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Nonprofit Radio for October 28, 2016: Get The Most From Your Board

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Eugene Fram: Get The Most From Your Board

Professor Eugene Fram returns to discuss his latest book, “Going For Impact: The Nonprofit Director’s Essential Guidebook.” We’ve got the critical things your board needs to know and pitfalls to avoid. What’s your board’s most important job? How do you use your board members’ time wisely? And a lot more.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with calla boma lo bill, i if i heard that you missed today’s show, get the most from your board. Professor eugene fram returns to discuss his latest book going for impact the non-profit director’s essential guide book we’ve got the critical things your board needs to know and pitfalls to avoid. What’s your boards most important job how do you use your board members? Time, wisely and a lot more on tony’s, take two non-profit radio on youtube, 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 super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We be spelling dot com my pleasure to welcome back dr eugene fram he’s, professor emeritus at saunders college of business at the rochester institute of technology. He’s served on twelve non-profit boards and consulted with dozens of others. Jeez, first gene’s first book policy versus paper clips brought him to non-profit radio in twenty thirteen he blog’s at non-profit management, d r fram dot com and there’s hyphens in between those so non hyphen profit hyphen management hyphen d r hyphen fram, dot com and he’s at eugene fram that’s what she’s your twitter jean welcome back. Well, nice to talk to you again. Pleasure to have you back with your with your new book going for impact. What what did you feel? It was necessary with this book versus the policy versus ah paperclips book. Well, i’ve had a lot of experience between then and now, and i wanted to talk about that experience, especially in the movement towards impact, as you well aware, that funders air looking for impact. Ah, or governmental organizations, they’re looking for impact and a lot of non-profits really don’t i understand that, especially non-profit board members, they think if you meet objectives and on develop outcomes, that impact but it’s really not, as you well know, right impact reporting. I’ve heard rumors to that effect. That’s. Okay, that it’s critical, uh, the the, uh, the classic case on that is the newark schools that you’re probably familiar with. So it’s not too far from you in new york city. Uh, is that, uh ah. Sucker burghdoff gave one hundred million dollars. Forty and five years later they had reached their their objectives. But there was no impact on students. Okay, so that’s, the classic lesson that there is a difference between out comes and impacts. Yes. Okay, you’re echoing what a ah, another two time guest has been on well saying it sounds like he’s two timing the show not thirty two times a show, but another guest has been on twice. Dr robert penna makes the distinction between outcomes and impact. Yeah, and more people are. But if you look at the total of non-profits that i meet, some of them will argue that this is only a fad. I had that argue with a a fellow colleague, boardmember uh, just about a year, six months ago on that she was claiming this is just another fad. Let’s forget about it. But actually, this has been, um, around for eight or nine years. At that time, the really thoughtful people in in the non-profit area were saying to me, forget about outcomes. It’s impacts that air that are very important. And where it’s coming really into the four right now i remember in nineteen ninety four or nineteen ninety five. I had a friend who who said that the internet was just a fad hey wouldn’t get an email address felt that that was unnecessary wouldn’t get a website for his company. I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s coming to the i know if he’s coming to the modern age, we don’t talk anymore. I know. Yes, i cut him off. They’re not kill those people around. And unfortunately there on non-profit board. Yeah, ok. Well, yes, i think it’s if it’s any kind of a fad. It’s a critical fad, but i don’t believe that it is. Yes, lots of funders, including individual donors, won’t want to see impact, impact investing. We’re talking about donors as investors. Well, they want to see the impact of their investment. Okay, all right, i i hope listeners, i mean, i need to pay attention to that indeed. Borden metoo okay, so you didn’t feel well. That was really not the emphasis of policy versus paper clips. That was mohr making sure. I mean, i’m summarizing an entire book and we listened to go back and check is you were on to talk about it in twenty. I believe it was november twenty thirteen, but i know it was twenty thirteen. You could research, uh, jeanne franz name at tony martignetti dot com and you’ll find it. So i’m summarizing. So forgive me for trying encapsulate a whole book into a sentence. But it was basically you don’t want your board micromanaging and dealing with details that are not appropriate for them. But rather they should be dealing. It hyre more strategic levels. Yes. That’s. Exactly it. Thank you. You remember? Well, cool for dr. Okay. Professor? Yes. Professor from dahna in rochester institute. Technology. That’s. Pretty good. And it’s. Pretty good that i went to that schlocky carnegie mellon university. So that’s. Another it’s in the same category. I don’t know. I think in a and rochester maybe, maybe, maybe. Ah, well, i guess. Why would you say that? Tonight’s debate that one, okay? Know what would be a seat so that we could be going the other way? Okay. All right. So now what i like about your ah, you’re going for impact. You have you have takeaways at the end of every chapter. I appreciate a little more than a conclusion. It’s a. You know, i like to take aways like not tonight, not that i only read two takeaways. I don’t not that people should buy the book and only metoo takeaways. You’re going to miss you a ton, but i like, you know, it’s a nice touch. I appreciate that, and also short chapters, you know, you’re in, you’re out like two, three pages. I mean summer longer chapters, certainly, but the most are, like two, three pages or so four pages, you know, in a topic and onto the next, because this is for board members, they’re volunteers. They don’t have time for treatises, that’s, right, exactly. All right, it’s. Only one hundred four pages total reading, but it also has a, uh, on index at the back with one hundred fifty different items on it. And if you really need a specific topic, all you need to do is to go to the index and you’ll find out where it’s mentioned throughout the book. Okay, okay. Um, a little more than one o