consultant who really understands the area because you’re absolutely right. Tony. Yeah, if you if you aren’t careful, what you’re doing is you’re creating people going behind the executives back to make complaints to board members. And that’s not what the purpose is. So it might be controlled by saying, Hey, the board staff buddy thing is a meeting of the board and staff person in a joint group in a group where we’re all meeting in different corners of the room and just talking about certain specific topics so it can be regulated a little bit more carefully with rules of the game spelled out in advance. This is not a place to complain about employment issues. This is Yeah.

[00:23:04.34] spk_0:
Um, what do you like for board terms? What do you have? Advice? Two years? Three years? Should How many? How many years or how many terms should board members be allowed to continue on?

[00:24:00.64] spk_1:
Um, there’s there’s not, you know, one specific answer. I hate the lawyers. Answer. It depends. It does. But let me just say in a large number of cases, I like the 2 to 3 year term, both balancing a little bit of need for continuity and giving a fair expectation to a new board member of that. This is not just going to be a one year thing and you’re out. Um uh, and I like to have board terms to make sure that the board doesn’t become very insular and its thinking and in its diversity by keeping board members on perpetually until they’re ready to resign. It also makes it hard to ever remove a board member if people think that they have a right to serve on the board forever. So I kind of like board members not to be on board for, like maybe five or six years. Um, having said that, there are times

[00:24:02.67] spk_0:
when to not be on for five or six years

[00:24:04.99] spk_1:
to beyond that

[00:24:08.44] spk_0:
beyond. For five, like maybe two, 23 year terms, two year terms or 23 year terms of the most

[00:24:41.64] spk_1:
something. Something like that. Now, a lot of exceptions to that, if you have, if you had trouble building aboard and you have some great champions on the board. But those have been kind of the long term people who really know and really invested, and everybody else has been sort of lackluster. Um, I don’t think you should kick off your strongest board members, so you have to really think about that before you implement it. It is sort of an idealistic goal to have those term limits and, um, 2 to 3 year terms. But in other situations, I would say one size doesn’t fit. Also, take a look at your own board composition first before you make those type of decisions.

[00:25:19.94] spk_0:
What about in terms of socializing to the board, having social events for the board? Occasionally, Maybe it’s a dinner after a meeting. Um, I wouldn’t have cocktails before a meeting. But you could have cocktails after a meeting, you know, trying to get the board to get to know the members, to know each other outside the board. What else do you do? You go skiing, you go snowmobiling. You know, you’re a Fisher fisherman. You know things like that.

[00:25:26.34] spk_1:
Yeah, I love that idea. I’ve even had cocktails before boarding. So,

[00:25:31.63] spk_0:
uh, all right,

[00:26:10.84] spk_1:
but yes, um, for board members to trust each other and to be open to each other’s ideas and respect each other, the more you know each other, the more likelihood that that’s all going to happen and that you’re going to actually build the board culture rather than have people who don’t know each other who are trying to get out of the meeting, to watch a basketball game or be home with their family and sort of sit and say, This is my duty. For the next hour, I’m going to sit here, take notes and listen and try to do my job. But think of it just as a job. It’s going to be less productive. I think that if you come in and say I love these people that are kind of get to work with. And we’re trying to build something great so we can make change in the world or in our community. And so I really like coming to these events and getting a sense of it. Sometimes there’s, you know, those ice breaker things you know, for five or 10 minutes in front of a meeting that can be hit or miss and oftentimes a

[00:26:33.10] spk_0:
miss. How many people can you talk to in 10 minutes?

[00:26:35.46] spk_1:
Yeah, and that’s another reason why you shouldn’t have too big a board as well. If you have 50 people at a to our board meeting, how many people are going to get to

[00:26:51.84] spk_0:
talk, right? That’s yeah, So I know that I know your answer is there’s no hard and fast answer for this one. But since you just let into it, share your advice on on board size,

[00:28:13.54] spk_1:
Yes. So my maybe not so helpful advice is not too few and not too many, um, that if we dive down a little deeper, you need, um or you’d like to have as many board members as you can utilize to help you govern the organization and help the organization and the board do its best job. So if that number is eight, or if that number is 15, that’s, you know that may be your ideal board size. It’s more important to me to get the right people on the board, um, rather than the right number. But if you can, if you have less than five and you’re a mature organization, I start to worry that you’re gonna lack that diversity in many different perspectives. Um, and if you’ve got more than 20 I have a feeling that a lot of board members feel like their contributions are not being heard because they don’t have an opportunity to sort of verbally contribute, especially if there are few dominant board members at meetings and in a two hour meeting, even 20 people are going to have a chance to say how much about how many issues it will be very few. So to really think about that, and you want to encourage board members to attend every board meeting, not just sort of half of the board meetings or think that they can take a free ride because you’ve got enough people to do that job. I’ll just help on a committee. You don’t want them to feel that way. You want them to feel very invested.

[00:28:31.24] spk_0:
So you feel like an expectation is you attend every board meeting either physically or virtually.

[00:28:33.84] spk_1:
I think that’s the expectation. And if people are missing, you know, one out of 41 out of five meetings, one out of 10 meetings, you know that might be acceptable for special circumstances. But you don’t want it to be a habit. I think you want to aspire to have everybody attend all of them.

[00:28:58.64] spk_0:
Okay, Um, what do you What do you feel like talking about board wise that we haven’t talked about yet? Let’s not go to how to get rid of a board member yet that’s that’s toward the end. What’s your what’s on your mind around your best? Better board?

[00:30:44.94] spk_1:
Well, we talked about kind of the expectations of what the board should do, but they think each director’s gotta ask that question of themselves as well. And maybe that’s part of the board. Recruitment and orientation package is kind of a list of however many 10 things that board members should aspire to do themselves, uh, to be part of this board and attend all meetings. We talked about that, but what else should they do? They should review financials regularly, so if they’re getting a financial before each meeting, they should review them. They should know that they are expected to ask questions that might be at the board meeting or that might be before the board meeting. But if they’re getting information aboard package in advance, which they should get, um, about the matters that are going to be up for discussion at the board, they should know that they should review it first. And if they have any questions, they should share it with the group. Um, and that doesn’t happen enough, in my opinion, that there are these questions and everybody saves it for the board meeting, and then they run out of time to discuss all the issues that they want to. So just having it kind of on an email sort of mass email, the board package comes out on email, and people can ask questions about it so that everybody gets an advanced preview of what some of the issues are before you go into that board meeting and then start to discuss things a little bit more detail. Some of those things might need a little research to be answered to. The executive might have to talk to an accountant or a lawyer or someone else and say, Let’s find out what the answer is and you know that does away with that issue even before the meeting, if you can share that information. So that’s another thing to just think about.

[00:31:35.04] spk_0:
What about managing the board? Uh, some. Some larger organizations have a board liaison where that’s probably not most of our listeners with someone who’s devoted to the board. I think that’s more like university style, big university style. But there doesn’t have to be a lot of staff support for the board. I mean, not only the you mentioned getting the board packages to them at least a week. I’d say in advance, maybe a week or 10 days in advance, something like that. But it goes beyond that. Board members have questions. Have these questions that you’re suggesting they ask in advance of meetings? Um, committee work has to be supported. How do we How do we make sure that we’re giving the board members the support that they need.

[00:33:00.24] spk_1:
Yeah, and it’s a great balance. Is it? Well, it’s a great question, but it is a tough one to answer because of the balance that you have to think of. You want the board to be informed so that they can be of help to the organization. But you don’t want the board to put on so many demands upon the staff that they’re really hurting the staff’s ability to do the work of the organization, the programmatic work that’s needed. So there is a little bit of balance there. I know many staff members and executives hate kind of preparing the board for the board meeting because it may take so much work. Sometimes it’s because they’re trying to justify what they are doing to the board, because the board may come in with a little bit of a negative skew about, you know, prove to us that you’re doing good work of some kind. That may be the perception that the staff is getting. I don’t think any boards are overtly saying that, but I feel that staff can come into it a little bit defensively in preparation of board materials rather than this is an ally of ours. This should be the strongest ally that we have this board group. Let’s give them information and questions for them so that they can help us do our job better. Um, and that takes time. But how many staff are involved with the executive? Certainly is meeting with them. That probably goes without saying if there is a financial person there other than the executive, that person should probably have frequent contact.

[00:35:45.54] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to the podcast. Pleasantries. They gotta go out. That’s what we start with. Plan giving accelerator that’s coming. The podcast. Pleasantries. Uh, I’m enjoying the nostalgia of sending these again. I’ve missed it. I guess I I ignored it for a while. My my mistake. I’m sorry about that. Pleasantries to you, our podcast listener. Well, you individually. But there’s more than just one of you out there. There’s over 13,000 of you out there. So, to the podcast, listeners pleasantries. You know, I’m grateful. I am. I’m glad you’re with us. I’m glad you’re learning that non profit radio helps you helps your organization open conversations, take action steps, open discussions with the board. Your CEO, your vice president, Whoever it is, you bring stuff too. I’m glad it helps you do all that. And I hope there’s the action steps to I’m sure there are. There is. I’m sure there are the action steps. I’m sure there are. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for being with me. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners. Each of you plan giving accelerator that is the online membership community that I created to help you get your plan giving program started and growing. It’s a membership that you join for a year, and I teach you month by month lesson by lesson, Step by step. Everything you need to get your planned giving program started and growing. If you’re not doing planned giving and you would like to be, is it on your to do list? Have you, like so many folks? Say to me, Had this on your mind for a couple of years. You can get it done. You can get it started to get the initial thing started, and that’s done and then the program continues. I mean, the program doesn’t finish after a year. You continue your playing giving program indefinitely, of course, but you’ll get plan giving off your to do list. You get the going done. Your started 2021. The next class starts April 1st, all the info on how to pick my brain and have me teach you planned giving starting up step by step. Is that planned? Giving accelerator dot com. Okay, that is Tony’s Take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time for build your best better board with Jean Takagi.

[00:36:41.93] spk_1:
I didn’t mean to downplay the role of somebody from programming coming in speaking to the board once in a while, I think I wanted to say that that was insufficient for the board to know what’s going on programmatically. But having people come in a little bit more regularly, or at least providing materials to the board more regularly about the program’s impact, you know, and that could be through stories as well. I’m kind of like in fundraising make the board engaged with what the organization is doing programmatically and invested in doing more to help the organization do better with its programs, either serve more people are doing in a better way. You want to create that connection so that the board rallies around you and actually helps you rather than just again just providing oversight and saying We want to make sure everything is lawful. Give us all this information to make, you know, make sure that we can do that. You want to do get more from your board.

[00:37:26.53] spk_0:
I like the idea of regular presentations at board meetings from from program staff. Maybe the 1st 15 minutes of a board meeting every time is from some different employee. Maybe maybe it’s not a unique pro, maybe not different programs every time. But I like the idea of devoting some board time each each meeting to to programs to what our work is, but but not being acquainted by the CEO. But having someone who’s on the ground doing the work answering, I think that would be a real fertile ground for questions to from the board and provides ongoing training.

[00:37:28.53] spk_1:
I think so, too, and maybe even somebody who is a beneficiary of the services

[00:37:32.89] spk_0:
beneficiary to yes

[00:37:51.23] spk_1:
to say Hey, you know you get a chance to speak to the board to because we want to know what you feel about our programs and our organization and how you’ve been treated. So, um, I think those things are good, and I I again think, tony, that will just energize aboard to want to do more if they feel more connected to what the organization is actually doing and not just reading about it and listening to the executive tell them about it.

[00:38:15.32] spk_0:
What about that important CEO board chair relationship that should be very collegial? It should be supportive. What what’s your advice around for? The CEO is probably mostly CEOs listening, although we do have board members listening. But probably we have more CEOs than we do board chairs. So what’s your advice there for them? Although

[00:39:07.82] spk_1:
I’ll say that probably a fair number of CEOs have actually acted in the capacity of a board chair as well and other organizations, so they may understand some of the roles from both sides. I think my advice is what you have just said, as well as to have this collegial relationship and develop one where there’s one of trust where the CEO is not afraid to go to the board and say, I’ve got some bad news. Um, I’m looking for some guidance on this. If the CEO is always about, um, my pay or my job security can be affected by telling bad news to the board chair. So I’m going to try to, uh,

[00:39:09.52] spk_0:
show hide it, make it sound, not as bad as it is not. Be completely honest, etcetera.

[00:39:26.32] spk_1:
Yeah, I think of what you know. For profit, boards of directors may say to their shareholders in public companies, Right, like you want to pose the best view of that organization as possible. I don’t think that’s a healthy relationship for nonprofit board to have its executive,

[00:39:37.42] spk_0:
and and that should be frequent communication to I mean, shouldn’t shouldn’t the CEO feel comfortable picking up the phone and seeking the advice of the board chair?

[00:40:20.31] spk_1:
I think so. And if it’s not the board chair, I I think it’s okay at times. So your board culture is going to have to allow for this, but for them to pick up the phone and talk to another board member, So I’m when I serve on the board. I’m sometimes the only lawyer on the board. I want the CEO to be able to talk to me. I’m not going to be their legal counsel, But I might have a point of view. Or I might spot an issue if they feel like, Hey, is this something we need to talk to our lawyer about? Maybe our board chair wouldn’t be able to answer that question. But maybe I would as a board member. So, yeah, I like the CEO of being able to reach out to multiple board members for for different issues. Yeah,

[00:40:48.21] spk_0:
all right. Should we should we talk about terminating board members the topic before before their time is, Do so Let’s say, you know, a three year term and they’ve been on for a year, and they’re obstreperous, lackluster, unkind. They don’t belong. Let’s just for whatever reason, they don’t belong.

[00:43:09.10] spk_1:
Sure. What do we do? Yeah, it’s a real tough one, right. So, um, sometimes you have to look at it holistically. So oftentimes I get a call and that situation will arise. But it will turn out that that board members also the biggest donor to the organization right now you’ve got to think a little more diplomatically and strategically about how to do this. Um um So again, not one size fits all But one method that some organizations have used has been to say, Let’s talk with this board member and try to find the best role for them in the organization and see if we can move them off the board but into this other role, whether it be advisory, um, or whether it be in an, uh in an honorary position for being, you know, uh, something emeritus. So give them a fancy title. Ask them to show up at fundraising events, um uh, or to to speak to two foundations when you go out with them to do a pitch, maybe that’s where their strength is. And maybe there’s enough there of their passion for the mission and for the organization and what it does. While they don’t have passion for doing the work of a director in a strategic and diplomatic way, they may still have passion for the mission of the organization. And let’s try to take advantage of that, um, and use it in a way where nobody will use sort of the Asian mentality of nobody loses face right, like so everybody gets to keep their dignity and look good. But let’s try to take advantage of not having that person be disruptive on the board anymore. And if that person isn’t giving you much of a contribution in any way, then once in a while removal is an unpleasant but sometimes necessary option. And boards may have to decide that again. Uh, they’re going to ask somebody where they’re actually going to vote to tell somebody, um, that their services as a director are no longer needed, Um, but that has to also be done diplomatically. You have to be careful of alleging reasons for doing that because that could get you involved in a defamation lawsuit from that person if they’re upset with it and litigious so carefully.

[00:43:20.20] spk_0:
So this should be something that’s in the bylaws, then removal of a board member. Yeah, you need to have a documented process.

[00:44:17.09] spk_1:
I think that’s right, tony. A lot of, um, boards have eliminated that from the bylaws because you see that as a negative. But then they would default to the code, right, and they’re not going to usually look up what the code says about removal. It has to be done in a certain way, and in some cases it can get a little bit complicated. If you have a voting membership structure like for certain charities, they might have members who actually elect their board members. It’s more common in trade associations and homeowners associations things like that. But some charities have voting members, and removal, then becomes a lot more complicated. But having it having the procedure in your bylaws at least gives you kind of like the encyclopedia. Look at how to do this properly without feeling like it’s going to be too hard. We can’t do it and just live with it.

[00:44:26.89] spk_0:
I’m not familiar with this model you just described because you and you said it’s some five oh one C threes have elected board members. So

[00:44:28.78] spk_1:
yeah,

[00:44:29.71] spk_0:
so it has. The board has voted members on and can only remove them,

[00:45:22.59] spk_1:
actually the opposite way. So members elect the board members, so the members are responsible for electing and potentially removing board members. So you might think of that more in terms of like a union or a professional association or homeowners association, where all the homeowners elect the board. If they don’t like the board, they’ll remove them and put somebody else on to that board. So some charities are also structured that way. And that was to sort of been seen as a more democratic process of ensuring that the board stays responsive to what the members think. The mission is supposed to be, um, for smaller organizations. I generally don’t recommend it because it’s more costly. It’s much more difficult to manage and administer. Um, but nevertheless, I would say about 5 to 10% of the charities that we run into small charities we run into are structured that way.

[00:45:32.49] spk_0:
Not ideal, though, but they’re trying to be democratic. And

[00:45:36.99] spk_1:
that’s right.

[00:46:19.48] spk_0:
Okay, I see. All right. Well, that Yeah, that conversation to to hope that opening that conversation with the director to be removed is is hard. Maybe maybe the maybe the board member themselves themselves, uh, maybe the person. Maybe they can’t find the right pronoun. Maybe that person isn’t happy in the role either. That’s a possibility. It could be. You know, you could sort of open the conversation with it. Seems like, you know, this isn’t as you were suggesting, and I’m kind of putting a few things together. It seems like this isn’t quite the right role for you. You don’t seem happy as a board member. Uh, you know, you could open the conversation that way in trying to find something else to offer

[00:46:43.88] spk_1:
them. I think that’s a great way often to frame that that situation. I actually wrote an article for the nonprofit Quarterly. I think called something like 10 Reasons Why a director made gracefully want to resign from their organization, um, board. And so, yeah, framing it from their perspective and what they’re not getting is probably a good way to start it.

[00:46:59.58] spk_0:
I thought of something else before we wrap up. What do you think about junior boards, you know, maybe have an advisory role? There’s sort of a training improving ground for future board members, whatever you call it, might. It might just be the advisory board or something. But what do you think of that? That having, uh, that in your organization,

[00:47:26.78] spk_1:
I think you’ve done well. It works. Um, really Well, it raises potential future board members and gives you an introduction to the organization. Rather than bringing somebody straight into the board. They have a chance to be part of whatever you want to call it an advisory committee or, uh, the junior board. I would be careful with the name, depending upon who you’re planning to put on it.

[00:47:30.99] spk_0:
So junior board is not so good. All right.

[00:47:33.37] spk_1:
Unless it’s for, you know, unless you’re putting minors on it for advisory positions. Okay. Okay.

[00:47:44.08] spk_0:
But advisory, an advisory board advisory committee. And and it gets to be seen as a stepping stone for some folks to the board membership.

[00:48:04.17] spk_1:
Yeah, and to offer thought leadership from different perspectives. Um, so I think that’s good. But if you’re trying to increase diversity through an advisory border, Junior. But I would say Be very careful to make it not look like it is of less importance. And that’s why these people were put on that.

[00:48:54.37] spk_0:
Oh, yeah, right. Right. So all your yes, all your all the folks of color and other underrepresented groups are on the advisory board. Yeah, that’s well, that’s a sham. Alright, That’s right. Exactly. That’s inhumane. Alright. Yeah, I’m surprised you thought of that, Gene. You’re well. You see the good and the bad. All right, you’ve It’s not that you thought of it. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. I guess it’s It’s out there somewhere. All right. Thank you, Jeanne. Outstanding. Outstanding advice. Jeanne Takagi, our legal contributor. You’ll find them at nonprofit law blog dot com. You can find him at Columbia University if you’re a member of their student body in, uh, what is it? The nonprofit nonprofit management program at Columbia?

[00:49:01.07] spk_1:
Yep.

[00:49:07.17] spk_0:
Okay, so you’ll find him there. You also find him at neo law group dot com and you’ll find him at G T A K at G Tech. Thank you very much, Gene.

[00:49:12.87] spk_1:
Thanks, tony. Been a pleasure.

[00:50:05.17] spk_0:
My pleasure. As always. Thanks. Next week, I’m asking you to trust me. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen. Two dot c o. Creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great. Mhm

Nonprofit Radio for May 25, 2018: Board Change Agents & Authentic Selves In Work

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Raj Aggarwal, Sabelo Narasimhan & Glamarys Acevedo:
 Authentic Selves In Work
Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference shares strategies for workplace inclusion so that all selves are welcome and accepted. They are Raj Aggarwal from Provoc; Sabelo Narasimhan with 350.org; and Glamarys Acevedo at Mamatoto Village.

