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Nonprofit Radio for October 11, 2019: Recruiting Your Board Members

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My Guest:

Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi: Recruiting Your Board Members
Gene Takagi returns with 12 tips, ideas and strategies you can use in board recruitment. We’re talking expectations, motivations, commitment, requirements, and more. He’s our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit and Exempt Organizations Law Group.

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of wheel if I if you irritated me with the idea that you missed today’s show recruiting your board members. Jean Takagi returns with 12 tips, ideas and strategies you can use. Inboard recruitment will get those many of them as we can. We’re talking expectations, motivations, commitment, requirements and Maur. He’s our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and Exempt Organizations Law Group on 20 steak, too. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. Responsive by Wagner, C. P A. Is guiding you beyond the numbers. Witness cps dot com But Cougar Mountain Software, Denali, fundez They’re complete accounting solution made for non-profits Tony dahna may slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. And as I’m reading, I realize that the embarrassment of wheel we had that last week. So again, as I’ve said, uh, I’m in desperate need of an intern. So I have someone to blame for these mistakes. So so sorry we didn’t get ah updated sickness for you this week. Uh, no one to blame but myself, which is the problem. That’s why I need interns. Um, let’s let’s bring on Jean. I feel, uh, we’ll rescue everything for us. You know who he is? He’s the managing attorney of Neo non-profit Exempt Organizations Law Group in San Francisco. He edits the wildly popular non-profit Law block dot com. And in 2016 he was the American Bar Association’s outstanding non-profit lawyer. He’s at G. Tak Jean, help me out here, please. How are you? I’m doing great. How are you? Very well. You sound strong and powerful. And Vural and enthusiastic. I love it. Thank you. I need that. I need that after my real mistake. Um, So you, uh you have Ah, pretty lengthy. Uh, interesting block post that we’re gonna turn over a little bit, but you know, it’s you. You wrote something for individuals who are contemplating boardmember ship, but we’re gonna turn the tables on it on talk about non-profits or contemplating recruiting board members. And what? What advice you’ve got in that in that regard? Does that sound right? Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. Go. You’ve, uh you’ve been working with boards and board members for how many decades now? Um, a couple decades. Yeah. Yeah. So you know what you’re talking about. You You’re on your ANA least one board that I know of. Are you on more than one board currently on a couple boards and a few committees that are non board committees, but staying pretty active. Yeah. No, I know. I’m tryingto I just wanna, uh, establish the bona fide. He’s I mean, you’re not just not just a theory for you. You’re actually practicing it and keeping, ah, keeping real boards feet to the fire. Right. You’re not just not in a vacuum. This is real life for you. So yeah, both both the legal adviser to some boards and then sitting in the fire as the boardmember. I’m not sure I’d want to be on a board that you are a boardmember of you. Would you hold this will? You would hold us to high standards. I I certainly aspire to high standards. I don’t know if I achieve them often or ever, but I aspired to them. So I guess, Yeah, you we wouldn’t clash or anything if you were on the same board. I would I would respect you. I just would be annoyed that you’re always telling us that, you know, we’re not We’re not reaching the right standards of governance or you’re failing your failing the the the requirements of of the duties, the three duties. And and you’re not fulfilling your responsibilities as board members. I would, you know, I would respect you. Um, and I would I would aspire to do better in your words. I would. I would. Yeah. Totally trying not to be that type of boardmember. Well, but you’d be hard. You know, we all know those boardmember. Yeah, but will be hard for you to turn it off. I mean, you know, you’re you’re a fiduciary to the organization. You have. You know, it would be hard for you to turn it off. I could tell it would. All right. Um, So let’s see. So we’re starting with, you know, starting with some of the basics. Um, you want you want to make sure that people understand what? What they’re taking on what responsibilities The three duties, which you’re, um, loyalty, care and obedience. Um, you want to make sure that board members understand what they’re walking into? Yeah. I mean, that’s absolute basics because, you know, everybody could say, you know, I like to be on the board. I’m really passionate about the mission, and that’s a great starting point, but I know that that’s not gonna get very far if you’re not willing to do the rest of the work that’s involved. So just having an understanding of what your legal obligations are, first of all, is probably a good first place to start and for the non-profit, because you flipped it nufer the non-profit. When they start to recruit boardmember, they want to make sure that the board members kind of understand not only what the organization wants out of them, but what the law demands of them. And and they should have offensive. Actually, what could happen if they don’t settle the obligations and that maybe the boardmember from hell that nobody wants the ones who could tell the well in the worst case scenarios, which I sometimes see. This is what can happen it in, like the worst case scenario as you might imagine, might be personal liability of boardmember. Go out of pocket for something that happened with the organization on their watch, because perhaps gross negligence or something more serious than that, or just terrible PR damage where boardmember Zehr individually attacked by media and social media for some failure of the organization. I think from the headline in many news stories over the December and the beginning of the fall, we’ve seen some high profile non-profits where they have been called out for. You know, donors are for activities have engaged in, and so boardmember Zehr often held, you know, to thio how they’re living up to their authority on the responsibilities by the media and social media and maybe buy you a time dummy. Maybe that’s right. Non-profit radio also aspires to a very high standard. The show achieves the high standards. It’s me personally. It’s me personally. That’s ah, that’s rare for way. Just have about two minutes before before our first breaking. You make the point that there should be in place. My ability insurance directors and officers liability insurance. Well, that would be one of the things that I would look for as a perspective boardmember coming on to a board. So I would think that a non-profit that aspires to try to get high quality people on their board who are really interested in doing the work protection, huh? Just in case personal liability doesn’t become an issue. Directors and officers, insurance is kind of what protects against that. So that would be a mosque on my list. Do your do your boards that you sit on, let you get involved with recruitment. Yeah, I’m Max. Absolutely. Part of the one of the committee that that’s in charge of recruitment for one of the board. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. So that I shouldn’t say like, let you go. I mean it. That way, they take advantage of your expertise. That’s what I should say. Buy-in recruiting new boardmember. Yeah, because it is essential. You know, the people want to have to know what they’re getting into. And, of course, like you said, it has to go a lot lot further than just passion. Um, we have about a minute or so. What? You you knew, name something. What would you feel like bringing up for a minute? And then we could talk about it more after the break through? Sure, I guess, is a nonprofit organization I would want to know. Why does this individual? So I’m thinking about inviting onto the board. Want Do they want to be a board member of our organization? And I know everybody I talk to you is gonna say what we have a passion for the organization of the organization’s mission. But I would want to know what else. Why else do you want to serve? Sometimes those reasons could be all about, you know, uh, very altruistic. And you know what? Emotionally helping the people about our organization helps what that means to them and the social impact they want to create. But sometimes there are self interested reasons as well. And sometimes that’s okay to do it for personal reasons. And maybe we’ll get into that. Tony, would you have any personal reasons for wanting to serve on the board? Could you see some benefit that comes to you personally out of it? Oh, sure. Um, hold that thought. I’m not trying to get out of answering. Let me take this break, and, uh, and I will answer in about 30 seconds. Um, this break is for regular CPS. Are you thinking about a change possibility? Possibly in your c p. A relationship. Maybe your board is talking about boardmember boardings rumbling that they’ve had the same accounting firm for a long time. Or maybe they’re not quite up thio up to par for some reason, um, whatever the reasons, maybe you’re feeling, ah, growing need to get some accounting help. You know, a partner. You know, partner Wagner. You know, ye duitz doom. Weinger CPS has been a guest multiple times. Talk to him, see if they can help you get started at wagner cps dot com. Now, let’s go back to recruiting your board members. Um, okay, Gene. So, yes, Uh, I didn’t I didn’t call you out for asking me a question, which is generally prohibited, but that’s okay. Uh, so, yeah, I mean, I’ve ah, personal networking. I mean, if we’re getting to the base level, maybe there’s some people on the board who, you know, I’d like to I’d like to get to know, or maybe I know them and were friendly, and I feel like we would work very well together, Although that could be that could be a bit of a red flag for the non-profit. If if I’m gonna be like a voting bloc with my friend or two that, you know, that could be difficult, depending on what those one or two people are like. Um, but, yeah, of course. Networking business advantage. Um, maybe I’m on another board. And there’s some synergy put potentially between the organization’s, um so there’s a couple of non mission related reasons. What do you hear? You hear any bad stuff? Well, I’ll just add on 15 were good things, and then I’ll talk about the best. Like sometimes people want to develop skills and maybe create job opportunities for themselves. They may start off a boardmember hoping that that might turn into something out with that organization or maybe a allied organization. Um, prestige is probably another, and there are some status boards of, like foundations and symphonies and operas or whatever. Organizations have particular status in a community of whatever communities that have might happen to be sometimes sitting on the board ads toe kind of the social status that somebody might have and power. Sometimes I know for identity based group community organizations, sometimes serving on the board on it. Being with such high like that that that person is able to exercise power in other areas as well. So those might be reasons summer okay for serving on the board of long, but that’s not there. Those were not their primary reasons, or they do not let that get in the way of acting in the best interest of the organization above all other things. But sometimes there are some bad things. And then so serving on the board to get into a contract with your company, that wouldn’t be such a cool thing, although we hear of that happening with several organizations that are in the news. Um, have you where Jean have? Have you ever heard anyone disclosed that what in the in the recruitment process that they want it? Not that I’d like to see. I’d like I’d like to see this organization doing some work with my with my company. I haven’t heard you haven’t heard of the organization I join, but there’s definitely been some implications that for some of the reasons that you discussed well voting blocs created within the board from business partners or business, then you know they’re using that block to take advantage and have the whole board or enough of the board to agree to certain contracts, um, that allow their companies to do business. So I didn’t want to point out to meeting, but I think it’s safe to point out one name of an organization because they’ve been in the news an awful lot under governance. And that’s the N R A, which is actually a bunch of different organizations. Ah, but the n r A. That sort of the main organization, uh, has been kind of under heat a little bit for the contract that their board members and they have a very large board. I think over 70 people the contract that their board members have engaged in with the organizations and whether that was on abuse of their duties or not. I will comment on whether I think it is or not. But there’s that perception of a non-profit boardmember being on a board that the proof contract would that boardmember company and when that occurs over and over again with multiple board members and it starts to look like the voting blocs are sort of a wash, you wash my hands. I’ll wash yours kind of kind of deal. And so you have to think about the perception, and not only just the limitations that Lami have on that. There’s certainly some legal issues that could arrive, but the public perception of that and being on the front page of The New York Times or The Washington Post or whatever. And you know, with that allegations, what will that do to the rest of your fund-raising and how the rest of the community thinks of your organization? So there are some really interesting things that could be bad as well in terms of bad personal reasons for serving on the board. Um, I’m going backwards now to something that you mentioned about potential social media embarrassment for you being on the board. Critics of the organization, I guess, is there some way that an organization can, um, insulate or or somehow protect or what can what? Can an organization offer to, uh, mollify someone’s concerns over possible personal embarrassment on the social networks? Yeah, you know, it’s a really tricky thing. There are some organizations that try, so you’ll see that some organizations are very open about putting on their organizational website. You know who is on the board of directors? Um, but some organizations feel that they want to keep that information a little bit more private, and they don’t put their board members on their website. The limitation to that is that your form 9 90 which is a public document. And that’s your annual information return that you submit to the I. R. S. Um, that’s easily available on a site like GuideStar Archer. And, um, that’s going to list all of your board members on it. So as much as you want insulate some board members, that’s not really the way the law thinks about what the law thinks about. You know, non-profit organizations, while while they’re not public organizations, they’re not governmental organizations. They are the type of private organization without ownership where the board are really acting in Stuart’s on behalf of the community, Um, and they want to make sure that those organizations are fairly transparent and what they’re doing, including who is leading the organization. So that’s why that information is required on the form 9 90 board members and officers so that everybody could see them. And what type of compensation they make for the organization if they’re paid. So is there not really much protection that an organization could offer someone against attack again on the social networks? I’m thinking of that because it’s it’s so public, and it could be potentially so embarrassing. There’s really If someone wants to call out a boardmember, there’s not really nothing. It’s not really something that the organization could do. Tow support, the murder? Well, yeah. I mean, other than Dino insurance, you know, the the organization could It’s the beer enough. Have their lawyer perhaps look a defamation claim. That’s a stretch. That’s that’s really serious. Okay, yeah. And the social networks are Ah, well, yeah. I mean, they’re they’re pretty much open. They are what they are. You have to go pretty far. You have to go pretty far to be, uh, someone have a reasonable claim against you for defamation, right? And in that environment, right. And you’re weighing in against the First Amendment rights of people to be able to express their opinions like a yelp review that’s really bad and says, Well, you know, this organization has done horrible things, and these are the board members who are responsible. Well, that’s probably protected straight. All right, opinion. It’s something. But it’s something for organizations that are potentially controversial. If they’re doing grassroots political organizing or really doesn’t even have, sometimes have to be. It doesn’t have to be political to be controversial s. So if your organization has a mission that’s high profile of any of any sort, um, you need to make sure you’re boardmember understand that there’s a potential for them to be, uh, called out good or bad. We’re thinking about what we were thinking more of the bad. That’s true, Tony, I. And I think now that I think about your question about is there anything that you can do to protect your boardmember? There is one protection for small organizations that they might offer is to not publicized or use a board members home address or even their business address as the organization’s address. And I know a lot of small grassroots organizations do that. They kind of just use a board members. Or maybe the founders home addresses their organizational address. Yes, well, once you’ve made that public information now, people could actually go to that home. They know where you live. So, um, not subjecting a boardmember tiu. That might be important. And that that address might be located on a public document that details either the organization’s address for the ancient for service of process address. So that’s the agent preservative processes. Basically who? Somebody would deliver a lawsuit, too. And you are required to make that publicas well. And oftentimes people put a boardmember they’re on, they put their home address so they make sure that they get the mail. That’s not very good for privacy concerns. So those are two things to think about. You could get a P o box for 100 bucks a year or something. And sometimes a P O box is not permissible. They require a street address, But then you can look too. There are a lot of virtual offices that will let you suri address, right? Right. Yes, exactly. That’s right. The male shops that used to be mailbox etcetera. Um, but that type of that type of store, they’ll give you a street address, but it’s a storefront. Yeah, OK, yeah. That’s right. For service of process P O. Box. Not allowed. Probably, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, you want to be looking for someone who is, Uh Ah. Good. Ah, good team. Team player works well with others. They’re gonna be serving on committees. And of course, we talked about expectations. You gonna tell them whether they’re gonna be on one or two committees? Maybe you could even tell them which committee or committees they’re going to serve on or ask them what their preferences are. But it’s committee work. It’s full board work. It’s working team wise with the C suite, sometimes with the staff, maybe with volunteers, somebody who’s gonna be collegial and team worthy, right? Yeah, I think you know, I wouldn’t understand an organization that wouldn’t want that characteristic of a boardmember. And it’s hard to tell, right? Some people are good about, you know, putting on a good public safe. So it’s the only time you’ve ever met this candidate is, uh, you know, a breakfast interview, and then you’re deciding whether to that that person should be on the board or not. That’s a tricky decision to make because they can say they’re collegial player and be really nice at the breakfast meeting. But do you know how, though act in aboard environment, then sometimes that’s going to be very different from that one on one meeting. So getting to know the person might include a little bit more diligent but informing them of, like Witek of requirements and responsibilities they’re gonna have for your organization if that’s committee work or that other work or expectation that they volunteered at events that times are work with some other volunteers or work with some staff on some committee, whatever kind of the organization does with its own board members, that’s the expectation. And that’s why they want t get Yu on the board. You know, they’ve got to make sure they’re expressing that to the boardmember in advance before they bring them on, because the boardmember. Is walking into something that they didn’t know about. That’s gonna be a potential mismatch and can create some harsh feelings. It’s not managed, right? Yeah, sure. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you? Didn’t you tell me up front that this was gonna be the thieves? Were the expectations on And of course, as long as we’re talking about expectations again, we want to be very clear about fund-raising expectations. How much are you required to personally give. How much do you do we look for you to get from from other sources? Do we look to you to host events in your home or in your business? Uh, do we look to you to bring the business community to us, etcetera? All those types of fund-raising requirements should be should be laid out. Yeah, it’s a it’s a It’s a great question to ask, because this is a little bit of a debatable topic, and I see both sides on it. Is that fund-raising requirement? Tony Some a little curious as to how you feel about it, too. I kind of feel like it’s great to ask that every board member give a meaningful amount for them. But I’m a little bit more leery of the board that says, You know, we have a $1000 a $25,000.100,000 dollar minimum that you contribute a year for the privilege of being a boardmember big sickening that’s now framing it as a donor relationship rather than a relationship in which the expectations are is that the boardmember is been a exercise proper oversight and helped direct the organization into the future um So while I think donations should be a requirement of some sort, I don’t think strict numbers are really a good idea, Particularly if diversity and inclusiveness is something that we want in our organizational board. Yeah, Yeah. I used to feel that a strict number was appropriate, but I’ve changed my mind over the years that it should be what it should be a meaningful gift for the individual. Now, there are marquee names with that we’ll never get away from. You know, we have $100,000 requirement here, but we’re talking to small and mid sized non-profits, not the New York City Ballet and Stanford University. Right. So But you know that that, uh, well, they’re the other, the other 5% we’re talking to the other 95 but they’re the five that they’re not in the 95. So, uh, so they’re they’re moving them aside as we do routinely. We don’t even mention the 1999% of time without even thinking of them. So for our listeners, yeah, uh, it should be a meaningful. I mean, it should be a stretch gift, you know, But then you have to have conversation with each individual boardmember. You know what that means for them? I think I think before they joined the board, I I agree, Tony. I think that’s a good thing. Thio raise ahead of time. So you don’t put people in awkward positions where their like again going. I had no idea. And this is deeply personal for me. And I’m going through hard times now. Yeah, yeah. Do you like to see these expectations in writing? I kind of liked have, um, some of this in writing as part of the board orientation package so that both parties know kind of what, What he expected. Questions are going to be. So, uh, both, you know, in the board orientation package that I’m thinking of is going to be shared, even with part of it will be shared with a prospect before their actual provided onto the board. Okay, some of the questions that that you’re gonna ask of any prospect so they get to know you better as an organization, as the board of the culture that values better pervading the the organization. And they get to know you better than individual and to see if there is that right fit. So being as transparent as possible up front, I think, is the best way to help make sure you’ve got a good relationship going. You mentioned being independent enough to express your own point of view and not to be intimidated by other committee members of the board members. How would a non-profit assess that? Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think you could see the Valley, Tony and I know you’ve got a legal education background as well. So the independent judgment is really important. So we don’t have kind of a bunch of sheets. Just say, Oh yeah, way trust, you know, our chair or whoever. We will just go along with the boat without actually looking at any of the documents or any of the facts and circumstances related to that boat, which might be very important for which you might have particular skills that you could actually have given the full board. The benefit of if you had actually taken a look at that ensures what you what you had with it rather than sort of rubber stamping what somebody else said so that independent judgment is really important in terms of meeting your legal responsibilities. But it’s also just if you’re a team player, Um, I don’t think you’re just the team player. If all you do is follow, I think with a strong team, you are all supportive of one another. And when you have a certain skill that or experience or perspective, you share that and you utilize that so you can help the team in that area where other people, other people on the board may not have those things. And I think we’re also unique. That we can offer something different from the way everybody else is looking at Is the boardmember on almost any issues. So I think really contributing and exercising that independent judgment is, uh, super important. But testing it wth the question you asked Really hard. I know. So we asked the question. Or you can ask more generative question about how would you behave if you know, the board chair said, We want this on your head. Five out of six other board members say it, but you really disagreed with that. What would you do in that situation? That might be one of the types of questions that you ask a candidate for the board and see what they say. Yeah, Maybe that’s maybe that is the only way is just ask you. What would you do in that situation? All right, Jean, we have to take a break when we come back. Give us any more thoughts you might have on assessing that, uh, that independent judgment and then, you know, then you come back with something that you’d like to chat about. Meanwhile, we’re taking a break for cooking mountain software designed from the bottom up for non-profits. It’s simple to use phenomenal support. Can you say that about your own accounting software? QuickBooks? No. Quick in no turbo cash workday zoho Patriot. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can’t. Um so go with something that is made for non-profits from the bottom up. Cougar Mountain Free 60 day trial on the listener landing page at Tony dahna May slash Cougar Mountain. Now it’s time for Tony’s take two. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. This woman years ago accused me of being a thief, a planned giving thief. She suggested that I would steal from an estate steal from my employer at the time. This is what I was a director of planned e-giving. Um, and all while trying to get me to do her a favor, which was technically well, not just technically, which was impossible for me to do is illegal for me to do not just on a technicality. It was illegal for me to have done, but she didn’t understand how this whole thing works. So, um, see what shocked me? It’s Ah, it’s a video where I’m hosted by Peter Heller of Heller Consulting Group. He’s got a video siris. He interviewed me. I told this shocking story, and you can find it on. Uh, yeah, I mean, you go to Peter Heller’s website, but why would you wanna go there when you go to tony martignetti dot com? That’s the place to go. Watch the video at tony martignetti dot com. All right, let us continue with Jean Takagi and recruiting your board members. Gene, anything more you want to say about possibly assessing independent judgment than anything come to mind there, but I think it has to do the questioning of the candidate. But maybe more importantly, you have to share with the candidate that you’ve got a culture that allows for independent judgment to be welcomed, right? You don’t want to make it look like you have this culture where everybody is going to rubber stamp a board members or the CBO’s. Maybe which is more common. Whatever the CEO decides upon, they know the day to day stuff, so they must be right. Do you have a culture that that allows the board to question, then probe and act more than just the sounding board? But really, Thio provide a lot of additional input and then decide whether the board should actually stacked in and make decisions where there’s enough of the board that that challenges what a particular board share or a CEO, my steak is in the best interest of the organization. So it is a particularly important point to create a culture that allows her for individual board members to intervene when it’s reasonable and appropriate. But I think that’s the last thing, okay, and this is related to something that you and I have talked about before, which is very bad sign. If all the votes are unanimous and there isn’t this culture that you just described, you know everybody just rubber stamps. Ah, there’s And we talked about it. It might be a strong board chair or CEO or somebody extra wealthy who everybody is intimidated by, or whatever. You know that those are all those are all very bad and counter to the culture that you’re talking about fostering. Um, what did you want? You got one. You do throw something out there? Sure. So I think another thing that an organization wants to do with with an individual is to make that individual comfortable, that they know who’s actually on the board and who the CEO is. Some some organizations recruit board members, and only one boardmember. Knows this new candidate. Nobody else has ever met him, you know, and they judge that candidate based on how they look on papers. But he’s got a good resume. Yes. Um, and this boardmember vouches for him, and we really need a boardmember. So let’s Alexis, um, yeah, uh, so you know that’s not a typical. It’s pretty common. So for non-profits have a system where they went. Why don’t we have that breakfast meeting or lunch meeting and bring out a few board members on bring out the CEO for one of these things. If you’re you know, it is a board member and the board really that important to an organization. And the law recognizes a tte the top of of what is still ah, hi article system in terms of governance, it’s the law requires, you know, that the board is at the top, then a boardmember position is super super important. And is the organization treating the addition of a boardmember as it is that important? And that’s a good sign of the board for an individual candidate and for aboard that actually sets it up so that they’re going to place proper priority to bringing on a new boardmember by letting the meet several board members and CEO and maybe attended board meeting without any, um, sort of strings attached. A visitor. You come out and see a get to know us, we’ll get to know, you know, that’s a promising Anything I haven’t heard that suggested for That’s a good one. Let someone come to a board meeting as a visitor as an observer, that was you mean? Yeah, exactly. Um, and I think they would get a sense of what the culture is much better from actually getting to be in the meeting. Even if they’re a silent observer. I’m sure there’s going to be some pleasantries exchanged, but they’ll know much better. And you get a sense out of them if you actually allow them to participate as part of the board. Um, at least with introductions and maybe what they want out of what their views are of the organization that that might be a nice baker. Also your point about doing it based on a breakfast meeting in a resume review that, um, yes, this is subsumed in what you were saying, really? But I won’t make it explicit that that that just doesn’t give, um doesn’t give credence to the, uh doesn’t respect the, uh, the position that you’re bored should be held in. It makes it, you know, just purely transactional. We need a body, she’s available, and she has a good resume that, you know, that doesn’t doesn’t, uh, give someone ah, feeling of prominence in the organization like Ajay. If it hadn’t been my warm body that that was brought in, there would have been some other warm body that they found the next day, but but a Siri’s where there’s multiple interviews to three interviews over several weeks on and there’s deliberation and you make sure the person shows up on time for the three interviews and takes them seriously, you know, those you can learn a lot just by observing somebody over over several weeks or maybe even over a couple of months. Yeah, I think that’s so true. And I met the okay with even introducing some perspective board members to certain staff beyond the CEO. Um, so and then soliciting staff input is, well, a thio what they think about this perspective. Candidates. Um, I, uh I am forgetting a good picture. Look all around from all people. Um, and Aziz said that the importance, I think articulated much better than I did. The importance of the position should be respected by the process. That’s what I meant to say. Yeah, I think you just said it better than I did. Okay. Really Got you said. You certainly said it more succinctly. That’s definitely true. Um, okay. You have one. You gotta You gotta basically have your compliance house in order your nine nineties articles of incorporation by-laws policies. Your financial statements, whether audited or not, All these things I mean, this is sort of foundational, but, you know, if there’s a problem in any of these, you’re you are got you at the organization are gonna look poor in the eyes of your perspective. Board members. That’s what I think. And I think as a perspective boardmember and I will give you this morning, actually for a board. So coincidentally, um, I’m gonna look at all these. Um and I will look at them with a bit of a critical eye to see if I see sloppiness. Where if I see vagueness in in what the missionary, I see a different mission statement in the articles from the by-laws the website. Like I had really tell what they’re doing where they’re 9 90 Just seemed to be like, very, you know, scattered. We prepared. Of course. I’m gonna see, you know, the financial. I’m gonna see how stronger week they appear, at least on paper. Moneywise. Um, so there’s a lot of things the documents are gonna show me. So if a non-profit is very careful about doing these things and finding on time, of course it I’ll see if they’re finally late and you know they’re suspended or delinquent or or whatever. So the non-profits should like when whenever you invite a houseguest over that you want to impress in, clean your house before you bring that person. And I think non-profits got to think this thing. Wait, they’re gonna bring the boardmember and again back-up prominent important positions. We’re going to clean our house so we can attract the best candidates. And hope will retain the best candidates as well. Well, Gene, that organization would be lucky to get you in-kind on. How many boards can you be on? My gosh, you’re on your own. You already you have time for? Yeah, I usually have a tube board maximum. But the organization that pocket is important enough. And I actually have a term off of another board. Uh, within the year that that gives me the ability to sort of overlap with three boards for maybe a few months. If I If I should be so lucky as to be elected by that order, um, But then then we’ll be back to two boards after that. Okay? I see you get you have a whole schedule of new spreadsheet to manage. You’re bored. You’re bored. Obligation? Yeah, actually. D’oh, I’m very careful about trying not overcome it. Let’s talk about something that you and I talked about. Oh, I don’t know. Three months or so ago, maybe 23 months. We had a real well, uh, meaningful conversation about diversity equity and inclusion. So without going over the that full hour that we spent, um, if this is important to the organization, then it’s going to want to recruit board members for whom that value is important. Yeah, I think so. Well, and if they’re looking to recruit, um, certain, uh, members of the community that might give the board more diverse representation. They’re gonna want to really think about making that person feel not like a token which we discussed about and have an inclusive environment that really welcomes their ideas and acknowledges and ensures that they’re able to exercise the power that they have in their position, that they have a voice in the organization and in the governance of the organization. They’re not just sitting by the sidelines, helping the board take a better looking picture. So it really is an issue. But it comes down to where? For an individual. If you believe strongly in that In in that diversity concept, um, and you are invited onto a board that’s not diverse, and you’re a member of the majority group. So let’s say the group is predominantly white man and your white male we get invited onto that board. Well, if you really falik the value of diversity equity inclusion, you might say, No, I’m not gonna take that position on that board because I would grab you see that board bring on somebody who does give you a more diverse perspectives representation on Guy might, you know, being part of the majority group, participate in another way to help you get that. But I don’t want to be part of a board and just make make that that issue on even harder one to deal with. So it’s an interesting situation for organizations that want to think about it. Um, if they want to bring in the best people, they’re gonna have to think about how they’re gonna address their composition issues as well. That that happens to be an issue. Yeah, no, it’s very altruistic. The way you describe you know, the selflessness of doing what’s right for the organization. Bye bye. Not not accepting a board position and flip that on its side. Uh, non-profits need to be, uh, thoughtful about who they are inviting If this is an important value for them, Jean, we gotta take our very last break turn to communications, PR and content for your non-profit. They help you tell your compelling stories and get media attention on those stories all the while building support for your mission. They do media relations, content marketing, communications and marketing strategy and branding strategy. You’ll find them at turn hyphen to dot CEO and Jean and I have but loads more time for recruiting your board members. Um, all right, G, you have something, uh, you want to bring up? Sure. I think maybe the next important point I wanted to bring up because it happened to the indication is non-profit is great. It’s filled with wonderful people and they they’re really working towards something that I believe in passionately in their culture is the great says everything seems to be fine, but at the moment they are confronting some really difficult issues that’s going to require extra effort extra tax from the board, and it might be a financial challenging, financially challenging time for them might be a leadership transition, that they’re losing a founder or expect long term executive director and they’re gonna move into a new one. They might be engaged in litigation for which they did nothing wrong. But all of this doesn’t They’re going to be sort of boiled in in lawsuits and potential PR damage that might go along with that on all of the things can create more work for aboard and definitely require more effort in intelligence impact from the board. I think non-profits have to let prospective board members know, even if those things have not hit the media are are really public yet that if they’re coming on toe into an organization that’s got some imminently difficult challenges that will be brought before the board, they want to know first. Is that the best time to recruit boardmember? Because it might not be. But if they are recruiting port members, I think they got to be up front again with them and not surprised them after their dahna boardmember got you. Now you gotta be on the committee that deals with art. Being involved in this lawsuit duty to disclose basically thing I think that that organizations have to be up front about that, obviously very tactful there. I know there are confidentiality issues that are gonna be weighing in on the other side of that transparency, so somethingto really managed very carefully and thoughtfully. You’re basically saying there’s a duty to disclose these these kinds of challenges, and that could be an opportunity the organization could could turn that into something, you know? Yeah, we have this particular financial challenge, but that’s why we’re looking for you. Andi is not to be a donor, but, you know, maybe it’s Ah, it’s a it’s a finance problem or an investment problem on endowment management problem or something. And so you’re can hyre are sorry. Recruit someone who has a particular expertise and that person could, you know, potentially be a leader in I don’t want to turning the organization around but guiding the organization out of the difficulty that they’re facing so it could present a challenge and an opportunity for non-profit and for a potential boardmember to come together and help each other. I think that’s very, very true. Yeah. And financial management expertise is, um, really sought after quality for a board members. And sometimes some boards have a hard time finding those people, so it’s a difficult issue. Arises. And, um, uh, they put extra effort into finding somebody like that that that can be an opportunity for referred bringing ana boardmember gonna be invaluable for many, many years. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what about, um, the, uh just, you know, sort of leadership personality, like, you know, Are you Are you? Ah. Are you messing? Well, you are. You messing well as leaders with the the potential boardmember do you put forth a, um, an image which hopefully is not merely a not a facade, but, you know, Are you confident you you convey confidence in the direction of the organization, the your leadership, your leadership style? Uh, you know, these, I think, are sort of intangibles that Ah, well, much of what we’re talking about is intangible, but that ah, potential boardmember is using toe assess whether they’re gonna fit. Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure they’re all the studies that we know of. Um, where first impressions are powerful tribes of what that relationship turns into um so or whether there is a continued relationship at all. Um, and I think that’s very true in bringing Ana boardmember as well. So boardmember gets introduced to a board chair or to an executive director or somebody else in a senior leadership position. And first impressions are going to develop pretty quickly. So certainly within the 1st 30 seconds Teoh a minute. Um, they’re going to be some presumptions that each side has about the other. And I think understanding the limits of what first impressions means are important for board members when you’re dealing with people who might be introverted or shy, and or maybe from a cultural, different cultural background not used to sort of exhibiting some of the the the confidence you know that you might find from another culture stressing that important in the first meeting maybe is more of a dimmer, demure attitude that is more valued by other cultures upon the first meeting, or that find that more appropriate. But I think we have to sort of take into account that there are different reasons that people are are showing for the first impression. But on the other side, when you’re the non-profit. You do want to make sure that you are giving the best impression we can, not just in the documents that we talked about earlier, but in your leadership. So I’m always a huge fan of education and trading, and I think boys don’t do that enough for their CEOs in their board chairs. Um, so yes, way kind of expect them to have the skill on. And maybe once in a while we’ll send them to a training where they’re just sort of getting training about the secretary, you know, in a sector wide conference or something. But are we really giving them training on on certain things that might be really, really relevant, but very, very specific? So if they’re the public face of the organization, should we be giving them some public relations training or some media training? Those things, too, just sort of think about it again. I’m a big fan of training, and the board can really help by saying we want allocate some resources to this on. Make sure that we’re providing for that, that that strong first impression and understanding about first impressions on their limitations when we’re judging other people on it. Yeah, I’ve seen instances to where, um, the organization invests in coaching for the CEO. I’ve seen that I’m not a couple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they see promise potential. But I guess the CEO, maybe, you know, like like all of us, I mean has some shortcomings. You know, maybe it’s Ah, I don’t know what leadership leader, management of the other C suite individuals. Or maybe it’s, you know, there’s not enough team building or something, you know, whatever it is, they see a need a gap, and, uh, they invest in a coach for the for that CEO. I think that’s such a great, um, uh, allocation of research from from from many organizations that have money to invest in their leadership leadership training. I think coaching from the right people could be invaluable even for a very, very senior executive. None of us have all of the tools and all of the best qualities. Andi executive director seems to need so many different skillsets so many experiences in so many abilities. I think coaching never heard. Um, we’ve talked about we talked about the consistency across documents, and so now we’re talking about meeting, meeting the leadership of the organization and maybe even meeting some staff, introducing staff to potential board members. You want to make sure that not only your documents but you’re your people boardmember Zand staff and see sweet alike are consistent in terms of messaging, that they all have the common vision that’s laid out in the vision statement and that the articles of incorporation of the by-laws without by-laws the articles of incorporation speak to know the people all need to be consistent, as as thes potential board members are interviewing them just as much as you’re interviewing the potential board members. Yeah, I think that’s very true. And I think when the, um kind of the things that I think is overlooked right now is the importance of memorializing or documenting the organization’s value. Um, in a document like the by-laws Wait, don’t do it. We have incited a standard practice. I’m trying to think about that being an actual, um, important section of the box by-laws. Really? Okay, Yeah, I think organizations Now, um, you’re driven by your your mission, of course, but it’s not just your mission. You’re also driven by your value because if your mission was, I don’t know. We talked about this example before, but your mission was just thio. If feed homeless people, you could just wait down suit on the sidewalk, right? You could play down slop there, and many homeless people have to eat it that nobody does that right, because that’s not within our values of having people had to be treated with dignity and respect. Um, organizations just won’t do that. But we don’t explicitly say why we don’t just affect the mission, you know, to the maximum degree by just doing things without, you know, care and just laying it out. So I think it’s really important that we say what our values are and how the values that I think about are those that will guide our decisions so that it actually stops us from saying we’re gonna spend a maximum amount to get the most people served. No, we’re gonna not spend the maximum to maximize the number of people served. We want to maximize the service that we’re giving as well in balance, that and why are we doing that because of these values? And I think that has to be documented. So with that we know we actually share them with all the people, including the perspective boardmember. We don’t just assume it. That may not be true. Okay, Jeanne, we gotta leave it there. Well said he’s managing attorney of Neo non-profit Exempt Organizations Law Group in San Francisco. You’ll find the block post that we were speaking from at non-profit law block dot com, which you should be subscribed to its 12 considerations before you join that non-profit board. But I’m not sure I don’t want I don’t want a decrease traffic on hits to your site, But I think we I think we did a pretty good job of going through. Ah, all these 12. Maybe we didn’t. You know, we didn’t explicitly one through 12 but I think we’ve covered the vast majority. These, if not if not everything. Jean, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing your expertise. Thanks so much, Tony. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Next week. Scale up and sustain with Kathleen Kelly. Janice. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by Wagner CPS guiding you beyond the numbers Witnessed gps dot com but koegler Mountain Software, Denali fundez. They’re complete accounting solution made for non-profits. Tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. A creative producers. Claire Meyerhoff Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein, who is me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit Ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. You’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, I’m nor in Sumpter potentially ater. Tune in every Tuesday at 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern Time and listen for new ideas on my show yawned Potential Live Life Your way on talk radio dot N Y C aptly named host of Tony martignetti non-profit Radio Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% fund-raising board relations, social media. My guests and I cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. 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I’m Jeff Goodman, host of Rediscovering New York Weekly showed that showcases New York’s history, and it’s extraordinary neighborhoods. Every Tuesday live at 7 p.m. We focus on a particular neighborhood and explore its history, its vibe, it’s feel and its energy tune and live every Tuesday at 7 p.m. On talk radio dahna you’re listening to the Talking Alternative Network.