four, though you cut yourself off. You got these? Yeah. You kept making your cut yourself short, it’s actually, like one hundred eleven and ah, one quarter i would say thank you. I’m glad. Because last seven. Glad your fact checking. Yeah, we’re all about and what some people did last night on the phone. All right? Yes. Last night was the last debate we’re pre recording. Yeah, i know. You know, those last seven and a quarter page is air important don’t don’t all right, um okay. So we’re going to talk about some of the things that were, you know, we only can hit highlights because i want you to listen to shit by the book for going to say, uh, we’re going to talk about you got six essentials that board members need to know we’re going to talk about that, of course, uh, we got some pitfalls to avoid way got the most important job that you’re bored has on, then using your board members time wisely and and utilizing an advisory board. So those that’s what we’re going to cover, i’ll tell you what, let’s, go out a little early for our break. Now, i’ve just tease the whole show, and when we come back, you and i have the whole hour together remaining talk about that and i know you’ve got some stories to tell. So jeanne, i know you’ll stay with us every else doing that i’ll be here, i know everyone else do the same. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Okay, dr fram. Let’s. Uh, hi. Yes. Okay. Let’s, get, uh, let’s. Get into this. We got we got six essentials. And, er, the first one is be aware of rose colored glasses what’s your what’s, your concern there? Well, there are a number of different concerns there. One i find that quite often, uh, that, uh, non-profit boards will tolerate a mind this size store type of ceo, uh, because they’re comfortable with the media. Ocracy in other words, they want to be good, but not great. And you hear that expressed every once in a while that says, well, when something goes wrong, well, you really can’t expect that of a non-profits yeah, this is not the same as for-profit mediocrity mediocrity, andi. And if you take a look at it from the point of view of some board members and remember, i only speak as a boardmember i’ve never been a needy, never been in the management of a and non-profit giving you the board members point of view. So when you do that here, you’re really, uh, moving towards the bottom, all right instead. Of the top. And so you gotta expect excellence from your ceo and the management staff as much as they can do within the finances that they have or to develop creative ideas. Uh, that will take the organization to the to the future. Okay, now, but you’re also speaking as a as a professor of business former retired professor of business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you bring in that room that respect you see and like in policy versus paper clips, i only seat major differences between the non-profit on the prophet and that is the non-profit has, uh, mission, vision and values as as their objective. The for-profit obviously has to have is the profit motive s o that is the major differences i see and and everything else to me is very much the same. Okay, excellent. All right, so so you’re you’re your your experience as a a business professor. Converts, i mean, and and i’ve also had, uh, for-profit board experiences too. Okay? Yes. Not quite as many, though you aren’t twelve non-profit points in only four or five of them, for they range from ah, national corporation listed corporations. Tio start up. Okay. You credentials are unquestioned. Don’t worry. Okay, you’re you’re on non-profit radio your bona fide. Okay, good. I want to make sure my non-profit bonified are clear. Yeah. No, no, you’re, you’re good. Okay, um, let’s talk about the next one. You have, um, being wary of the silent boardroom, or when i call it, i that’s what you call it? I’m calling it that god. Yeah. I’m concerned about deference to directors. Yeah. That’s mine. I’m adding that what? What? What’s the problem here. Too much deafness, what’s what’s the problem? Well, this all started a couple years ago when i was doing some consulting work and a young boardmember said to me, hey, you said, you know, i wished we had mohr uh what he said, conflict of discussion, he didn’t need to say me, i mean, to say in the extreme but he said more discussion in in the board room of the issues because what he was seeing in that particular situation is that the, uh, the executive committee er would make a recommendation from people’s would ask, um, passive questions. And then they would pass the emotion on de so he didn’t see any, uh, any riel discussion going on there or real probing of the issues? S so you know, when he said that i developed this idea of the silent board board room and this is very typical, and i ask your listeners if you’re a non-profit director when’s the last time you saw a person say, i’m going to give a no vote to that ah proposition, because i don’t want to be liable either personally or professionally for what the majority has saved in here on dh make sure you put my no vote in the in the in the minutes, okay? I had to do it about a year or so ago, and i stopped the whole the whole process with that statement, but typically, if the president wanted a ceo wants it, or the board chair wants that people exceed to that very, very easily, yeah, alright, too much difference given right? Not not robust, the conversation not really duitz not real due diligence and, of course, your point about liability that directors are potentially liable for them, the deeds and misdeeds of the failing to upper failing to act and misdeeds of the of the organization there, there, fiduciaries they have a legal. They have legal duties. Uh, yeah. Now ah, this all comes, then becomes part of a culture. You know, the typical even business person will say, well, i really don’t want to go against the board chair or i don’t want to go. I don’t want to go against the ceo on this on duh on and it just becomes a part of, for instance, the university trusty came to me once. And he said, we were asked to comment on a particular program which happened to be in the business area. And you can, uh he knew that i had some expertise in that area. And he said, i when i listen to the, uh, to the people there, uh, they were all saying, yeah, let’s go with it, he says, but deep down in my heart, i felt that this was actually reducing the quality of the program. And he said, but early in the hand, i didn’t want to be negative, so i went along with it. So she’s kind of doing a confessional to may, right? But that’s, what you will often find in these situations why should i cause conflict? Why? Should i be the outstanding a negative person in the area. So forth in the situation i said in the committee meeting, i says, if you pursue this and my ass and i gave my reasons for