 

 

 

 


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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. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with polychrome at ophelia if you stained our relationship by saying you missed today’s show authentic selves at work, our panel from the non-profit technology conference shares strategies for workplace inclusion so that all selves are welcome and accepted. They are raja agarwal from provoke sabelo narra symon with three fifty dot or ge and glamarys azevedo at mamatoto village and board change agents you want to shake things up on your board and in your order, greg cohen takes us through the process of identifying, recruiting and exploiting agents of change on your board he’s with cause effective tony take to the ninety six year old secretary with eight million dollars in her will. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio by regular cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps, dot com and by telus turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s here is authentic selves at work from the non-profit technology conference welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen, ninety si you know what that is? It’s a non-profit technology conference. You know where we are in new orleans at the convention center. This interview is scheduled centerview response, sir. Why not buy network for good? Easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits and they’re sponsoring it. They didn’t schedule it. My guests are raja agarwal, sabelo, naralo kayman and glamarys azevedo raj is president of provoke i say that right provokes correct. Okay. I didn’t ask about pronouncing your company name. I only asked about your personal name. He did a great job amglobal pronounce her company name wrong to propose. They say sabelo robak provoc which is the traditional latin version of alright, alright. And sabelo is north american digital campaign manager at three. Fifty dot org’s and glamarys is the professional development specialist mamatoto village. Raj sabelo glamarys welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much for spending time and sharing your wisdom. Your seminar topic is bringing your whole self to work. Let’s, start down the end. There glamarys what’s the what’s. The trouble what? What? What would you like to? See, people do better when they go to work each day, right? I think our our session is going to be really or, you know, you don’t have a minute neo-sage exactly so this is a little preview, right? Eh? So we’re going to be speaking about, you know, who has the privilege of bringing their whole self to work, you know, and who doesn’t write s o i think some of us work in places where we do not how the privilege to bring our whole selves to work, right? Because there might be, you know, things, implications, teo, those actions bring your whole self, and then maybe some of us work in places where we feel like we’re getting closer to being ableto have an environment where we bring ourselves to work, what is the whole self? What do you mean? You have to forgive my voice? I’ve done about thirty these interviews what i say, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say the whole self? That is a great question, so i believe just in from my experience i’ve been and workplaces where i had to bring a version of myself to work. So that i could, you know, excel within, maybe they’re parameters, but it wasn’t maybe my whole authentic excel unlike where i work now, where i feel like i can bring my whole donor-centric self and it’s something that’s really valued, and i’m able to excel in that and growing myself instead of growing into stumping that someone else wants me to be. But what is your whole self, my health? So, i mean, that is that is that i’d like to ask everybody such a such a layered right eye, a multifaceted so there’s just there’s so many layers to my whole selves like that’s really? Uh, parsing that out twenty five minutes. I could take the whole entire teo, but we’ll start with your woman. Yes, s o that’s. Great. Yes, i’m a woman. I don’t fires a woman identify as a black latina. Um, identify as in my workplace, this is important. I defy with someone who is single without children. S so there’s some things that, you know, come up. You know, i’m bilingual, you know, those of certain things that come up in my workplace, that i’m able to bring my whole self and that and i feel like those are factors that are used against to me, which i think in some environments it could be and has not just could nobody has. Okay, okay. Sabelo yes? How do you do? Well, let let’s, before we ask, before i asked how you define your i don’t define describe your whole self, but before that what’s your what’s your intro to this topic, why did you feel this was unnecessary session at ntc? I feel like in the nonprofit world there’s been a lot of conversation over the last few years about bringing your whole self toe work, and most of it has been led by cece hat white males and women on dh they are proposing practicing vulnerability and taking risks and not worrying about being judged or the implications of bringing your whole self to work, and they see it from a very narrow they’re like my ionic, which which it means something entirely different for a person of color means something entirely different for someone like me to bring my whole self toe work, and the consequences are often not, uh, positive, so you know there’s a lot of wing of choices. That are made about when and how to bring your whole self to work so that it’s actually supporting yourself and not putting yourself in dangerous situation. Okay, i guess we’re going talk some about creating an environment that enables, yes, someone to bring their whole cell exact okay, the way glamarys feels comfortable, who is your whole self? Sabelo well, again, as glamarys said that’s a complicated question, but i identify as trans queer, immigrant of color on dh i have a lot of identities, but most of which are hyre not the mainstream at the organization i work at, and so i’m often used to being in situations where i’m the on ly x or the on ly why or the only z and s so how does that feel? Uh, it feels isolating it feels difficult to contradict what the expectations are for a leader toe look like what the expectations are for a person who’s doing good work in the organization toe look like and the particular ways that i need to be supported rather than undermined for bringing my whole self toe my eyes water actually, raj, welcome. Thank you. How would you to find the need for this session, um, i, too, believe that a lot of the conversation that’s happening is off, and technology is important. Designs important. I make my living doing it. But i think that we often have to leave who we really are when we come into interactions with other people. And i think the ending result is products, environments, people just not not being as effective as they could be if we really tapped into so authentic selves who we are. And so i find that the more that i’m able to be my whole self work, it gives our client’s gives the rest of our team permission to be themselves, too, and i find working together with them ends up being a lot better and what we produce is it being a lot better, but i think sometimes we’re just to. Oriented on the on some expectation of what should all look like versus what it truly is and how it’s continuously evolving time for a break pursuant, they have a new site and a brand refresh and the top creatives they’re the two senior creatives that worked on this. Put together a podcast with tips and lesson learned lessons learned that’s, taylor shanklin and andy goldsmith at pursuant may share how they kept it user focused, plus their expertise doing this with hundreds of sites. It’s a combo with tips and strategies lessons learned you’ll find it at pursuant dot com slash launch. Now let’s, go back to our convo you feel if if there’s, if there are parts of your whole self that you have to withhold, then you’re withholding your best work. Yeah, maybe not consciously, probably not consciously, but if you can’t be yourself, you can’t give everything that you can to your clients. Your organization? Yeah, i think it really pulls back on our ability to create creative solutions. I think that this idea that there is a separation between work and life, it doesn’t make sense to me. Um, i’m the owner of my company. I’ve been doing that for a long time, and i do the work that i do and most people in the non-profit work do the work that they do because they love it, you know, the number of people that i’ve spoken to that have been no offense hoodwinked by there by their organizations because they believe in the mission, but they’re not being paid well or treated well, but they believe in the mission over and over again, and on top of that, they don’t get to be them, but they do it because they love it. So in one way, you could say that they’re being manipulated by the system to do this thing, and then at the same time, they’re not able to be themselves at the same time, but they’re only reason they’re there is because they love it. So i think distinguishing those two needs to go away, who’s your whole self. Yeah, well, i think it’s also complex the way that my wonderful colleagues here have mentioned, but one of the things that i talk about, a lot of different things, i’m a male out primary owner of a company, and so i’m also a male who’s in a position of power i’m my heritage is from india, and i’m a person of color. I’m on a very interesting journey around race because i’m not black, i’m not wait on dh that’s seems to be, you know, obviously a really big conversation that’s happening in america today and always has been for a long time, but i’m also formerly heroin addict, and so i told my story on npr about three years ago, and i was very public about it. I wasn’t anonymous about it, and i found a lot of freedom from doing that, not only you just just in general and it’s it’s opened up a lot for me by having to release holding that back, whether it be with clients or whether it be with my team or with my family or with the rest of my south asians culture. You know, just these things, there’s once you remove the shame or whatever, people might impose his shame for some choices that you make that aren’t mainstream. Yeah, hopefully is what people impose not not what you’re feeling, but but those air those are so intertwined because it’s about acceptance it’s about being loved and if we don’t have that, then you know, we don’t feel we don’t feel comfortable being ourselves briefly. What was the npr story about with regard to heroin addiction? Yeah, you know, they talk about this thing called the opioid epidemic, which i think is baloney, because people of color have been impacted by heroin for over forty or fifty years, and at the very least, at least in this country and now that it’s become showing up in more in a rural communities may be impacting more people that are white, it’s become this, quote unquote, epidemic. And so i really want to talk about how it was one of the hardest things that i’ve ever had to go through in my life. As i was doing the interview, i had the privilege of having my parents with me, and they heard things that i had experience that they never even knew was there, and so was a tremendous amount of healing between myself and my family, but your parents heard some things for the first time in front of a mike in front of a mike. It was all recorded. I have it, i can share with you, tony, if you yeah, okay, it was a seven that’s, a pretty authentic radio. It was seven and a half minutes, and it was picked up by national npr and played all over the place, and i got hundreds of people reaching out to me, especially of south asian background, being like, you know, how can we talk about this? Because i’m struggling with some of the same thing. If someone wants to listen to that, can they just google your name, and they are, they can, and the name of the interview is called heroin. Heroin addiction sucks. It totally does, just for the record, okay, guard. Sabelo who? Who are the people that can bring their whole selves to work without a fear of shame, of being downcast. Who what population is that that khun company will bring it’s whole self? I think, at least especially in the american context. But really globally we live in a system of white supremacy, and that is seen as the mainstream that is seen as the norm that is seen as, you know, white male, i presume, is what we’re talking about. White women too on dh and there’s, there’s there’s a sense of their huge blind spots. These folks have white folks has around bonem there’s just so much that they don’t even think about, you know, they don’t question because they’ve just been entitled to just be themselves and it’s ok to bring their, you know, tears in or it’s ok to bring there dahna, you know, decisions in without worrying about will people listen to you? Well, people respect you, they can delegate, they could do all these things without ever having questioned i want to challenge something that you feel like women could bring their their whole self, comfortably white women i’m not sure for me see for me race and gender are like central to my thinking, but race is the primary driver like it’s, the biggest elephant in the room in every workplace i’ve been a part of in the us and, you know, for me that overshadows what white women experience, which can be challenging, but like, for example, in non-profits including my own, there are tons of white women in leadership, and there have been so, you know, they do experience certain forms of oppression, but and that that might limit their ability to bring in, whether they’re, you know, a mother or whether you know, other other parts, but but there’s also, i think additional blind spots created because they feel like they’re, you know, put down by the white men, and so therefore they don’t have to analyze their own reiteration of those kinds of behaviors. Glamarys how do you feel about that? Women wait, women being able to bring their whole self? Yeah, i completely agree with the fellow on that on because i think white women with what i think has not been highlighted is that white women, they really do uphold white supremacy, right? I think that is the root of what we’re speaking of here and the fact that we’re constantly, you know, i feel like the narratives always like all the white man, the white men it’s, just like but if you look at this is the white people and white women are part of that, and i feel like even to my experience with non-profits like, you know, at the end of the day, yes, they have other parts of themselves that they have to bring into work, but they i feel like i have that that privileged to be able to do that in a way that people, people of color do not get to do that. So in that sense, i can’t i’m not willing to sort of, you know, like, i don’t know why women, no, like they also uphold white supremacy, and so we have to talk about that that dynamic in the workplace. How about the workplace? That’s? Why what? I want to go to creating a workplace that is inclusive, that doesn’t impose shame, fear, love, discrimination, recrimination, let’s start since we were down there with you, america, how do we what strategies can you share, too? Because we have a lot of listeners. Who are ceos? Executive director among our among our listeners. What do you want to say? I would say, you know, hyre black people and rolls of leadership hyre black women and rolls of leadership, i think, like, at the end of the day, like getting those people and to those rows of leadership is going to affect the, you know, dynamics that are happening at non-profits that are kind of like a monolith right now, right? Like it’s, you know, white on top, and then maybe, you know, as you trickle down on it would be, you know, more people of color, but that’s not the way like, if you’re really wanting to be inclusive, that’s not the way to get it to bilich oh, we met some sort of quota because we have enough, you know, workers of color and itjust like, but where are they within the company, right? What about the pushback that there aren’t enough applicants of color a senior leader for senior leadership position? So with that piece, i would go to the job description and you can see the, you know, racial undertones, even within that, right? Like what? What, like when when? You put it in there like when you put into job descriptions, maybe not, including, like, maybe experience, but really trying to highlight, like education. We already know they’re very like large disparities within, like, even educational requirements, and but someone might have the experience, you know, just from working to be, but be great person for this role, but because you have maybe this piece in here it’s like, oh, they have to have, you know, a master degree and this and that, you know, i mean, like, those kind of sort of pre requisites really end up excluding people from being even able to even apply track. S o i think some even like looking into that, i think when people are riding up, you know, they’re just just job description, what they’re looking for if they were true, like, if they really were to look at it and parse it out there looking for a white, you know, male, female, really to fit into these roles, they may not be doing it consciously, right? But they are doing it subconsciously and so that’s something that i’ve, you know, been able to see whenever i’m going to go. Up imply for roles i i think i may be a really great fit for this, but because of some of these markers that they have put in there, they’re not realizing that they’re really excluding frumpy people, you know, to apply so people of color, like they’re out there, and they’re ready to take on these roles and be really excellent in these roles. But it’s really the environ first of all, the environment of those non-profits do people even want apply there? Because it might be one of those things that rogers speaking to where is like, the mission seems amazing, but then you look at, like, the culture of it, you’re just like i’m not really even wanting to be a part of that writes that might also be contributing to why those organizations feel like there is in that pool of applicants, right? But people are out there that there’s no one can tell me that there’s not people of color who can come in and, you know, a part of these rolls but i think it’s a lot around the the oh, gosh, it’s word this morning napor martignetti yeah, the markers of it, you know, but okay, but isn’t education a reasonable requirement for see you, lucia? But if it’s a cfo it’s reasonable to expect a degree in finance, correct, i think, but i know i hear you on that piece, i just feel like what’s not being thought about is people’s experiences experience coming into these rolls, right? Like, if you have these, like defined markers of, like, you have to have this that’s in that, like when it comes, i think the educational metoo means something like a bachelor’s degree or further in finance or equivalent life experience, right? Exactly. I’m starting to see more of that happening, which i think is super important, and i think that is a better way of sort of approaching those sort of things whenever job descriptions are being put out there. But yes, i’m definitely speaking to that she has an employer. Um, i totally agree one thing that i’ve found is that i had no idea how much code was in the language that i was putting out in my job description, but i’m a person of color. And what else did you find besides education language, like professional or expertise or networks? Of people where i was putting out the job description to because if i kept on putting out to my two don’t people of color, i have networks, and aren’t they professional and missing even the word wife? I mean, there were those air more ground, even the word professional is code for a certain type of person that might dear to what the standards are, whatever professionally, i think i think that you have tio i think you have to start with the assumption that there is a qualified person of color for every role you’re hiring for and that you do not need to lower your standards in order to get a person of color in those roles. It’s just about changing the language, many most people get jobs through network through who they know. There are even their stats that black college graduates from the same schools get jobs at much lower rates than the white college graduates from those same schools. It’s clear that the disparities air there even with equivalent education, so you just have to re tune yourself. You have to reframe the job based on that assumption that, like, you’re not reaching the right, people that you want to bring in to actually get creative, innovative new thinking in your company and like different perspectives, different questions ask different projects prioritized because you’ll get different people than just those same old, same old people that you have. Another part about the issue was specifically with the cfo, which i think is a really good example the people that run our books at our company don’t have a degree in finance, they even work, and i’ve been writing a sustainable business for over nineteen years, and what i find is that people that often are very dogmatic about particular numbers, they’re not really understanding the missions. So when there’s a nuance to a particular decision that isn’t just about money but about impact, they’re not able to discern it in that way. So i think it’s more important, that they have well rounded experience are connected to the mission versus just having it the degree that indicates that they were educated by some ivy league university that says that they can do this thing, but it doesn’t mean that other blind spots are going. I’m guessing it’s, you would find it insufficient to just have a statement that says people of color re hyre regardless of treyz sexual orientation, uh, gender, etcetera, just have a disqualifier at the bottom of a job description. I’m guessing you would believe that that’s not sufficient. I don’t think the necessary that’s necessary, but not sufficient. It’s what? It’s a it’s, a it’s. A very basic. Okay, what is it? I didn’t. I don’t get your point about the word professional or networks because people of color, people who are trans i mean, they have their professional and they have networks. I’m what am i missing? Professionalism in america is usually about assimilation, assimilation to white supremacy, assimilation to an idea being american. If you have an act sent getting rid of it, if you have dreadlocks not wearing them to work, you know, there’s there’s a lot wrapped up in that word professional that perhaps a lot of people don’t think about white people don’t think about but all the people of color i know do think about the you know, the ways in which they conform or code switch to adapt to workplace ideas about professionalism. Good let’s go so it’s kind of pathetic als bringing your whole self toe work if we’re talking about a simulation. Yeah. Same. Or what do you mean? Well, if we’re all going to be the same, then what’s the point of us being individual human beings with their own personalities, experiences, characteristics, perspectives like, you know, one of the things that i do in washington, d c is i helped to create it an inclusive economy. And one of the things that we really try to push out as much as we can is big boxes. And because people want to live in communities where there are businesses that represent their own individual needs are owned by people within their community. Everybody going no offense and mcdonald’s or the target over and over again. And also no target has its own place in the world as faras economics go. But the point is, how do we create a unique environment that is representation of each of our beautiful, unique selves? Let’s go further than beyond the job description. What would you like to say? A little like some idea. Yeah. I mean, hiring is, of course, a really important prerequisite. But beyond hiring retention support, um, i have a very strong voice i have a really unique perspectives to bring in that would really help push the work forward creative solutions to some of the challenges my organization faces. If i’m not in an organization that can support me to say challenging things, if i’m not in a place where bob that leads to my promotion rather than my demotion, or my being tradition or marginalization, yeah, exactly like it really takes a lot of ongoing work to support people of color and marginalized folks in in a workplace and to really buildup and, you know, empire their leadership rather than undermining them. What form can that support tape? I understand in terms of encouraging the voice, encouraging a voice that’s not traditional typical but what other are there other things that employers could do to support to make that support explicit in the organization? What else do you like? My suggestion is one one is model as much as you can that it’s ok to bring your hosts off to work. And secondly, humility and talking as little as possible. It’s really there there’s so many beautiful voices that just aren’t heard on a regular basis. And if you could just sit and listen. What emerges to me? It fascinates me every single day. We have to spend another minute or so together see glamarys start, we started with you, we’re gonna we’re gonna book and you’re gonna be booking wrap up with you in a little less than a minute or so, you know, some encouragement and some motivation, okay? So that’s that’s the way to make a change to make change, to encourage the diversity that we’re talking about? Yeah, so again, for for within my work environment, we ended up sort of like creating our own way talk about this whole, like, sea at the table sort of thing, and so we just ended up making our own table, right? And so i think from there we have a fork work force development program, and we’re just were, you know, bringing people in from the community and giving him those skills, you know, that they’re not having the opportunity to get in other places, and our hope is that we’re just we’re going to be able to flood sort of in our field with eventjournal child held just flood the field with, you know, women of color, people of color who are going to be ready to go on to the leadership roles so that’s like a peace that we’re really that’s. How sort of were targeting that. So i really appreciate that approach. All right, that was glamarys azevedo she’s, a professional development specialists mamatoto village. And next to her in the middle is sabelo kayman north american digital campaign manager at three. Fifty dot org’s. And next to me is raja agarwal, president of provos provoc provoc provoc look provoc provoc provoc group provoke provoke. Thank you, roger. Good sport. This is an interview. Is sponsored by network for good. Easy to use donordigital and fund-raising software for non-profits. I wanna thank you so much for being with twenty martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc. Thank you so much to our panel. I need to take a break. Wittner. Cps. You know what cps do? Nine nineties and audits mostly, right? Although wagner does go beyond the numbers hear me say that it’s true started wagner, cpas dot com get comfortable in one dimension. Then go human-centered he coached whom? He’s been a guest. I know him. You know him? He’s been on multiple times. He’s. A good guy. No pressure is not like that. His number is. At wagner cps dot com, which is where you get started now. Time for tony steak too. Did you hear the one about the ninety six year old secretary who gave eight million dollars to two non-profits in her will? That’s? Not a joke. She spent her career at a law firm in new york city. It got it was very small when she started, it got very big. When she retired, she invested based on what her bosses were investing in. Because back when she started, secretaries would handle would do the investments. So she bought a little bit of the same things they were buying decades and decades ago left to charities. Ah, little over eight million dollars here in new york city. Very compelling story. Um, and i have an important takeaway from it about the way you treat your modest donors. She turns out she was never a donor, but the takeaway deals with treating your modest donors well. And to get that takeaway, watch my video it’s at tony martignetti dot com now it’s time for board change agents, and in order to do that, we have to bring in greg cohen returning greg cohen. Also multiple time guest he’s, associate director at cause effective the non-profit capacity building organization, he’s provided coaching and training to the boards and staffs of hundreds of clients. His expertise includes converting resistant boards into competent and effective fundraisers and developing board. Meaders he’s at greg cause cause effective is at cause effective and cause effective dot or ge he’s in the studio. Welcome back, greg cohen. Thanks. Really happy to be here. That’s a pleasure. This was a bit of a last minute thing, but i’m glad it worked out so well, sure. Um, so board change agents okay? Or board members as change agents. Um, how can boardmember is be effective as change agents. So this starts with how to think about your board overall, i’m going to say ah and step into a room and executive directors and say, list your top three headaches and, you know, that board is going to show up one or two on that relationship has got a complaint about their board. So the first thing that i say to exact directors is, remember it’s, not about the people. This is something systemic boardmember zar, your chief volunteers and you want to reflect on are you creating an environment that brings the best out in each? Boardmember and they’ll say, well, they’re tired, they’ve never i didn’t recruit them to fundraise, but now i need it. So the first thing to think about is when i’m thinking about changing my board am i changing the rules of the game for the people who are in the room? That’s the first thing where i might have recruited them where fund-raising wasn’t a priority now it’s important to me because my organization’s grown and then as we bring in new people, we don’t want to bring people in to that tired, bored culture where they sink down to the lowest common denominator. So here’s my theme, which is you recruit people who are ready to help you change that culture, you talk about it explicitly in the recruitment process and then you bring them in such a way that they start to provide leadership from the get go ng there your ally for change? Why would they want to come to a board? That’s i’m going to call it dysfunctional. You don’t use that word, but i don’t know lackadaisical, underperforming under performing. That’s okay, right now, that sack less judgment that’s still judgment, but right says it sounds harsh. Okay, why would why would they want to come to a board that’s like that? And and be the firebrand and the troublemaker, right? Well, it all starts with mission, right? Like everything else like fund-raising why people volunteer, they care about the work. So when you go out and recruit, you have tohave a narrative of change. We’ve built our organization up, we had a group of dedicated founding board members who put in a lot of time in the beginning, they were volunteers when we didn’t have staff, but now we’ve grown, we have staff and we need a governing board that’s that’s paying attention to the high level issues and out there finding money for us, right? So we don’t have that now. We don’t have that now and very often, as we were crew there’s a really fear if we talk about the fund-raising requirements now, they’ll never join the board. So first is front and center, so the narrative has to be we’ve grown, we have exciting opportunities in front of us. We need a board that matches the and can help add capacity so we can realize all our potential. So what’s offgrid teo just what’s offered to those candidates is the chance to contribute to building the organization to the next level. Okay, so it does. It needs to be someone that loves this mission and that’s true for any board. Candid. Okay, well, well, yes, it ought to be right. Okay, i think sometimes any good, but i’ve seen i’ve seen recruitment just on expertise. We need a lawyer. Well, i know a popular i know a lawyer. Who’s got a good network and she’ll raise a lot of money. So let’s bring her in, but but she doesn’t know the organization, and that leads to disappointment. She’s ended up doing it as a favor to a friend or something like that. Okay, all right, so this they love the mission and you can make very plain to them the gap between where we need the board to be to make that mission excel and where we are right and you’re going to say that you’re going to be that you’re going to be the bridge. You’re going to walk into a room where you’re going to see behaviors that are different than the ones that you were trained in, if you’re coming in, say, through united way or or or another program, i’m bringing you in to be a partner to change that board culture through your excitement about the mission, and you’re fresh ideas, okay? And people are going to look at you. Well, they’re going to be prepared. We’re going to get that because this is the existing board members need to be prepared for when we cover that now. Yeah, because otherwise they’re gonna be daggers in the back of this, only their boardmember are people just going to sit and watch right off my board? Models are consensual and collaborative. It’s not the it’s, not dallas it’s, not the back room. I was there to change this to change person changed person the reporters and prepare the worst is that they pay no attention and they behave the way they did, eh? So what we need so first of all, i’m putting the executive director and whoever’s on the board who’s there, partner in the recruitment in an active role of really thinking about the process of change. So you know there’s a science of change management, we have to articulate a narrative that says we’re on a journey with this organization. The needs for the board’s involvement have changed. We honor what you’ve done, we hope that you will step up to those new needs, but we’re moving forward regardless because the mission in the organization calls for it. So that’s the context and then we need some people with new skills, new networksnew capabilities and ah, willingness to fundraise. We hope you will join us. This is to the existing board, but but if not, we’ll find another place for you advisory board honoree board many forms aboard heaven that you can put people on, but we’re going forward, and we’re going to bring in new folks who are ready for this. Now, we’ve gotta have some allies on the board. We’re going, we’re going, ah, validate this message when it comes from the ceo executive director, i mean, you need is not one ideally suit. This can’t be a surprise, right? I mean, you have good leadership. Ideally, the chair of the board would be idealware well, it’s often you have a very tired from here. That’s the that’s, the source of the trouble you’re tired, you need one or two people and see the need for the change. You know where the allies they don’t have to be officers. Ok, is your back channel before this? Before this change announcement you can and you crack on with transparency. But that’s another conversation. It doesn’t have to be back channel. But you do have to find people who say who actually are the voice in the boardroom of the need for change. It’s more effective if it comes from appear then from the staff. Even the executive director. Okay, better coming from them. I feel like this board is that this is the is this a new business? They raise their hand. I feel like this board is not. I am one of the m one of the one or two. Yeah, sees the trouble. Right? I feel like the new business. I’m raising my hand. I feel like this board is underperforming way. Don’t raise the money we were had, like forty or fifty or sixty percent giving every year among the board. We’re not bringing in our networks. Well, i don’t. I don’t see excitement. On the board about the mission, we’re not engaged with what’s happening on the ground by identifying some potential. Is this is this how it happens? And then? Well, so that that’s the observation is but we have so much that we could do for our clients in this era, we have a waiting list, our staff is performing greatly. How do we talk to each other about bringing the necessary resource is and providing the oversight and stewardship of this organization that’s ready for takeoff? And we need to examine ourselves to see, are we in a place to do that, or do we need to step aside and bring in new people now? Somebody other than the one or two right? I think we’re doing fine. I don’t i don’t see the troubles your eye, all the reports we get are that are the people are fed, are you? Our recipients are benefiting? We’re making impact in the community? Uh, i like the way the board meetings run the preparation for them. I don’t i don’t see these troubles that you’re that you’re kicking up. If if if if if all is well, then no reason to change. The border let’s presume, but there actually is going to be just fine with the resistance. Yeah, so the idea is that we’re having to create a sense of urgency in the boardroom that one of two things is the case, something that we value about our programs and our services will be lost if we don’t get more involved or something or more importantly, and we hope when there’s opportunity and a group is flourishing, things that we want to call into existence components of our strategic plan, expansion of services won’t happen until we step forward. As aboard the staff has exhausted its resource is now the board must play its full governance and fund-raising role, that condition of urgency must be present or it’s rational that people don’t change their behaviour. Ok, urgency, okay, um, let’s, go back to the coast and then it just to say there needs to be a narrative in the boardroom, you know, brought by the staff and those allies that makes it clear that there’s a need for change on an organizational basis. It’s not about the performance of individual boardmember no finger pointing, no blame. We’ve grown up the organizational. Curb the board needs to now catch up with where the organization is that’s a very common situation that the growth of the organization’s development moves faster than the boards and then the board needs to catch up, and some people have put in their service and they’re tired. They don’t want to step up or they need help. And that’s where bringing in some new folks in new energy, new talents, new networks as change agents really could make the difference. You can’tjust reform your existing complacent board without bringing some new element into it. Ok, ok, all right. But i want to address the resistance because right, everybody not going toe be subservient. Go on. All right, all right. So i feel like very articulate with that. Thank you. Alright, let’s, go back to these potential change hs. Now, um, how do we identify the skills that that we’re looking for? The personality? I mean, that’s got the personality is a bigger deal in recruiting these couple of change agents than it has been in recruiting our board for the past fifteen years. Right? So what we’re looking for, right? So first of all, i i said i don’t kick them my eyesight, the executive who’s, your hands, but not your feet, the executive director and those allied board members are are in a place of being the helping b the agents of change. This is an active strategic process, not a passive one, so the recruitment process is of the past may not work up front. You’re looking for people who have experience running and motivating teams. If fund-raising is important, then you want prior fund-raising experience and you want to talk about your goals so it starts with those doing the recruitment, being able to describe clearly what they’re looking for going beyond just we need a lawyer who cares about kids who’s willing to write a check that this is being more demanding and looking for the kind of people you’re bringing to the board table because you need them to drive change. All right? They got the motivational articulate. Yep, right? They’ve got to be pretty insightful to. They’ve got to be ableto handle the pushback not only in the public meeting, but you know, in their committees that they’re going to get assigned to in any back channel communication that might be from other boardmember zoho resistant there’s got to be able to manage yeah, i’m not sure i want to be the manager now. It’s nice if you find someone that’s a very high level skill, but they need to not need credit to be able to lead from behind and put their energy and heimans and they need to understand the background of the need for organizational change. So to understand the journey that we’re helping, they take the board on complete value back-up buy-in so that that’s what i don’t have to have served on the board before, but they have to be good listeners on dh and willing to work as allies. Let’s, take a break and ah, that is for tell us, tell us monium lee elementary school foundation receiving a monthly donation from tell us for the credit card processing of a company one of our parents owns likely the easiest donation source we’ve ever secured. End quote the elementary school that’s, the monthly pass of revenue i’ve been telling you about think of people who are close to your organization who owned businesses. You start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony tell us and go from there. Now, back to aboard change agents with greg cohen. Um, but greg has to sit tight while i do live. Listen, love and podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections. I’m sorry sam prompted me. Yes, the live listener love goes out. Where is it? Cut where’s it going to? Well, it goes to the universe, but specific places within within that that universe. Staten island, multiple new york, new york. Always count on that brooklyn, new york. Um all right, s o we got where’s, where’s, the bronx and queens. We don’t see them today. Alright, historia. We’ve got a story. A queens. Is there? Where’s, the bronx? Not checking in. Well, let’s. Not focus on the negative. Live love to the four boroughs that are with us. Queens, brooklyn, manhattan multiple and staten island. Also down to tampa, florida. A state kongers, new york. Lots of new yorkers love it. Um, hubert, north carolina live love to north carolina. You know, i love north carolina. We’ve got listener in iraq. Iraq is occasionally with us, but not too often live love to you out in shanghai seems to be our only china listeners. Shanghai ni hao, let’s, go to the u k we don’t know which country is masked. We don’t know the country all right. United kingdom, listener live listener love to you and ah, it covers it so far. All right, that’s, the live love and the podcast pleasantries on the heels of that has to come three over twelve thousand pushing thirteen thousand listeners weekly. That’s not a monthly number. That’s each week each episode very glad that you’re with us. Pleasantries to the podcast audience and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners. Also throughout the country. Affections to you. I’m very glad that you are listening. Analog. Never let that am fm die, it’s never it’s it’s not going to die. It may be declining. It’s never going to die. Media is too personal. You’re with us affections to you now for greg going. Thank you for being patient. Um, go show the gratitude, you know, all right, okay, let’s, go back to these people. Where do we find? Where do we? Okay, right. Thank you. Thank you. Big request i was school past screening past screening, right? Where do we find? Where do we find him? So typically people think, well, we only have the usual circle of people and they go out and i’m going to use a dating analogy, and so and people go out and right away they think about asking people to become board members after they meet them. But being a board members really the most rarefied form of ask it’s, easier to donate it’s. Easier to be a volunteer it’s. Easier to come to a gala it’s. Easier to be on a host for much time limited not a big ask way at the end of the spectrum for engagement with a non-profit is being a boardmember time, money, reputation, all those things right? So don’t rush into the process, our suggestion for a processes that if you can’t find candidates, think about people who are the well connected people with for people of a certain age. The best roller texas those big role in texas who know everybody in their industry they’d never be your boardmember may because they’re already overcommitted or they’re not quite right, but you go to them with that narrative of your organizations, growth and aspirational future and the kinds of people that you need in the board room to help you get there and you ask them, who does that make you think of in your circles? The more specific you are? We’re looking for a person of color who’s the sepia with a fortune five hundred company, or maybe has technology knowledge, the more likely people going to come to mind in their mental roller decks and give you a suggestion that you say, would you mind calling that person and opening the door for me to go meet with them? They’ll be happy to write. So now, instead of just going to people who are maybe maybe not board candidates, you’re using other people’s networks and using their ability to filter through their contacts to suggest prospects. One, two you’re getting in front of influential people with your aspirational story about where your organization is so it’s a cultivation event, even even if they don’t give you any names or they give you a few, you’ve created the opportunity in front of that person to bring them up to date and show yourself a strategic so that’s a key thing which is don’t rush into rushing to prospects and saying, would you become a boardmember think about some indirect ways and also then cultivate as you screen. Okay, excellent. And you’re doing this with people who know people who have exactly good networks. Good role, exactly right? Good, strong. You can even add ad hoc people to your nominating committee who aren’t board members to help for a limited period time in this process of identifying and screening people. But now these people are coming from your from those folks networks they don’t know you’re or go the way we just said they gotta love your mission ten minutes ago s so we got a quaint thes potential board members with the good work we’re doing and the much better work we could be doing and make them the bridge between those two, right? Exactly. So this is this is not going to be a six week process. No, this is where the best practice for board recruitment coming. Like we need a process. Teo, introduce people to our work. Have at least two interviews i would say with the e d and one with the boardmember i like three. I like to different board encounters, so people offer different judgments, and and the candidate gets to see the different people that be interacting with and then a third thing, which is essential, they have to go out and see the work. Now, when i say this to executive rector’s, first of all, they hold their head in the hands i need boardmember tomorrow. Yeah, well, that’s not realistic, right? The second thing is, if the person doesn’t have time to participate in this process, they’re not gonna have time to show up to board meetings and show up prepared and take a leadership role. So these air enforcing them to show their commitment exactly for you before you invite them? Yes. And they may in good will be excited about your work and the idea of being a boardmember but not really testing it against their reality. These are threshold measures that left both sides figure out. Is this really going to work now? I just heard this at one of the ntcdinosaur views we haven’t played this one. Yet we’re talking about hiring. There was someone who likes three, three, four interviews long hiring processes so that you’re that you’re making the candidate prove their commitment to your mission before you offer him a job there. You got long hiring process, you can’t show up for the fourth time, you know, we will find someone who can well, and that sounds crazy to some people t ask for that, but more often than not, i hear from people we recruited someone looked like a great person on paper, but then we’re disappointed they didn’t show or they didn’t bring them for their full selves to the table when they did show, and you would say, you have yourself to blame because you didn’t you didn’t adequately, uh, you know, they’re not getting their commitment and it’s like a job interview, but the power relationship is more equal. You want to carry out a transparent project process so that either side at some point can say, you know what? I’d like to be helpful, but not as a boardmember maybe i’ll serve on a committee on the host committee or a board committee without being a full member. Excellent. That’s a home run if you don’t let him on the board if they’re going to be end up being one, these disappointments very important i’m now seeing the time that’s required, and i don’t feel like i have that kind of time to be aborted. I’d like to help you some other what there’s, another component arches, you’re not wasting any of your time in the search sound. First of all, you’re going to have to go through a lot of candidates. Most people don’t have the time to be boardmember the best ones already committed. Yeah, right, but what we want is a process that says, i’m i love what i hear about your guy position i love what i see, i can’t be a boardmember and then you want to say, well, there is another way you could be involved. So the idea is you have a spectrum of involvement with boardmember ship at the end that the most demanding part, but you’re actually trying to get everybody you connect with who responds to your mission to be connected in some way. Donor-centric attendee volunteer, a member of a board committee without being on the board, there’s so many ways to engage those people, so you’re not losing that time because they didn’t become a boardmember you’ve added people who are supporters, but maybe not at that very demanding level of very boardmember all right, what do you say to that ceo like you saying ceo but executive director that says, i need boardmember is next week, what do you tell them? I need to raise the money for my kidscollege education next week, but it’s not gonna happen in a week things take to do it well and strategically, it takes time. If you start to do this on a systematic year round basis, you start to build the bench, you should have a regular process cubine ongoing process, al, you’re watching these people who are volunteers, and you’re treating them well and maybe in two thousand eighteen, they didn’t have the time to be a boardmember, but in two thousand nineteen, all of a sudden they discover this is one of the most important things in my civic life. I’m ready to step up so once you start the process, it’s really like farm team through teo being a boardmember it gets easier and easier. Because you’re feeding it it’s, not an ad hoc one shot think ongoing exactly be are going through your right, and as you revitalize your board, you’re placing this function in the governance slash nominating committee. So also it’s moving partially off the shoulders of the e d this should be in a well performing bored the revitalisation of the board process through bringing new people on it should be aboard function, driven by board members. How do we empower them? We just have a couple minutes left. How do we empower them once they’re on the board to hit the ground running as change agents? Great question, so they’re at their at their point, twenty minutes there at their point of maximum enthusiasm and then begin a one, right? So we actually say, work out a plan for engagement, right? So here here, the things that are coming up where we’re going to want to do fund-raising what are your ideas? Where can you be involved? Here are openings on committees, what most interests you were ready to make you committee chair or if you’re not ready, we have a boardmember who will mentor you so that within six months you could play a bigger role. So you’re actually reviewing all your needs with the person right up front and engaging them to commit up front rather than hang back a year, see how it goes, i’ll figure out my place. No, no, we want them engage from the gun. All right, actually, maximum, you mentioned mentor. You and i have been on you and i have talked about this before. Board he’s. Thirty seconds on the value of aboard, buddy. Absolutely essential. You know, particular someone’s. Never been on a board before they come in the room. There are all kinds of acronyms. There’s. An existing culture among that complacent board of friends and family or whatever it is you need. Someone who’s easing you in explaining what’s going on that’s a familiar face in the room when you walk in because you’ve met with them before. So aboard, buddy is an essential piece of that onboarding process. Very smart guy. We gotta leave it there. Greg cohen. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for sharing he’s at greg. Cause cause effective is at cause effective and cause effective dot org’s. Next week. Gene takagi returns with unrelated business. Income tax and fringe benefits for your employees under the new tax law. Do you know this? If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing to radio weinger cps, guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com bye tello’s, credit card and payment processing, your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Family roots in the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and i agree. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get in. 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Nonprofit Radio for March 20, 2015: Your Board As Brand Ambassadors