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

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Greg Cohen: Board Change Agents

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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. Hello, this bruce chamois, coast of the web design and technology coach. Join me and my guests every tuesday from eight to nine pm. As we discussed the latest in web design, social media, marketing, search, engine optimization and technology way also discussed popular topics, including ward press, making money. All i better cool rankings and more every month way. Also feature the best unsigned music from around the world right here on talk radio dot n y c. You’re listening to the talking alternative net. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in sumpter, potentially ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential. Live life your way on talk radio dot n y c hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. 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Nonprofit Radio for June 9, 2017: Youth On Boards & Crazy Good Turns

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Michael Davidson & Brett Carey: Youth on Boards

Have you considered reducing the average age of your board members? Would you bring on a teenager? What are the issues with millennial board members around recruiting, engaging and retaining? Dr. Brett Carey was on his first board at 18. Board coach Michael Davidson returns to add his perspective.

 

 

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Duitz 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 one remind you our three hundred fiftieth show is coming up. It’s going to be july twenty eighth, number three fifty and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into apophis itis if you inflame to me with the idea that you missed today’s show youth on boards, have you considered reducing the average age of your board members? Would you bring on a teenager? What are the issues with millennial boardmember za round recruiting, engaging and retaining dr brett carrie was on his first board at eighteen, and bored coach michael davidson returns to add his perspective and crazy good turns rather than non-profit radio here’s the podcast you want to pitch to tell your story, they even have hats and bumper stickers. Crazy good turns host bradshaw shares what they’re about on that show. I told you, take two, take care of yourself, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey e spelling dot com. It is my pleasure to welcome back michael davidson hey has over thirty years of experience in non-profit board and managerial leadership. He successfully guided the boards of over one hundred organizations. He’s, lead consultant for the united way boards, serve new york city board training program and his past chair of governance matters he’s on the non-profit faculties at new school university and adelphi university. He’s been a peace corps volunteer and assistant district attorney here in new york city and then attorney in private practice, you’ll find michael at board coach dot com michael, welcome back. Thank you very much, tony. Good to be back here. My pleasure. And as i said, our three hundred fiftieth is coming up july twenty eighth and you were on the very first show when it was called twenty martignetti show flies with fun. It was called the tony martignetti show. We don’t even know what we were doing. And dr brett carrie is also with us. He is a physical therapist in hawaii. His board service began at eighteen with the march of dimes in virginia. At twenty five, he was inducted into the march of dimes hall of fame. He chairs the board at west hawaii community health center network. You’ll find him at d. R, for doctor he’s at d r. Brett, carrie, welcome, brett. Carrie. Bret cerini a little tony. Good morning. How are you doing? Aloha to you. Good to talk to you. Where are you? In there. Why were you calling from? So i am actually on the kona coast of the big island on the kona coast. Alright. Cool. Where’s the kona coast bilich chronicle? Yes, on the west side of the island of hawaii. So the east side is where all the volcanoes are and the west side of the dry, very arid side. Okay, now we have a little, uh, sounds like wear a little radio background or something. I know. Is that our thing? Sam it’s our thing? Okay? Its not you, brett. Sorry. Sorry about that. Um, welcome. We haven’t. We haven’t had a guest from off the mainland yet. We’ve neither had onalaska nor hawaii guest before today. So you’re our first welcome. Great. Great. Well, i’m proud to be the first. I’m so glad. And i’m so glad you came to me with the idea of, well, millennials on boards, but actually, teenagers on boards. You started it. Eighteen. How did that come about? Yeah. So how that started is at age seventeen, i was a lifeguard. And i was a sponsored surfer, and so as a surfer, i had different endorsement, and i came up with the idea that i should use my sponsorship. Teo, do something good. So i started looking at different charities to get involved with, and i found the march of dimes, and what i liked about the march of dimes in particular was they had a long tradition of very positive views, involvement, dating all the way back to the polio days of having young people actually go out and collect dimes. And so i approached the marcher done and said i wanted to a fundraiser to benefit your organization, and, ah, a couple of weeks later came back with a bucket of very damp checks in dollar bills that totaled around ten thousand dollars. And then shortly after that, when i turned eighteen, they asked me if i’d be interested and joining the board and you you took it on quite willingly. You were quick. I did, i did so at the time, my main goal of being a boardmember was probably stay on the same packet of the board, you know, board back is everyone else. I was very nervous? Uh, very young at that age, but, uh, luckily, the leadership of our regional board in hampton roads dahna something within me that they thought was work developing. So when they asked me to be part of authority, i was very excited. Okay? And how did it go? How did it go with the outset? Pretty well, where what we’re saying at the time? This is all the way back in two thousand two. Was that there’s a lot of college fund raisers around the country really doing quite well, there’s college fund raisers that are raising over five hundred thousand a year, some over million annually, and think of that time different non-profits were really, really starting to look at the value of young people. And so i was brought on to give that perspective into the youth and college world, and yeah, i was well supported by her board. I did have some good mentors and began to feel really comfortable as a boardmember. Okay, let’s. Bring michael in. Michael what’s your respective on a on an eighteen year old on a board, i think he’s fantastic. I mean, i think a couple of things that number one. A lot of organizations are, in fact, doing what you you know what you’ve described, which is bringing on groups of younger people, mostly toe work on fund-raising. But i’d be really interested in how you got involved with the other aspects of being on the board. Besides the fund-raising. I mean, what was that like to an eighteen year old to be looking at? Organizational finance review of the executive director. Compliance issues those kinds of things that you get involved on the governance end of things as well as on the fund-raising now, let me just remind michael hasn’t been here for over three hundred shows, so he’s he’s become an anarchist in this time asking the questions that no, happy to have a conversation. Now i ask the questions here. Obs are you know, i hope you realize i’m picking on a kid star occasionally welcome. So now, please go ahead. Michael. Yeah, i wouldn’t know. Yeah, yeah, i’d be interested in that perspective. Bright. How did you get involved in that part of it? Especially the reviewing, like, reviewing the ceo performance on eighteen year old reviewing. Ah, ceo. What was all that, like, your excellent. Thank you, michael. Right, right. Those are great questions. And so i was a regular boating boardmember just like all the other board members. So i did have so the rights and privileges for reviewing all the financial statements as well as reviewing our director performance. So when and if i ever felt uncomfortable, something i did have the opportunity to recuse myself from a vote. But for the most part, with the active mentor in had with the explanations that was given before the regularly scheduled board meeting. I felt pretty comfortable, especially with getting the board package normally a week ahead of time had plenty of time to look up any information that i thought i needed to make a good decision. Okay, okay, we’re goingto go out for our first break, and when we come back, of course michael and brett, now i’m going to keep flushing out this issue and we got a live listener love 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 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. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I feel like kicking off with a little live listener love. We’re going to start domestic here. Uh, right. New york, new york. Got multiple new york, new york. I love it. Love it. Bayonne, new jersey. Just across the bridge and in between new york, new york and bone got staten island live. Listen, our love to each of you also woodbridge, new jersey. Tampa, florida. Brookline, massachusetts. And that looks like all that’s. Okay, domestic. So far, we’ve got hawaii too. But i suspect that that maybe bread. Because it’s ah, kahlua kona, hawaii. Is that you, brett? That may. Okay. Well, live listen, love live lesser love to each of you and the podcast pleasantries in the affiliate affections. Definitely coming. Second half. Never forget the podcast. Pleasantries or affiliate affections. Okay, um, you said you felt pretty well. Pretty well supported. Brett, you mentioned having mentors. They assign you a mentor because you were eighteen years old or everybody on the board gets a mentor. I would say i would say yes. No to that question where i was assigned a mentor, primarily because it was my first board experience, so, um, even new board members that were let’s say in their fifties, if they didn’t have previous board experience or had questions, they were also assigned mentors as well, okay, you were treated equally then. All right, all right. Um, assume michael hijacked the show, so i’m a little out of sorts now, right now, that’s it no, but it’s fine, of course. My michael let’s, go to you for a threshold question. What might this not even be appropriate for your board? Or or could you see a circumstance where i mean, just basically every board should consider having someone? Maybe not eighteen, but ah, millennial on yeah, i absolutely, i mean, eighteen is a little pushing it. But, you know, for organizations, for example, that a youth serving organizations, it is very hopeful, tohave a really young person on the board or brings that brings that perspective, but other than that, i think i work with a lot of millennials coming onto boards, that’s part of what i’m doing in the united way training and and and they’re wonderful on boards. The interesting challenge, though, is different work styles that they they used crime in very different ways, and sometime that creates are kind of a culture, not much of a conflict, but a culture difference in older boardmember okay, potential now now. All right, so that’s ah, yeah, a couple of things there. I mean, that’s an easy example if they’re if they’re serving a millennial community or youth community, then clearly you want to have the but suppose they’re serving an elder community? Yes, absolutely. Still, yeah. Still, because they bring a different perspective. They bring a very different perspective about communication. They bring a different perspective about what’s going on in the world now and the on any kind of organisation. The area where i find it’s most interesting is different work styles. You know, people of my generation in your suit, tony, you know, we used to face to face meetings. We said, why would people we talk? We hang out, right? Yeah, they’re not used to face to face meetings. They want to do things over the phone. They want to do him by videoconference. They work a lot faster and a lot more focused. And so there’s a kind of a culture thing. When when? They’re working together with older people on the board, but ultimately it works, but it creates a bit of a conflict. Alright, brett, did you see that culture, culture let’s not call it a culture conflict that you felt the cultural differences? I’m sure across across the different generations you were working with? Absolutely, and i see that even today sabat currently has my role of four, chairman of the west dwight community health center, and so what i’ve had to dio because, yes, we have board members in their seventies, too are not used two elektronik communications. So what we’ve done is we’ve decided what committee meetings make sense for what form of communication and what i mean by that is there’s some committee meetings where all we’re doing is reviewing information. And so those meetings it’s very easy, tio do through email, whereas perhaps the finance committee where there’s there’s a lot of explanations and understanding that have to happen within the term sheets, we’ve decided that those interactions are best done in person. And so as a board, we’ve come up with a consensus that stratified across different generations, that seems to be working pretty well o k interesting, cool, cool thing. You’re smart paris more. Okay, what about recruiting? Bret how would you recommend if we want to look for potential millennial members for our board? Where would where would we start to look? Sure, sure, i would think the best way it’s actually more passive recruiting where if you’re lucky enough, do you have a young individual come up to your boarder your organization and tell their story and say they want to be a part of the organization? Usually the conversion rate on those individuals into successful four members? Or perhaps a youth advisory council member i think is high, but otherwise to be to have a bit more of an active strategy, i think looking at perhaps student body president, individuals who have been involved in college organizations have shown some sort of leadership potential, and if you’re lucky enough to live in a college town, that should be pretty easy to have one of your staff for board members actually go teo a college club and give their talk about what your organization’s about and see if he’s interested. I can’t get any thoughts on recruiting. What have you seen your clients? Doing yeah, another. Another good outlet is volunteers. People who are have been recruited to be volunteers very often from corporations who maybe who maybe financial partners with the organizational contributes to the organization. They want their younger people tohave volunteer opportunities and the people than that service volunteers. You could get a sense from them. Of the people that are really committed would take on, for example, volunteer leadership roles who come back repeatedly, the volunteer and they’re a great source off potential board members. Okay, i think i remember on i’ve seen your writing to you like the idea of having ah, mentor for new board members, right colleague, another another boardmember as a mentor, and actually i think it applies to every boardmember even those that have been on other boards, and sometimes especially those it could have been another board’s going because they come thinking that they know everything that they’re supposed to know. And so you really wanna have them introduced into the specific culture of your organization and your board. So many organizations now that i know of, will have a mentor for every new boardmember irrespective of their prior experience, what about keeping? These younger boardmember is engaged ongoing basis now, after they’re on boarded well, that that’s a challenge not just for younger board members. It’s a challenge for all board members and one of the things that happens is lots of organizations don’t pay attention to exactly that question, tony and for example, they lose boardmember is very quickly lose touch with the mission, so they got attracted to the organization because of what it was doing programmatically, and then they no longer have any contact with what it’s doing programmatic, they come to board meetings and they meet with other board members, so organizations now do things to make sure that the board members keep some degree of contact with the mission, either by visiting programs, talking to clients, talking to staff or even bringing clients and staff into the board meeting so that they’re constantly refreshed with what’s this all about yeah, that’s what’s an important thing for that. I’ve heard that recommendation a bunch of times from from you and other guests do brett, i’m going to guess it warms your heart a bit that we’re we’re not focusing on what specific teo millennial board members that has. To be done differently, but rather, like michael is saying, these are things that apply to all board members, whether it’s engagement or having a mentor, i love that approach, ok? Absolutely don’t wantto segment you out waken treat you as if we treat all other board members. The teenage thing really, really gets me. I mean, that was that was pretty courageous of that. The local virginia march of dimes to invite an eighteen year old to the board a zoo. Michael what you perspective on that? I think it was courageous, but i think at the same time, it was really very smart. I mean, they saw somebody with energy. They knew how that person could be used. And i assume they figured, brett, you were smart enough to learn what you needed to learn. And they saw a great opportunity. They’re very smart. They weren’t stuck in a kind of a mold. This is what our board members need to look like. They were open for opportunity and for energy to bring new things in. So i think was very courageous of the organization is very smart. What’s that line from top gun. Gutsiest move i ever saw, which may be dating a za boomer. But i’m a young boomer. I’m young. Okay. Let’s. Brett, any any problems you encountered? You be as specific as you can. Difficulties? You recall from being an eighteen nineteen year old boardmember? Sure, i would say the biggest problem. And this comes up on your show all the time. It’s the jargon that gets thrown around, uh, jargon jail. Yeah. Yeah. Eso every organization very much benefit from having jargon. Jail because it’s very easy as a new boardmember tio here. A lot of jargon cannot know what it means to be embarrassed. Teo either ask the question or to become a little more reclusive and withdrawn once you feel like you don’t know what’s going on the board meeting? Yeah, how many times can you raise your hand and say, what does that mean? What, what? That acronym right becomes becomes difficult. Michael that’s a really interesting point about board members. Kind of feeling embarrassed to ask questions. And one of the things that many organizations do now is they add at the end of a board meeting, an executive session and the executive session has those staff in the room and it’s just the board members and it’s an opportunity to say whatever might have been on your mind that for whatever reason, you might have been reluctant to say, and so and that’s always a good opportunity for people to ask the questions that they think might be regarded as dumb questions. So it’s a it’s, a it’s, a structural thing that board’s khun due to get past that. But then you’re still sitting with your fellow board colleagues. Yeah, but is it likely you’re old? You still got the seventy two year old in the room? Yeah, but but somehow, without the staff in the room, it’s a little easier, it feels more informal. Okay, brett, you taking on anything like that? Or did you just cum it yourself? You know, how did you work this out? Oh, certainly, there were certainly some embarrassing moments, but i think michael’s right without staff in the room, sometimes things are a little easier, but that being said, a lot of times, there are boardmember that you’ll feel more or less comfortable asking questions to create understanding about. So yeah, i definitely have the moments where, you know, i felt a little embarrassed are i wanted to know more information, but again, i think that goes with any new boardmember to where, you know, even if you’re an individual in your fifties, maybe you haven’t had experience with human resource is with finance with fund-raising and so most of the time, when you recruit new board members there’s going to be situations where they feel a little uncomfortable, so i think that’s just important to recognize when recruiting any new boardmember okay, okay, um, michael, have you seen where boards will will recruit management from west where organizations will recruit management from the boards? Is that a is this a possibility that you might be a millennial might become the next ceo or ceo? It happens, it’s not a great idea because you really don’t want your board members looking at their board position as a as a potential personal career ladder, because then, if that if that becomes a possibility of the organization, they’re going to behave differently, and they’re going to be looking at the board position from a personal point of view. And so occasionally it happens, but it really is rare, it’s not something that happens very common, and the only time it sometimes happens is if a longtime executive director. Is stepping down and there’s nobody immediately available to fill in, and then maybe a boardmember might step in on an interim basis, but even that is not a great idea. So in general, board members don’t do that, and in general organizations don’t encourage it. Yeah, okay. All right. Bret you have any perspective on that? Sure. Where i agree with michael. Where? Through a succession plan succession plan. You might see that you might see, you know, a board chairman temporarily serve as an interim ceo, but, um, i would say also in rural areas like out here in hawaii, it’s probably a little more common for individuals to g o from aboard role to a staff role, but that’s purely out of necessity, we’re in a rural area like this, especially where it’s very hard to find someone with five year work history in a way, or even a ten year work history that probably more often than two more urban area, you will see boardmember going on and serving the staff members. But i completely agree with michael where you don’t want to set that up as an expectation toe where someone starts changing their views. Or use their role of boardmember differently, you know, they start auditioning to be the next ceo. Yeah, okay, getting at zoho on ah, a job interview almost on there being evaluated for that. Okay, okay, now the average board ages is about sixty eight and ah, and we have less than about two percent of boardmember zehr are under thirty, which is the millennial means not for money or cut off, but it sze close. Brett, you’re, uh you’re obviously encouraging greater age diversity, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Where we look at boardmember ship and a lot of time, ethnicity and gender are giving great priority, which they should be. But we should add aged ever see that as well? Millennials are now the largest generation to that was a pew research center early last year, like march or april of last year declared that they now outnumber baby boomers. Michael, you and i are under threat way r yeah, andi, i know. And you’re in your you also agree with the idea of greater age diversity? Absolutely. It brings in different perspectives. But whatever we talked about, yeah, we got, like, another two minutes or so. What else? You want to not necessarily leave people with but the things that we haven’t talked, something we haven’t talked about yet? You want to you want explain? Sure, sure i would. I would say that board should have a conversation about potential versus experience and what i mean by that is we’re in the air, the mark zuckerberg. So the world. So where you’re seeing young people do phenomenal, phenomenal things who ever thought we would have a twenty six year old billionaire? And in addition to being a physical therapist, i also create rehab fitness app so smartphone applications and when i go into different tech conferences, it’s amazing to see the value that different tech companies are putting in the young people, very young people sometimes eighteen, twenty years old, and i would suggest that perhaps the fund-raising and non-profit world can look at millennials and younger people in the same way that the technology industry has. So as a physical therapist, you see people’s potential. I love that, and you want to and on board, you want to balance that potential with experience? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, michael, final word. Thirty seconds or so. I’m right there with you. Bret that’s. Really interesting. The only thing is, i mean, it’s a much harder job to to read potential than to read a experiences is very it’s. Not a resume is on a resume, right? But i think you’re absolutely right. That is what we should be looking at is the potential and the march of dimes. And where was it in virginia? Brett hawaii. In the virginia beach area. You beach. They identified it. So it’s, it’s, it’s, eminently doable. We got to leave it there. Brett gary, physical therapist in hawaii. You can follow him at d r brett, carrie and michael davidson. Bored coach, you’ll find him at board. Coach dot com gentlemen, thank you so much. Thank you. Nice talking to you, brett. Pleasure. All right, take care. What do we have coming up? We’ve got crazy. Good turns coming up with bradshaw were going a little fun with this former home depot. See? Sweeter now with a with a dot org’s. Um, first pursuant, enormously rich re sources that are all free. Whether you hear me talk about week after week, whether it’s, webinars, resource papers, white papers, the other content that they have archives that they’ve got i’m just encourage you to check out pursuing dot com for the webinars for the for the for the content papers, click through and they just have a wealth of free resource is they are they’re they’re engaged in fund-raising they’ve got research on fund-raising you need to raise more money, i think you’ll find the resource is at pursuing dot com valuable and we be spelling you know them super cool spelling bee fundraisers and we’re obviously we’re just talking about millennials and engaging millennials. Maybe before they come before i become boardmember sze don’t want to check you out and what better way to check you out? Then? A spelling bee fundraiser bret was a fundraiser for the virginia beach march of dimes. Now you might do it as a as a knight of spelling and live like stand up comedy and live music and dance it’s a night devoted to fund-raising for your organization, check out the video at we be spelling dot com and then pick up the phone for pete’s sake pick up my voice cracked alot i hate it when i love it! Talk to the ceo, alex greer set up a night of spelling bee fund-raising for you now time for tony’s, take two summer is here, and i want you to take care of your self to get away from your work. Phone, email, social texts out of the office with you, get out! I did not have a video last week because i was taking time off for myself. Now i do have a video, so but that doesn’t mean that you take time off, and then you work twice as hard the following week. I’m not. I’m not suggesting that either it’s, like, don’t get carried away, but i do have a video. It’s got advice. It’s got some drinks, suggestions, it’s, too good to drink tips in there and, uh, an admonition for napping. Check out the video it’s at tony martignetti dot com. Please take care of yourself this summer, that is tony’s. Take two. My next guest is bradshaw he’s, the host and co creator of crazy good turns podcast telling stories about people who do amazing work for others. He’s been the chief communications officer at pepsico gateway and most recently, home depot, where he reported directly to three ceos during his more than ten years there, he’s been on the boards of the point of light foundation, ken’s crew kaboom and the metro atlanta area council of the boy scouts of america. You’ll find the show at crazy good turns dot or ge and at crazy good turns welcome bradshaw. Hey, tony how’s it going, it’s. Really great. How you doing? Down in atlanta? Uh, good. It’s a beautiful day here. Not too hot. It’s. Uh, just a stunning spring day. I’m glad i’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad you have good weather. Let’s. Get past the weather. You know, that’s, the basic everybody could talk about the weather, right? We all have that in common. So let’s, talk about this crazy good turns your co founder of this podcast, uh, frank blake was the former ceo of home depot. Correct? All right, so so this’s. An interesting mix. Tio two high. Level c sweeteners at home depot. I don’t know what you’re trying to atone for the for what you brought on the humanity as a cz corporate raiders waiting this right in my way. I like to think we did a lot of good in the world through home depot. And i will say that our experience there is actually what led us to do crazy. Get turns. And you want me to give you the back story on that? Yeah. If i could just starting just a tad. I know you were doing videos for home depot employees, right? Yeah. I mean, that was one of many ways that we communicated with over half a million employees across the country. That’s correct. So storytelling was part of how we communicated at home depot, both frank and me. And as you said, i’ve reported directly to frank, who was running the company, and clearly, storytelling and communication was critical in his mind to motivating, as i said, that half a million employees. Yeah. All right. So we see the sea, the qualifications you wanted. Your both are retired now from home depot. Is that right? Yeah. We both retired in the spring of two thousand fifteen. Okay, so wealthy okay, did well did well, home depot, we’ll leave it there. I won’t get carried away. Um, and so now e-giving back. And how you doing that through crazy good turns. Well, what? Uh, fundez over coffee. Frank and i were talking and discussing what we might be ableto do together post home depot. And he made the point that i just made, which was in the end, what we did really well, we’ll tell stories, let’s, figure out a way to do it for the greater good. And it was frank idea tio basically focused on non-profits we both worked with a number of non-profits at home depot, iran, our foundation and all of our corporate giving. And frank was obviously closely involved with that. So we got to know quite a number of non-profits would really cool back stories. And we said rather than just focus on what they’re doing and the good work they’re doing let’s focus on that sort of compelling backstory of their founding. And what inspired that founder to create that non-profit and that’s what crazy good turns us. It’s a roughly twenty minute podcast that’s a voiceover narrative, not just a q and a that set the music and tell the compelling backstories of non-profits let’s not be too critical of the q and a format. Okay, i wasn’t critical, so i was differentiate. Okay, okay. No, that’s. All right, i did see that i have to talk. You know, i was looking at you up and i did see some quotes in the atlanta journal constitution. Ah, but you’re fairly differentiating from from the format that i have on non-profit radio. Sure. Although i’ll tell you one thing, tony, we are looking at supplementing that narrative format with some possible cubine a content as well down the road, you know, we’re still young, we’re still growing. Ah, and that could be a path that we take in addition to the narratives we tell you’re in your second season now, is that right? That’s correct. Halfway through a second season. Okay. And ah, how often are you publishing? Every other week? Okay, we’re on a brief hiatus now till july. We’re just taking a little summer break and then we’ll be back in the lead after the july fourth holiday. Yes, very nice. I saw that nothing, nothing this month, but coming back after july fourth, we’re taking your advice t get out during the summer, which is what we’re doing. Okay, very good. Um, you are you get your how many listeners how you doing listenership so far? Second season midway through? Yeah, we’re right now pacing and over six thousand downloads a month, which for a podcast our size with no notoriety in terms of a celebrity host is pretty good. We’re ahead of the curve. Ultimately, we want to scale to a size where we can sell ads and get sponsors and will remain a non-profit we are non-profit, by the way, funded by frank’s family foundation, and we’d remain a non-profit if we become profitable, but we’ll push those profits back to the non-profits way feature so it’s a it’s, a pretty innovative model of fund-raising through storytelling if we can just keep growing now, as the as the host of producer of ah self-funding podcast, i got to say you’re, you know you’re in a very enviable spot where you’ve got a foundation helping you out. It is true, very fortunate to have the resource is that we do. Thanks to frank in a family foundation. It’s it’s. A blessing compared to a lot of other podcast. Start up. Interesting. So you count. I guess this is a little inside baseball, but but but you count downloads per month. I never i never counted that way. I was looking listeners per week. I mean, i could say, like, sixty five thousand downloads a month or something like that. Yeah, i never i never had. And i never looked at the number that big. I mean, i look at it, but then i divided by the number of show’s in a month and that’s how i get listeners per week, right? And i can, you know, we can see by weak as well, but and? And you know this well, when you, when you release new episodes, you see spikes with the automatic download on itunes that elsewhere? Yes. I’ve heard rumors to that effect. Right. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, but okay, interesting, because i could see, like, sixty five. All right, so, um, i’m not trying to be competitive, but you just you piqued my interest. Cause i never counted it that way. You got you got some? Very interesting stories can we can we talk about the the organization that helps the people who are living in the storm tunnels below las vegas? Yeah, that’s called shine a light and that’s that’s an interesting story. And it’s it’s basically one guy in las vegas, it’s not even an organization or non-profit it’s just one guy doing great work. He was a writer in las vegas who stumbled on the fact that there are three to four hundred homeless people living in the storm drains in las vegas, and he decided to just help him and that’s what he does, and it connects him with relief agencies, and secures donations for them. It’s uh, a cool story and it’s, one of those there’s there’s a number of stories that we tell that air really sense of discovery. You come away and say, wow, i didn’t even know that was an issue or ah, cause that i could actually look at maybe contribute to yeah, that wouldn’t move me, especially because what? You just said it za solo guy. Oh, and he hasn’t scaled it up. I mean, he’s got volunteers and things, but but he’s just he got moved. By the piece that he wrote for the i guess i gather it’s an alternative paper in latto rittereiser and ah, just even as a journalist he got he got so involved with the personal story that he had to help the people he was he had just covered. Yep. Moving. Moving so that i mean that’s, you know, that’s the beauty of what you guys are doing that that we’re not doing here on non-profit radio well, that i mean, we are trying to tell inspirational tales in the hopes of motivating others to do good things for other people. And even if it’s not starting a non-profit if it’s just holding the door open for someone one day, i mean it’s there’s, a lot of good that can be done in the world and that’s what we focus on and hopefully we’re an antidote to a lot of the nastiness in the world today. We were just talking about the eighteen year old boardmember let’s talk about the story that you you covered you of the ten year old founder riley pack? Yeah, right again. She’s amazing. Yeah. So she started that, you know, there are a number. Of organizations out there that gives school supplies to poor children, but the fact that this was founded by a ten year old she’s sixteen now was just remarkable to us. And when you, when you hear the episode as i’m sure you have, you come away so impressed at the complexity of her world view and her ability to actually marshall resource is to solve a problem at the age of ten it’s pretty incredible. Yeah, i again another moving one. What are you looking for, brad as your as your vetting the stories for for the podcast? Well, it’s it’s a great question, tony, because we get a lot of submission through a website that, frankly, we appreciate the submissions but can’t cover them all in frankly, wouldn’t what we’re looking for is just a compelling story. So what we tell everyone is all non-profits by definition, you khun say do good work, but do they have a good story? And so we always do a pre interview with the founder or someone on the founder’s staff to just sort of stress test what that backstory is, are there some interesting twists and turns in that person’s life? That maybe aren’t on the website or in any of the previous media coverage. And so we try to teach those out during the pre interview process so that when we go into it, we know that we’ve got a compelling story line before we even do the interview. Music is also important to your show. It is? Yeah. I mean, it’s it it it is an important part of the whole aural experience for us. And, you know, it brings a richness and sound and just way think, ah, highly polished professional product in the end. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, i noticed you have a you have a grant contest for radio for fifty thousand dollars. This is you got fifty thousand dollars to give tio one of your one of the charities you chronicle. This is that xero yeah. That’s. Right. And again, this is the generosity of frank. I mean, he gave a twenty five thousand dollar grant at the end of last year’s season, which we gave the team rubicon. That was our premiere episode this year. We wanted to just put a little bit of sort of soft criteria around it to say, hey, we want to get back to the non-profit that we feature, who does the most to help spread the word about crazy good turns through their social networks through their email blasts and just their overall dissemination of their episode? And so we’re just, you know, walking along this this season, keeping an eye on how people are helping promote crazy good terms and at the end of the season will give one of those non-profits fifty thousand dollar grant thanks, frank. Yeah, well, bravo, brad, i mean, you’re you got a bunch of organizations now stepping up their their social media and other games to help you promote the show and for the one that does the best there’s a nice fifty thousand dollar gift that’s yeah, that’s and i mean, you think about it, some of the non-profits we cover are very, very small and something like a fifty thousand dollar grant is an important grant to a non-profit of any size, but it could be game changing to one of the smaller ones if they should get it. Yeah, now, what about the musicians you’re i feel like i feel like you’re shortchanging the musicians because because those air all done gratis. They are on dh, so, yeah, they basically donate their songs to us, uh, to score the show itself on dh way went into it, saying it would be a nice vehicle to actually provide some music discovery as well. And that’s, that’s, certainly part of what we’ve been doing. Okay, we’re going to take our takeout break when we come back. Brad, i’m going to continue talking about crazy good turns podcast and how you submit and a little more detail about what they’re looking for. And, ah, a couple of other stories 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 only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige, no knee author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s, continue with that live listener love! We’ve had more people check in from new bern, north carolina and texas, texas we can’t see your city’s fremery masked in texas don’t know why, but welcome to the broadcast on dh, then let’s go abroad. We’ve got a lot of a lot of listeners abroad starting in germany, guten tag and also seoul, south korea, always always loyal listeners in seoul, thank you so much on your haserot comes a ham nida, ukraine! Ukraine is with us. We cannot see your city, but we know you’re there live list their love to you also, knox are in malta, mexico city, mexico bring a star days, el hadi dahna morocco live listener loved to you and team gear morocco to for two are they neighboring cities? I don’t know, barocco, welcome live listen love to you, and we’ve got to do on the heels of that. Of course, going the podcast pleasantries did i just say plod? Cast the podcast pleasantries come to the over twelve thousand listeners each week, whatever your task you’re doing while you’re listening whatever device whatever time, thank you so much for being with us means a lot. Thank you. Pleasantries to the podcast audience and the affiliate affections are am and fm listeners throughout the country. We’re gonna have some kind of a couple of new am fm affiliates to announce in the next couple weeks or so just tryingto close those up. Wrap those up, but we’ve got a couple new ones coming up so glad that you’re station fits non-profit radio into its schedule affections to our affiliate listeners. Bradshaw i got it. I got to send out the love. So thank you for hanging on while i do that. No problem let’s talk a little more about the submission process get can you can you be a little more detailed for the organizations that would like to submit about what it is you’re looking for in that compelling backstory? Sure, uh, if you go to our website, which is crazy, good turns dot or ge on, just scroll down toward the bottom of the landing page. You’ll see a little box that says, tell us a story and if you click on that it’s just an automatic email that you can fill out and send to us and we read everyone, uh, replied all and as i said before, we ask you to really tell us what is that compelling backstory in addition to what the non-profit does on dh it’s work and it’s focus and cause so sometimes that doesn’t necessarily confirming the e mail, but it looks like an organisation that eyes interesting to us. Then we’ll pick up the phone and talk to someone to try to get more details. Well, okay, all right, so cool. You’re you’re investigating investigative investigative journalists? Yeah, sort of. Okay. We’re not looking to blow the lid off. No, no, no. Yes. All in a positive. All in a positive light. Okay, um, i guess and the best way to highlight some of these interesting back stories is to is to talk about a few of them here. Let’s, let’s talk about team rubicon, which you mentioned. What? I guess i’m going to blow the headline for you. But what compelled me about this one was there was a comment about the addiction of war. Yeah, that’s. That was the first question that we featured in that episode when i ask jake can you miss war? And he didn’t skip a beat he’s, a former marine who was the co founder of team rubicon, which, for your listeners deployed veterans to disaster relief areas. It’s a it’s a really cool, well run, terrific at marketing organization, and jake would is the founder on dh is just one of the most interesting philanthropists out there today. They do just a fantastic job, they’re working, they’re helping vets by sort of tapping into the one of the adrenaline that they’re not getting in there daily routine back here in the states after they’ve left the service, and then they’re also helping victims of tragic, natural natural disasters. That’s, right, it’s a win win and i would say, in addition, that tapping into the the adrenaline which which jake describes well, he also goes to great lengths rightfully so, to talk about veterans commitment, the service in general, you know, you think about it, they they voluntarily joined whatever armed services branch they did, and by nature, their service minded and when they, when they leave the service and come home, sometimes there’s a pretty big void you need to fill in terms of service. To others and this’s a great way to do it into your point. It helps those victims and disaster stricken areas as well. You do your show from a studio. Is that right? Won a radio studio in atlanta? Yeah, we do. We are audio engineer is a gentleman named steven key who is a a m d j here in town. And sixteen. Ninety, uh, is the station and they very graciously loan us their studio when it’s not used. So we do all the interviews from there. We do the voice overs from there as well. Do you always have people come to the studio? Are they’re calling into? I’d say it’s about half and half when they do call in. We asked that they go to a studio so we can capture their audio and high quality. And, uh, and then we mix it after okay. Yeah, you do. Yeah. It it’s heavily produced, which is, is a different sort of format for then. A lot of the non-profit podcast that are out there correct. That’s? Correct. Yeah. That’s, you know, and by the way, purposely wanted it to appeal more broadly beyond just the non-profit sector. Clearly that’s a big target audience for us, for all the obvious reasons, but we know that a lot of our listeners aren’t affiliated with a non-profit or maybe they give to some but aren’t really in the world of non-profits and we wanted it to have broader appeal with just great stories about people doing amazing things for others. Yeah, for sure i mean, you’re you’re you’re you have terrific, i think commercialization potential too, because the audience is really the whole, the whole country that’s what we’re hoping we just need thio keep getting the word out and keep growing. Okay, well, if we can help you while we are helping you, you are you are you people let’s talk about another one that i thought was interesting, so i’m making it all about me. I didn’t even ask you which ones you thought were interesting. Maybe i should throw it to you. Is that why don’t you? So i did not listen to every single episode, so i don’t have the the breath that you have let me toss it to you, what’s one of the stories you cover that that sticks out ah, one of the ones that’s. My personal favorite, is, uh, stephen siller tunnel to towers. And that was one of our early episodes in our first season last year. And again, i mean it’s it’s, the backstory that makes it so compelling. Uh, stephen siller was a fireman in new york who, uh, i was off duty on nine eleven and grabbed all of his gear and drove as far as he could get that close to the towers as he could get ran across a bridge with his gear, ran into one of the towers and family collapsed and he died. His brother got him. Frank siller uh, took up the cause of veterans who have been catastrophically injured and decided the launch of a non-profit called tunnel the towers, and it basically built smart homes for catastrophically wounded vets. And one of those is a guy named top love who was a former marine. Who’s, a triple amputee. And we did that interview, actually in the house that frank sylar’s organization built for him. And it was just and todd’s a great interview. Frank’s a great interview. It’s just a great illustration of that really compelling backstory that brings the work. Together in a really insightful way, a lot of new yorkers know that story because the frank’s brother was in brooklyn and that’s, right? You had to run through the brooklyn battery tunnel. That and that, and i’ve run that i ran that that five k. Once you run, you run the path that he took that’s exactly right from brooklyn through the book of battery tunnel to get. And then it ends at the tower of what ends at the site of the former towers. Yeah, yeah, and again, this is one of the organizations in team rubicon that frank and i got to know so well through home depot because we were one of their largest funders, both tunnel to towers and on team rubicon when we were at home depot. Okay, cool. All right. If you have just, like, a minute left or so brad, what what should we leave people with? I mean, i’m certainly going to leave them with your girl, so you don’t have to say that again. What do you want to leave people with about crazy good turns? Well, we need more stories we always do. And you know, we’ve got plenty in the pipeline for the balance of the season, but we’re always on the lookout for compelling stories of people doing amazing work for others. So please do send him our way because we we love to see what’s going on out there and hopefully feature a few. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Bradshaw hosting co creator of crazy good turns podcast. You’ll find them at crazy good turns dot or ge and at crazy good turns brad’s so much. Thank you very much and good wishes. Good luck. Thank you, tony. Thanks so much for the time. Real pleasure. Thank you. Care. Next week, jonathan lewis is going to return to the show with his new book, the unfinished social entrepreneur. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony. Martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam leaving, which is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scots. Time you 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 pony 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. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff 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 gifts. 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 expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for September 9, 2016: Going Social In The Boardroom & Creative Commons 101