it, i’m going teo a vote no on it. Okay? And then i never heard another thing about it after that, right? But you you have to make the vote that that you’re you believe is right that your conscience guides you two. You have my conscience there, right? Right? Right. Because i felt instead of putting the money and for what they were planning to do with it was a legitimate type of thing. I’ve felt that it had been a it should have gone into programs. Now you can overdo that, okay? And really cut out the over set, uh, down the overhead. But on the other hand, sometimes that overhead is needed, the payment is needed. I want to move to the next one. But before i do, i just want to point out you mentioned deference to the board chair. The ceo, um another. Another together. Pardon me, nto and each other. And i wanted to mention also something you point out the book is about difference, teo major donors who may be on your board that’s always right, that that could be a real problem. That’s a tricky one putting putting big donors on your board. You know, nobody wants to upset the apple cart risk-alternatives bing risk the payment by the pledge payments that have been promised, etcetera, um, you have to you have to tread carefully. Alright. Yeah, very, very carefully, andi. And you might have to compromise your values in some instances, but there’s only so far. You you should go because you still have the mission that needs to be achieved on this let’s. Move her in kapin a typical question teo typical type of donation is people will may offer you property, but the property has value, but they may pace restrictions on it, and you can’t necessarily sell it and you might be able to use it. But who’s going to pay for it in the long run out that property so far that’s a typical situation really real estate khun b could be a tricky issue, a lot of due diligence required around that, whether whether to even have that, whether to accept it in the in the first place on we’ve got i’ve got a video about that on the youtube channel, which i’m going to talk about tony steak too. I’ve got i’ve got a video on yeah, about the due diligence required for real estate gifts. Okay, jean, we need to move on because i want to i want to make sure we get everything in this hour. Next of the six essentials you described, what makes a non-profit board great? Go ahead to find to find great for us. Well, i’ve handed it something. One is the quality of the board dialogue and discussion on duh that’s. Uh, and it should be at the policy level or this or the strategic level at all time would say should be ninety percent at that level, and but you’ll find that boards get quite comfortable with discussing operations because they’re more interesting. Well, that’s the policies in policy that’s the policy versus paper across our street strategy, i have yet to find the person who goes on ah goes home and says to a significant other or her significant other oh my god, we had a just of tremendous evening. And she lt’s a he or she will say, what did you do? Oh, my god. We just discussed policy and strategy and fascinating. Yeah. Find that person, will you let me know? All right. What else? What else? Hallmarks of greek board. Tough questions. The ability. Teo, drill down. And teo, talk about things that might be had happened with the decision. Okay, andi, what air the unintended consequences of the decision. Ok, so these all need to be laid out and that’s where the tough questions there. Okay. And what else? Uh, well, you need a board diversity and experience. Unfortunately, many non-profit board members are made up of for friends, family and neighbors. Okay? And you rarely see intra prin nouriel uh, board members, people who haven’t an enterpreneurs, rials streak in them or willing to take some some modest risks. When it comes to risks, the typical board will back off because they don’t want to be risked in a situation in which they might be liable. So so those are the three top things, as i see out out of that area. Okay, hallmarks of a great board on. Okay, let’s. Move. Teo, our fourth are our fourth essential straight straight talk about the board members responsibilities. Go ahead. Okay. One is she obviously have used fiduciary responsibility. Uh, overviewing the board, but at the same time not micromanaging it on dh. Also understanding the difference that we talked about between outcomes and impacts is one thing. Shall i go on? You have another one? Yeah. Yeah. Fund-raising yes. Boards have a responsibility for fund-raising, but you have to have, uh but, uh, except if you might delegate it to a foundation to fundraise for you and that is that is a perfectly legitimate approach, but boards totally have a responsibility for fundrasing, but there. But as a group, they’re really not effective. Okay? It usually takes about three or four people who are comfortable with fund-raising on are willing to drive it. Okay? No. And, uh, you know, that’s kind of the facts of life of jean. Do you like to see these? These expectations about director responsibilities in a written document for new board members off course. And, for instance, i saw one for a, uh, for a human service organisation in which their expectations for the board we’re all listed and pretty much followed. What? I had a policy for what i have in policy versus paper clips, but they they left off the fund-raising, but they had a separate foundation set up to handle fundrasing. No. Okay, so that’s, that that’s acceptable. That’s, that’s. Perfect that’s find acceptable. Okay, so they’re difficult when you get into foundations. You have to, you know, and and can lead to a lot of problems where the foundation says what we raised the money. We want to determine how it’s spent. Oh, that, you know, the way it works, right? Okay. But you even if you know, even if there is a foundation the the organization’s board members may have ah, ah, personal fund-raising, you know, give or get requirement to the foundation. Yeah, but i just want to point the example i gave you a hundred. A zing was not listed in the area of board’s responsibility. Okay, right. But they left it all to the foundations. They see. It is the board responsibility. But there might also be a personal requirement to give. Yeah, there might be a personal environment for the board. Teo getter give type of thing way that we can talk about later. I have here. Okay. Now, there’s there needs to be a good amount of trust between the board and the staff. Yes. And the board in the ceo? Yeah. Yeah, well and okay. That’s hinting at something we’re gonna get to write. But now another thing. I’ve kind of abstracted what i think they’re the important ones. You have a legal responsibility that quite often boards don’t even know about, uh uh for non-profits they have to live better different from a four for-profit board in