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Roger SametzYour Board As Brand Ambassadors

Does your board know the basics of your brand? Do you? How many volumes in your story library and how do you build your board’s talent at sharing them? Roger Sametz is president and CEO of Sametz Blackstone Associates, a brand consultancy.

 

 


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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. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with adaptive hypertrophy if i heard the thickening story of how you missed today’s show you’re bored as brand ambassadors does your board know the basics of your brand? Do you? How many volumes in your story library and how do you build your boards talent at sharing them? Roger sametz is president and ceo of sam it’s blackstone associates, a brand consultancy on tony’s. Take two a caution for your plan giving program part do we’re sponsored by generosity siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks roger sametz is with me in the studio. He is the president and ceo of sammons, blackstone associates, boston based brand consultancy, integrating brand editorial and digital strategy with design and digital media. They work with academic research and cultural non-profits as well as corporations, roger rights and speaks widely on brand building he’s at sam it’s on twitter and his company is at sametz se m e t z dot com. Roger sametz welcome to the studio hyre glad to be here pleasure, but it have you why do we need board members to be brand ambassadors? Why important? Well, a lot of board members, you know, sign up to be born members and given of their time and money and expertise, and they don’t actually think they have to do more than that. But there’s no marketing or development department in any non-profit of any size that actually doesn’t need help, and board members have networks, so to the extent that they could be out there and actually talking to their networks in productive ways or opening the doors for the fund-raising staff for being an extension of the marketing staff that’s all to the good, and what does it mean to be a brand ambassador? Well, to be a brand ambassador means you have to sort of first sounds tautological understand the brand so that you could be out there and actually talk about the organization and what it means and what its vision is and how you might, you know, convince other people too participate, donate or even be another boardmember and this is something that can be trained since, since people don’t come to the organization most likely with these skills, they can learn them of, of course, well, boardmember is generally have you no aptitude for learning things, or they might not be on boards, so sure, and a lot of the work we do with boards actually happens in ah boardmember ng setting, or perhaps a retreat setting or some sort of special meeting because if you come into a board and you know you’re the finance guy or you’re the you know, you’re the lawyer who helps out or, you know, help out and, you know, some particular aspect going out and chatting may not be something that you’re actually conversant in or you have done, how come they’re not? We’re not natural ambassadors, brand ambassadors because it just come naturally? Well, i think part because we love the organization well, part of it may be that some people, of course, are better actually having conversations and drawing people out and others, but leaving that to one side, people come into organizations because they know some chunk of it. You know, you come in because you care about the kid’s education provoc you came or you care about, you know, their hunger. Programs or something. But you may not know the full scope of an organization. You may only know that sort of bit that, you know, touched you. So part of the education process is getting people up to speed on the whole of the organization, and then, you know, coaching them like you would coach anyone to anything to be more pompel all right, on dh to start this coaching training we need we need to recognize that there’s a gap between i think, the way they weigh the organs, they perceive the organization on the way they like it to be perceived the way they describe it on the way they’d like the organization to be perceived. Help them. See that there’s some dis constants there. Sure. I mean, often leadership in an organization or the person charged with stewarding. The board is pretty clear that their boardmember zehr not really good ambassadors. And then there are plenty of board members who, when asked to go out and, you know, be ambassadors, sort of look at the clock or look at the floor or say, not my thing. Um, but there’s a sort of an easy exercise. That one. Can actually do and it’s sort of fun, so take a board meeting. Take twenty minutes onboarding passed out a bunch of four by six index cards and ask boardmember is on one side. Write down how you actually describe this organization, the friends of yours at a cocktail party or a barbecue or something. Give them seven minutes or whatever to do that, and then ask them on the other side of the index card to write down what they might like to see if the local newspaper we’re writing an article on the organization so typically a newspaper will write, you know, x organisation comma, eh blank comma. So, you know, there was three or four words there that come after the name of the organization that are sort of pinned to it in the first paragraph of some article, so ask the board members what would you like to see their so the first side of the card is, how would you actually talk about this to some peer, a cocktail party? The second side is sort of this distillation, this aspirational take on how you’d like to actually have the organisation described. So you do that? And the reason you actually using index cards is so tony who’s sitting next to janice can’t say, oh, you know what? Jenna said so people have to commit to writing on and then you go around the room and you share what people have written on both sides, two hearts and two things. If history is our guide will happen, you either end up with or either or both, you’ll end up with very disconnected descriptions of the organization as you go around the room, you start to get thes looks like, oh my god, we really are not singing off the same page, and then when you get to the second side of the card, the aspirational side, you’ll get these completely different visions, so just doing this exercise will make pretty clear to people that, hey, we could use some training. Um, yeah, sounds it sounds very eye opening, especially the aspirational side, the way you’d like the organization to be described. But in your experience, you see lots of lots of disparate answers to those. Well, you do. I mean, boardmember czar recruited or they sign up, but they’re not part of leadership. I mean, they’re not sitting in the, you know, ceo or executive director’s office, so they may never have actually been in on the vision of the place. So there’s some catch up to do ok? And, uh, they need to become masters of the the brand, the organization’s brand, what are what are some elements of brand this a very ethereal thing that a lot of people regrettably reduced to logo, logo in tagline or something? Dahna we know it goes a lot deeper than that i’ve had guests on who have made that very clear, but what are some of these, whatever some of the concepts around in brand that we’re trying to grasp? Okay, so if you think of brand not as the label on the toothpaste box and certainly brand in the context of non-profits is fairly recent and there’s still a fair amount of resistance around that because there will be many people who think it’s too commercial. But if you think a brand, not as to your point, not is the logo a logo is sort of a symbol of the brand, but if you think about it as what an organization means, what it promises the expectations it sets well, then that’s a whole different way of of looking at brand so boardmember is have to sort of understand that, but took sort of get to that. I have to sort of get under that hood. They’re some sort of grand basics to go over. So we started a minute ago to talk about what is an organization. Means so you need to understand. Okay? What’s the organization’s vision. They may not be clear on that. What are our areas of focus? Which means, you know, if we’re an anti hunger organization, how we actually you know what? One of the areas in which we’re working to accomplish eradicating hunger, what of the roles we play? You could be a convener. You could be, you know, an inventor. You could be any number of things. But constituency out there are not gonna remember seventeen programs that you have. So you need to sort of. Boyle is down into a finite number. I don’t know. Three, five areas of focus and rolls that people can actually remember. And then the sort of more evocative side of this. What are the brand attributes that you want? Associate it. So these air generally adjective. So to take commercial metaphor here. You know, volvo has always been associated with safety. Then they sort of managed the product and brand slightly differently, and they kept safety and added performance. So organizations tend to have attributes that they own that are already associating with them, and attributes that they would like to have associated with them, which will call aspirational. So if you work through these areas of focus, the mission, envision the rolls and the attributes both owned an aspirational you get a pretty good sense of the underpinnings of how an organization can be presented externally. All right, we need to dive deeper into some of this because it sounds i mean, it’s it’s very basic to the organization, the its promise. What are the expectations? I know when you didn’t mention that i know is part of it. How do you measure success? This is not something that, uh, you know, if it’s not already clear, we’re not gonna be ableto answer all these questions in a in a board meeting. Is strategic planning up a part of this process? Well, strategic planning certainly could be part of the process, but leadership also may know some of this, but the board may not, so no, some of it so you certainly could have sessions where you educate or you could use the board too, actually surface these by putting a big post its around the room and actually putting these topics down and writing down different suggestions and then sort of figuring out where you are. Okay, we’re gonna go out for a break and when we return, of course, roger and i’m going to keep talking about your board as brand ambassadors 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s. Do some live listener love and let’s do it starting abroad. Tokyo, japan and multiple tokyo, japan and musashino in japan. Konnichiwa, seoul, south korea always so loyal soul. Unbelievable! Anya haserot to our listeners in seoul and in china, we’ve got none jing and guangzhou konnichi wa live listen love here in the u, s st louis, missouri, sioux falls, south dakota, san francisco, california, new york, new york welcome each of you and, of course, podcast pleasantries to those listening wherever you are at whatever time on whatever device pleasantries to the podcast listeners over ten thousand of you and to our affiliates, affiliate affection love each of you lots of alliteration, zon non-profit radio an abundance of them. I admire. I like now. I like a little rations. Roger i yesterday i was speaking at a at a a present. I did a presentation on, uh, hosting a panel, and i met a boardmember for ah who’s on the big apple circus board. I don’t know if you’re familiar with big circus. There sure are a lot to new york and one of the things she lamented is that they’re not too well known, but i think she was an excellent brand ambassador because within a minute she had me understanding how first, reminding me that it is a non-profit which a lot of people don’t know, but that they use clowning techniques to help children in a bereavement program that they have, and also a clown, techniques in education, on some of the outreach in the school programs that they have. And she ticked off like three or four things within a minute or a minute and a half that i had no idea of the big apple circus did. Um, and i just i i complimented around being ah ah, an outstanding bruh broad no, outstanding brand ambassador that was jenny keim, virginia chambers kind. But jenny keim is what she goes by. I was really struck teo to meet a riel what i thought was a real good brand ambassador boardmember well, it seems like she was pretty clear on as we were talking about before the break the organization’s rolls? Yeah, it’s areas of focus, she made it clear to you, you know that it wasn’t on profit, which could have been ambiguous, and she clearly engaged you. So whether she comes by this naturally or it’s been soaking in it or had some training you, but i don’t know, but that is what we’re aiming for. I urged her i told her that if her fellow board members are not as good ambassadors as she, that she should listen to this exact show because you were coming on the next day, just yesterday, some of these basics that we were just talking about seems to me that the organization should already know all the stuff that you mentioned. Mission values, expectations who with constituents he should already be known factors leadership certainly should know all that, but sometimes they actually get a little bit down in the weeds. So if you’re an organization that has seventeen different programs or you’re an academic research organization that has seventeen different labs or whatever, people often sort of stay at that program level and don’t actually think about how can we group thes into, you know, sort of higher level categories or buckets that people could more easily understand because they’re so focused on, you know, keeping the ship going in the right direction so sometimes they don’t think about that. And also there’s we determined over these over the years, people within non-profits see their value as self evident. You know, i work here, i believe in it. You should believe in it too, and they don’t quite understand that it actually takes more work to get someone who’s on ly connected tangentially or not connected at all to understand it. So there’s work to do to move from that sort of internal. Ah, phew! Point to being externally focused, what you need to do if you’re trying to, you know, get more donors or increase your participation or, you know, whatever, with people who are not in the fold, how do you find boards take to this work? Are they enthusiastic about the idea that we’re gonna be talking about brandy and being an ambassador or however it’s described to them? How did they how did they have they think of it? We’ve always found that people were actually quite thankful because they’re they’re nervous. They know that part of their role is to be ambassadors, but yet they don’t really know howto ambassador for my rittereiser yeah, so you know any sort of help that gets them into position of, you know, both comfort and sort of fluency so that it feels natural and not nervous about it. That’s great. And a lot of the exercises that we sort of put together, they’re helped by wine there, helped by camaraderie. Well, fluid. Sure. So you could make these exercises fun. And to the extent that they actually build fluency within it specific person, they’re also building deeper engagement of your board, you know, across all the members. Do you find red or white? Wine is a better, better beverage to accompany this. And then i think people could choose either one. Is you’re you’re agnostic. Teo. Totally. Okay. Okay. Um how let’s. See, when? When organizations are coming to you for for help in this area. What kind of symptoms are they showing? How do they know they have a problem? Well, we talked about that index card exercise before the break, which is sort of a diagnostic tool. But i think organizations khun simply know they need some more help from their board members. I mean, any non-profit board needs their board to help open doors for fund-raising. And that’s only gonna happen if the boardmember is, you know, comfortable in fluent and can you no understand enough to actually make that happen? Yeah, okay. And ve so is it usually the case that the organizations do recognize themselves that they’ve got some some shortcomings around their their boards participation in fund-raising sure and or is just a good idea, okay? And do you describe when you’re when you’re when you’re about to come to the board, do you describe it as we’re going? We’re going to help you, coach youto be good ambassadors? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s no reason to hide around this time that people you know, they’re ashamed of. I was just wondering, you know, they’re generally up for it. Okay? All right. There are for the help askew described. Okay, um, so let’s, let’s talk a little more about some of these, some of the basics of the brand there’s, some more elements to it that we haven’t talked about it. Like, who do we serve, where we focus on what is a mother? Sure. So so almost any non-profit is going to have a range of constituencies. So, you know, we’ve been talking about donors, donors are one constituency. People actually take advantage of your services and offerings. That’s, another constituency, you may have partners, you may have government agencies you may have, you know, people you’re trying to recruit as staff. So all of these people have slightly different needs about what they need to know about your organization that orders or connect in ways that make sense for them. So you need to identify constituencies and what they care about so that you can sort of rearrange things in ways that make sense for them. I mean, you would do the same thing in planning a website. You need one very interesting potential. Potential employees, people who use you’re hoping to recruit to the organization. Ah, a brand ambassador. Boardmember could easily be talking to the next cfo or or any person, any level? Absolutely. And, you know, given that non-profits generally pay less than profit organizations, you have to want to be there. So to the extent that the brand is another reason to want to work in that work for that organization that’s all to the good. But you have to understand that in order for that to be, you know, a magnet our next step once we’ve well have we exhausted all the basics of the brand before we go the next step, i think we have i think, if we understand, you know, areas of focus and rolls and the only thing we didn’t talk about was sort of category, which sounds a little odd, but sometimes boards have a hard time articulating what exactly are you? You know, are you an anti hunger organization, or are you a social services organization really instant? You find that we often find that, and so that that sort of stymies people, that that first level of conversation, if they can’t even clearly say, you know what category the organization? So it sounds simple enough, but when you sort of put to the test, it isn’t that simple, and often it actually takes some work to both evolve and then subsequently get agreement on interesting. So so that actually it’s a good agreement on so there’s differing opinion as to whether we’re we’re social service or community based? Or, you know, however, we defining ourselves, you get your getting different opinions around that you will get different opinions and you’ll get different language, even around the same opinion can share a any chance you, khun recollect what we’re working with, that we’re working with one organization at the moment, that’s a non-profit that actually helps non-profits and part of the organization thinks they’re in the capacity building business, which is probably accurate but not particularly mellifluous to talk about and part of the organization thinks they’re in the business of shifting power and influence to change values in society. These are two very different ideas. Yeah, now they actually do both, but if you’re out there talking about it and you pick one or the other, you’ll get a very different picture. And how does the process mediate that these different opinions? Well, this would actually happen at a leadership level and not a board level one would have one would have the chats, and we do have the chats with senior leadership to sort of nail this all right, it’s a very, very esoteric stuff. You’re dealing with this brand well, yeah. It’s always interesting and there’s a lot more to it. Then, you know, the star burst on the side of the toothpaste box. Yeah, all right. Um, we once all the board members are are comfortable with the brand basics, then we’re going to help them put together a new elevator speech, right? Sure. Ok, everybody wants one. This is a couple minutes like, i basically what i heard about the big apple circus from from jin in-kind well, everyone, you know, elevator speeches just shorthand for what’s your high level of message, but implied in this it’s the notion of being able to have everybody on the same page. So one template that you can use actually comes from a game that some people may have played earlier in life called mad libs, which was, if you remember, there was sort of a story on a pad and they were blanks, and you were asked to fill in a noun or a verb or an adverb, and then when the story i read back, you know, some level of hilarity and sued because the words don’t make any sense. So when you do this on a brand focused level, you’re actually looking for more specific things, so the template runs something like it will try to draw this in radio air, okay, for whatever constituency. So if you’re an arts organization, you could be art’s interested. Public could be prospective donors. Could be artists, you know, for ex constituency. Your organization is what, so that’s, where you get that sort of category answer and you provide another blank. What do you provide? And then how we’re through, how do you actually provide it? And then what value to deliver and how the organisation worthy of participation and how is it worthy of support? So these are all blanks. So, again, it’s an exercise with big sort of post its up around the room and you put lots of different answers in and then the board together sort of calls. Okay, what are the best responses here? And then you start to sort of string it together, along with adjectives that actually could come from your brand attributes. So an example might be so let’s. Take, for example, wgbh, which is a public television stations radio station in balkan. There we worked with. So the big category answer might be public media powerhouse or content engine, which were both a lot more evocative than television and radio stations. The second part of that might be trusted. Guide to new worlds and new ideas that sze what the organization is. Yes, of course. So it’s a more evocative answer than a literal answer. Yeah, but that hey, you’re out being ambassadors so you can certainly be we’re not trying to divine this is not a definition that is not a dictionary process and it’s, not a tax form, okay, you know, in terms of areas, well, they’re they’re in news and drama there in public affairs therein kids programming, they’re in science, so you get to nail the sort of areas of focus they have signature programs like masterpiece everybody knows downtown and that what do they provide? They provide opportunities for exploration and interaction and an independent voice, especially if you’re talking about the news and public affairs programming. Where did they do this? Well, it’s locally, the boston area but now that everything streams it’s much farther, and of course, it’s multi platform so there’s a more complicated answer toa wear then there might have been in years past, and then you can end with, you know, it’s for you and supported by you. Or you could take another completely different example i referenced anti hunger organization a while ago so the constituents he might be for those who care about in this case, we’re talking about massachusetts seven hundred thousand people in massachusetts who actually don’t know where their next meal is coming from. So that’s the constituency, the people who care about that and then project bread what’s the category, the leading statewide anti hunger organization. And what do they do? Offer fresh approaches to ending hunger? What are they? By pioneering funding, facilitating a range of programs and through education advocacy, they actually have programs that meet people where they are rather than just handing food out of back of a truck, and then you get into that next level of details? Well, you know, how do they actually do this? So it’s programs that are in the community programs that are schools with kids, programs that are building sustainable food ecosystem? So then you get into more detail and then what’s the benefit well, it’s all the sort of fulfill a vision that the opposite of hungry isn’t just full it’s healthy, which then musicians the organization differently against sort of just emergency food and nutrition versus full nutrition vs and then you go, you bring it down to donors, which is with the support of people. They also sponsor a large hunger walk. Those who walk and our corporate partners, we’re able to eradicate hunger in the state. All right, two two excellent examples. A little long, but but i think the examples help help us teo to fill in the in the template. Um, okay, we’re going to give ah, roger. We’ll give you a break for a couple minutes and there’s going to be mohr with roger coming up talking about brand ambassadors and tony’s take too, of course