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Jeanne Allen & Nancy Rose: Going Social In The Boardroom

There are lots of ways your board can use the social networks to make their work more efficient and fun. The possibilities start with recruiting; orientation; chat; and content creation. Those and other ideas come from Jeanne Allen, principal of Jeanne Allen Consulting, and Nancy Rose, executive director of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research. (Recorded at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

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 content to raise awareness. This originally aired on September 26, 2014, before Carly was an associate at Robinson+Cole.

 

 


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Okay. 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 suffer with quadrant ah, you believe that i’d suffer with quadrant a topia if i saw that you missed today’s show going social in the board room, there are lots of ways your board can use the social networks to make their work more efficient and fun, their possibilities starting with recruiting, orientation, chat and content creation. Those and other ideas come from gene allen principle of gene allen consulting and nancy rose, executive director of the north carolina center for public policy research, that was recorded at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference and creative commons one or one carly leinheiser explains what creative commons is and how valuable it khun b if you need video images or publications or you want to release your own content to raise awareness of your work that originally aired on september twenty six, twenty fourteen and also seth godin, the author, blogger and speaker sat down at the two thousand ten next-gen charity conference with regina walton than our social media manager, his advice about shipping product failing and permission marketing remains quite sound until on tony’s, take two non-profit radio testimonials responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be spelling dot com i’m gonna try to untie my tongue, and in the meantime, you can listen to gene allen and nancy rose on social networks for your board. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference this is also part of ntc conversations were in san jose, california, at the convention center. My guests are gene allen and nancy rose. They’re session topic is moving social media into the non-profit board room. Gene allen, seated next to me is trainer and consultant, a gene allen consulting, and nancy rose is the executive director at the north carolina center for public policy research. Incorporated ladies gene, nancy, welcome welcome, thanks for having thank you. My pleasure, my pleasure geever a bit of interesting maybe i don’t know, maybe provocative topic social media in the non-profit boardroom and we’re gonna get through it very shortly, i just to shout out our swag item for this. This interview, which is from start male it’s, a very, very firm bug. I could hear that. If you’re not, you’re not watching the video on the backside from start mail. It says, my friends, my email, my business, start mail, dot com. We’re going to put this in the swag pile for the day two and t c swag. Right, he’s got a dreadful place. Okay, this is very interesting. Nancy let’s. Start with you. What what’s the potential for for social in the boardroom. Well, i’m coming at it from an executive director’s position, as well as in my former position as the technology person from our organization and moving boardmember sze into social media helps a lot with four duties, if you can get them to do tweeting for you communications, but not only that things like working in committees, if you can get them toe move online, and actually i let gene talk a bit more about it. I’m sort of the non-profit. Side kick teens. But there’s this interesting. Now, as a technologist, you became executive director. Yeah, i don’t think that’s very common now, it’s not, uh, how does that work? Well, i’ve been with the organization for a little over thirty two years, almost thirty two years. And our executive director had been there for thirty three and he retired and i was in the finance operations in technology side. So i was doing all of that side and ended up moving into the position about seven months ago. But you were broader than just broader than just technology. Okay. Okay, alright. Jeanne what’s the potential here transform how boards do work. Transformed. That’s. All right. That’s. That’s. Pretty dramatic. Yeah. Be creative. Duitz concept of fell fast. Just trying new things. See what the board could get involved with. Okay. We got two ladies from north carolina, by the way. So, uh, onda gonna guy actually, north carolina, just very recently, not thirty two years for me. All right, so let’s, say now the description includes i don’t know if you read this that you proof. Read this. Yeah. It says ah, this session is feared for those who work with leadership or boards, i think, supposed to be geared, but it does, say, feared snusz feared. There, i circled the word feared we’d like to keep people on their toes, so i don’t think geared. Yeah, so is their fear a in the board room around social? Are they so unskilled that they’re they’re fearful? You got a wide range of people on board? You get people who are ready to use social media to get people who like the way things have always been done. Yeah. Plus i think the point here also is people just don’t think of using social media this way. They think of using it to get boardmember is to ask for money. Sure, they think of events they think of broadcasting out and the ideas well, how can we take some of this these products that are out there and use them in this in that boardroom? Okay, well, you identified working internally and and having the board be external ambassadors on social. So how about we start with the internal? Because i think aside from the fact that this is not really very much thought of, i think the first thought would be oh, well, we could have them out tweeting as as you said, but let’s start in so let’s start internal, the board committee structure and the mechanisms of the board. Right. So what’s the potential here. What? What? What are they gonna do when i presented this before the group, some of them are well advanced in some of mark’s there’s. Kind of two. Two different strategies here. One is the idea that you can do collaborative tools. To get bored or committees to me. But the other side of that there’s been a lot of talk of this going on his conferences. What’s the strategy for just making change happen. How do you get people to try something new with a willingness to have that learning curve and a willingness to fail? That’s? Why, nancy, not make a great pair? Because i bring these great ideas and nancy tries them and then says, well, some of these work better than others. What can we learn from it? You know, great idea needs to be a diaper adapted by somebody. Okay. Okay. So what are some of the collaborative tools that we can that we can employ for our board? Well, summer simple, like google plus and just learned how to share your documents have been in a lot of workshops talking about the paid platforms that you come by. So, it’s, just the idea. Board, pack or board effect where you can have your whole board process online. The bigger non-profits alright, let’s not gloss over these resource ideas. Board pack is one right. Ph you and another’s board effect. Okay, so that is you buy a platform and you can have all of your documents, all of your information, and one space that’s organized now the people who work for the huge non-profit sitter nationwide often have these platforms, but the individual non-profits don’t have anything, so they have to they’re the ones that might be most interested. Well, those are our listeners, actually small and midsize. Non-profit so even though i think some of the people inside national organizations could learn, they’re there, i’m not producing the show for them, we’re so we’re targeting the smaller midsize non-profit so all right, so you don’t have to be his fancy as the ones you’re named right but simple google docks and google plus, right? Yes. Yeah, for example, with some of our board members with our committees. If we have boardmember sze that air taking notes for their committees, they can put those into the google docks so that everybody can can see that would add to them as well. Now, getting everybody to use google dogs moving them along sometimes takes a little longer than you would might hope. Say you have toe you have to try it and keep at it for a while. Before you, you decide that it’s not going to be working for you. Ok, there is this age dependent sometimes. I mean, i find that there are people who are all ages come with different expectations, but part of it is people the board members, you’re recruiting the new ones. We want to bring on the boards, bringing new skillsets how do we make sure they’re interested in being on the board? So the process forever has been paper driven? How do we change it? Make it more online? Ok, somewhat aged driven. But not everybody who is young uses all the tech called upon all the platforms and not everybody who’s older doesn’t use them. Okay, i think one of the other things is, you know, our board mirrors the population of north carolina, so they’re coming from all across the state there. You know, we have business people, we have academics. We have people in government, and they all use lots of different tools. And so trying to find one tool that everybody is comfortable using, that can be a challenge sometimes. Okay. How do you have you overcome that challenge? Well, sometimes i’m not sure at the moment the you know, google docks has been fairly successful for us. We do have board members that work and financial institutions that if they are asked if they’re remote ing into a, um into a meeting, they may not be ableto access google docks through their workplace wifi because of security reasons, so they either have to bring in a personal dahna device or they have to leave the premises and work it, but they they’ve been pretty good about it about doing that, okay, okay, songs you give me a heads up. So what are the potential activities that that boards could be doing around the social tool? So we mentioned committee meetings, right? Committee committee meetings between the full board meetings, other other things, they they’re cheating or what? Well, the other one of the things you want boardmember is to be is an ambassador for your organization. Instagram is a great example. Fifteen seconds you considered a board meeting and say, what are some points we could all make? Passed the phone around into a fifteen second video of each boardmember in front of the logo of the organization. So then you have some content you can put out once a month or whatever, and it’s, i’m on this board for this reason, and somebody else gives another one you khun planted ahead of time by everybody saying one of the points we want to cover shows the personality, the face of who’s on the board and people don’t think using instagram that way, and maybe you’re bored doesn’t come in and think that’s, the way they can show their enthusiasm. Yeah, yeah, we’ve also had boardmember tze, when we’re doing our nominations, process du videos of why i serve on the board and then we’ll post those on youtube and share have them share out so that people understand you have different various boardmember see why they’re passionate about the way you’ve actually done that once we have done that and then have the board members themselves share it, or they were or you have done it for them, we’ve shared it and tried to encourage them to share it. We’ve had less success. We’re still working on getting them, but they’re still working on that. Okay? Okay. That’s. Why? The beauty is you can do it on a phone right there in the room. You can practice everybody, does it instead of go home and do it. We’re doing it right now and we could look at it and see what it is. It’s fun. So you’re creating these board meetings that are fine and, you know, and look at this video, you could be silly and then do another one and just to make it have fun, ok? Excellent, excellent. What? Elsie? Glad i asked because i was just thinking of committee meetings on dh nancy mentioned the board minutes, but okay, motion content, 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. What else? So another example i use in the workshop we’re going to do is i take the picture, ellen, the generous tweeted out from the oscars remember that one that you have the selfie? Yes, our kevin spacey and much people, yeah, but just celebrity. So i did a little bit of research on this, and i found some other pictures where people kind of newsjacking s so so to speak. There’s one where there’s a picture, it is the picture right after the picture was taken, so it shows all i’m after they step back about three feet looking at the picture, then there’s another one that shows this person who’s associating united way, who then photoshopped himself into the picture with a united way shirt like you’re bored could do that. It’s just silly things to say to people, look, you can start newsjacking what’s out there mean jacking taking pictures that are out there and adapting them, getting your board toe laugh and have fun so they don’t just see the serious part of the job. All right now that’s a great one for the united way pictures. Great. Yeah, yeah. Like that film zelig, you know the woody allen looking up? He sees it through the kennedy assassination in that place that the lincoln inauguration hour and whatever you know throughout history is face is always there, okay, is there more? I mean, sharon, what else can we now internally still still keep it internal before we start having the board go out and tweet for us and, you know, facebook close for us? Well, actually, i think internal board management stuff so one of the things that i have found about twitter that’s very interesting is i find it to be a great search engine so you can put in topics you’re interested in and stuff pops up boards are always one thing they seem to not know his financial management, so you could get somebody to tweet with it. I mean, search within twitter and i for the trial run to this and found a free webinar there’s being offered on non-profit financials, so you could ask boardmember is to do some searching on twitter to find topics that might be of interest and bring it back to the board members so they could then have signed up for one or two people. Could have signed up for the webinar on non-profit financials seen what it was about brought it in and said here’s, a couple of ideas of what i learned so it’s using twitter is away toe search for information. Then i did an example had to do with lung cancer just for an example of a non-profit that might be with that as a focus, and some report came up from the journal of american medical association that if you were on that board, it might have been of interest to you and it’s one you would have found otherwise. So it’s just getting people thinking you can use twitter to find information, not just tow broadcast put it out, of course, okay, uh, nancy much much with on the board with twitter. Um, we haven’t had the board do much with twitter yet, other than searching for media outlets when we need to do press release those people in their area who we should, who we should be adding to our list and that’s helpful, but the most recent thing we’ve done internally with board is working with our board treasure we’ve implemented slack, which is, you know, sort. Of ah, tool that’s a combination of texting and file sharing all in one place. I don’t know this one it all okay, so it’s of the howto explain slack messaging. So yeah, so it’s sort of like instant messaging back and forth. You can have secure channels and you can have open channels that anybody can anybody that’s invited can be a part of so the treasure and i have a secure channel and that’s where we share all of our financial conversations back and forth our budget information, our treasures reports that we’re working on together so that it’s also searchable, so that if he puts in the word budget, all of the conversations that we’ve had with the word budget and all of the budgets come up in one place so we don’t have to go through lots of emails back and forth or have, you know, set up a specific site excellent that land slack. All right, so using it for internal communications so you and the board or boards could board committees could use it? Yes, and that’s what? I’m hoping we’ve started just with the treasure and i, but i’m hoping it’ll it’ll spread. Out toe have the rest of the committee’s use it. Very interesting. Did you find that one who brought interestingly enough center and ten brought it to me the antennas using it for their five o one tech club for there. What are we called? Were father one tech club in the raleigh durham tol arika oppcoll nc tech for good. Ok. Yes. Come visit sometime. I may so they started using that for communication tool between all of the organizer’s and i thought, oh, that’s a great idea to try with board members so i got used to using it with in town and then started trying it with with the board treasury. Okay, excellent slack. Ok, i love this resource is people khun you can go online and see if it works for them. I love those kinds of ideas i think listeners really appreciate. And the bass part that we’re using is free. So okay, so there’s a page version is the papers and you haven’t found a need for it. So funny before. Yet you said there’s security there could be secure or public. Yes. Ok. Ok, right. So i see how it diverges from email. Plus that they’re all concentrated to search all the remaining on board budget. Just search my communications with nancy. Yeah, talk about budget, and i also integrated double level search. It integrates with other tools, like ed ingrates with box and drop box, so that if you have files that are stored over there, you can just share a link to those files. And when you do the search with, then it’ll pull those up as well. Yes, that’s, what you mentioned, okay, excellent that’s, a great one, all right. Anything else? Internal? Well, they’re all kind of internal from the perspective of it’s, about looking at social media is a way to do the work of the board, so one of the ideas boards need to do is recruit new board members. So what would you use that? So we decided, how can we use link thin? And the idea behind lengthen is if you got all your board members to put that they were on your board, which sometimes people don’t even put that on their profile, then it starts toe raise the profile of your organization because there’s your name out there of people wanted to search, they could see who’s on your board, you could have boardmember put a statement while i’m on this board, he wouldn’t think to use linked in. It helps with your searching when you come up, and it also just helps with if if anyone was asked to be on your board and they might search to see who who’s on the board that comes up that way, who’s on what kind of skills they bring it. You should listen to non-profit radio because we’ve had people talk about some of these chicks linked in cars to me most recently, but you just mentioned, but we’re just and none of the tell you the truth. None of these are brilliant new ideas, the packaging them just for the board to say here things boards khun do right right with social, yes, excellent, excellent. Um, go ahead. Nancy was going to say, i think, gene, you have some, um, examples of using it for orientation as well. Well, that’s, my i like the fun when it’s using slideshare, which now is part of linked in. But the idea is, i’ve seen cem orientation. You can put your orientation slide, show up on slideshare, and then the idea is to use the concept of the classroom where you would do the work ahead of time, right? Flip the classroom where they where they look at the slide show or video first, and then you come in and you have your education after they’ve already looked at. Okay, so you take your somewhat boring, perhaps orientation to being on the board, but you can watch it at eleven o’clock at night and i could watch it it’s six in the morning and then you show up saying to people, come to the board meeting and we’re going to discuss what was on there. And i shows some examples that i found of a couple of groups, one of which embedded some questions and said, we’re going to talk about these questions when you get here, the ideas you don’t pull people into a room and use their precious time to look at a slideshow that’s one dimensional even though it’s important, they can look at it on their own time. Yeah, why slideshare and not other places you don’t have to keep changing it. It sits there. You don’t have to it’s just it’s. Ah threespot to put your information don’t have to go in and change it once a week don’t have to change it twice a year. Every time you have an orientation, if you upgraded, you could put something in there, and then other people who might want to know something about your organization might come across and go. Oh, isn’t this interesting? So the questions i get sometimes about that is what we have information we don’t want to share. Well, then, don’t put it in the slide show. I mean, if it’s crucial, we’ll just deal with that at the board meeting. Exactly. All right. But the key on that is to use people’s time in a wise way and say, we’re gonna use your time when you’re together doing things you could only do together and use the time alone where you could go what’s the slide show. Okay. Excellent. Slideshare for boards. Yeah. Brilliant. All right, all right. We still have a couple more minutes left together. What? Whatever. We talk now. Okay. Well, i guess i mean, i was organizing it inside and outside. Yeah. Let’s go. So let’s, go outside. Okay. Um, you’re boardmember xaz social media ambassadors. Yeah, yep. You’re doing this, nancy. So we’re just starting, i mean, we’ve had