a legal way. Otherwise their quarter, their corporations the same as a for for-profit businesses. And one is, of course, in the non-profit area you have the annual iris form nine ninety and the board has a legal responsibility. Teo to review that and make sure it’s correct before it is submitted to the irs. Uh, they will even have a system for getting e-giving extensions. If you can’t meet the data on on this. The other one that few people know about are the intermediates is the, uh i r s is intermediate sanctions act, and they know about it in the sense that if you pay above average wages to the ceo uh, you can be really responsible and fine for you, but what they don’t know there are a whole host of other things related. Teo uh, the intermediate sanctions act. For instance, if you sell a piece of property below market value, the board and the management can have and i additional taxes paid on their personal texts that bills for for the for doing for voting, for improving it and doing it something something below market fto sort of an insider is insider trading basically, uh, it’s equivalent to the insider trading? Oh, it doesn’t even have to be insider. For instance, if if you sell a ah a ah, a piece of property below value to a let’s. Say a person who serves on a committee on the board. Ah, serves as a volunteer to the organization you can. You can, uh you can define you took this. Have at a tax bill added to your bill. They’re contributing writer. I have an article thoroughly explaining that if any of the people were interested in it, if you send it to my ah requested on my at eugene fram and send me an address. Where i can? Well, i can send it through regular e mail. I’d be happy to send it to them. Okay. Okay. Cool. That’s your that’s. Your twitter id. All right. Okay, i need you. I need you to sit tight for a minute while i take a little business for our sponsors and delighted who’s. Hang on, just hang on right there because we got more with professor fram coming up first. Pursuant, they’ve got another free resource for you this’s. Their donor line report card. It will help you evaluate the health of your donor pipeline spot. Possible weaknesses and identify areas of your greatest opportunity. It is an infographic, and it’s under resource is at pursuant dot com. Check out their infographic. The donor pipeline report card. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for non-profit fund-raising they’re not like any other spelling bee that you’ve seen or been to there’s live music and dancing and stand up comedy fund-raising, of course and spelling you could check out their video. These are ideal events for millennials. Great fund. We be e spelling dot com now, tony steak too. Have you checked out? Non-profit radio on youtube? There’s there are over two hundred videos on the real tony martignetti channel. Lots of interviews over a dozen playlists. Some of them are event fund-raising dahna relations playlist, social media, standup comedy, bi weekly videos and there’s. A bunch of others. Yeah. Find what you need. Look for it on the youtube channel. Subscribe my channel israel r e l tony martignetti you could just go to youtube and search twenty martignetti on the only tony martignetti doing anything substantial on youtube. I regret, though, that you have to put in marketmesuite eye, and then you still get like martin martinez. You know, marketmesuite and then i pop up, so but i’m the only tony martignetti pops up, but you got to get that g in there. That’s tony’s, take two. Thanks for checking me out on youtube. Okay, gene, that was okay. Appreciate your indulgence. Thank you know, uh uh, the other a couple more issues. Okay, only one more because i see we’ve covered the trust point here. Go ahead. One more on board members really have to understand who who the board represents. And the borg does not represent the staff quite often. They think they have to look out for the welfare of the staff. Obviously they have to look out for the welfare of the staff that they want to be productive. But their obligations are made to the various stakeholders. It could be the community. It could be the trade association. It khun b to the, uh to the mission of the organization. Obviously, esso and and the people related to the mission is ah, is the one that’s most most common for enough for non-profit not to the staff. Okay, okay, i understand that. And that’s ah, you know, we don’t weigh can’t have staff doing and runs around their vice president or their ceo and going to the board members that’s, that’s all no, no, i want to move on way. Tio, your last two are what the board should expect from management and what management should expect from the board. So i don’t know if we can maybe deal with ease the same time. But wait, let’s, take the first. You know, doing the order. You got it in the book. What? The board should what the board should expect from management and you start with, you know, no surprises, no spin on bad news must rise. So just say a little about no surprises, no spin. Well, let me, uh, let me no surprises there. Spin. Let me start that with a war story. I was on a board of a non-profit which was a very active non-profit and serving its clients well and serving, uh, it’s mission well, however, the executive committee decided that they wanted to acquire a for-profit in another city, and they had enough finances to be able to do that, and so they went ahead and do that did it? And then they came to the board and ask them teo, to approve the acquisition after they had already signed the contract and every everything else and the reason they did it, they felt there was a banker on the, uh, on the executive committee who knew all about these things, and it turned out the banker did not know our about it. For instance, the banker didn’t tell them you don’t give the buyer full payment, and until you can see that they can fit into the nonprofit organization when you you stretch the payments out so forth. So what happened is that i went for ah state on the on the board for oh, maybe another month or two. And i resigned and used the usual excuse of work pressures because i just didn’t want to abolish the whole whole thing up, actually, you. Could have. You could have had a a legal situation there if you really wanted to pursue it on. And it worked out that way. It was just a terrible act was acquisition, but let me ask you wait. Owner, the former owner wanted to run the er the division, the way she wanted to run it instead of the way the acquiring non-profit wanted to run it. That seems so i don’t know what happened beyond it. But there was evidently a lot of conflict there. What? Why? I have to ask you a question. Well, hold on. Hold on. Altum. Why? Why did you not tell them directly? What the reason for your resignation was ok. I took the easy way out. Ok? Why