before that. But i have to mention generosity siri’s because they sponsor the show. They help you raise money. You being small and midsize non-profits that’s, who that’s their sweet spot by hosting multi charity five k runs and walks lots of groups that couldn’t sponsor something on their own. Come together and you can have a terrific day in new york city. Twelve charities came together, raised over one hundred fifty thousand dollars in the last one in philadelphia. Nine charities raised over seventy five thousand dollars. I know because i am see a bunch of their events. For them, and i’m the one announcing the fund-raising total’s at the end of the day. So it’s a fun day, it’s a it’s, a successful day around fund-raising and that’s what generosity siri’s through generosity, siri’s provides that’s them. They’re coming up in northern new jersey, miami, florida and new york city. Pick up the phone, talk to david lee and he’s the ceo. Be sure and tell him you’re from non-profit radio seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven or generosity siri’s dot com my video this week, which is from my laundry room, is a follow up to last week’s caution for your plan giving program it’s, a story of a twelve million dollars lawsuit against chapman university by a ninety eight year old donor who became discontented with the organization. You have to be careful with the relationships that you build and how close you get to someone, and the whole story is in the video, which is at tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of march eleventh show of twenty fifteen roger sam it’s feeling a little under the weather, but he’s mustering well, if you hear your silence, that’s ah, that’s cutting rogers mikes that we can give him a cough. But he’s made the trip down from boston. Thank you for doing that. It’s. Been a tough boston winter, as most of your listeners probably already know we do. And it’s not been much better here. Today is the first day of spring. I believe march twentieth and it’s snowing outside. We look out the window right now, there’s pretty brisk snow coming down in new york city. Um all right, anything more you want to add? We don’t need another example. But anything more you want to add about this this template, but helps with the elevators. Bitch. Well, i think it does two things. I mean, you actually end up with an elevator speech is not going to be eloquent language by putting things up in this mad libs posted format, but it will give you the content. So then, you know, either some sub committee of the board or staff can then be charged with actually, you know, wordsmithing it. So everybody likes it, okay? But getting the content down is important. And then the other thing it does, of course. Which all of these exercises do is get boardmember is engaged, so to the extent that people sitting around the board table or wherever you’re sitting in doing this are participating in developing messages it’s already getting into their heads. So we stand a much better chance of people becoming comfortable with something if they’ve had a part in evolving it much more so than if you just took, you know, a piece of paper and slated across the tape foisted on them and say, memorized, memorized this on dh have it prepared for the next for the next meeting? Yes, quite okay. All right, so they’re involved in the involved in the creation of it. Um, this is going tio this is one of the tools that were empowering board members with basically i mean, this is what we’re trying to make comfortable, confident brand ambassadors and, uh, another tool that you recommend his stories. Yes, well, you know boardmember sze, can we, like anybody can sort of talk about an organization either from the top down or the bottom up. So the top down would be starting with your elevator speech and then presumably, if you haven’t run to get another ice cube, the person you’re talking to, you might tell a story another boardmember might swill around it a barstool and actually just start with a story and end up with the elevator speech. So a bottom up approach, okay, but this only really works if people have the stories one way or the other, and what happens is boardmember because they’ve experienced the organisation themselves in one way or another, you know, they might have a story, um, but they might have on ly that one story and, you know, the other board members would have different stories, so the extent that you can sort of pull these stories and even get a story library going, perhaps online, internally online, then people have more things that they can talk to and they can sort of pivot. But if you want to sort of think about a story there’s, of course, another template to try to actually do that, and you could sort of start by thinking, okay, if if this were a movie title, what would be the name of the movie? And that will lead you immediately to some sort of evocative top end to the story. And then, of course, you want to talk about, well, who’s in the story, who’s the protagonist. So this could be a person or it could be an organization. Then the next step to think about is okay. So where what’s the problem? What? What has to get solved? And then where does your organization come in? So what programs air services get marshaled to help solve that problem and then what’s the end of the story. And is thie ending? You know, finite? Or is the benefit ongoing? So you can use that very simple template and really think about okay? How does your organization, you know, participate in either other organizations or other people’s lives to make a difference? Where where else might these stories emanate from? Your example was bored boardmember tze maybe each person has a story or something, but they can also filter up from the program’s staff that’s out, actually doing the work. Um, i know a lot of organizations like to invite people who are benefiting from the work the people of the organization is serving. Have them come to board meetings and tell their story. Sure, you could absolutely do. That what you’re going for is something that’s authentic where you khun, you know, show that you made a difference and that you’re not sort of, you know, overreaching, you’re not trying to say you made you more of a difference and people would believe, yeah, but sure, i mean, you know, every organization writes up profiles or highlights people, those are generally stories, whether they’re set up a stories that have sort of a, you know, beginning middle and an end that has a benefit, you know, that varies, but what you are going to make sure that you have it, you know, you have an impact statement at the end, you have a benefit to show that you know, why people should participate or why people should be donors and just, you know, give them a reason to believe we gotta get these stories down, too, what under two minutes, right? If if i’m in a conversation with somebody at a reception or something, you know, i can’t hold their interest too long, let’s have a master storyteller? Well, you might be, but yes, i think you’re right under two minutes or, you know, if you’re writing it. Out, you know, under two hundred words. Yeah. Okay. All right, um, and you mentioned a story library like internally online. But what? What is that? Well, you could do a story library in any number of ways, but if your organization has some sort of internal web set up that’s a great place to post them if it doesn’t have that, you know, you could just compile them. But the whole idea is you don’t want stories to just leave an individual’s heads if they’re really good and they could be shared and, you know, people can use them in conversation out there in the world, you might even be sharing them on the web. Well, with the public doesn’t have to be behind a, you know, an internet or anything, you know, a lot mean, a lot of what we’ve been talking about because we’ve been talking in the board. Ambassador context is useful for word ambassadors, but of course, it’s useful for staff. It’s useful for senior leadership? Yeah, potential donors have thes stories, air there’s. Quite a bit of talk among non-profits about around non-profits around around storytelling, right? And as i said earlier, you know, storytelling is simply sort of the inductive way of describing your organization that’s supposed to starting from the top down, which is sort of more than deductive way, but both are valid, and it has to do with how you’re comfortable talking with people, okay, what’s our next tool that we want teo arm, are board members within making them confident? Well, we started to talk about donorsearch let’s, let’s focus on that for a minute. So most organizations because they do more than one thing or not monolithic and as we already discussed their constituencies or not model to think either even within a donor community and if you think about major donors for the moment, they’re just not good do bees, they’re generally interested in giving money to some organization that they believe will advance goals that they personally care about. So if you take the goal around major e-giving to be connecting institutional priorities with donor passions and interests, and you understand that the people aren’t monolithic and the organizations not monolithic, then it behooves you to come up with different ways that people can connect. So this is another way that you can actually work with. Your board to evolve what we call ways in. So for instance, taken orchestra could be a tiny little orchestra, really big workers treyz some people are going to care about performing the traditional repertoire, some people are going to care about commissioning new music, probably a smaller number. Some people are going to care about the space that music is performed it, and you know what? What shape that’s it some people are going to care about kids education programs if there are such, some people don’t care about building the audiences of the next generation, and the answer to that is yes, so some donors will connect in one way, and some donors will connect in another but it’s important that for your non-profit that you actually evolved what thes different ways in our so that if i’m, for instance, i’m going out to talk to tony, and i think he’s wants to support kids education, but he really wants to support community outreach. I’m able to actually pivot and talk to you about community outreach, of course, implicit in all of this, and we could have talked about this at the top of the hour, is they? Need to listen because you’re going to have any conversation with someone outside your organization, you have to also understand where they are otherwise you’re just pushing things at them. Yeah, yeah, you’re a billboard. So you wanted you wanted to be a conversation, so you have to learn enough about the person you’re talking to two actually take what you’ve learned in terms of these areas focus and rolls and stories and mission in category and no talk to the person in terms that are meaningful to have her see you like to rehearse this with boards once you once you farm doing with the tools? Is there some practice? We do a lot of role playing, which is also fun and also better served with wine so you can set up small groups. There’s not much that isn’t isn’t helped by wine. I find my favorite seven young blonde personally, but well, it depends whether your board meetings here in the evening at seven. Thirty in the morning. Yeah, well, bloody mary zahra possibility? No, i would not have not tried. But if their evening most activities in life i find very well lubricated by wine. Well, you have an italian last name? I do, um but yes, a lot of these can be when you have after you evolve the kinds of things we’ve been talking about, whether it’s in small groups or people making, you know, presentations to the larger group, anything that has people actually use what we’re talking about rather than just sort of take it in because the more people use the information that we’ve been discussing, the more comfortable they ll get and them or it’s actually in their heads, and they make it their own. So never are we asking anyone to like, you know, memorize words or spew things back, it’s all about understanding that the content and the concepts and then being able to actually talk about it in words that are comfortable your own? Yeah, on your own that connect with the person that you’re actually talking with. How long is this process to build the board, ambassadors, brand ambassadors? Well, these air separate different kinds of exercises that we’ve been talking about it and there’s no, no fixed timeline are sequence to any of this you could certainly come up with, you know, three or four these workshops, depending on how often you want to meet so you know it, it may be better to do oneaccord er just because the board has other things to do and you have to hijack some time here, or you could do a concentrated session if you had, you know, a two day retreat and you, you know, take some of that time, okay? Yeah, the ways in i mean, they should be already known to the organization. There shouldn’t be anything new here in terms of identifying how you khun be supportive. Well, there’s always a difference between things that exist and actually sort of understanding it and remembering it. So if you, for instance, well, let’s, take a life sciences organization example, um, you may care about the work they’re doing in a specific disease area. I may care about how they’re using new technology. Somebody else may care about how their training scientists of the next generation. So you may know that the organization actually doing those things, but you really care about that disease area that you care about. So in order for you to feel comfortable talking about the technologies that i care about you do have to learn more about it and sort of, you know, soaking it a little bit. All right, yeah. So right, right again, everybody got their own perspective and reason that they’re with the organization exactly. We need to share all these and everybody’s converse and in all the ways, right? Because the goal of an ambassador is to be able to meet people where they are not to just go out, as you said earlier and be a billboard that, you know, is inflexible, and this is an electronic billboard isn’t going to change any, so you need you need the information, the confidence, that fluency and of course, the content, which is largely what we’re talking about during this hour to, you know, start someplace and be able to pivot to someplace else and, you know, not be flustered in the middle, um, you you also work with boardmember is to overcome potential resistance points as their out ambassador rising? Sure, well, i mean, everything doesn’t go smoothly. We’ve been talking about ways to make boardmember is more comfortable. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to bump up against some donorsearch prospect that just, you know, says no, or i don’t believe in you or comes up with, you know, some reason why, you know he or she should not entertain a conversation with you so there’s no guarantee it’s all going to just, you know, fall into your lap. So again, we keep coming back to role playing and the’s group sessions, but and leadership or bored or the fund-raising staff probably knows the points of resistance, so one thing the board can do is come up with what the arguments are for dispelling that. So this is a good thing to do in small groups who could even sort of picture seeing a couple people on one side of a table in a couple of people on the other. And, you know, one side has the resistance, and the other side has duitz with what we’ve just been talking about, you know, the roles in areas of focus and the impact stories try to convince the, you know, the first party no, you’re wrong, you know? Or give it another thought so that you can in fact, bring some more people into the fold. Okay, um, before we move on anything, anything more we can talk about with the respect of these resistance points. Anything else there? Well, they’re different for every organization. I mean, we worked and some tell a story tell somebody you worked with has some are harder to overcome than others. I like stories. So for a large ballet company that we worked with, one of the points of resistance that we we heard often was, you know, i fall asleep hard to see what the argument for that might be rather than take a nap earlier. Well, the persons of phyllis stein or whatever or, you know, write them up, we would just write them off, i fall asleep at the ballet or i fall asleep at the opera. Are we really going to get anywhere? Not necessarily ok, some of these you don’t get anywhere, okay? Or, you know, there aren’t any words, so i don’t get the story or for modern ballet, whether isn’t a story, i really don’t get the story, so you have to explain, you probably have to actually sort of inculcated people about what they’re actually seeing in hearing, but there are some things that, yes, it’s harder to overcome. Um, some things are easier to overcome. So, going back to wgbh, the pbs station in boston, one of the things they tell you. What down before you kill the gbh story, we’re gonna go out for a couple minutes, okay? Give your voice a break and we’ll come back and we’ll go right to the gbh story. 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 or an a a me 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 are 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 peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back again too big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, as peter shankman just said, more live listener lovemore live listeners have joined us. Woodbridge, new jersey, east bridgewater, massachusetts, and brooklyn and queens, new york welcome live listen love to each of you schnoll a france bonsoir got shanae india somewhere in the uk uk unfortunately your mask you can’t tell where, but we’ll presume it’s england, but live listener love to india and the u k listeners also. And ah also joining us moscow and you know us brazil. I apologize if i pronounced that wrong. But you know who you are listening in? Brazil also got italy, but we can’t see where you are. We don’t know what city or town i’ve been to italy four times, so i should be able to say hello in what am i missing? What am i missing? Child? Go must die. I can order a meal and i can find my way to hotels. That’s, about by like restaurant and hotel. Italian is about what i speak. You could start with bum jo know when jordan was really good. Thank you, roger. You don’t even have the italian name? I don’t. Thank you. Thank you. Um okay, let’s. Ah, so we were overcoming our resistance points. So anything and you were going to tell a story about wgbh? Sorry, that’s where we were. Yeah, well, it’s not so much a story as so it’s a little different from some other non-profits in that it depends not only on individual donors, it depends on sponsorship, so one goal of a particular board is actually to help with sponsorships. So many organizations, of course, do have sponsors and sponsors requires that the different value proposition than perhaps an individual or a major donor is going to have. So some of the areas of resistance were because it’s a public television station, for instance, i don’t want to support you because you’re too liberal. Okay, so then the board got together and came up with some arguments around that or it doesn’t congress pay for everything? Well, no, but so that’s a point of ignorance that you could then sort of overcome or isn’t your audience to old? Well depends, you know, too old. For what? And it’s also younger than you think. So there. You know, there are things out there that are often misperceptions that board members will get hit with or in fact staff will get hit with that one can marshal arguments for. So yes, that’s different than falling sleep at the ballet. How does the staff support this? This whole ambassador rising process? Well, in a lot of these organizations that were working with, you know, we’re facilitating these sessions, but staff, of course, has to organize them and make them happen, and to our earlier point probably procure the wine. But an interesting side effect of all of this, not the side effect of the wine is how what comes out of these meetings, then benefits staff so they’re learning right along with the board so they will be clearer on the organization. They will be clearer on some of these arguments. It will be clear they will learn new stories so there’s a definite no relationship between, you know, staff on board. They’re not just there in a supportive role. It’s actually making their jobs, you know, more successful, actually, even though it’s a aboard process the staff is vicariously elearning right and that’s a that’s a goal, even though it was not. Necessarily sort of, you know, a stated goal, but we see it happen all the time. You’re sort of raising both sides of the seesaw in the in the course of doing these exercises. Okay, then, it’s not a seesaw anymore. Both sides arising it’s. Some kind of rising platform. It’s. Just a seesaw that’s level a level level seesaw. But then that’s not really a seat it’s not really. See? So it doesn’t have a fulcrum in the middle. One side rises on the other side falls, but both sides rise. I don’t know. What’s that a jungle that’s a jungle gym. We’ll find another metaphor. Okay, beating you up, you know you don’t feel well, um, ok, we’ve we’ve we’ve covered the resistance points, and this sounds like something that would be valuable to revisit over over time. Not just do once and, you know, kind of put on a shelf well, like brand building, which is also a process and not an event. All of these could be processes and not events. So to the extent that you take some of the exercise we’ve been talking about, instruction them over some period of time. It also serves an organization well, too, to bring these back at some kinds of men of different periods, first of all, boards change, so everybody isn’t going to be always up to speed in equal way. And this notion of fluency like practicing anything else, you know, piano, swimming, whatever you have to do it so you can certainly come up with short role playing exercises at some other point. You khun certainly revisit stories you could revisit rolls and areas of focus. All of this stuff could have a sort of rinse and repeat kind of cycle. We talked earlier on about strategic planning, something formal, possibly being a part of this. Do you find many organizations that really don’t have the basics in master so that they can carry on further? Well, lots of organizations have the basics and not have a strategic plan, which is fine, you know you’re not always in a strategic planning moflow but if you are, if your organization does have a new strategic plan, all of this is even more important because there’s no stresses you playing that we bumped into that doesn’t depend on its success by having people think and act in. Your favor. So all of what we’re talking about on the board of the staff level is helping you to convince people to think and act in your favor, otherwise would be to plant. Just sit on a shelf. Yeah, well, they all depend on some actions. Yeah, that’s something i’ve had guests lament that a strategic plan gets done and then he really does just get parked on a shelf and it doesn’t live, doesn’t evolve and the organization doesn’t really benefit from it. Other than it’s a checkmark the board can now move on to the next project. Right? So if you go back to either the ways in that we were talking about or just being sort of clear on the different aspects of the organization you could sort of back into ok here. These aspects are a strategic plan. What do people have to think and do and feel in order for this to be successful so that they will, you know, realize is section to be of the plan. And then how can boardmember sze help so sure you could bring that in as another discussion topic. Now we just have about thirty seconds left. Roger, but i want you to share with me what you love about the work that you do. Oh, all right, well, have to think about that for a nanosecond here. I think that the top answer would be because we worked with so many non-profits and they’re in so many different fields that first of all, it’s never boring and there’s always an opportunity to help these different organizations achieve their different missions. Um, you know, we’re all about brand building not just to build the brand, but brand building to help organizations evolve and to better navigate change and that’s just about every non-profit roger stamets president and ceo sam it’s, blackstone associates, they’re at sam it’s dot com and he’s at sam it’s me tc on twitter. Roger. Thank you very, very much. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Mustard on quite well, despite being a little under weather next week. A peer-to-peer fund-raising report with the president of the peer-to-peer professional forum, david hessekiel. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where else would you go mean, of course, our creative producers claire meyerhoff. Line producer today is janice jennifer genesis cerini janice taylor. Of course, i forgot that. Thank you. Shows social media’s by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott scott scott scott stein. Of course, i know that when janice let’s got it right here in print. It’s supposed to be a little self deprecating humor please 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 insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. 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Nonprofit Radio for December 5, 2014: Corporate Sponsorship Coup & Board Unity Or Dissent