a couple of tries and fails, so when we’ve released a publication, we’ve certainly ask board members to repeat our tweets toe tweet out in comment, etcetera, but we’re finding we have a couple of board members that really do that, but we’re finding that if we go ahead and craft tweets and craft facebook posts and send them to them and all they have to do is cut and paste and they consent it from their own that’s what? We’re going to try for our next release and we’ll see how it goes, okay, yeah, i mean, the wisdom, the conventional wisdom is that you want make it as easy as possible for people to share and at least getting started, you know, write, especially for those that are not as comfortable with it as others. All right, all right, we’ll get there, but you’re you know, you said you’d try and fail, try and fail sometimes that that’s what we should be don’t fear that don’t feel failure. That’s part of the flow of the organization is not at risk for what your trying you know, you’re just trying some simple tweeted to twitter and facebook outreach try it, it’s creating the culture who were willing to trust something what works and find the two or three tools that work well for us. Part of this is bringing on new people on the board that creative class, the new thinkers. I had a friend who just joined the board who said to me i only want to join the board whether to one fun things and creative things. I don’t want to be on an old fogey board. Well, it’s not necessary in age thing, but it’s a tool thing sometime and a culture. Yes. What do you know? What are they using their board for? How were they using them? I was how engages the board. Okay, there’s. A lot to that. So do a lot of more development. And with the number one question, i get asked us how to get our board more engaged. So that started this whole presentation. How can we do things that engage? Boardmember is it’s not just telling him what to do but gives them a chance to create stuff? So the idea would be perhaps what i have a board come up with. What? Are some of the topics we need to learn more about, which is always financial management and then instead of staff driving it, divide it up amongst the board members and say, okay, here’s, some topics, tony, you’re going to charge the september meeting, we’re gonna have a ten minute time slot. We just want to do a little bit of introduction on this topic, why don’t you go look for it on twitter or look for a video on youtube and you bring the content to us and i wouldn’t ask you if you were the lawyer or the accountant necessary because we don’t want that high level. We just want some layperson description of whatever the function is, so you could bring in a a video you found on youtube said, hey, this is one about non-profit financial management that really lays out some ideas we could look at, so people are taking some ownership for teaching themselves how to be on the board nasco you’re doing that are the are board members bringing topics either on their own or once you’ve asked him to look into well boardmember zehr always bringing us topics study for our for our policy studies way. We have not had them bring topics necessarily for board development yet. Okay. All right, so we just have a few more minutes. I mean, another minute or so really men and a half. This is really it’s very motivating mean, they’re very simple things you contest. You know, this is no, nothing outlandish, but but true productivity, i mean, the idea of the of slack love that one, you know, simple productivity tools that board’s air just not thinking about and boards can be very paper intensive. Yeah, we but we all know that yes, yes. Created a culture who are willing to try new ideas because if we try i’m in the board room with using social media. We might come with other ideas for how to do fund-raising or take some ownership in some other ways. I have one. I’m going to throw out for you. I was in a board meeting for ah client organization, and they invested in ipads for all their board members. Now you have to give it back when you leave the board, but they’re boardmember it’s. Well, don’t you start with the minutes report packages leading up to the board meeting instead of these three ring binder is being shipped out all over your state or something? Just upload you put them somewhere. They all grab them from there, they will grab them for their own into individual ipad. Read them at their leisure so you’re not you’re not. I don’t know if they found that they saved money, but they know that they have safe time in copy and reproduction and on dh. Maybe they haven’t in these shipping costs because they have board members all over new york state. So i’m thinking north carolina, you know? So yeah, it’s an upfront investment. Although the older ipads now are a lot less expensive uh s so all the board packages they’re online, right? Please download it at your leisure and obviously have read it. And then the board minutes get circulated that same way. And we need to take the stories of the non-profits doing that and kind of write it up and share. So we get more people trying things like that. Okay, i agree. Yeah, we finally moved from eight and a half by fourteen hundred and thirty eight page paper board packets to bring your own device and download. Download the you’re doing that way just now got into that. Space, but it took about four years. All right, all right. You’ve been testing audiocasting contrasting and trying exactly really write their test and try and don’t be afraid to fail. Great. Outstanding. All right, seated next to me is gene allen, trainer and consultant of gene allen consulting and also nancy rose, executive director, the north carolina center for public policy research. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc steen the non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us. Cuadra to know pia cuadra to know pia cuadra, tono pia, creative commons one o one and seth gordon coming up first. Pursuant fourth quarter starts next month, which means a big fund-raising push for you. Do you need help? Check out their year end accelerator. It combines a proven best practices with their innovative acquisition and cultivation strategies. What does all that mean? You have a strong year end push, that’s what? It means their accelerator at pursuant dot com slash year end accelerator we be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising you want to bring millennials into your organization? This is perfect because it’s not your grandma’s spelling bee. Check out the video. You’ll see live music, dancing, standup comedy, fund-raising and spelling. These are great millennial events. They run them in a bar or restaurant on behalf of your organization. If those very fun video at we b e spelling dot com now time for tony steak too. The itunes testimonials and reviews are amazing. I had to keep this video up for a second week. One of the guys on invoked the cartel. Guys remember tom and ready, marriott. See, the show is still on there. Just not doing that new new shows every week anymore. But the archive is still very active. And one of the people who wrote a testimonial said he sees elements of the car talk guys in non-profit radio, which i loved. That was very gracious because i, you know, i don’t know so much now, but in the beginning i was sort of channeling tom and ray because, you know, they have features and the show has features and e yes, i was thinking about them. So for that to come full circle on someone in the in the audience to recognize that was really felt very good. He also invite invoked mike pesca. Who’s a guy i don’t know if he’s nationwide, but i hear him on w n y c public radio here in new york city and he’s also a pretty good talent. So i was very grateful for that kind of stuff. And there are others on dh i thank you if if you’ve posted a review or testimonial at itunes, thank you very much. The video that covers some of these other some of the other ones and shows my gratitude is at tony martignetti dot com. The itunes paige for the show is at non-profit radio dot net. And that is tony’s take two here is carly leinheiser from september twenty six twenty fourteen talking about creative commons 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 ah, law firm in new york city. And her workshop topic is share use remix an introduction to creative commons. Carly welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to have you. Thanks, it’s. Great to be here. Thanks. 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 disturb you 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 and so 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. Um, 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 there in their work. So you have a set of exclusive rights that you’re the only one they 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 on anyone can exercise those same rights as long as with all creative commons licenses, you have to give attribution or credit. So you link back to the original work and then there’s certain other restrictions that are in some of the different licenses. Okay, andi, 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 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. And this is a concept called the copy left. And the idea is 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 or a 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 in the same way so grows the body of work. Yeah, 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 um or, you know photos or maybe personal histories, things that i’d 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. 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 market of eco enterprises charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact 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. How do we how doesn’t non-profit go about using creative commons? What do we need to do? Right? 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 safe 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. Ah, 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 license 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 in bed 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 this 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, um, 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 favorite it’s 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 have 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 siri’s 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 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. Tio 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 contests, 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 is excellent, 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 releasing their contents under creative commons license, so not only so the brooklyn museum is a good one, yeah, 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, 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 searching for others as well. Sounds like it sze i’ve learned a lot more about the community than, uh, than i knew. Thank you very much, carla. Thank you, 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 latto visser love. We are rocking tons of live listeners. We’re going to start abroad with a country that i don’t believe has checked in the past. Morocco robot robot, morocco i hope i pronounced that right in ah, in the in the a small chance that you are among the one third speaking french moroccan bonem sure, if you’re not, i’m sorry for that that’s. The live love still goes out. It just goes out in english. Right, mexico cua cua em alpa quantum oppcoll mexico buena star days! We’ve got multiple in korea always sold, always checking in so grateful for that. But also young django jungle korea, i think do the best i could on your haserot comes a ham nida you are south korean listeners. China always checks in we got multiple beijing, but we’ve also got guangdong china ni hao st louis reserved no, i’m sorry that’s not abroad that’s not very nice to do. Uh, sometimes they do it in person, but on purpose. But not today taipei. We got taiwan in the house also, and they are occasional listeners. And i’m always grateful for that, of course, niehaus to our taiwanese listeners here in the u s. Berkeley, california! Springfield, virginia. Coral gables, florida. New bern, north carolina joined us late. But there you are, loyal nonetheless. New bern edmonds, washington rock in chapel hill, north carolina only about five hours from where i hang out a lot in emerald isle, albuquerque, new mexico. Cool smyrna, delaware. Smyrna, maybe it’s smear now think it’s smeared a delaware live listener love to each of those live listeners. You’ve also got new york. New york thank you very much. Appreciate that were here on seventy second street and st louis, missouri, right after live. Listen, love comes apart cast pleasantries you can’t you can’t proceed with the show one without the other. Grateful to all our podcast listeners, whatever platform, whatever device and whatever activity you’re engaged in while you listen. Thank you so much pleasantries to the podcast audience and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country. Let your station know that you’re listening. I’d be grateful for that they’d be grateful for that affections to the many affiliate listeners throughout the country listening and all kinds of different times, most of them next week. Affections to you. Back in two thousand ten, my aa and the show’s my end, the show’s inaugural and excellent social media manager was with me at a conference and next-gen charity conference was here in new york city, the that only they really ran about three of those, but we were at the inaugural one and i had a commitment. I had a run out for something for like an hour and that’s when seth godin was available, he was speaking at the conference, he came off stage. Regina walton got him. Got the interview. Here it is. And then right after that, we got a surprise. Maria semple is with me in the studio with her husband bob and she’s going to join us for jamie for a few minutes. Right after here’s. Seth gordon and regina walton. My name’s. Regina walton. None of you have heard me before. I am tony’s social media manager andi. We’re here at nextgencharity and i have the pleasure of speaking with south code hyre regina. Hi. Um, question when you were giving your speech, you were talking teo charities about how to adjust to this new world of work. Can you give a quick summary of what you were talking about? I’m not sure i’m happy with the word adjust. Okay, as a revolution. But this is the first revolution since tv nineteen. Fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty. It’s the revolution of our lifetime. If you look at the revolution, we are buy-in and you view it as something one needs to adjust to that’s a little bit like being a horse sales and say i have to adjust to the car. No, you have to embrace it. You have to dive into it. You have to figure out how do i use this open door and this opportunity to make a dent in the universe. Right? So from that perspective than what do you recommend for people? Tio? Jump in and embrace and revolutionize. And teo, you know, innovate three steps ship, get it out the door haven’t intersect with the marketplace until there’s an intersection. Nothing happened to connect. Understand that the internet is a connection machine. That’s what? It’s for that’s what was invented for wasn’t there to help you sell shoes was there to connect one to another. So you have to keep track of how many connections you’ve got and what are they worth? And number three is fail fail. Often people in revolutions fail in nineteen twenty. There were two thousand three hundred car companies in the united states. Think about that for a minute. Wow. Right. So you don’t say i’m going to start a car company if i can be guaranteed to be general motors. No, you say. Well, give it a shot. Let’s. See what happens and that’s, you know, non-profits have so. Much at stake in the on the upside and so little its take on the downside that there is no excuse whatsoever for them not to make the choice to ship and to fail and to repeat, because if you do nothing, you’re going to get what you already got. But if you do something and it works, then you can make some lives change. Great. And so this connects to your point when you brought up charity water and and i do remember, you were saying, if you d’oh what scott does it’s not gonna work, so can you expand on that goes back to the idea? Purple cow, right? You know, marcel duchamp was a visual artist, and he was a dada ist he put a urinal into an art exhibit, and it was a sensation. The second guy who put a urinal into museum was a plumber very big difference between being the first guy in the second guy. So if we’re doing art, if we’re making conversations, if we’re telling stories that spread, we have to be the one who does it first, you have to be the one who does it in a way that impacts people, if you say, well, i’m just like that guy, but me, we’re going to go with that guy. He was first, he got our attention. Now we don’t need you. We’ve solved out whatever problem he solved, right? Okay. And just one more question at least, is that with nextgencharity, you know, there are a lot of new charities here, but with tony, he does a lot of work with plan giving. You’ve got to be around for ten years and before you can even start that process so and people are trying to keep up with, i’ll bring him up again. Charity water people are trying to keep up with these new guys. So how do you help them or what can you say to them? The older charities that are still going well, i would start by saying this that ten dollars, texted donations are dramatically overrated. You can’t count on them, you can’t build a real organization on them, they’re flashy but that’s not the future permission is the future, the privilege of anticipated personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. The american cancer society has permission the legacy charities have permission and they’re blowing it. They blow up the way politicians blow it to get your e mail address they have for you for money until they burn it out and then you’re gone. The answer instead is to say, these people care enough to listen to me. How can i say something to them that they want to hear? How can i create platforms and scenarios and stories that make them look forward to hearing from me? How do i take this permission and nurture it and grow it over? Time has supposed to slam bam! I got to make this quarter’s numbers of the board’s gonna get mad at me. Mindset. That shift is a fundamental shift from the tv spams economy to the connection permission economy that we live in now. Okay? And just one more thing in terms of revolution. What? I talk about this in terms of what i do, which i won’t talk about a lot. I also talk about how in some ways it’s going back, you know, it’s. Like when your grandfather was talking, teo, you know, whoever and they’re just talking over the fence. It’s just it’s nowhere fancier and flashier. Would you agree? Your dad? Actually, they call it a global village. And when they think about it, what they mean is, tribes are one hundred fifty, two hundred fifty people who care about each other. Well, now it doesn’t have to be geography. It can be one hundred fifty people in united states who all grew up in that village. And all grew up in that slum who are now coming together to fix that thing. It can be the three hundred scientists who care the most about the truth about global warming and want to connect over that. So it’s. Yes, it’s, that conversation over the back fence. But it might be digital. So stop worrying about slamming strangers and start worrying about creating friends. Okay, great. So thank you so much for your boss. Really work six years ago and still excellent. Excellent advice. Regina walton. What a beautiful radio voice she has. Real simple. Welcome to studio. Hey, great to be here today. So you got your boat parked on seventy nine street, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s. Right. Okay. Excellent. You and your husband bob here? Yeah. The two of you look very similar. We were told that a lot. Yeah, you’re not brother and sister are you know. No, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely. Ok. Ok, sure. Although he’s been told he looks like a kennedy a lot. Yeah, but maybe his dad especially. Yeah. Yeah, that looks like joe bob. Your head. Ten. Really maria. Simple. Of course. The prospect. Find her. She’s. She’s. Ah, at maria, simple and she’s. Also the prospect finder. Dot com outstanding outsource prospect research. Right for businesses to not only for non-profits, of course. Right. I help robbery. Help small businesses with prospecting. Excellent. Okay, so you drop by tonight, which is very cool. You’re done. You got the boat parked in seven nine street for how many nights? Just through tonight. And then we’ll leave tomorrow morning, so i figured i was in the city. I’d pop by and say hi to both. You here? I really appreciate that. That’s, the both of us being me and sam. Sam and i i appreciate that. Thank you, bob. Nice to meet you. Cool. All right. Welcome. Very simple. What? Good to be here and have a great weekend. Oh, thank you. Thanks so much. Cool. All right. We’re gonna wrap it up, sam, what you think next week, beth cantor and her co author, eliza sherman, with their new book, the happy, healthy non-profit. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant. They have a year end accelerator pursuant dot com slash year and accelerator, aptly named and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com ah, creative producers. Claire miree off sam liebowitz, he’s here is a line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty, 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. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine am 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 do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were, and 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 percent.