wine? Because, uh uh, you got me all right. I took these because i felt that they were doing well enough, and i didn’t want to muddy the water. Okay? Okay. Okay. And that’s typical of of, uh, of a poor who looks out for the welfare of what they’re doing. They were doing a good job in the base organization. But the expenditure for the, uh, for the acquisition just turned out terrible. Ok, i appreciate you’re appreciate your being honest now under on it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay, now wonder what the board should expect from management. We don’t have time to cover all the points that air that are part of that. So it just one more? I just couple. Okay, now i just want to cover one more in this, and then we’re gonna move on to what? What management should expect from the board. But talk about bad news must rise. Well, well, often, uh, people board members will keep bad news from the ceo or the staff will keep bad news from the ceo and s o uh, cia management has toe actually seek bad nose on this. For instance, one of the things that i recommend the people right now eyes make sure you have a whistle blower hotline for years. You owe your staff or even perhaps board members who don’t want toe get involved with, uh, causing conflict within the organization, but feel something needs to be checked out there. Ok? Eso eso you you have to. If you’re a wise ceo or board chair or boardmember you look for these things on dh you have to have the venues opened for them. All right, let’s, move to what management should expect from the board of the last of the last of our six essential wait, hold on. We don’t have again. You know, we don’t have time to cover everything listeners. You gotta buy the book. Of course. You know, we can just summarize, i wantto suggestion. I want e i want to focus on i wanna focus on something we just touched on. Briefly trust, trust and confidence. The mutual, the the that the management should expect the trust and confidence of the board. Yes, you have to have that because quite often, uh, the attitude is, well, they’re not-for-profits people. They’re not for-profit people aside talked about before. And you have to have to trust and confidence that the ceo is a competent manager. And there are ways of doing that. One of them when we get to advisory committees, uh, can talk a little more about that, too. But there has to be the trust that the ceo and his direct reports and others are competent managers, depending on the size of the agency, because the traditional point of view is that they’re not competent. If they were competent, they could be working for for-profit organised, i think that i hate that nonsense. I do two on, i’ve seen very competent people, wonderful people, you know, my traditional comment about the people in the nonprofit world, especially these there that they figured really stand ten feet tall rule that’s, the way i always look at it, no matter if their their case worker or if they’re a ceo when they do their job well, they tend to stand ten feet tall and there are a lot of people in that category, of course, no that’s, not it love that. All right, all right. We’re going to go. Teo. Teo, the pitfalls you’ve got, you got many chapters on potential pitfalls. We’re going to talk about the the the bad poor practices for border for boards. So why don’t you want to just start us off? Go ahead. Okay. One is dumbing down board with croup. Mint uh, where you take, uh, what who’s available and, er on that khun b anybody? For example, i recently encountered a situation, and i saw it myself with that board chair. In the nominations committee recommended a particular person who may accepted simply on the basis that his wife recommended he be aboard nhis no do deal is it’s so far, by the way, he lasted about two years burghdoff had a lot of problems, is and that is just, in my estimation, is just terrible. Okay, i understand. Wait, hold on, hold on. Because again, you got so much in this chapter. There isn’t time to cover. What do you remember? Everything you see and hear? Oh, yeah. Get they get stuff. Yeah, yeah, come on. You okay? You know, haley paid a fancy prices this. You know, this is a prepared show. Come on here. So, that’s our failing to this. I hear this a lot. So that’s why i’m flagging it, failing to delegate sufficient managerial responsibility to the ceo because this gets sticky. This gets to your policy versus paper clips so don’t can’t recite ceo and see him as her as a competent manager. Yes. Alright on that. That goes to what you were just saying about presuming competence and excellence not you know you’d be somewhere else if you if you want, let me give you a story on that one? When i was head of a, uh, board chair of a non-profit in rochester, we also had on the board of ah, the human human resource director of eastman kodak at that time. And so i wanted to make sure that we and i felt we had a competent person and but i was receiving static from other board members such as, well, his response. They had one hundred. The the organization had one hundred employees and hay on the comment. Wass well, hey, has the responsibility of the system pastor at my church. You know, uh, so but fortunately, i had the hr director from eastman kodak, and he says no. He said this man’s responsibility is equivalent to what a good, uh, middle level manager at kodak would have. Okay? And he should be paid accordingly. Ok. So as a result, i was able to get the salary that i wanted for for the ceo. But it took that in order to that power to get it right. All right, all right. And there’s there’s a lot more in there. There’s. Not more in that chapter pitfalls. But i want to get teo, don’t make sure we cover everything. I want to get to the most important job for a bored. What is it? What is it? The most important job for the for the board, uh, is ah eyes, i think ceo selection and overviewing okay. Hiring hiring the right ceo, hiring the right ceo and overviewing the person making sure that he looks at you as a partner. That’s. Why? I like overviewing the ceo and the board is a partnership. A relationship? It is not a boss. Subordinate relations look any good ceo no knows that. Uh, hey, here. She can be fired by the board. But if you give a develop a culture where the two are working together as partners and that both people will make mistakes from time to time. Okay, but that partnership is very, very important. Okay, okay. We’re going to go out for break, gene. And when we come back, you’re not going to talk about the last two. Will have just about six minutes or so to do that. Ondo? No, little bloomerang that like a little more than nine minutes or so to cover our last two. How to use the board members. Time, wisely and when and how to utilize an advisory board. Stay with us. 