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Gail Bower: Corporate Sponsorship Coup

Gail BowerGail Bower, president of Bower & Co. Consulting, shares savvy strategies for bagging high performing sponsorships.

 

 

 

Gene TakagiGene Takagi: Board Unity Or Dissent?

Should “shut up” be part of your board meetings? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board and speaking with a singe voice. 

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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 love this time of year, the holiday time between thanksgiving and christmas. For me just a lovely time to be in new york city it’s vibrant people are apologetic and forgiving and friendly that’s ah, great time this this whole month of december love it and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to bear the pain of e s n a filic, asafa jj itis if i had to swallow the knowledge that you missed today’s show corporate sponsorship coup gail bauer, president of bauer and company consulting, shares savvy strategies for bagging high performing sponsorships and bored unity or descent should shut up be part of your board meetings. Jean takagi are legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo returns to weigh the pros and cons of descent on your board and speaking with a single voice between the guests on tony’s take two fund-raising day and jack nicholson. We’re sponsored by generosity, siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks i’m very glad that gail bauer is in the studio from philadelphia she’s, the author of how to jump start your sponsorship strategy in tough times. She’s, a consultant, coach, writer and speaker with more than twenty five years experience in marketing and leading some of the country’s most important events, festivals and sponsorships, you’ll find her at gail bauer dot com her sponsorship blawg is sponsorship strategist dot com. And on twitter she’s at gail bauer b o w e r welcome gail bauer. Thank you. Thanks, tony according to be here. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to have you you would like us to be tossing out the the gold silver bronze a platinum, i presume. Also platinum. All these levels of sponsorship, these air not meaningful, not meaningful. Yes, they cause the nonprofit organization to give away value and leave a lot of money on the table and a whole lot of other problems. No good. Ok, we’re going. We’re going to dive into that right. So that’s, the that’s, the old model correct and the newer model were calling high performing sponsorships. Sure at high performing organizations, right? So organise a sponsorship as a marketing driven activity for corporations. Has been around for ever non-profit organizations have been a little slow to move in that direction, and there have been a lot of changes and a lot of aa lot of reasons why that’s a good strategy on dh? Slowly there non-profit sectors moving in that direction. Okay, should we start with what value we’re bringing to a relationship? Identifying that, or should we start with who we want to partner with and see what their needs are? Where should we start this? I think the best place for anyone to start thinking about sponsorship is really understanding what the value is that they have to offer. Okay, so that’s that’s, the first place we start looking there and inside. So we’re looking inside now is the board involved in this process way offer. Sometimes the board members are but usually it’s more the staff. The board usually has more tangential roles in sponsorship development. Okay, opening doors, making introductions. Ok, so the networking part of it correctly the friendraising and bringing people to the organization. How do we start to identify what the value is that weaken? Bring to this sponsorship relationship that we’re gonna be going after? Well, an organization needs to do a little bit of soul searching, they need to understand more about their brand, they need to understand, especially about their audiences and who they who they reach, who they interact with, and how and factor in how important their mission ist so those three things the they’re strategy, their brand, their brand strategy there, their mission? Because i don’t want them to do something that’s outside of their mission, and especially their audiences and how they can allow a corporation to connect with those audiences. So those three things to find the value we identify these were putting these in a written package that’s going to be a part of our sponsorship pitch that that’s a good play, it doesn’t have to be that formal, but certainly being able to articulate that value, being able to articulate why a sponsor would want to be connected to that audience needs to be something verbally said it, it’s woven into any written materials as well. All right, so this is the special stuff that we bring to a relationship because we don’t want to just be going hat in hand and asking for whatever twenty five thousand dollars or million dollars, whatever it is, without recognizing, without having the company recognized that we bring enormous value to correct the organization should feel very strong and bold about what they what it is that they have to offer two responses to a sponsor they don’t want yet definitely do not want to feel like a dickens character, you know? Yeah, you’re right. You bring something very special and let’s talk a little more about the people that you reach in your organization that a cz one part of what you identified, the people you reach in and how you reach them, going to say, well, more about the sure most organizations have a lot of different audiences that they work with, serve, interact with, and it can range from the constituents that they actually serve. Two, you know, very high end, very high end but high, highly affluent donors. Eso understanding more about the demographics and the psych. A graphics of all these audiences will then help us point a direction to the kinds of corporations that want toe engage with and interact with these with these audiences. Okay, break that down for me. How does it how does knowing that help you identify where you’re where your efforts should be? Should be leading? Okay, so corporations sell their products and services to particular audiences. They know a lot about their customers or their clients. If it’s a beat, obese or service company, so they’re trying to reach a particular audience segments and many non-profit organizations serve these same segments. So for example, a major donor group, a segment of bay jer donors who are affluent, highly educated, perhaps, you know, skewing a little older. Forty five plus might be a very attractive demographic for, say, a financial services company to reach. Okay. That’s, the alignment, the correct your retirement. Okay, yeah. So we then have to do a lot of research to try to find companies that are consistent and with an aligned with what it is we’re bringing in our package. Correct. How do we do that? So that’s like a pretty big task. It’s a pretty big test. But once you know what you’re looking for it it can go pretty quickly. So you you have to understand a lot about how different industries work. How does the banking field work? How does ah, consumer product company work. What? What is it that they’re looking for? But if you always stay focused on what a for-profit company ultimately ultimately wants is they’re trying to sell something. So the way that they do that the pathway to doing that might take him in a different direction. But they always want to sell. So knowing that can help move your can help you focus your research. All right, if you got i’m interested in like, a good client story, you can share an interesting sort of alignment. Even if it’s not a charity where you help somebody, aline recognize what? What kind of company they should be aligned with and help bring something to fruition. Sure. So i earlier this year in early twenty fourteen i love stories. That’s. Why? Yeah, no that’s. Great. So earlier this year i worked with a home builder association. Actually. And they have ah, a significant anniversary. They have many different events. They produce a home show. They produced various activities and events for the consumer population for where they’re homebuilder. Members could be part of on dh. So one of the things that they did was to partner with a bank because obviously banks sell mortgages, and they’re also trying to reach people that are buying homes. So they collaborated with with a bank, and this was actually a bank that had turned them down for a sponsorship. And we went through this process, help them to find a strategy and build their skills, and especially build their confidence because they had a lot more to offer than they were really recognizing. And they landed a very healthy five figure sponsorship to your deal. Very, very healthy. Five figure of sponsorship for this event. For the next two years. They were so excited. I love that they were turned down and then they went back there, go back the next year, way we went back to two months later, two months because i went, i took them through this training program and coach them through it. And they were a little nauseous. But they they went in and said what i told them to say and they did it. It was go out of the company. How did they persuade the company to give them a meeting? Months after the company had decided it’s not a fit. The board chair actually knew the bank president very well. So that was the end. But what i coach them on is going back and talking to them about their business objectives and really focusing on how they could help them fulfill those business objectives. Whereas before they were doing the gold silver bronze approach, so did they get feedback like it’s. Hard to believe this is the same organization that came to us two months ago that we turned down because they get anything that i don’t think they got that say, although maybe the bank people were thinking that but they were really excited about the possibilities and about the partnership moving forward. Outstanding that’s. A very, very good it’s that’s a great cake store because they got turned down and then they worked with you. And then they got approved. Yes, it was a great i had tears in my eyes when she reported back when it was really awful. And you were in the background. You were coaching? Yes, coaching in the background. Okay. Excellent. All right. We’ll go out a little early for a break. We come back. We got a lot more to talk about. Regarding corporate sponsorship. Coup with gail bauer from philadelphia and we’ve got lots of live listener, love, love it, 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Got lots of live listener love philadelphia p a we got a couple of people from philadelphia and no one is probably gil’s partner shot out. Teo to barry barry brentwood. We hope that barry be better. Be one of those two were presuming you are. Brentwood, california. Blandon, pennsylvania, near philadelphia, georgetown, texas. Honolulu, hawaii, bayonne, new jersey live listener love to all of you my my grandmother used to live in bayonne, right on the newark bay. Like thirty west thirty first street, i think, right last street, right on the newark bay, new bern, north carolina chevy chase, maryland, oakland, california live listener love it will go abroad very shortly. Skill bauer, part of what you’re offering to accompany could very well be opportunities for their employees. Right, like, maybe volunteering. I’m thinking. Volunteering? Yes. Okay. Yeah. There are all kinds of opportunities for volunteers. Of course. The nonprofit organization has tohave a strong volunteer program put together, which can be, you know, challenging, sometimes for smaller organization. But the corporate side can they love having opportunities for volunteerism? And it could be a great way to expand, expand what an organization is doing. Yeah, and that goes to the point that you don’t want to create something that you don’t have or isn’t consistent with your mission. Correct? Just to achieve a sponsorship. Correct? Because that that sometimes takes you away. You know what way off track? Yes, but it’s tempting it is tempting because you’re being offered money. Well, creating a volunteer program. Well, we don’t really work with, you know, most of our work is all done with professionals. You know, maybe they’re counselors, you know, credentials or something. You know, we don’t have a volunteer opportunities, but maybe we could create it for this lucrative five figure sponsorship. Right? That’s. Bad that’s. Bad thinking. Well, it’s it’s, when you’re working on sponsorship, you always have to be thinking into the future. And sometimes a sponsorship opportunity can come along. That actually can propel something that you do want to move forward too. So if having a robust volunteer program is something that you wanna have happen and you can expedite it more quickly through a sponsorship poke, then yes, that’s. Great. And sometimes it can be a surprise. I worked on the new orleans jazz and heritage festival for many years and the year after katrina sin oko sorry, excuse me, shell oil came in as a sponsor on day one of the things that they did was to provide a very large pool of volunteers, which was really invaluable because if you remember, after katrina, half the population of new orleans left, we could not have produced the festival without without that volunteer staff, and it was terrific, so volunteerism can be really important for an organization what’s we’ve identified what it is we’re bringing, and we’ve identified companies that are properly aligned similarly aligned, who should we approach let’s, say let’s say so let’s start with a large company, but you know your ah midsize, maybe organization, and they’ve got an office in or, you know, some kind of retail outlet or something in your community. You start at the local level, or do you go to the national office? You, if you’re an organization that is regionally or locally based, then you wantto work with the regional or local decision makers. So if they have a retail branch, for example, of a bank branch or it’s a retail. Organization. A retail company, you can get to know the branch manager or the you know, the general manager of the store. But the decision’s probably not going to be made there, though, that that person, depending on the company, could be an influencer of the person who’s making the decision, the decision’s going to be really made out of the marketing or communications or public relations office generally, depending depending on what the opportunity is. For example, if a new organization had an opportunity that was more environmental, they were an environmental organization. It could be made out of the csr office, the corporate social responsibility office. Or if the organization has some kind of a diversity initiative, then it could come out of the chief diversity office. Okay, adversity. Office of interesting. I was only thinking of marketing. I was thinking marketing budgets that’s where this would all be, but not necessarily right. Yeah, it’s usually marketing. But one of the things on a more sophisticated way of working a high performing way of working in corporate sponsorship is to really help an organization leverage sponsorship opportunity across multiple departments within the company. So if we have any corporate listeners listening, tuning in that’s that would be a tip that i would have for them to have to involve as many departments into your sponsorship opportunity is possible because that way you’re getting more value out of that investment and driving mohr business outcomes, not just marketing. This is on the non-profit side, you want to be looking, then at possibilities for maybe diversity volunteer opportunities, which should be hr hr. What else? Corporate public relations if there’s an environmental theme, corporate social responsibility, there could be sales initiatives there. If you had a media partner, they’re trying to drive sales and they’re trying to drive circulation and they’re looking at there could be a content opportunity. There could be an opportunities to bring there the writers or the radio personalities tto life s so there are all different kinds of, you know, all different kinds of channels, so that the idea is for the nonprofit organization to think really broadly and very creatively about all these ways to tie in. Excellent. I love it. Well, now we’ve identified who were going to and and where we should be starting who should? Who should make the initial inquiry? I guess if there’s a relationship like a boardmember, then they should make the first inquiry that yeah, that if you have a really somebody got relations, yes, that would be a good one, but to make the macon introduction or go, you know, go to lunch together, but see it’s, usually the development director, chief development officer, or sometimes there’s a corporate person on the staff of the nonprofit organization so that’s usually the person, if it’s a very small organization than sometimes it’s the executive director. But you want to make sure that the person i had this is another point of having high performing organizations selling sponsorship is you want to make sure that the person has both sales skills and marketing skills. Set your you’re actually in business development when you’re on the corporate sponsorship frontier. All right, why don’t you distinguish the two between sales and marketing? Yes, well, marketing is attracting people to you, and sales is actually selling going in closer yes, selling enclosing something. Yeah, and with corporate sponsorship, the type of selling that you’re doing is more of a consul. Tate of process. You’re building a relationship. You are, you know. Challenging the organization or the company and really helping to drive their business goals. So there’s a lot of relationship building and trust building that has to happen. This does not have to be around events, right? Event sponsorship. No, i mean, it works very well for sponsorship marketing. The hallmark of corporate sponsorship is that it’s experiential. So so that there’s a face to face interaction, that’s involved with it. But there are many ways that programs could be tied into it or other marketing initiatives or other kinds of opportunities within an organization and could very well then be longer term. Correct. I think you had said in the example you were talking about the building association, um, wasn’t that the homebuilders association one that a couple of year because there are a couple of sponsors that was a two year sponsorship for their home show, right? But it could there could be annual sponsorships that happened for organizations as well. Oh, so the event was a part of that? Correct. So it could be an event and just not stop with the event, but it continue, like could be leading up to and could be after, right? The that particular case, they sponsored boat two years of home show that that’s what that’s what? I just think that a lot of times the constraint is on ly around events were hosting an event, we need sponsors, right? And you want people to think broader than that? Correct ideo because you’re otherwise you’re missing opportunities you when you’re starting sponsorship, it takes a lot of propulsion to get your sponsorship program moving, so you want to focus on your best opportunity? You don’t want to waste time on a smaller opportunity, so you want to put more eggs in the baskets that are going to drive the best results and then and then keep building up these other opportunities. So if you only have one significant event and it seems to have a lot of potential, i would focusedbuyer rather than dispersing my energies across other opportunities. So for example, i’m working with an environmental organization in philadelphia right now, they’ve got one new event to other events that they’ve been building and building, and there are undoubtedly others opportunities for sponsors within their organizations, but we have been just been focusing on those that that new event in the other two events that they’re trying to really build. All right, you’re back in the meeting now, first meeting introductory meeting a lot of listening, i presume a lot of listening eighty to eighty percent of your time should be about listening twenty percent of your time should be talking. All right, what what kinds of questions are we asking so that we get answers and have things to listen to? Yeah, so that there are three things that you want to be doing when you go into a sponsorship opportunity like this and into this kind of discussion number one you want to build trust, and we build trust by having that other person and that company’s best interests at heart, especially that person, because that person is going to be making the decision. And so you want to be building a relationship and one part of this twenty percent of your time, you’re doing three things. You’re enthusiastically conveying information about your organization and about this opportunity, and you’re asking really good questions which i will get into in a second. You’re asking really good questions that are going to help you uncover the business objectives. Of the sponsor and at the same time build that trust and build the relationship. So you want to ask more questions about what their business objectives are? What are they trying to accomplish in there? Marketing plans for twenty, fifteen and beyond? You know, if you’ve done your research, you may have found just the perfect hot button that is something that they could focus on. So for example, maybe there’s a new product launch or there’s a merger that’s about to happen when either of those two kinds of situations and many others happened there tend to be more marketing dollars available, so you want to find the one, you know, the key priorities that the business has coming up, all right? And in the other twenty percent while you’re talking, you’re making an initial pitch, but, you know, trying to close this is just an introductory meeting, but but you’re trying to explain the alignment between your organization and there’s, correct? Yes, and you’re you’re enthusiastic leak, you know, conveying information about what that sponsorship opportunity is and to, you know, to sort of have corroborated what you’re thinking is the right approach for them. Yeah, so and then you’re asking questions, and as they’re talking, you’re listening and listening internally to think, yeah, i’m right on this, this this this event is, you know, this priority that they’re having is exactly what i should be focused on. All right, now you go back, you had your first meeting and let’s say, you know, there’s, some interest, okay? Basically, the the tenor of it is let’s keep talking, you go back, and now you’re obviously putting together everything that you heard and weaving that into what you’re trying to get out of this correct. And so if you’ve left that first meeting and there’s equal enthusiasm and they, you know, you feel like you’ve gotten all the information that you need, then you would go back and you would develop a proposal for them, and you would give them lots of different suggestions, you know, several different options and let them choose how they might be involved with your organisation. And so in the proposal, then you had outlined the different ways that they could be involved different opportunities that you’ve defined in the process of developing your sponsorship strategy for your organization. Now, if we’re not allowed to call these gold silver bronze? How are we explaining what’s available and what it would cost? Ah, well, in the proposal, you’re outlining what? You know what the value is, what the benefits are for each of the different options, and no, you don’t want to call it gold, silver, bronze, but you want to make sure that each of these different opportunities number one drives some business goal of the other theirs, and that integrates the company into something of the organizations, whether it’s a program or event let’s just taken event for now. S o, if you wantto weave it into the event in a meaningful way so that the the sponsor is really contributing something valuable to the event. So, for example, a long time ago, i worked with gibson guitar as a sponsor of one of the events that i was involved with fender, i prefer fundez yeah, fender was involved offenders involved too, but they weren’t you know, not not this year. Yes, gibson was involved, and so an idea that we had we didn’t have time to execute it, but one of the ideas that we brought to them was, wouldn’t it? Be great. Gibson has a lot of endorses and so we thought would be really great if we had an area where there endorses who are also playing on the festival’s could sign autographs. So you want to bring something that’s really meaningful to the event? Not just, you know, slap logo’s on things. Was that for the new orleans jazz and heritage festival? Yes, it was. With all right. Now we have presented the proposal, and it has happened with the client that you worked with in the home building association. Now we get a no way. We thought, you know, there might be something there, but we don’t see it any longer. Well, that can happen. So you have to go through a lot of you know, you have to go through a lot of prospects at the door. Might still be open door. Might still be alright. Let’s, continue with this prospect. Yeah, definitely need a pipeline. Right? You need to close a hundred percent, but let’s, continue with this one. Um we’d like to know what? What is it that didn’t doesn’t appeal, right. Exactly. So when you get that far along it’s, you know when you’re to the point where you’re writing a proposal. There’s probably pretty good interest, but if there’s not interest, suddenly yes, that that’s a great approach. You want to find out more about what what went wrong or why they’re not interested, or perhaps there’s a question? Or maybe they don’t understand something, but usually the response people get is that they wantto learn more about the they want to explore the costs more. They will come back and say, well, we don’t have this, we don’t have fifty thousand dollars in our budget. We’d rather do forty thousand dollars where we only have twenty thousand dollars or something, but still encouraging exactly. We can offer you less exactly for lower dollar direct, right? So that that’s what you do is just negotiate. How do we come up with these numbers that were going toe put two different alternatives that we’re offering is it’s strictly based on what our needs are if you just did. But based on what your needs are, then you really wouldn’t run a prophet in in having corporate sponsorship. S o there’s pricing sponsorship is one of the trickiest things to discuss because it’s one part art. One. Part science there, about two minutes left. Yeah, so it’s, based on it’s, based on the value that the sponsorship is delivering to the to the organisms that tough to pin down. Yeah, so there is some quantitative value. And then there are some qualitative intangibles that are factored in and that’s. Part of the strategy that you would develop is toe also developed the pricing strategy as well. Maybe other organizations could be helpful to you who have who’ve, or is there not really going to be willing to share so much about their details of their sponsorship? Sometimes other organizations air charging so little that that’s, not helpful. So don’t follow other people off the cliffs, correct? Let me finish with what it is that you love about the work that you’re doing twenty five, thirty years in in sponsorship work. Yeah, i’ve done every side of sponsorship development work, i’ve helped sponsors secure deals, i’ve sold sponsorship, and now it just brings me really great joy to see organisations you know suddenly have a paradigm shift and then be able to go out there and boldly, boldly go where they’ve not gone before and generate more revenue and really propel their organizations forward. And it just i really just gets so touched and so excited when somebody gets what i’m saying and they’re able tto to move their organization forward in that way. It’s it’s really thrilling your passion is clear. Gil bauer, you’ll find her at gail bauer dot com her sponsorship blawg is sponsorship strategist dot com and you can follow her on twitter at gail bauer. Thanks so much for being guests. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks. Next up is jean takagi on board unity or descent? First generosity siri’s they host five k runs and walks small and midsize non-profits can’t get enough runners. Tau host their own event. You’re going to have twenty five people thirty you can’t host an event like that generosity. Siri’s brings the small and midsize charity community together so there can be a fun and valuable fund-raising run walk in new york city where i am seed their event. Just last month, there were twelve charities raised over a hundred fifty thousand dollars. They hosted one in philadelphia, nine charities raised over seventy five thousand dollars. They offer, you know, fund-raising portals and dashboards and social media tools and, ah, charity support team that you actually talk to. But all of that is to just bring small and midsize shops together tau host valuable fund-raising run, walk the events coming up in new jersey and also miami, florida. Dave lynn is the ceo. Please tell him that you’re from non-profit radio, you know, i like to talk to pick up the phone and talk to people seven one eight, five o six, nine triple seven if you prefer generosity siri’s dot com my video this week highlights to fund-raising day videos and also a jack nicholson movie on how aloma shared ideas about upgrading donors and marcy brenholz and i talked about thanking donors so that they’ll stay with you you after year and keep on giving. I played both of those on the show not too long ago, but i also want to share the fact that there is video of those two interviews from fund-raising day and the jack nicholson movie that i recommend is from nineteen seventy four it’s an excellent murder mystery, and this probably gives it away. It co stars faye dunaway and if you want to know what that movie is that i’m recommending, you have to watch the video. The video is that tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, fifth of december forty seventh show of this year. December already jean takagi, you’re out there, right? I am. Honey, i know you are. You’re the managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. That’s still true, right? Absolutely. And fire yourself. All right. And you also still edit the popular non-profit low block dot com and on twitter, you’re at g tak gt a k right. All correct. Okay. Just like the check. Double check the biographical information every every once in a while. And plus, being an attorney, i don’t like to ask questions that i don’t know the answer to, so i knew that was all correct. All right, gene, we’re talking about unity and dissent on your board this arose from, although we’re not going to nit pick the details of this, but this arose from a university of virginia proposal that that board members silence their descent and there was a little bit shocking for some people to read in the paper when they read about ebba talking about so sad, discouraging or actually prohibiting dissenting board members from publicly expressing their view. And that was just a proposed policy that somehow got released to the public, and some people were very, very upset about it thinking of it, a censorship on dh that caused them once, you know, the public was made aware of it. There was all sorts of articles in the washington post and other newspapers about it, and they rescinded that part of the proposal, but they kind of added a more common governance thought after about well, you can talk about your descent publicly, we won’t. We won’t chill that from happening, but once a decision is reached by the board. The board members each have a responsibility to ensure that the board’s actions and decisions are successfully implemented. So they really downgraded their initial thought. But it was a a source of a lot of controversy at the time. And i think it’s a really interesting subject. Yeah, i love that. Some dissenter released to the public, the non dissenting policy and that there that’s interesting at virginia. I just this is just a small detail, but they call their board the board of visitors. I thought that was interesting. Hey, i i i do it. Well, i don’t know what the historical artifact of that is, but it is their governing body. Yes. This’ll all go back to the days of this is from thomas jefferson, i think is the founder of via university that’s what a little bit ironic and some people’s mind about, right? You know, quenching public dissent? Yeah, this statesmen who spoke out of, um and they’re doing just the opposite. But askew said it turns out they’re not doing it, that that part of the proposal was was killed. There is, in fact, value in diversity and dissent. On aboard, right? Yeah, absolutely way need tohave open discussion then, in a lot of governance, experts will say having a culture that encourages open dissent is actually one of the most important indicators of bored effectiveness, the opposite being, you know, usually a culture of group think and rubber stamping one person’s decision and all just sort of reinforcing, you know, the first point of view that comes up rather than actively debating and thinking about, you know, critically thinking about what would be the best decision of the board amongst all of the possibilities. So so every board vote should not be one hundred percent in unanimous. In fact, it’s you’re saying it’s a good sign if there’s there is disagreement. Yeah, but, you know, from from time to time and that’s, you know, a pet peeve of mine and many other lawyers that work with non-profit boards to see by-laws that say board actions will only be taking taken if there is a unanimous vote in favor of aboard actions. That’s part of it really just chills, you know, the board from discussing, you know, individual boardmember from discussing their dissenting opinions. That’s part of some by-laws of some organizations, that has to be a one hundred percent vote. Yeah, i, um i got is an uncommon to find consensus. A required vote. Teo get bored. Action. Well, but consensus could be an easy majority or two thirds or something, but but you see it often that it’s one hundred percent unanimous requirement. Yeah. It’s not uncommon. I wouldn’t. I would i would say, you know, it’s, not the majority of by-laws permit that, but certainly i’ve seen several, uh, that that require one hundred percent consensus vote in order to take aboard action. And that is to promote their culture. What they feel like is a culture of unity. Mmm. All right, there are ways of dealing with the descent in a in a board discussion on dh valuing the honesty and the openness and the diversity if you just if you just manage and facilitate the conversation yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. And i think it takes a really skilled chair of the board or whoever is the presiding officer at the board meetings to really encourage that. That dissent without letting it, you know, devolved into infighting and ah, and, uh, a culture where nobody wants to be there. And everybody is apprehensive about showing up at the next board meeting because there is that culture of stress and tension and disagreement. So it is a bit of a balancing act, and i think it actually like many, many things take some exercise in some effort. Teo, create that culture of open dissent where, you know, people can descent. This takes place in families too, doesn’t it, tony, especially in italian cultures, open dissent and at the dinner table, but always mine afterwards. Yeah, i went after the thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house. When, when i was walking down the sidewalk in getting into the car to drive home, i realized how quiet it was. I felt like i had been in a springsteen concert for, like, four hours. And then i was back at home and my ears were almost ringing. Yes. So there’s a healthy descent at least among my cacophonous family. Yeah, for sure. And my part of the family. And i have ah, through marriage, some italian family as well. Yes, it is this healthy dissenting atmosphere, but it’s very vibrant it’s encouraging of discussion. Um, and at the end of the day, they can move forward. So, you know, creating that culture is not necessarily the easiest thing, especially for non-profit board, who may not meet so often like the way family gets to meet andi, everything gets remedy, you know, the next time they have dinner. But when you meet, like once every other month or once every quarter ah, and that’s, the only time you see these people, you may be a little hesitant about, you know, starting a fight by by presenting a dissenting views. So i think it takes practice. And, you know, one way you might practise is and there’s some dangerous to this as well. But in short, formal, just say creating a doubles advocate for a particular issues, you know, and particular issue, maybe where the board all seas, the thing you know, in the same light and would all vote unanimously in favor of it. Maybe at that time assigning one person to just raise issues and take the other part and encouraging discussion to see what happens. And you may end up with still the same opinion, but aboard that’s learned to discuss things a little bit more. Vigorously and critically look att issues and way ah ah, conflicting viewpoints, there’s a policy governance model from interestingly, from a married couple, the carvers that has some very good ideas for howto manage this whole process and maintain good governance. Yeah, and they’re they’re aspects of the carver policy governance model that i really like, and it is a model that encourages discussion, even passionate disagreement, i think they say to rip represent the diversity on the board, hopefully the diversity in all kinds of ways, on the board, with different perspectives in different ways of looking at things. But i think part of the model says is once you’ve made a vote, you know whether it’s a unanimous vote or if it’s a five for a slim majority vote and that’s enough to take board action, the ceo and the staff have got to treat it the same way. It’s a board decision in favor of going a certain direction and that’s what needs to be implemented. And so the carver model goes on to say, you know, if a boardmember descent, you know, with that, well, you should absolutely record that descent. So in a five, four vote, you’ll record those who have presented their dissenting opinions, not necessarily by name. However, if they don’t want their name to be to be entered into there, if they’re minutes or public, they may feel that that might, um, chill feature board discussion if they’re not in the majority. So, you know, it could just indicate that there was a five four vote and anybody who wants to be on record as dissenting should have their name recorded otherwise, maybe not, but if if if you do disagree with it and you want to go out and publicly say it, we don’t chill that process, you let them say that, but they’ve got to balance that with a duty of confidentiality, so they have to make sure that they’re not releasing confidential information out there. They have to be careful of not chilling board participation in future discussions. So if they go, you know, john smith disagreed with me, and he came up with all sorts of terrible arguments in favor of that. Well, that’s not going to be a healthy way to descend, you know, naming out individual board members who disagreed with you and, you know, taking down their argument without the chance for them to present the other side. And then i think what’s important about the carver model. The balance is that if a boardmember disagrees, they should go on to say, on the record, whoever they’re speaking out to in the public, that the process used by the board with proper so they disagreed, but they were in the minority. But the process used was proper to get all those things out there and that hopefully we’ll create a good culture of open dissent and ability to express dissenting views in public without harming the organization. All right, there was a lot in there that this is getting into the details. Very interesting of good governance, right? I mean, a lot of times we talk about good governance and it stops with well, you should have a conflict of interest policy. You have a whistle blower policy document retention. But this is getting into the process of board meetings that created good governance and proper oversight. Yeah, and you know, onboarding typically take actions and board meeting. So how boardmember ings air run? How their chairs, what type of discussions you choose toe have. Board meetings when in the meeting do you take your, you know, place your most important discussions? Maybe it shouldn’t be approving the board minutes right at the front where everybody, you know has the energy to vigorously discuss important issues. Maybe that gets put in the back. So prioritizing what you’re goingto, you know, discussed at the board meetings and creating that culture of open descent and possibly allowing everybody toe argue different points beforehand, circulating that in the board agenda and sort of meeting prep materials would be a very good and healthy way to get bored to be able to discuss the most important things to the organization because boards are ultimately in charge of the organization. You mentioned the agenda, and this ah, this carver policy governance model, which, by the way, you’ll find it. Carver governance dot com has something to say about the agenda who should be creating the board agenda because that could that could be a source of of dissension also is what belongs on our agenda for the month or whatever. For the for the meeting. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely true. I don’t actually, i’m not familiar with how, how carver’s model treats who will create the what’s? What typically done is is bored chairs. After conferring with the executive, the executive director’s, ceo of the organization developed the agenda. But i think knowing what i do about policy governance, it is openly encourage other board members to chime in as the chair developed the agenda to figure out what topics are most important to the organization and figuring out at that point how to proceed with finalizing the agenda and the meeting materials beforehand on dh that’s, very consistent with what carver recommends in there in there model, which is that the board developed its agenda. Not that the ceo create the agenda for the board. Yeah, you know, that’s, uh, i don’t wantto go too far off, but that’s sort of the problem with when the board acts by written consent because whoever drafts that that consent and circulates it is possibly planted just one point of view and argued only one side of it. And that can be very persuasive. And nobody has had a chance to look at the other side. So developing an agenda with only one point of view can make things look very, very one sided in developing organisation that just rubber stamp the chair’s decisions. Okay, we’re going to go out for a break for a few minutes. You mentioned a consent agenda for the break you’re in, george, in jail for that, and we come back. I’ll offer you a quick, a quick parole 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 they are 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 are 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. Duitz i’ve got more live listener to love to send out ottawa on ontario, canada, ottawa, the capital city of canada welcome live listener love to ottawa in china we’ve got coming! Ni hao my first guest, gail bauer, did some work in china for the great wall foundation. I believe it is. I know she did work with a couple of clients in china. We’ve got hanoi, vietnam, we’ve got turkey, germany and seoul, south korea on yo haserot turkey and germany. I’m sorry, we can’t see your cities your mask, but we know that your country is represented live listener love to you and naturally podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift wherever the heck you maybe arjun takagi the you didn’t actually say the phrase consent agenda. I put that together for you and locked you up in george in jail, but you said consent and you were referring to agenda, so i’ll give you half a break. So could we explain what consent agenda is sure, andi, you know, i didn’t realize that i did not say that i thought i was accused and i was guilty, okay? But i don’t think we’re a consent agenda. Is basically a group of routine, typically procedural, self explanatory, noncontroversial decisions that the board has to make, like approving the minutes of the last meeting, approving committee actions that were very non controversial and it’s done all in one action. So rather than going through them one by one and having a lot of discussion about each one if they don’t deserve that discussion, it’s just something that should have been read before the meeting. It’s all presented on the consent agenda, one person moved to adopt it, it gets seconded, approved and then it’s done and you don’t have to spend, you know, half to your board meeting talking about thes routine on controversial board actions that everybody should have read before hand and instead of, you know, having them read it at at the meeting and wasting everybody’s time. Thank you very much. Probation granted a parole parole granted program when how do we know when a boardmember has gone too far? You suggested that its fine for board members to speaking descent as long as they’re they’re not speaking on behalf of the board and they and they say that, but when does a boardmember go? Too far. Yeah. I wish i had one easy answer to that. And i think i mentioned before, you know, balancing against being a balancing that openness against the duty of confidentiality. So not giving away any confidential information and also not harming any individual on the board or sabotaging, if you will, the board action that ultimately was taken by majority vote, even though you were dissenting on it. So if you try to unwind and unwrap it, that that’s probably not acting in the best interest of the organization could harm the organization and their four year breaching your fiduciary duties. But exactly when when you cross the line is not always clear. For example. And if you thought the board had approved an unlawful action both well, that’s going to be you do need to speak out. And at worst case, you need to bring it to the attention of ah, the authorities in much more common cases. Maybe it’s something if you if you feel very strongly about that, you send a private letter out each boardmember and ceo. And if somebody asks you about it, you just say you disagreed with it vigorously. But the process used again was proper, and a majority voted the other way. And if you really can’t live with that decision, think about resigning from the board, okay, the private letter to the individual boardmember is that’s an interesting approach, but that’s discreet but still could be very firm, right? And i think it allows you to state your argument in a way that you can get all your points across the way you might not be able to do at a board meeting when you know everybody’s interrupting each other and there’s this vigorous discussion amongst, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty people all trying to chime in in a short amount of time. Would you be asking if you felt that strongly about something for the board to reconsider its decision and have the discussion again at another board meeting? If it’s the type of decision that can be reconsidered, maybe it’s something that’s going to be ah, strategic ah plan for the future and not a contract that has already been signed on dh where you can’t back out of it. If it’s something that far off enough that the board decision can be reversed in the organization can change course without any harm, and then yes, i think the board can reconsider it if if they didn’t get a chance to hear your arguments, perhaps because the board meeting pets short didn’t give a chance give you the opportunity to put out all your points that you thought were very important, sending it in a board letter, at least to the chair of the board. But but possibly toe all board members and and the executive might might be the right thing to do. Do you see money? Occasions? And we just have about a minute and a half left where an outside facilitator could be valuable for for these these kinds of difficult discussions in board meetings. Yeah, you know, i think when when the board starts to disagree each other and creates this culture, not only have open dissent but of open, uh, hostility, yeah, so just where they can’t stand each other anymore, i think you really need to get a facilitator to help figure out the process and howto get boardmember to understand their different viewpoints. You also have tio select board members very carefully not only fruit for their diversity and skills and backgrounds, but also for their ability. Tio operate in a culture that that encourages dissent on where they they’re not afraid to speak out, even if they may not be in the majority view point. That’s, that’s really important in our democracy and certainly in aboard as well my voice just went up like a high school girl like you often voice cracked like a fourteen year old, and i do that all the time. No, but it is very important. That’s a very, very interesting point two to bring in the recruitment process the not only the skill that you might be seeking real estate attorney, whatever, but fitting into the culture of the organization and the culture of the board. I i think that could even be a valid statement for the organisation when it when it, you know, thinks about all of the valleys that it wants to to promote is encouraging dissenting views as a core governance or organizational values sametz okay, jean, we’re gonna leave it there. I want to thank you very much. You will find jeans, blawg at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter, you’ll find him at g. Tack again, jean, thanks so much. Thank you tell you, have a happy holiday, thank you very much, you two we’ll talk next month thanks next week, amy sample ward returns you know her she’s, our monthly social media contributor and the ceo of and ten non-profit technology network. She’s. Always excellent. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com generosity siri’s remember them good things happen when small charities come together and work together. General city siri’s dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is on the board is a line producer. Shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing on the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules are music is by scott stein it’s cheap red wine 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. I took two or three years for foundation staff to 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 dh 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 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.