Nonprofit Radio for May 8, 2015: Consider Consulting & Top Skills For Your Board

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Julia Reich and Marlene OliveiraConsider Consulting

Is consulting to nonprofits for you? Do you have the personality for it? What about marketing, pricing and setting boundaries? Julia Reich is owner of Stone Soup Creative and Marlene Oliveira is principal of moflow, a communications consultancy. We talked at NTC 2015, 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 suffer the embarrassment of giggle incontinence if it leaked out that you missed today’s show, consider consulting is consulting to non-profits for you do you have the personality for it? What about marketing, pricing and setting boundaries with clients? Julia rice is owner of stone soup creative and marlene olivera is principal of moflow, a communications consultancy, we talked at ntcdinosaur fifteen, the non-profit technology conference and top skills for your board software advice has a report on what skills to look for as you recruit board members. Melissa mccormick is their market research manager on tony’s. Take two thank you and third sector, responsive by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference here is considered consulting from auntie si. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen we’re in austin, texas at the convention center our hosts are and ten non-profit technology network with me are julie rice she’s, the owner of stone soup, creative and marlene olivera, copywriter and communications consultant with moflow julia marlene, welcome, thanks for having us thinking it’s a pleasure to have you on a busy conference day. Thank you. You’re a very interesting topic is, uh, considering consulting to non-profits i like that a lot. We don’t do a lot of career topics on non-profit radio. So that’s why? I was very much anxious toe have you and talk to you? Um, julia let’s, start with you. What do i need to be thinking about? Generally? Because we have plenty of time together if i’m thinking about making this transition to consulting what what should be what? Some of things i should be thinking about? Well, when marlene and i were putting together the session, we identified five different main topics that we’re going to cover, and one of them is actually making the leap and what to think about when you’re first starting out? Yeah, on and so we both came up with our own tips of what we thought would be important, and so i’ll just share one of my tips and it’s going to sound really obvious, but when you’re first starting out as a consultant, i think it’s important to be professional and there’s a lot of different ways, teo exude professionalism, and one of those things is really easy to do and that’s get a professional headshot so, you know, you can use something from your iphone or whatever, but that’s the selfie is not really doing it. Yeah, yeah. And i see a lot of people do that, and i think that they’re kind of it’s kind of an injustice. I think that they could really be presenting just a better presentation of themselves if they got a a professional headshot on and there’s actually, right here in the conference in the science fair, they’re actually taking professional about two boots over, right? Flux a fail you xx our neighbors are taking taking professional hit shots so there’s, no excuse, right? If you’re here it but if you’re not, yeah, and we’re in such a visual society on the web is so visual. When people go to your about paige or your bio page, the first thing they’re gonna do is look at your picture before they start reading. So it’s your first impression and a lot of ways, right? All right, marlene, you have a tip? Yeah, for sure. I think when you’re thinking about whether or not to move into consulting, my advice is to think about two things in particular. One is your personality and whether you have an entrepreneurial type of personality, whether you’re going to be able teo, learn the skills that are outside of your specialty in order to run a business, have you also within your personality, whether you’re a warrior or not, whether you’re gonna be able teo, stay, keep an even keel when the business is slow, right? We went in cash flow. We need to know that cash flow and income fluctuations very, very much a part of having your own consultant lee totally a part of it. And so i kind of think that you should potentially not be pursuing this if you’re a real warrior. Yeah, some real introspection. Yeah. Think about your personality. And and you know whether you want to run a business because it’s a big move from having a paycheck. And then the other thing is, think about your finances. So you touched on it. I think in my in my experience, it worked well to have a good cash flow. Good reserve before launching the business. So i think, you know, save up for it if you can spend some time saving up so that once again you can weather the downtime and that you make good decisions, you won’t just take any client for any reason. So i think thinking about your finances and think about how good you are with money. You know, julie and i have talked about, you know, your good favor when the money does come in. Do you spend it all? So those are things i think you think you should think about in terms of your personality way want to avoid making an impulsive decision because all of a sudden, our job sucks. Something has really just happened that we just can’t tolerate. So i’m going off on my own. Yes. Actually, that is something that we talked about as well as your motivation. Are you? What? What you said, you know, it seems like the easiest way out of a bad situation. Or do you really want to be a business owner? Okay, julie, you want to share another tip? You said you had teo just came up with. A couple, anything else or around the motivation, any opening question tips? Well, i would just add to it, marlene said, when i first went out on my own, a lot of people would say to me, oh, i could never do that, i would just be watching television all the time or, you know, going shopping and, you know, my personality is well suited to being a consultant and being self employed because i’m just really self motivated and no, i have to, you know, i have to make a living, so i’m not gonna waste my time, you know, going shopping and watching television and so it’s, just i know that part of my personality is is motivated enough teo toe work, like on a and i guess that’s going back to being professional, you know, it’s, i’m i’m sitting in my office in front of my computer basically monday through friday, nine to five, sending that setting those hours cem or introspection, but also recognizing that the need to pay bills is quite a motivation. So you may think that you may be on the fence about whether you’re whether you’re disciplined enough, recognize that you’re gonna have bills and you are going to want to make money to pay them so that that should be some help to you, right, discipline, that way of putting it. But on the other hand, if you say you’re total slouch and, you know, for a fact, you’re not gonna do it, then then this is not the right both for you, although i can’t say i kind of learned this one the hard way a little bit where the year i launched my business was also an olympic here i watched it few too many olympic duvette your income suffer, and i mean, it was mostly during a quiet time it was during the summer, but i did realize that i could have been building my business instead and started to build that structure and that discipline in a more defined way for myself started to structure it in what year was that what you live for? Two thousand eight? And how long have you been in business? Julia? Since two thousand one. Okay, oppcoll what’s something else? Well, can i presume that marketing is one of the areas of importance? Who wants to start with marketing ideas? How? Do we get this thing launched? You go first. All right, well, i have just a few of the things that have worked for me that i think are potentially surprising to people. I mean, i think you need to do what you enjoy doing and do what overtime you figure out what works but a lot. People cringe when i say i could have obtained some of my favorite and best clients by either cold calling or sending letters. Really? Absolutely. Especially in that first year, i think, you know, nobody wants to pick up the phone and do that, and i didn’t want to either. I don’t mind as much as other people, but i just did. I just made a list. I made a certain number. People i’d call on certain days. It’s good to schedule marketing days. That’s another tip that you will spend on your marketing, your business. And yes, between those calls and those those letters overtime, i did plant the seeds, and they did take a while to grow. But i got some of the best clients my favorite work because they responded to the letter or that phone call. I wonder if. It’s, because you were very careful about who you put on the list. I definitely would have been a lot of time on research, absolutely so much, so much more than the writing and the calling. Yeah, but marlene is also a writer professionally, so i’m sure it was an extremely well written letter. Okay, okay, still that’s not what i would expect all these years and you’re consultant two thousand eight, i would have expected you say comes from referrals mostly that that’s my number to me, actually between that kind of pitching, sort of cold calling or or letter writing and referrals that’s where most of my business has come. And i think referrals, arm or account for more. But that was just a surprising one. The first one that i mentioned and i’ve kept up more with referrals then with letter writing and phone calls. But, yes, absolutely referrals. And when it comes to referrals similar, i think people should be disciplined, structured about it. You make it really targeted list. What you do is you approach your clients that you like working with and you let them know i’d like to work with more awesome clients. Like you and i’m guessing, you know, like minded people, and i think that they’re to you, you said a number how many referrals will i ask for per month to say and make it a point? Make it on your calendar asked for those referrals and pre write an email that they can forward on that your contacts conversely, ford on very, very simple, just like all our sharing tools on the web. Okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way julia let’s, come back to your marketing marketing tips. Well, i think when you’re thinking about positioning yourself, when you’re first starting out, that you want to position yourself as an expert, i mean, obviously, you have an expertise in whatever it is that you want to consult about. So i don’t think that that would actually, you know, be an issue. But, you know, you kind of want to just stake a claim and say, i am this expert with this with this specialty, and position yourself that way, go on and have the confidence to do that. All right, anything else? Marketing wise marketing is pretty big. Well, let’s say, i mean, julia, you mentioned professionalism and the professional headshot. Obviously, all your marketing materials should be professional might be worth investing in a professional writer if you’re not one designer. If you’re not one, definitely. I mean, you should be investing in your business. Yeah, and and i would say that in terms of marketing, something that i think has worked well for both of us is sort of building a network and developing a community and sharing your knowledge with that community. So whether that’s doing blawg posts or webinars or marlene does tweet chats, uh, different kinds of presentations, but sharing your expertise with the community and building it up that way. There’s a good way too, huh? Just build your clientele and your prospects. Julia, what is your consulting? What do you do? I do graphic design and brand strategy. Okay? And marlene, you’re a professional writer. I do copy writing in communications planning. So basically a block and a newsletter planning it’s. Not writing strategy. Not writing if it’s not writing it’s those do you think? Okay. Okay, so you’re covering it. All right. So we have writing and design. Ah, where? Should we go after after marketing? Well, they didn’t want to just say one more thing about marketing really lead to it and a lot of those efforts i know for both of us lead toward building an email list on and that’s it for me. It’s a focus now that hasn’t been a focus prior to now, but it also fits with that building a community, having people who want to hear from you and are waiting for your help and your tips and your information keeping yourself top of mind with them. So it’s ready to add that about female? Alright, excellent way wish we go after marketing. Well, we didn’t finish talking, but one thing that i love talking about a little bit of this bit working from home, one of the advantages yeah, and the productivity side for me because i think it’s both the luxury on the challenge of being self employed that you’re leaving the world of meetings if you work in a non-profit you’d probably spend forty percent of your day in meetings, and maybe maybe i’m under representing that, but you can get so much done, but you do have to be. Disciplined, so i just wanted to mention the idea about setting boundaries for yourself and for others on, and i’m very pointed about that, you know, there are certain things i won’t do while i’m writing, i won’t let an internet distractions of all that social media scheduled time for those those are put to the side until i’ve been productive enough and setting boundaries with people around you could sometimes those friends who have more flexibility in their life get excited that they can call you during the day or they can pop in, or the or the lunch thing that julia mentioned that that they think you’re available now to fit into their social calendar. So you just need to decide what you’re going to allow in if anything, during a work day and be deliberate about that boundaries. And i’ve had i’ve had an office outside of the house, and i’ve had an office inside my house, and i like them both for different reasons. Pros and cons for both. Okay, murcott how about pricing? We move, teo pricing, what base do we have around pricing? Well, i have a few tips. Sort of. I find it. Hard to give anyone advice about what they should do with pricing, but these are the things that these short, more smaller picture tips that i that i use well, the big picture point is, too. If you’re launching your business as a professional than charge professional feet, it doesn’t mean charging here here doesn’t mean charging a ton, but it doesn’t mean trying to compete with employees and related to that is to get away from hourly pricing because clients will compare you to staff and what they’re paying stuff. Oh, that’s interesting you’re recommending avoiding hourly, but i don’t think of charged hourly since since that first year since two thousand eight, when i when i realized that for me project based pricing works better clients, they like the predictability of it. They know what they’re paying, and i build in the steps that it is going to take to get there. So that’s kind of like to use the analogy, if you know you had kids say they come over your lawn for ten dollar fee or, you know, four dollars every ten minutes and you have no idea how long this kid is going to take. And i think my clients like that predictability about it other a few other tips are i think you should always give a ballpark first to see if you’re speaking the same language, maybe, you know, even in the same world and never quote in person, like always have the conversation go back and think about what that really should be and come back in writing later. Yeah, sometimes it can be sometimes hard. Teo, resist the impulse to do be thoughtful and answer the question. Well, what would this cost? You know, you always have to say step, step back, let me think about it. Let me put something in writing for you that’s usually that’s, usually sufficient to get the person toe agreed. It’s wait a few days or a week for something more. I appreciate that you’re thinking about yeah, exactly, you know, with anything that we do. We’re thinking about time, but we’re also thinking about our particular expertise, whether we’re right fit were probably building out timelines for clients. They want us to go think about what it really is and so yeah, it’s customized for them. Yeah, more, more, more tips around, pricing, anything. You wanna add julia? I wanted to add onto something marlene said about not pricing by the hour because i think it’s also a perception thing, you know, if a client is hyre is paying you by the hour, i think they’re more inclined to perceive you as a vendor, you know, like, you know, someone who most lawn and not then that’s, not really what commodity? Yeah, like that’s, not really where we are and what we do, we’re more i feel like i’m more of a valued partner with my client’s projects, and i’m really trying to understand what their goals and objectives are, and i want to help them. I want to be honestly, genuinely helpful to help them achieve their goals, and i’m helping them plan and strategize, and they’re not going to get that from an hourly rate and it sure you both of you come would come across this that you want to be helpful, so i don’t want my clients to hesitate to call me or ask me to do something because they don’t want to spend that other additional hourly fee. I want them to feel like they can talk to me. To get it right do what it takes to get it right. And then if there is a need for an additional fee, absolutely you can say, you know, i certainly can help you with that. But it’s it’s outside what we go talked about initially that’s actually is another thought about boundaries different than what we were talking about, but still that’s important about boundaries. Yeah, that’s well outside we’ve we’ve agreed, if you like, we can add that on absolutely and that, and that goes back to those careful quotes. You know, when i build a quota bill didn’t exactly what steps are included in that fie, and if it does carry on a little longer than we might talk about an additional fee? Yeah, yeah, okay, one of the topics i think you were going to discuss his establishing your niche and identifying yourself as that within that niche. How do we how do we do that with our potential clients? Julia has a great thoughts. I’ll lead over to her about the consultant versus freelance or kind of role, but for me, when your first evaluating your nation with a canadian e, i think, you know a few things to just consider again you have to find your way along the way we’ve talked about how did we each find our way? Because we can’t pin it down to any one thing, you know, but you’re you’re looking at obviously your expertise and your experience and your skills, you’re looking at what kind of non-profit you want to serve if you want to focus in on a sub sector and you probably should, unless you’re skilled that you’re offering is very specific. He wanted to think about what motivates you, how you can bring your personality into your business and how that can influence what you what you have to offer. So, yeah, that’s kind of go through my thoughts around establishing your brand in the shape of your business and of course, your marketing materials have materials need to support all that and be consistent, just like we have a consistent message within non-profits our own marketing message needs to be consistent, okay? Julia well, my answer is more sort of about the terminology that i might use to define what i d’oh on, and so now i’m using the term consultant, but i haven’t always been comfortable using that term, so i mean, when you think about graphic designers and graphic design firms, you probably don’t think of them as being consultants in the typical sense of the word, and you’re right because i do have ah, more of ah, creative agency hat and with graphic design projects, you know, and they’re and they’re, you know, project fee, and i work with a team of people, you know, like a website, for instance, and i work with developers and designers and content writers, but there is also i am also a consultant because i do brands strategy, and i work with my clients one on one, and so i am wearing that more of that consultant hat, but i also do trainings and workshops and things like that, so in that sense, i’m more of a consultant. So i guess when you’re talking about establishing your brand in your niche, you know, whether you call yourself a consultant or an agency or a freelancer or a coach on this, you’re really matters. I mean, maybe the clients don’t even really care as long as you are positioning yourself so that the client that you want to reach knows that you’re the person to call in their time of need, and that may take some tweaking, right? I’m still tweet like that been in business for fourteen, fifteen years, i’m still tweaking. You don’t always get the clients that exactly in the sweet spot that you want, right? And you might change over the years, you know, i’ve been tweaking when i started right away and interesting. Yeah, you know, i actually was focusing on not focusing i was helping with anything that fell under communications because that was my background was overall communications managing within a non-profit and in the first few months, i decided let’s focus on content because i think clients know they need it, and they don’t want to write it themselves. And then i did that for several years, and in the last couple of years i thought, you know, i can still do that, but i can help more non-profit by doing mme or things like this chat that julia mention now that’s, that’s, not for compensation. I do that for free, but i wanted to sort of change who i was, who i was in the marketplace and i offer more training and more webinars and developing a course so it’s, always evolving. I assume it will always evolve for me. That’s actually the fun part of it it’s it’s creative to be self employed to be a consultant you’re always trying to think of new ways to do things and better ways to do things many things. A twitter chat is a great example, cause it sets you up as an expert in the area, a za convener of others live in your profession as a guide and help in the niche. Yes, a resource that got all that well within the niche that you’ve selected. All very good, i think, for long term credibility. Have you ever seen anything directly business come from twitter? Chat directly? You know it’s a good question, because some of the things i do in that domain, i think, keep me top of mind, but they don’t result in a phone call. Yeah, that’s fine. So i think it’s someone who knows about the rest of it or has been to my website or his has met me through referral and then they see the other activity and that gives it. A boots that just keeps me top of mind i feel that way for the chat, but what i find with the chat specifically is also that it creates sort of a you know, my my own, even though i’m a business might maya ambassadors on social media, people who are more loyal, more willing to share what i’m providing, whether it’s block post so that kind of thing so that’s a definite benefit that i’ve had from your ambassadors on social media love that, yeah, very good in all those ways. Yeah, well, well put, well put, i’ve been doing this show for four and a half years and on lee within the past year, i’d say has it led to calls related to business? So interesting really took a good three years, i’d say before, before that started happening and and it’s it’s a love i mean, i just it’s a joint i love doing this show, but that’s just like an added benefit. A lot of marketing efforts are like that. Yeah, yeah it’s a long cycle, long term, but i do plan to giving consulting, by the way e-giving fund-raising all right, so we still have another like three minutes or so together? What? What else? What else you want to talk about? Well, one of these we’re going to be sharing in our session tomorrow is about lessons learned along the way. I don’t know if you want to keep that are julia share? So we’re going to wrap up with lessons learned along the way and when i was thinking about what i wanted to say about that it’s really more about sort of ah, something i’ve learned about myself that i’m not very good at and just acknowledging that i’m not very good at it or introspection more interest back-up introspection, asses, yeah, preneurs yeah, yeah, so one of the lessons i’ve learned about myself along the way is that i really hate to talk on the phone like i’m think i’m phobic like i will talk on the phone, you know, if a client wants to talk on the phone or one of my strategic partners wants to talk on the phone, i will do it, but i won’t almost never pick up the phone and initiate a car, so you’re definitely not doing the cold calling marketing i’m doing carlene store. Right? I’m doing cold emailing. Okay, uh, but i would rather clean out my refrigerator, then pick up the phone. Okay? And i think that’s really held me back. You know, i don’t think it’s a good thing, all right, but just you’ve identified it right way you’re not going to force yourself to do cold call marketing, right? Alright, alright. Lessons learned, marlene for me, the big one is learn to say no, you know, say no if if it’s not in your budget, if it’s not according to your fees and wait for the client that will pay your fees. Say no if it’s if it doesn’t feel right, or if it’s not the right fit for me, i say no when it’s not a non-profit because other people hear about me and they asked me small businesses and i really my passion is focusing on working with non-profit so that’s where i keep it and it’s not to say not to be leased a little flexible on work outside your comfort zone and try new things, but just understand it’s okay to say no when it doesn’t feel good so that the more you say no the more you’re actually building the business you want instead of the business that is just kind of coming around. Yes, letting it involve organically. Based on what comes in. Did you have you said yes? Unwisely? Oh, yes, definitely. And so this is a big lesson learned along the way, and i don’t know why, you know, i think it’s just a coincidence. But every time i took a large corporate client, a large corporate client, it didn’t go well out of money. A lot of money in those. Yeah, actually that’s not always true. I was surprised to hear the medical, nickel and dime with me more than a non-profit might, but just just think, it’s the common thread that whenever i took a large corporate client, like once a year for the first couple of years, something would go wrong. It would either be about a relationship or they wouldn’t pay on time, so i just took it as a sign, you know, there are they paid by not on time. I mean, like, four months later. But i took it as a sign that i’ve got to start saying no, because even when it came in someone metoo copyright a boat, nickel mining or i don’t know the subject. I don’t know the people i should’ve said no, i didn’t say yes, we’re gonna leave it there, ok, thank you very much. Thanks for having us. Oh, my pleasure. Julia rice is the owner of stone soup. Creative and marlene olivera is copywriter and communications consultant moflow m o f l o w ladies. Thank you again. Thank you. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc fifteen the non-profit technology conference. Thanks so much for being with us. Julia rice has a very spotless refrigerator. Sounds like live listener love let’s start domestic right here, philadelphia p a the city of brotherly love live listener loved to philadelphia, lexington, kentucky. Langhorne, piela toronto in canada. San francisco, california. Marquette, michigan live listener loved toe all the live listeners going abroad italy haven’t had you? 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It’s in october, as of today, it is seventy six percent sold out. I in fact, i gotta get my registration in amy sample ward is going to be there also, if your work is related to poverty reduction anywhere in the world, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net i thank you very much for loving non-profit radio your love keeps me going on cold, snowy nights when i have no heat or electricity. It’s a tough city here in new york, but your support gets me through. Um, actually, i’ve actually play of heat and hot water sometimes have to crack. The windows open it’s money that i could use you can send money because the love is no good if i don’t have the money. So what the hell is that? So i can’t go out for nice dinners can go on trips love is not going to be enough. Um, i can’t be golden corral and applebee’s. I can’t do those all the time. Although golden corral does actually have good salchow ices. I appreciate those, but you get the message now. But actually, i am very, very grateful for the love that you show for non-profit radio weekend week out really it’s almost it’s. Almost five full years were coming up. And my video this week is a thanks for recent prays that i’ve gotten from listeners you can hear. I got some got some quotes there and the video is that tony martignetti dot com and i do thank you very much. Third sector today at third sector today dot com amy davita runs it and she has lots of contributors. Not like my sight. She actually welcomes other opinions. Ah, third sector today. Blog’s tips, insights. Best practices for the community. They have a podcast, maria. Simple has been on the podcast and amy davita, stop stealing my guests. Don’t even try to get maria. Simple is a regular it’s not gonna happen. She’s she’s exclusive non-profit radio anyway, third sector today dot com a valuable resource curated with an open mind. I hate that. And that is tony’s. Take two for friday, eighth of may eighteenth show of the year. I’m feeling well feisty this afternoon. I know why that is. I mean, i don’t know, but i’m not going to take it out on melissa mccormick. She is a market research manager at software advice. She establishes and enforces standards and best practices for research and analysis. She oversees the regular publication of original primary research on the role of software and technology across many industries. Her research has been sighted in court’s information week, elektronik ce weekly ceo, dot com and other outlets. Software advice is a resource for software buyers. They provide detailed reviews and research on thousands of software applications there at software advice dot com and at n p o soft advice. Listen, mccormick, welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks, tony. Good to be here. It’s. A pleasure to have a researcher. And rarely do i get in someone’s bio that they are an enforcer. What is that you do smack knuckles with rulers? Or is it like, stockades or or waterboarding? Which way? Now i’m really not at liberty to say i could tell you, but you have killing these air company secrets of pride. I kind of helped establish and make sure folks are following our guidelines for conducting research and analysis. Now, our researchers typically ah, like a group of anarchists. They’ll do whatever they whatever they please. Unless there’s an enforcer, not my researchers. Now you’re well oh, yeah, but because there is an enforcer. So researchers, they the they get a little loose handed if they’re not reined in. Is this is this ah, true among the research community, you know, not so much that it’s just there are lots of methods and method oppcoll method illogical approaches. So keeping everybody on the same page so that were consistent. Okay. All right. So we know the the research coming out of software advices ous high quality. It is enforced. Yeah. Okay. That’s your responsibility. All right, so how about this survey on board skills? Why? Was this ah focus area? Sure. So, you know, through other research that we’ve conducted and just talking to folks at non-profits that are looking for software solution, we’ve kind of observed that non-profits air a little bit slower to adopt new technology. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, you know, budget, obviously being a big one, maybe just lack of prior experience with software and technology, but it’s sort of a kurd twist that boardmember zahra and kind of a unique position to help guide perhaps the exploration of tech options. So having tech savvy board members could in turn, help non-profits improve their operations in the way they interact with software and technology. So that was kind of our hypothesis on land of reason. Is that your is that called that h one? We still use that terminology. H one hypothesis. You know, i actually don’t use that term, and i don’t see it’s, uh, played well. Sure. Let’s. Call it a one. No, no, no. I took statistics in nineteen eighty two. So each one is probably outdated. Now, it’s probably something else. I don’t know. Okay, we used to call it a tch one h two. And then you try to prove these and there’s something called confidence intervals. I’m sorry. Ok, ok. Is that that still exist? Count your confidence. Interval still exist? Yeah, they do. Ok. Alright, im sorry. Little digression trying to show off that i know something. Go ahead. Okay, so you had your your hat? Your hypothesis. You want to call it a tch one. You had this hypothesis about technology adoption being, i guess, a little quicker for for non-profits if they had sabat your board members. Is that is that basically it? Yeah, that was just it occurred to us that would be one entry point. So one kind of way that change could be an after would be through, um, kind of a technology progressive board. So we wanted to explore that idea and just kind of the broader impact that aboard could have. And how non-profits go about recruiting board members and how they should go about recruiting. Board members so kind of morphed into a bigger topic than purely the software and technology that that’s that’s, kind of where it started on and turned into you just to look at, um, you know from a non-profits perspective, what should you be looking for in a boardmember and on the other side of that coin from a boardmember perspective, which what should you be looking at in a potential board to join? Yeah. So you write. You looked at it, right? You said both sides. So what are people looking for? Yeah, out of board service. And we’ll get a good chance to talk about that and and how khun boards used that information to promote board service. I’m sorry. Not welcome. Non-profits use that to promote board service. Exactly. All right. On dh. What was the which method? A logical choice. Did you choose among the wide array open to professional researchers? Yeah. So we conducted an online survey of a little over fifteen hundred people. So that’s, kind of the quantitative approach. We also i did some expert interviews. So, you know, quantitative is great, especially with a big sample size. You can kind of get a degree of certainty about the results, but we really wanted teo get a little color to those results. So we also did some qualitative interviews with, uh, what i call subject matter experts, folks. In the nonprofit world who have been dealing with boardmember zoho topics related to boards and technology in general for a long time, so interesting and then how do you ah, as a researcher, how do you i don’t know what xero score those those interviews you call, they’re obviously qualitative said yeah, and using that term a little bit loosely report that we published drew most heavily on the quantitative results that were a lot of charts and graphs on dh then really used thie commentary from the interviews we conducted as just kind of quotes within the report on dhe means of almost kind of get checking our own analysis that we’ve done as well, okay, and i see those quotes are in the report. Um, yeah, a lot of mar yeah, so we kind of tied together the broad themes from the discussions we had with those folks into thank you take away that we had already identified from the survey results. I was i was not interviewed. As i recall, i that was obviously an oversight on the part of god there go. I did not coach her to say that i didn’t coach i implicitly. Begged her, too, but i didn’t say it. I didn’t say explicitly. Okay, next time. Okay. There’ll be other opportunities. All right. So what do we find? What? What? Let’s? Look at it from the non-profit perspective. What? What should non-profits b promoting as as board service values? Tio, you recruit? Sure, sure. So, um, one of the biggest, i guess, kind of most decisive findings was that people join boards for personal fulfillment on dh that’s, perhaps not really terribly surprising. You know, obviously, these folks they’re giving of their time and their money. So they want to care about the cause that they’re giving to, but personal fulfillment was number one on the tops of folks list. Okay, okay, let me get a question about that. Now, do we have to be concerned about self reporting bias that people would say the choose the altruistic fulfillment choice over networking opportunities or, you know, something more? More self serving? Sure. Yeah, that that definitely comes into play. You know, it was far in a way, the number one pick. So i think we still have a degree of certainty there. But but yeah, it’s probably safe to assume that. Consciously or unconsciously, folks are kind of elevating their their altruistic nature, as you said, but, you know, i think it also makes sense, um, kind of was validated by the folks we spoke with that, you know, this is a commitment people want two really care about what the non-profits stands for, they’re going to be dedicating so much of themselves to it. Okay, now, it’s clear why i’m not i’m on no boards, but to your point about, you know, networking. We did get folks saying acquiring new skills was important to them honing leadership skills, networking and meeting new people. Those were all other sighted benefits commonly cited benefits, okay, back to the top one, personal fulfillment? What is it? Is it those elements that they’re looking for is that is that satisfying the personal fulfillment that they’re they’re seeking? So i think there are a lot of components to that and that’s something our survey didn’t actually explore very deeply. So, um, potential for future research opportunities exposed, but, yeah, i think it’s not personal fulfillment in the sense that, you know, i am acquiring new skills or meeting new people, but also in the sense that i’m contributing to the greater good. Um so, you know, other survey results included that people really want to see the impact of what they’re doing in the non-profit and the impact that the non-profit is having on its community. So i think that certainly ties in the personal fulfillment as well focused on to feel like they’re contributing to an organization that is contributing to community. I also saw a reliability and accountability mentioned, yeah, so i think those terms specifically came up in the context of, you know, what skills should you look for in potential board way? Kind of explored to different avenues with that one being more kind of professional experience and even almost personality based skills on another being technology based skills? So when it comes to just professional experience and personal skillsets accountability, reliability, those blanked on the west, okay, um, we have just about ah minute and a half or so before we take take a break, melissa okay, why don’t you? Ah, why don’t we go into a little bit about some of the some of the tech skills that are that are sought after what we’re looking for? Sure so um, a little over half of the folks we surveyed mentioned a specific type of software in some capacity or another. So fund-raising software obviously a big one, some kind of experience with systems for doner management. But the number one that came up across the board that everyone said was important was basic computer skills again, not super surprising, but that would include stuff like email aah! Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay. That’s got to be there, right? Yeah, exactly. So something really foundational? Tio the the way non-profits conduct business, email documents, spreadsheets. Yeah, yeah, general kind of office productivity tools. You know, like you’re your microsoft word and excel. Not sort of saying calendar tools. Um, dahna obviously critical, but what was kind of interesting and i think what was reflected and the professional skills that we saw being requested was just the diversity of the types of tech skills folks are looking for. So you invented fund-raising and ensured time we’re going way. We’ll take a break, but hold that thought because it’s critical diversity is critical, obviously to ah, two, two boards and we’ll get to that diversity of skills and and continue right after this. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Yeah. All right, melissa let’s, keep talking about diversity, but what more can we say about that? Sure, yes. I’m probably going to throw that word around the whole lot. Ah, diversity it’s kind of a theme that came up a couple across a couple different topic areas that we covered. So i mentioned with respect to technology skills and software skills. You know, folks on boards were telling us, but the most important stuff was really a lot of stuff. So cr m donorsearch management kind of tools, tools for managing your website. Fundez counting obviously a big one and fund-raising tools in general, i mentioned already on dh that was kind of echoed when we looked at so not the technology side, but the professional skills that were most support. That was really interesting because it was almost an even mix when we asked people for the single most important we’ve got a pie chart with a bunch of pieces of pie that are very similar in size. Um, the number one that kind of had a little edge over the next few was fund-raising so experience fund-raising but others included, you know, just past experience with a similar type of non-profit so relevant volunteer experience. Um, professional services kind of experience. So stuff like legal and accounting skills. Project management provoc management, i think. It’s very grand marketing also. Yep. Marketing. Exactly. Good. You’re going to say something about project management, please? Yeah. That was one that was really echoed by the experts that we spoke with on dh. It makes sense to me that you would want someone who can, you know, manage lots of people working on tasks and keep things moving, keep things organized, keep lots of balls in the air at a time. So that’s a great one that came up in both our survey results in on our interviews, um, and then human resource, those skills, so just kind of oh, your management, which i think has tied to project management, but a little more on the, you know, actual people side. What do you think was meant by project management? What? Did you flush that out at all? Um, you know, i’m looking to see if we gave any examples. We didn’t flush it out much and mean kwan keita’s. But when we spoke to our experts, you know, they talked about the importance of this is where the reliability and the accountability came up. I think in the context of project management to the importance of, um, having the ability to hold others accountable. Tio get people to do great work without stepping on toes. And i think, you know, for non-profits, especially it’s, important to be really efficient. Anytime you’ve got a big group of people responsible for a single task. It’s, easy for, um, everyone to kind of go in different directions or, you know, lots of talking and not a lot of doing to happen. So folks with project management skills, i think, can really cut through that and keep things on track and keep everybody focused on moving in the same direction. Transparent communications was was thought as what? Where it was sought by by people aspiring to board service. Yes, what’s under that was i ah, that was very important. People want to know what the expected involvement is. So what exactly will they be doing? What will they be expected to do? Um and that includes you. You know, what kind of work will be doing but also e-giving requirements. So what will they be expected to give personally? What would what will day be expected to raise? Um, all of these things, people are looking for clarity. Um, and this was kind of echoed by some of the folks we spoke with us. Well, who said you know, non-profits tend to think that board members just understand what they’re getting in four or maybe don’t care about the specifics of what they’re getting in for, but it’s very important to have some layer of transparency and on the part of non-profits that requires maybe sametz tre thought into what the role will entail. So, you know, one thing that one of the experts we spoke to recommended was just actually writing up kind of a little job description to share with board members, you know, communicating really clearly what the expectations are in terms of, you know, frequency of getting together may be setting a schedule of meetings, like an annual schedule that you could share in advance. Um, and then kind of relating back to what i talked about earlier, the personal fulfillment thing. It’s important for non-profits to communicate the impact that they’re having and bringing things full circle. I think that’s kind of a role that technology can play, you know, helping track and also helping non-profits disseminate information about the impact that they’re having. That’s. All that’s, obviously very big topic in the community, especially now that charity navigator is looking for a new ceo. And what is that? What kind of priority priorities is that person going to bring to that to that organization? But yes, for interesting. And now, the way it ties back to technology. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, absolutely. What, whether what other questions are out there? We just have a minute and half or so left what the questions are out there that you’d like to answer. Software advice is going to answer? Sure. So, you know, i mentioned earlier i think one further area for exploration could be digging into that personal fulfillment question a little. We got the results back and saw oh, everybody’s looking for personal fulfillment and kind of went well, duh, of course. That’s what people are looking for and of course, that’s what they are going to say they’re looking for. But what does that mean? It probably means different things to different people. See? I asked. I asked that question also. So that makes me a subject matter. Exactly. You should be a researcher. Well, i’d rather just be interviewed, but i’m not a good influence. Our goal the line. All right, thank you very much. Just another minute. God, what else is out there? Um so so that was one thing another thing that i’m kind of interested in exploring, not necessarily in a quantitative way, necessarily, but just this idea of the diversity of skillsets you know what? What is the balance that you should look for? And how did these different folks with these different backgrounds worked together in the most effective ways? Um, and are there specific types of software and technology that can be leveraged by people with specific skillsets so, you know, should someone with accounting skills be advocating for accounting software for their non-profit that kind of thing? Just kind of the harmonies between the different topics that we’ve already dug started to dig into a little bit here, okay, actually, your urine unenviable position cause you can ask all these questions and then go research and find the actual answer based on quantitative analysis and not just based on best practices or tradition or anything else. I admire that, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. It’s a pretty exciting place to be cool. My voice is cracked. Melissa mccormack, market research manager it’s software advice. They are at software advice. Dot com and at n p o soft advice. Thank you very much, melissa. Thank you so much, tony. My pleasure. And at n p o soft advice. Thank you very much for doing some live tweeting today. Next week, another informative and tcs interview coming to the show, and amy sample ward returns. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it at tony martignetti dot com no singing this week. Opportunity, collaboration, the world convenes for poverty reduction. I’m warning you, it will ruin you for every other conference opportunity. Collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shoretz social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. 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