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 neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Time for live listener love we’ve got to send out the love because love is always in the studio through the internet and interweaves of the of the nets and the woman’s and the weaves the love goes out phone lines i don’t know, you know it goes out so if you’re listening live love to you, i’m very, very grateful that you’re with us if you’re in japan, which is a very good chance you are because there’s always japan japanese checking in konnichi wa for our chinese listeners and also taiwan, always checking in ni hao and south korea also very loyal listeners on your haserot comes our ham nida, if you’re listening in the us, the love goes out just thank you. What more can i say? Glad you’re with us following quickly on the heels of live listen love it’s got to be the pod class pleasantries did i just say pod classed? I think i just iconoclast the podcast pleasantries. They always go out to our over ten thousand. I think we may be pushing twelve thousand. I gotta look at the stats. God, don’t let me look at this every week or even every month but ah, down with the the download bandwith has been expanding, so it may be more than two, but podcast pleasantries if you listening via podcast doesn’t matter how many thousands there are pleasantries to you and the affiliate affections for our many am and fm station listeners seated strategically throughout the country in carefully selected markets, our am and fm station listeners affections to you, our affiliate listeners. All right, jean, we’re going to get teo. I’m well, thank you for checking in boardmember time should not be squandered. Is that correct? That is, that is absolutely correct. Because they need thio understand you appreciating what you are doing and making sure that, uh, that they’re spending their time wisely. Okay. That’s not always the case. Uh, for example, boards tend to want to a culture eight new board members to the culture of the board. For example, if you have a financial analyst it’s likely that they might ask the person to help the bookkeeper instead of saying, why don’t you help us develop a long term financial plan for the organization? The culture is that the finances, finances, bookkeeping, not financial analysis that will take you. To the future. Okay, that gets into the micro management a bit too, if you’re having a boardmember look over the shoulder, have a staff member. Oh, all right, you have some very simple tips, but i think, you know, worth repeating because because i’ve been to board meetings that this is not done so the stuff needs to be reminded board meetings should begin and end on time. That’s right on dh er people respect that, and they they respect what what that means to them and things of that nature go ahead as we’re not just talking about these old tapes, i don’t i don’t think you specifically mentioned agendas, but nor do i like to see in agendas is is a time limit for each discussion item on the agenda, and you take a step further. You don’t just keep it there in parentheses next to the item on the agenda you appoint a timekeeper, a timekeeper. He’s not was not running definitively, not agendas should be sent out well ahead of time with the briefing materials. Most ofthe that i’ve seen is, uh, the agenda in the briefing material come to you day before or sometimes. Two days before so if you’re busy, really don’t have a chance to really study and and know what’s happening. As as a plant e-giving consultant, i am occasionally invited to board meetings to present on status, you know our plans and dance and, you know, you can tell first of all, some board members come in and they’re studiously going through the folder that was sent to them of the binder that was sent to them. You can tell that this is the first time they’re looking at it. That’s right? That’s, right. That’s done a robbery. That’s not how you make robust. Good decision. Yeah, yeah. They’re flipping through pages in the ten minutes before the meeting opens. That’s, that’s. Awful, but oh, yeah, but you see that all the time, you know? Well, it’s, uh, you’ll even see that sometime in for-profit boards to go on. But that gets kind of dangerous there because you might vote on something that will yield some fancy liability for you. Fancy liability. All right. So you like to see things? Not only before the meeting like a week in advance, but also minutes, minutes done within a week of the meeting ending? Yeah. That’s right. That’s right, because contemporaries me contemporary iss meeting’s minutes are very, very important to cover you and to make sure that they are all correct is very important. For instance, if i wouldn’t wantto i don’t want to emphasize this. If i were to vote no on something, i want to see it there at that time. So i’m on record that i didn’t think that this is a good idea. Okay, so you don’t really like waiting until the package for the next board meeting to get those units to get the minutes from the last meeting? Yeah, wait, what we have with the internet and with email and whatever, uh, there’s no reason for it except for the ceo will say, well, i just don’t have the personnel to do that. Well, uh, you auto find ways of getting that done. Okay? Uh, in each ah, and for getting it done. Yeah, so that, you know, the ceo always say, well, we don’t have the money for it, but when you press hard enough, if it’s really important, the ceo will find it. All right, we need to move to our last topic. How and when to use an advisory board. Now we just have about two minutes or so to cover this. So please bear that in mind. You have you have shortened long term purposes for an advisory board. Pardon? You recommend that advisory board to be either short term or long term? Yes. Okay. All right. Uh, it’s, your term you need people for a specific project, maybe building a on extension on the bill aboard. So you need construction people or people like that who can help you on that? That short term? Ah, long term. You want people who get to know you on and get to know the mission of the organization over over a time period. And that should be a person who is not it’s, not advisory to the board, but should be advisory to the ceo because the ceo has the responsibility for taking action. And if it’s advisory to the c e o of course, he’s going to read rejects some of the ideas except some of the ideas. And you want teo have somebody who can take action and initiate some of them. Now he has. The ceo has an obligation to report what the advisory board is saying, but i think the ceo needs to be left alone with the advisory board so he or she can let their hair down in terms of what they’re thinking about long term and what their current problems the are today, we’re going to leave it there. Gene the okay, the book is going for impact the non-profit directors essential guide book. You’ll find it on amazon. You can tell it’s packed with information we could just scratch the surface. Dr jean fran, i want to thank you very, very much. Well, thank you very much for the invitation. And i look forward to listening to it. My pleasure. And again, you’ll find jean at eugene fram fr am and his block is non-profit management d r fram, dot com and there’s a hyphen in between each of those items. All right. Okay, fine. Go. Thank you. And thank you for the questions. My pleasure, jean. Thanks for being with me. Okay. Bye. Next week. Amy sample ward returns. She’s been on maternity leave. She’s coming back alive. You bet that i guarantee you she’s coming back if you missed any part of today’s. Show. Find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant those online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com. Our creative producers climb meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Stuck. My voice is cracked again. 