Nonprofit Radio for September 26, 2014: Critical Development Committee & Creative Commons 101

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Greg Cohen: Critical Development Committee

Greg Cohen

Greg Cohen is senior associate at Cause Effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organization. What does a high performing committee do and how can you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring.

 

 

 

Carly Leinheiser: Creative Commons 101

Carly Leinheiser at NTC 2104

Carly Leinheiser explains what Creative Commons is and how valuable it can be if you need video, images or pubs or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s an attorney at Perlman+Perlman. (Recorded at NTC 2014, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

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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. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with red know cora did itis if i saw that you missed today’s show critical development committee greg cohen is senior associate at cause effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organisation. What is the high performing committee do? And how do you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring and creative commons one oh one carly leinheiser explains what creative commons is and how valuable it khun b if you need video images or publications or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s, an attorney at perlman and pearlman we talked at ntcdinosaur fourteen the non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two, get off a less is back and a very special, a less show next week. Responsive by generosity siri’s you know them. They host multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that greg cohen is in the studio with me. He is a senior associate at cause effective since two. Thousand six he has provided training and coaching on fund-raising and governance to the boards and staffs of hundreds of non-profits for over thirty years, he’s worked to the wide range of non-profits greg cohen, welcome to studio very glad to be here. We had your colleague susan gabriel on about three weeks ago or so, and i am so in love with what cause defectives work does and how smart you all are on when she introduced me to you, i said, yes, this is definitely an important topic development committee. Please just remind us what cause effective does it’s a non-profits were non-profit ourselves, we’ve been around for over thirty years and where a capacity building group with a focus on helping other non-profits build communities of supporters with a particular emphasis on individual donors. We help them strengthen their boards both for governance and stewardship functions, as well as to make boardmember sze confident and effective fundraisers, aki function and the third area is to advise groups on the strategic use of special events. So not event management, but more the big picture of if we’re going to do something special this year, how do we make? Sure, it aligns with our capacity in our long term organisational objectives, and we don’t steer off the cliff running an event that doesn’t really fit who we are and who our audiences are and that’s related, the third part is related to what susan and i talked about using anniversaries exact effectively, basically when i would say that in a nutshell, it helps you get to the next level for small organizations that are struggling, particularly with fund-raising but also governance? Well, they may not really know that they have governance issues. Um, i think cause effective is a very good place for these organizations again, so it’s, particularly about diversifying funding when we’re talking about fund-raising for groups that have been very dependent on government or foundation, a few sources to diversify into individual donors and don’t know quite what the first steps are in aa strengthening, i think everything every organization feels its board could get to the next level so very much helping boards figure out how to be better planners and stewards of their organization. How does cause effective charge for its work? So about half our clients have a third party like united way. Or a foundation like new york women’s foundation who have funded us to work with them to strengthen them in a particular area. And about half come in having found a source of funding, either unrest, districted or a boardmember someone who feels the topic is important and helps fund our work with them. We also do a lot of work for free through partners like the foundation center and the non-profit coordinating committee, where we offer workshops, i do a lot speaking at the foundation center, i’ve never done non-profit coordinating committee, maybe you can get me in there. I don’t i’m on the board, so you are i’m talking e expected to get me, but i have done a lot of the foundation’s enter through the years on either planned e-giving or charity registration. They have an open house in november foundation center i’m speaking on plant giving a great that open house our development committee? Yes. Why is well, let’s start with why it’s important that we get to whether everybody needs one? Why is your function so important on the board as a committee? So i’m going to get a little high concept for a minute. And talk about the sociology of philanthropy and one of the key principles is that people are motivated to give and respond to their peers people who are like them in a socioeconomic way, perhaps, but i’m sure staff people listening are familiar with the fact that after a while, because they are always speaking to their boards about every possible topic, they’re urging them to fundraise becomes part of the wallpaper just become something that becomes routine. So how do we break through that to encourage and support boardmember sze to fundraise in ways that they can really here and the development committee, which is made up of their peer board members, is a key way for board members to talk to board members as a team about how we’re going to approach fund-raising for this organization, it sounds like even a small board six people should have ah, development committee absolutely so even if it’s a committee of two, although i would work to grow the board and grow that committee that’s important because the other thing is every critical function of a non-profit needs somebody who owns it. So if ah, a lot of organizations think, well the whole board should be fund-raising that’s absolutely true, the function of the development committee is to be the little wheel that turns the big wheel board fund-raising not to be the people who the rest of the board has delegated to go out and raise the money that the port thinks it should be raising, but rather it’s, the people who leave the meeting thinking about how do we move the board forward towards some fund-raising goals in between those meetings, just the way the staff does. A lot of times, i think boards delegate the fund-raising to the staff person, and they see maybe hiring their first director of development as the panacea, the cure all that’s right now, we can relax now we don’t have worry about fund-raising cause we have a director, we hired a director development so it’s his or her job. So this is why that peer-to-peer concept is so important because if we can visualize around every boardmember their facebook and lengthen networks, they’re connected to dozens, if not hundreds of people, but the staff would never have access to those folks were it not for board members willingness to be in front. Of those folk shin’s share their passion for the mission of the organization. So and typically, staff members don’t come in with the multiple of networks that aboard represents. So we say aboard is the vanguard of individual fund-raising and they have to be willing to reach out themselves to connect with other people and that can’t be delegated to staff, even if that the director of development does have networks, they’re not the networks that you, khun that person can bring to the organization their networks of other professional fundraisers, friends and family. But but it’s it’s not appropriate for this staff person to be asking their friends and family just be supporting argast that they work for well, we like staff people teo fund-raising actually, but it’s limited to their network. And if you have six, eight, ten boardmember sze sitting around the table who might offer access to hundreds more people, you’re leaving that resource untapped if you only rely on the staff to do that individual relationship building within their circles. Okay, then what is the relationship between the board development committee and either the director of development or even let’s? Consider a smaller shop that don’t even have a director development where it’s, the executive director. Sure. Well, let me start, actually, with the functions of the development committee, then it’s easier to understand. Taking taking over. All right now, i just think it’s a little. All right, well, okay. You know, i’ll say that it’s in a way the staff leads from behind. So they’re the ones who are the professionals who are thinking of, in a sophisticated way about where the organization could go for fund-raising collecting the information on what’s effective and but what they’re doing is they’re guiding the board leadership into howto have the conversation about fund-raising and supporting their fellow board members, kind of from behind, right? Okay, so so they they may in fact be either masterminding or thinking in conjunction with the head of the development committee or the board chair how we’re going to move this group, but they’re they’re letting the board voices lead the conversation around the table instead of it being their voices thie other thing is there plenty of tools that board members need? They need elevator speeches. They need talking points. They need help thinking out cultivation events to bring their friends in aa lot of different activities and events that are going to need the support of staff, the most valuable thing the boardmember brings is the ability to get someone to respond to their phone call or their appeal. Excellent. Ok, i just wanted to lay out, yeah, i didn’t want to get into detail, okay, don’t upset you, okay, we’re gonna go because right after this break was going to take right now, we’re definitely going to get into what does this committee do? Great. And then we can talk more in detail about the the staff functions to support that in detail. Sure, i just want to lay out the general landscape relationship. Thank you very much for indulging me. All right, we’ll go out for a couple minutes. When you come back, greg and i are going to keep talking about your critical development committee. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. I think. Cubine this’s, the cook said about wear hosting part of my french new york city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia. From paris to keep back. French is a common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it common desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their story, join us, part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Greg let’s, let’s, move right into this. Now, what does this important development committee do? Right? So i said, it’s, the little wheel that turns the big wheel aboard fund-raising so what are the functions of that cock? First thing is, it helps the board have a conversation about what are its goals for fund-raising as a subset of the goals of the overall organization, sometimes an organization says, okay, we want to raise fifty thousand dollars from individual donations this year through a combination of our event staff driven fund-raising inboard fund-raising and that goal sits there. However, the the board itself doesn’t have its own thermometer for its own activities, and commonly there’ll be a board meeting and every will say, you know, we have the big anniversary gala coming up. I know everybody’s going to go out and sell tickets and sponsorships, right? And everybody agrees at that moment, there’s a good feeling in the room, and then they go back to their regular lives and expect, as in the past executive director and the board chair going to pull the rabbit out of the hat so what we want to do is set goals for the board specifics, both for events and overall so of that fifty thousand what’s our board promised to the organization that we’re going to do let’s say we’re going to twenty thousand of it minimum, and we’re going to have a stretch goal a thirty five toward the fifty that way, the exact director knows one they can write that number into the budget and actually spend on it rather than live in suspense until the end of the year to see are the boardmember is actually able to come through and two, it gives a rallying point throughout the year for that board development committee toe work with the other boardmember sze to say, hey, we’re up to fifteen, you know, with this spring reception, we could get toward twenty five of our goal who you thinking of bringing and how much do you think they’d be able to do? So, you know, they say what gets measured gets done and setting goals for board specific fund-raising and having knows that gold monitored, but and supported by members of the board itself is a strong way to actually tow actualize those girls. What happens if the development committee brings these goals to the larger board and there isn’t support for them, so it has to be consensus, right? You can’t the ah, one of the most important characteristics of non-profit is it’s, not a command and control culture, it’s by consensus and, of course, what’s. Most important is that you bring in the board members who have the most ability in terms of your financial goals. But if you have a board with varied economic impact in a diverse board, then you also want goals that have to do with capacity. How many new people worry bringing into the organization? How many new donors without regard to the size of their gifts, how many people are we asking and those air goals that every boardmember can embrace without regard to? Hey, i don’t know anyone of high net worth and your point earlier was that these this is peer-to-peer so its board members in the development committee bringing these goals eggs, activities exactly to their fellow board members versus the staff, and it voids the awkwardness of saying, hey, reach a bigger goal that goes for my salary. Right, you can see where that might not be a most comfortable conversation foran executive director not to set a goal, but to exhort boardmember is that’s kind of hard when it when it’s partly your livelihood that’s at stake, so that’s goal setting the second thing is i mentioned is monitoring toward the goals. The third thing is supporting board members, so checking in and saying, how’s it going? What are you hearing when you’re out talking with your friends about the work or your colleagues at work? Are there additional tools that you need? What kind of events would help you bring in the folks that you think might be most interested in your circle in our work? So they’re they’re getting the chance to ask the board members how’s this process going rather than again? Exhorting people have him leave the room and be on their own teo to meet their individual fund-raising goals there’s the idea that they’re backing them up, and in fact, we advocate a buddy system where each member the development committee takes a few people on the board if you have a board that’s large enough who are not on the development. Committee and works with them over the course of the year in partnership to help them reach their goals. All right, we’re gonna have some more time talking about the buddy system of that. Because it’s ah, it brings back to my boy scout data on ah, we had troops whims. You have a swim in the water front now on the waterfront of been inspected. That’s a part of the truth from you had a buddy system and everybody had to be near their buddy swimming. And these are body checks. So we’re going aboard united now checks and hopefully they’re not drowning in the water. The board members, they’re i’ve taken that foreign so away. Other things that the committee does but let’s sze check in which this support role is this, i guess it’s not on ly at board meetings, but but we can be particularly between the time right took in board meetings is when we’re together. We have ah good feeling of working as a group and being aligned. The hard part is when we go back to the rest of our lives, family and work and our board responsibilities tend to fade in the face of the immediacy of those other things having development committee people checking in with board members in those periods between board meetings is a way to keep that present in their lives. All right, so that’s the monitoring and support role that’s that’s, right of the committee that’s right and listening, you know, there’s such a key thing in all fund-raising but hearing how’s it going for this difficulty thing of asking for money and and and finding out what’s, easy, what’s, hard, and and also because each development committee person is talking to a few people, they start to see what the commonalities are, you know, something’s missing from our pitch, i’m hearing that from several people. What about dealing with the recalcitrant board members so kind of in a version of everybody bring in stories, but sure, if you want to tell me so in a version of the buddy system, one one great system is to take boardmember sze who are experienced and confident and match them up, whether they’re on the development committee or not matched them up with newer boardmember czar or board members who are more reluctant to ask and have them go. Out together, for instance, on and ask so that the lesser experienced person had has a chance to see how it’s done and participate first. So great great example a peer-to-peer support there thie other area that often happens is chaillou i think i’d liketo have host a house party to get some of my friends, but i’m not sure enough people will turn up, and i wouldn’t want the embarrassment of having an empty room. Well, is there another boardmember thatyou could pair up and co host together, for instance? Excellent. Okay, and we’re going to talk about the recruiting, but but just it’s coming to my now the ah fund-raising expectations e-giving of board members at the recruitment stage can we just can we talk about that confession? How explicit should we be? Should it be in writing? Not in writing? How do we have this conversation about fund-raising expectations at recruitment? Great questions so that that’s really the next evolution of board fund-raising goal setting, which is ok overall, is aboard. We’re going to set some goals and then the next step is to say, what does each person think over the course of the year, they khun do toward those various goals. Can they host an event? Will they show up at other events? How many new people do they think they can bring into the fold? How many people do they think they can ask for money and at what levels? And, of course, for their own giving what? What between events and an annual gift? Do they think they’ll give and that’s important? Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road and being able to match the aspirations of a goal with what’s actually likely toe happen over the course of the year, and it let’s board members reflect on what they can, what there actually able to do? Dahna what’s easy and then what becomes a stretch? And if you add up, if you get people to write down on ah pledged pledge form pledge is probably the wrong word, but a projection form of what they can do, and you add that up, you see two people’s own projections of what they do get anywhere close to what we’re projecting as a goal overall, and if it’s too far apart than either you have to lower your goal or ask people. To redouble their efforts. All right, but still sticking with the recruitment stage. Yes, we putting all this, these expectations in writing for the boardmember the the potential boardmember boardmember including yeah, ideally, yes, because particularly if you’re trying to recruit people who are experienced and fund-raising the more organized and clear you are about what’s expected the more comfort that they’re going to feel in joining your board. You know, they say you want something done, ask a busy person. Yes, the worst thing you could do is say you’re so great and experienced wolf will find lots of roles for you. I think busy people run from vagueness. If you say we are looking to recruit five sponsors from fortune five hundred companies, you work for such a company and you have a network. It is our hope that you will help us, particularly the sponsorship area. Then the person can evaluate. Can i step into that role? And can i meet those expectations or not? Versus so often we recruits on because we have unspoken sense of what their connections will bring spoken and and then it turns out either the person’s already committed those connections to another cause or they’re not a confident fundraiser and the last thing they’re going to do is turn around, use their business relationships for the charity. Okay, okay. Let’s, let’s. Go back, tio the functions of the of the development committee beyond the goal setting and monitoring. And so there’s ah, one really critical one, which is to celebrate success. And that doesn’t mean just when the check arrives. But when that person who was a recalcitrant, ask her, ask their first person whether they get a yes or a no, we want to say, i want to acknowledge tony for stepping forward and actually sending out that appeal that we might then want to be the step pick somebody else. Okay, okay. I don’t want the recalcitrant. Okay. Ah, so we’re doing this in public at the board meeting at the board neo-sage celebration is the best way tio provide positive feedback for somebody’s step so that’s another aspect of that pure culture, which is we all have an equivalency of effort. And when we when we step forward to do that and show her on the bus ah, the rest of us acknowledge it and celebrated and in all forms you notice? I wasn’t talking about the amount of money i’m really talking about nufer fund-raising activities, right? And what other one of their activities should we be should be celebrating the first ask the first ask turning out ah, above and beyond kind of number of people to an event taking a leadership role by hosting an event or at the event itself, doing a great job with follow-up and saying thank you to donors on behalf of the organization and the board there’s so many activities that don’t involve asking that any boardmember can undertake, and then we want to say, great job, you know, both to reward that person and also to give the message to the other people around the table, you have the chance to step in the limelight as well. That’s cool the celebration. I haven’t heard that you mentioned the board members thanking i love that. I have heard that suggestion that at a board meeting or a special event, i’m a special evening, a bunch of board members around a table, and they’re just thanking donors for having made recent gift so i love a one to one thank so encouraging board members to make a phone call, maybe to someone that they haven’t met, you don’t know me. My name is greg on the border cause effective and, ah, i’m calling to thank you for your support and ah, and then you wantto what’s that person thinking there’s an ask buried here and then you have the boardmember say, i just have one question for you, and they think here’s, where the shoe drops, why did you choose to support our cause? And then they’re going to hear a bunch of extraordinary reasons that come from the heart of that donor it’s reinforcing to the boardmember oh, you know, we’re not out there with our tin cup. People are giving because of a connection to our mission and when’s the last time you got a thank you call from a board member of a charity you donate to never happens. So even the smallest organization that’s their comparative advantage against channel thirteen. Yes, they can thank every single one of their donors personally, right? Logistically, do you like to do those where? It’s a bunch of board members in a room together, and they’re they’re encouraging each other? They’re making individual falls or you rather have people do it from their home or their office depends on the size of the charity, you know, university’s love those call a thon. Alumni call it on things. Thank you. Call. Thank you. Write well for whatever i think it’s hard enough to get a board together for its general deliberations so i wouldn’t complicate matters. Ah, and let people also let people make those calls on their own schedule. So you’re giving them a list of dahna people little information about them? Ah, script that’s one of the forms of support staff can provide so that until someone gets their sea legs in these calls, they know what to say after a few it’s going to go easy and yeah, and you’re gonna hear terrific, heartwarming stories about why this is it right? So that, yes, your point that reinforces for the boardmember there are people all of us and it says now now now there is a step toward their getting confidence to be askanase themselves. Excellent that’s a great one. Okay, this celebration and the thank you’s. What else is there more this committee can be doing to turn the bigger wheel. Well, do you want to touch on recruitment? Not yet. It felt more that the committee khun do other functions. Those air, those air, the main function. Okay, can we talk about staff support? I have time to go short. The agenda with you. You’re you’re the board meeting with an agenda. I’d rather talk about a staff support for all these activities for yes. And then we’ll come to recruitment and mentoring. Right? Our buddy staff support. So ah, this could be the executive director without who doesn’t have a director of development supporting this a ll this committee work that’s correct. It’s always the exact director who has some involvement. Even with the development director. Just the way you observed the board can’t relax when they hyre their first development director. To manage all this. The staff can’t relax just because the board’s formed the development committee and there’s a good, vital conversation about board fund-raising taking place. They’ve got to be providing those tools. And that support because boardmember don’t have the time toe manage the infrastructure of fundrasing that’s still falls to the staff, including very importantly, if this is working, having a system for tracking all the contacts, all the people and the contacts