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 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 p m 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 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 on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. 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Nonprofit Radio for March 11, 2016: Policy vs. Paper Clips

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Eugene Fram: Policy vs. Paper Clips

Eugene Fram is author of the book “Policy vs. Paper Clips.” He introduces you to a corporate model of board governance to cut out the minutia from agendas so your board can focus where it should, on policy and planning. He’s professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, (Originally aired on April 26, 2013.)

 

 


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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. We have a listener of the week lynette johnson in virginia, she tweeted, listen to an old tony martignetti podcast with professor john list on the way to work today. Great stuff. Thanks. Thank you, lynette. That was from the february eighth twenty thirteen show and i’m gonna have to replay that one. I’m glad you brought it to my attention. That’s a very good that’s, a very good one. Lynette johnson, listener of the week thank you so much for your love of non-profit radio we have a new affiliate station welcome w l r i ninety two point nine fm in lanchester, that’s, lancaster and chester counties, pennsylvania. They’re a pacifica radio affiliate also non-profit radio is there on saturdays and sundays at ten a m welcome wlos tow our family of affiliates and welcome to the listeners in southeast pennsylvania. They’re in lanchester love it! Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of osteo conroe dysplasia if i heard even a skeleton of the idea that you missed today’s show policy versus paper clips eugene fram is author of the book policy versus paper clips. He introduces you to a corporate model of board governance to cut out the minutia from your agendas so you’re bored can focus where it should on policy and planning. He’s, professor emeritus at rochester institute of technology and that originally aired on april twenty sixth. Twenty thirteen that’s a great shows from twenty thirteen on tony’s take two my dream realised we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com eugene fram coming up here he is from april of twenty thirteen of course i said lots of good shows from twenty thirteen. There were lots of good shows in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen and we’ve had several in twenty sixteen also. So are you looking at the non-profit radio archive? Just go to tony martignetti dot com search whatever key words you need and all the shows related will show up. Here’s your jean fran, showing up my pleasure now to welcome eugene. Fran. He is professor. Emeritus at rochester institute of technology he’s, a consultant, board chair and volunteer director for non-profits he has authored a co or co authored more than hundred twenty five journal articles on marketing and non-profit and corporate governance, he wrote the book policy versus paper clips, which you confined on amazon to introduce a governance model that we’re going to talk about on twitter he’s at eugene fram f r a m just like the oil filter eugene fram, welcome welcome good morning to you. Good morning to you, it’s it’s morning in california on the day that we’re recording. Very early morning so thank you for joining me this early from the left coast it’s. My pleasure, jean are you are you part of the fram filter family bunny chance? Unfortunately i am not you’re not those things still around. I don’t own a car. I haven’t had a car for years. We are fram oil filters still around. Do you know what? I think? They’re still on the web? I seen them. Okay, you have but that’s, not you. I’m sorry on that’s. Not name that’s. Alright. I’m not part of the great martignetti liquor family in boston. And new england either. That’s. Okay, the both of us are suffering from famous names and chronic under representation in the in those wealthy families. Yes, we’ve been born with huge handicap. I’m still trying to overcome mind. I hope you have overcome your one hundred twenty five articles. Yeah, somewhat. But, you know, my ambition is to go to a thousand. Okay. Well, now that you’re in retirement, you have more time for that. But yes, that’s true. Professor emeritus jean what? What’s what’s happening with boards? Why? Why do you feel they are missing the mark? Well, boards from a governance point of view non-profit boards and from the government’s point of view frequently have retained the old, uh nineteenth or twentieth century model off of governance where the board has a multitude of committees and tries to eventually micromanage the uh uh, the staff in the process, nothing gets done or the organization, although it has potential as stunted growth. Ah, if it in that way, because volunteers like myself and again as i talk, i’m not talking as a non ah non-profit ceo or e d i’m talking as a volunteer director. We can’t be there. Day today, and we can’t, uh, manage the minutia that it’s no, are they not necessarily monisha or the work that really needs to be done and we can’t really manage truly professional staff, we can help, we can advise we can help. We have an obligation to set policy, but ah, but we’re simply part timers or some person has described that we’re birds of flight through the through the organization because we’re there, uh, traditionally three to six years, and the staff stays and works and works under different boards. Your concern is that despite the well meaning board on dh and individual members having great potential and the best interests of the organization heart, you feel they’re actually through