that are made with those folks over time. So there’s a good record of the relationship that’s important staff function yes entering into r r fund-raising database are exactly our cr m database that’s, right? The contacts that are made calls that i made the right back we get, and then something very basic when so in response to a board appeal, so let the boardmember know that it happened so that they can say thank you and avoid the embarrassment of running into the person who is waiting to be thanked and the boardmember doesn’t realize the person made a gift, right? So keeping the board members up to date on what’s happening in terms of their contacts and overall for that monitoring function is really critical. All right, so the running of these reports, right for right? For the for the board, right? And it’s it’s, partly the staff celebrating with the board to say, hey, your donor came back this year with an even bigger gift when you give me a call and say thanks that’s. Great, yes called. All right, um, i have to talk. Ah, i’d like to talk about ah, an organization sponsors non-profit radio generosity siri’s and i don’t know do doo ahh and your strategic use of events, teo do runs and walks ever ever figure in so some of our groups do do walks, we don’t get involved in any of the you’re not planning on you know, but but we’ll ask the question, you know, do you have a broad enough constituency base to have confidence that you’ll recruit enough people to make a walk or run successful? You know, you need zack, i need a word pretty well established network, and you need people who are willing to be the cheerleaders to bring people together in that, for instance, for organizations that can’t generate hundreds of unity’s hundreds. If you’re gonna have your own stand alone event for organization that can’t do that generosity, siri’s generosity, siri’s dot com their sponsor and they host multi charity five k runs and walks i am seed one of theirs last november, little chilly day. But it’s still great fun. There were about a dozen charities they had about no two hundred or so to fifty runners. Among these dozen charities, one hundred thirty, one hundred forty thousand dollars was raised, and it was great fun. And none of the charities could generate enough support. Enough participants on their own. But collectively through generosity siri’s they had this great event and generosity. Siri’s does all the all the back end work of licensing. We were in what’s the huge park in brooklyn that take part. We’re provoc piece of problem back park. They got the licence to get the port a johns to get the amplification and the big start the starting gate way in the finished gateway. And, um, it’s all done. Very smart, great. And its collective that’s. Quite if you would like tio. See if it makes sense for you to be a charity partner of generosity. Siri’s do what i do. You know, i like to talk to people. Pick up the phone. Devlin is the ceo and he’s at seven. One eight five o six. Nine, triple seven if you prefer generosity siri’s dot com a l s i’m keeping this video on the top of my sight tony martignetti dot com for a third week because i want people to get off a less is back let’s give them a chance to see how they’re going to manage this enormous growth. And next week we’re going to hear directly from the ceo and president of l s she’s going to be my guest. Barbara newhouse, we’ll hear first hand how they plan to manage this enormous spike in donors and dollars. The show next week is going to be a google plus hang out on air. We’re doing it from the chronicle of philanthropy offices in washington that’s where l s is that’s where the chronicle it obviously and that’s where i’ll be, because i’d like to be face to face with with barbara new house so you will join the google plus hang out on air at tony martignetti dot com that’s the place to view. We are definitely taking questions for barbara throughout the hour if you know how hang out on air works, you just type in your questions if you don’t, we’ll explain at the beginning, so very exciting show. Next week and very different format you come here to, well, not don’t come here, come to tony martignetti dot com and that’s, where you’ll watch the hang out on air with a less is president and ceo barbara newhouse, and that is tony take two for friday, twenty sixth of september thirty eighth show of this year thank you, greg, for indulging me little pleasure. Um, let’s, let’s, talk about let’s continue the staff support training. I’m glad you brought it up. Of course that’s one of krauz defectives great loves as something we provide, which is so few people come to a board with either fund-raising experience or a positive fund-raising experience, right? We’re lucky if we can recruit someone who’s been a great fundraiser for their alumni association or another non-profit but most often we’re recruiting people who are willing and interested, but i haven’t had the chance to fund-raising a systematic way before and of course, like everything else that we need to master in our lives, we need some training and information so staff arranging for training to make boardmember more confident is a great idea and cause effective could be the real happy that makes you happy to be a provider of such training latto onboarding persuasive years of experience, i could see you moving and motivating boardmember toe task that they’re not comfortable with at the beginning of your of your so i’d say it’s a little bit like arthur murray’s dance studio, we paint the steps on the floor, we get people toe awkwardly, try those steps and it gets more and more fluid until they discover you know what? I really like this so let’s, move them. Tio recruiting yes, talk some about recruiting to the development committee, so we have our board who were responding specifically for this committee, so i always take the extreme position not often embraced by every board. Every new member of the board should be placed on the development committee, plus one other committee. So i like to give the message right, it’s just a place to start. Absolutely because one people are at their highest point of enthusiasm, usually when they’re joining aboard two they don’t know better, right? If the culture of the board is a few people carry all the weight for fund-raising we don’t want them to sink to the lowest. Common denominator after going to a few meetings, so let’s grab them while they’re hot and put him on that development committee and then if you’re organized enough maybe to serve on one other committee as well, so that would be my preferred position. But i would say, of course, anyone who’s got prior experience ought to be recruited because they can help with the planning function and be creative about how the board can be fund-raising but really, what it really is a question of there’s someone have to desire to give it a try, and if you’re providing the tools and the training than anyone who’s willing ought to be added to that committee and bring in that new energy, can they also be mentors? Now they’re new board members? Can they be mentor? They’ve got what has the Numbers and actually 1 of the great ways to turn around the culture of a board that has gotten a little stagnant on fund-raising or has never stepped up is to bring in some fresh blood who are able to say when i did it over here, this is what worked and really help revitalize that culture i’ve even seen that work with some organizations that have young professional boards or junior boards where the enthusiasm of those young folks actually ah, crosses over and helps the established board embrace some goals with greater energy infecting them. They’re like their youthful energy that’s, right and vigor that’s right? Who do we look forward to lead our development committee? That’s a great question, so good question forty minutes, that’s a pretty good now they’re evolving right chair the development committee. You want someone who’s, a good cheerleader who relates well to other board members can communicate well, they don’t have to be the most generous giver on the board or necessarily the greatest getter. In fact, you probably don’t necessarily want the wealthiest person on your board to behead development committee because other people will look and say, well, they have the resource is of course they do. It seems effortless. You don’t identify with the right, right? So you want someone who’s really out there showing their commitment to the organization, but both by e-giving stretch gift themselves and out there asking widely in their circles durney ideally, that person would have prior experience, but it’s really the effort? They’re willing to put in that counts the most in their willingness to be a role model, because and this is true for all bored fund-raising if you’re not a giver yourself, it’s very hard to ask others to do something you’re not doing beyond that. I think it’s great to get experienced people for that mentoring and butting up, they can help with the training. They can help build the confidence. So you do want a cadre of people who are comfortable around the fund-raising conversation and who are well regarded by other board members so that they can induce them to join that conversation. Let’s, have a body check? Yes, the buddy system could we say more about how the development committee is mentoring and buddying with shirts? Are what’s the idea that you’re providing focus on fund-raising gear around and you have somebody on the development committee who really comes to understand what’s going on in the mind of their fellow boardmember who their networks are can be a thought partner and how to reach them. I can understand where their fears or inhibitions are and helped develop ways of overcoming them also hears what do you need to be successful? Would you like practice in making the elevator speech? Would you like to be paired with someone who’s going out, making an athlete, see how it works? Do you want a staff person to join you? And you’re asking because you’re not confident that you could answer detailed question about the organization’s program so that someone who can check in and ah, that the boardmember can reveal themselves to without exposing the fact that they might feel like to write about a topic and facing the professional staff, that might be an important aspect. We have just a minute left, okay, i really would like to hear what it is that you love about the work that you’re doing with boards. Well, you know, we say that boards are the most important volunteers of any organization, so we work with so many fantastic organizations and missions and boards are the place where you see people who, despite busy lives, step forward to make these organizations successful, make incredible sacrifices are incredibly generous with their time and expertise. So it’s fantastic to be in a room with people who are thes chief cheerleaders as volunteers around the widest range of causes it’s very noble calling great going senior associate at cause effective on twitter, they are at cause effective, and greg on twitter is greg causevox greg cause you want to follow him. Greg, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks so much. Now the interview that i did at ntcdinosaur profit technology conference on ah, creative commons one o one with carly leinheiser welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference and t c twenty fourteen we’re at the marriott wardman park hotel in washington, d c with me is carly leinheiser she’s, an associate at perlman and pearlman that’s, a law firm in new york city. And her workshop topic is share use remix an introduction to creative commons. Carly welcome. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Thanks, it’s. Great to be here. Thanks. And thank you for taking time on a pretty busy conference day. What is creative commons that i think a lot of people have heard of and not so familiar with? Sure. So creative commons is itself a non-profit they were founded in two thousand won with a mission of making the basically making content. On the internet accessible, so they developed a suite of licenses, which are basic copyright licenses that allow creators, artists, authors to distribute work under one of these licenses, and that signals to anyone who might find their work that it’s freely available for use subject to certain different restrictions. So this is quite a service, really it’s a certain unorganised ation serving non-profits and making content available, right? I mean, they’re serving not only non-profits but sort of ah, the larger idea of basically the commons there, they’re making a easier to put more works into not exactly the public domain because they’re still under copyright but making more works freely available for anyone to use. So the idea is that right now, the way copyright works is any time that somebody creates a work it’s automatically subject to copyright, you don’t have to register it. You don’t have to put a notice on it if you’ve created a work it’s copyrighted on dso that’s what is known as the all rights reserved model and that’s what happens automatically so if you are an artist and you get benefit from distributing your photos online and having other people take them and incorporate them into their works. It’s hard to do that because somebody would have to seek you out and get individual written permission from you in order to do that. Otherwise they’d be infringing your copyrights. But most people’s experiences it’s incredibly easy to find content online that you can just, you know, screen. Grab our download and creative commons brings the law in line with that experience that it’s fine it’s easy to find content online, it’s easy to incorporate it into new works. And so by with using these licenses, it makes it easy for people to know they have permission from the artist to do that. Do we need to know a little bit the basics of intellectual property law before we go to into too much detail? Well, i think that that sort of covers it so i could say copyright well, i could talk a little bit about it. Copyright is ah, is basically a bundle of rights that anybody who creates a creative work gets in their in their work. So you have a set of exclusive rights that you’re the only one that you khun the only one who can exercise those rights with respect to your work and um and then you can also assigned those rights or licenses rights out to other people. So you have the right to use the work to distribute it, to make copies, to make derivative works or a new work based on the original work, so that something like a translation or collage would be a derivative work and to license that out to other people. So what you’re doing with the creative commons licenses, you have your bundle of rights and you’re saying anybody can use my work. Anyone has access to my work. Andi anyone can exercise those same rights as long as with all creative commons licenses, you have to give attribution or credit s o you link back to the original work and then there’s certain other restrictions that are in some of the different licenses. Okay, on dh. Some of those different restrictions is get a little too technical. Know that’s that’s, sort of the heart of creative commons there’s. Six basic licenses. So all of them, including attribution requirements. So say i post a photo online and i license it under a creative commons attribution. License that means anybody who came across my photograph could take it, download it, use it, put it into a new work. All they have to do is give me attribution. So that means maybe linking back to my web page just putting my name on it. And i i would normally specify how i want to be attributed. So some of the other restrictions are share alike. Which means that i would license my photo under a creative commons attribution share alike license meaning anyone could take my photo, download it, use it, make a new work with it. But if they did that and distributed that new york new work, they’d have to release it under the same license. On this is a concept called the copy left and the ideas that i’ve created a work that someone else is used. And then now their work is also in the commons for anyone to use s o, for example, wikipedia’s content is licensed under c c it’s, cc by essays are creative commons attribution share alike license so anyone can use the content on wikipedia and incorporated into a new work. But then they have to also license it in the same way, so grows the body of work. Exactly. They’re two other restrictions. One is no derivatives, meaning you can download my work. You can share it or distribute it, but you can’t change it in any way, so i’m not allowed to make a new work based on it. So you’ll see this sometimes with some sort of reports that in the case of non-profits, maybe report that you’ve published on a particular policy issue, and you want that shared as widely as possible. But you don’t want people sort of taking accepts. Reinardy. Or, you know, photos, or maybe personal histories, things that, like you want shared sort of intact on dh. The last restriction is a noncommercial restriction, so that means anybody could use the work as long as what they do with it is for a non commercial purposes. Ok, thank you, little detail. But details, i think, are interesting. I think they are. You think they are. I think they are all right. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. I’m christine cronin, president of n y charities dot orc. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. How do we how doesn’t know provoc about using creative commons? What do we need to do right xero assumes we create something. I understand we have a bundle of automatic rights, but we’re talking about now making it available under creative commons license. Sure. So if you want teo well, i guess i’ll start with how do you find works that you could better license? Okay? Because they think that’s a lot more people have experienced with searching on flicker, for example. So if you’re looking for save photographs to put on your website or incorporate into a brochure and you want to find a photo that’s, all you have to do is give attribution to the person who made it. You can go on. Flicker flicker has a search feature and also the creative commons website itself has a search feature where you can go in and specify what you want to do with the work, whether it’s going to be for commercial or non commercial purposes. O r all you want, you want the least restrictive license and you put in your search terms and it pops up. So when i was putting together my talk, i wanted to find pictures of cute cats because that’s, what people like to look at on a saturday morning esso i search for cute cats license under creative commons license and found a whole bunch as far as really seeing your work under creative commons license if you’re distributing it online, creative comments has a licensed chooser on their website, so you don’t even have to really know the technical restrictions you go in and you say, i want people to give me attribution. I want to allow derivative works or not if i allowed derivative works, i want them to be released center share, like license or not, and i’m ok or not with the commercial uses, and then creative commons tells you which license you’ve picked on degenerates thiss html code that you can embed on your site, which then makes your work searchable by license. Okay, you become part of the search results and and it generates a little button you can put on the work, so you’ll see in a lot of like footers of websites thiss you know this pages published under creative commons license in which one? Okay, now the search function sounds pretty. Easy finding finding going back to finding content. Pretty simple. Yeah, it’s really simple the the only risk is you want to make sure that that thing’s air correctly tagged so but it is really pretty intuitive and you khun search you can search flicker you khun search through google images i think that there are more and more search engines that are supporting a search by license, so it is really easy to use and in terms of releasing your own content, any restrictions on what that content is? Well, i mean, it’s basically anything that’s subject to copyright so you wouldn’t you use a creative commons license with se your trademark or something that was protected by patent law, not copyright law. It also doesn’t deal with model writes in photographs, so if you have a photograph that includes an image of a person, creative commons doesn’t really deal with that person’s right of publicity or protections that they get for being in the photograph. So there was actually a litigation over this issue where a company used a photograph that included an image of a person, and the photographer had released the image under creative commons license. But never secured the model rights s o the person in the image sued the company and ask them to stop using it. Okay, are there other other cases that air don’t necessarily mean litigation case? Maybe client examples? You know that air that interesting, that and somewhat, you know, instructive. Yeah, so, no, i don’t have any specific client examples. They do have some examples i found in researching for my talk. One of my favorites actually is the brooklyn museum, which is i live in brooklyn, so i have a lot of pride for the brooklyn museum. They do really interesting things with their they’ve done two very interesting things. One is that a lot of their collection, they made their collection searchable by license. So much of their collection is very old and in the public domain, so you can now search their collection online and see what’s in the public domain and use those images if you want, and i actually incorporated a few of their images into my presentation and where stuffs not out of copyright but they on the right, innit? They’ve released it under creative commons license so you can use some of the works in their collection, another interesting thing that they did was in connection with the show they did a few years ago, go called who shot rock n roll, which was a series of portrait it’s and photographs relating to rock n roll. They did a remix contest, so they had chris stein and believes his name from blondie put together a bunch of tracks that he released under a creative commons license. And then anybody could download those tracks, remix them, upload them and those tracks would again be really center creative commons license. And they picked a winner, and they’re all available on their website. Um, it’s really interesting. So it was this great way to engage with their community and sort of further their mission of, like, getting culture out to the public on really engaged people while completely avoiding the issue of having to get signed releases and have people wave their their rights or sign rights toe in their tracks that they made to the brooklyn museum. They were just available to use, which i think is a really interesting example of what you could do. So photo contest anything like that video as well, video yeah, absolutely. I think on a new tube, isn’t there? Ah, little pull down window, whether you want to use a have a standard creative commons license to your video yeah, i wouldn’t be surprised i’m not positive, but i think that sounds right. Ok, i think they have a three or maybe four licensing options, and one of them, i think, is standard creative commons license. Yeah, and actually, when i was uploading my slides, teo the ntc, they asked whether i wanted to release my slides under creative commons license or not, so they’re they’re on top of it. Excellent. Well, you know, i don’t know what teo asked specifically, but what more do you want to share that we haven’t talked about? Let’s see, i think i mean, one of the things that i think is most interesting for me is they think a lot of non-profits have have sort of limited experience using creative commons in looking for photos and things like that on flicker, but i think that there are a lot of great examples of non-profits really saying they’re content under creative commons license, so not only so the brooklyn museum is a good one, but and wikipedia is another one. There’s, another organization called teach aids that creative commons features it’s a case study on their site. They big, they make sort of educational health materials that are really sandorkraut of commons license so anybody can download materials from their sight, redistribute them on, and i think for non-profits that have any kind of educational mission thie idea that you could create these materials and then just release them out into the world and they would be freely shared and no one had to worry about, like, violating your copyright if they wanted to download a report or, you know, i know your rights pamphlet or health materials, those kind of things i think are really great uses for creative commons, particularly for non-profits that have a mission based on education, where you’re not worried about so much selling individual copies of your materials, but that the more you get the word out about your organization by distributing materials, you’ll get your name out donordigital here about you, and you don’t have to worry about the transaction costs of negotiating, you know? Oh, okay, that person could buy a copy to do this or that. So i think it’s one of the more interesting things, all right, i hope listeners will pay attention to a creative commons both in terms of their own you’re your own work and and searching for others as well. Sounds like it, sze i’ve learned a lot more about the community then thin. I knew. Thank you very much, carly. Yeah. Thank you for the pleasure. Carly leinheiser is associate perlman and roman. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fourteen. Thanks so much for being with us. My thanks to everybody at the non-profit technology network and ten next week. Barbara newhouse ellis is president and ceo for the hour joined the hangout on air at tony martignetti dot com regular time one p m eastern. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com it’s, the store it’s, the center of universe you’re seeing this so all things emanate from there generosity siri’s and their charity support team that helps you in your fund-raising think about them for multi charity five k runs and walks generosity siri’s dot com seven one eight, five or six. Nine, triple seven our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. Shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. I didn’t even think that shooting the ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. E-giving dahna cubine come. 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A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking. Hyre