these old models stunting the organization? Absolutely. And i think it could be proven when you look at any number of organizations which has suffered this way. Do you want to give an example or to, uh well, i’ve consulted with a number of them on, but i don’t want yeah, i’ll talk t o generalities specific organizations where, uh, the the board actually got ah, where the volunteers on the board actually got involved to the level. That they were they were managing departments. S o if the decision had to be made, the department had first went to the volunteer uh ahh advisor or whatever they call him at the time and then went to the e d with the advisers either decision or concern or whatever the department had wanted. So the organization didn’t grow until they finally change. They finally changed the model full time employees reporting to a parttime volunteer diver. Person. Exactly. Oh, my all right. Let’s, let’s. Start with the beginning of the process and we will get to the corporate model that you lay out in your book way. We’ll get to that let’s. Take a couple of discreet sort of time line points and along a board members life cycle with the organization like i’d like to start with recruitment makes sense, i think. What can we what can we improve around our board? Recruitment? Well, the chief executive officer where, whether they be a nadie or a president ceo, as i suggest, needs to have more contact with the board with the individual board members, i think. Ah ah, they have tto have more contact between meetings that has to be in often and formal. Ah, and they have tio they need to get to know each other. And i suggest, uh, that, uh, they actually made quarterly to informally discuss the concerns and the challenges that the chief executive officer is facing. I, uh there are various techniques for doing this. I recently read in the harvard business review, uh, a recommendation that the ah ah o r one for-profit ceo actually sends a e mail out to the board every sunday morning. Uh, just laying out very briefly, uh, in this case, his concerns about what’s going on in the organization and what new ideas? He has a c as he indicated in the article, he says, i don’t worry about grammar right now. Gina, i’m trying to focus on recruitment, so maybe maybe in in in this board meeting is often is you you’re suggesting they’re identifying gaps in the board and maybe they can try to fill those gaps with new board members? Yeah, that’s, right. Okay. And but as they’re going through that recruiting process to identifying skills that they need that the board is lacking, how should they be talking to potential? Board members well, they should talk to board members that what they do is to value their contributions of time, the most important thing, and they make ah, meaningful use off the board members time. Ah, they don’t ask the boardmember the potential boardmember to do frivolous things, uh, such as stuff envelopes or our or get involved with watching slide shows or commenting on slide shows as one that i’ve heard of s o that that they focus on, uh, they focus on the policy and the strategic issues of the organization. Okay, we’re going to take a break now, jean, and when we return, we’ll keep talking about the little about the life cycle of the boardmember and then we’ll get into the corporate model that you lay out in policy versus paper clips, so thank you, gene is going to stay with us, and i hope you do, too. 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. Oppcoll welcome back with jean fran, and we’re talking about policy versus paper clips and focusing your board where the attention, where its attention ought to be on policy and planning and things like that. So jean question about in the recruitment process, the expectations around time and fund-raising for potential board members were still now just talking about the potential member what should, what should a non-profit be revealing about time and fund-raising well, they first ought to be very clear about the time commitment expected, and they ought to delve into a deep discussion with the boardmember on this because i’ve just consulted with a organization that has recruited some very fine people who are working on people who are building their careers, and they lay out the they discuss the the time commitment for the organisation, but in the final analysis, after being on the board for three to six months of the people have, uh, huge work commitments, and they say, j i just can’t meet the time commitment. Oh, and so they had to restructure the board in a way that allows the chairman much more responsibility. I think that a board chair should have and what about the fund-raising expectations? Uh, well, not all board members will enjoy fund-raising. I think it’s necessary to find those who might enjoy it or have experience with it to make some commitment to it. Andi, do you want to see that as a dollar amount or more flexible based on the individual based on what the individual strengths are, if they have contacts? That’s one thing, uh, if if they have aa dollars to give or you are in the are able teo network with people of substantial wealth, that is another thing. Okay, but there ought to be. Do you agree with this one hundred percent participation personal at some level for for all board members? Yes. That’s necessary? Because foundations, when you go for grants often look at that as a board commitment, showing board commitment that they have made the financial commitment to the organization. Should these expectations be in writing for the potential boardmember? I think so. But i think it depends upon the culture of the board and they understandings that air developed at the beginning. If you, uh, if they, uh, if the board gets a lot of questions after after being on the board for a while about those commitments, maybe it’s necessary to put it in into writing, but not necessarily a legally binding tract of oh, no, no, no, no. Okay, but just something that here’s what we’re expecting and please, you know, indicate that you’ve reviewed it. So we’re all have well have consistent expectations, right? We’re all on the same page, okay? Eso then moving. Teo orientation. If you recruited the right people, what should board orientation look like? Well, orientation, uh, should take place. I would say over i again size and complexity of the board, about a six month period. Oh, and in the sense that there might be a half day or a couple our orientation about the organization and its mission is a go mission vision and values. Ah, and any other details that they they have to be concerned with. But then other issues ought to be, uh, brought up for the new board members as they as they progress through their first six months during this period, the, uh, the board chair and the ceo. I need to be readily available to answer questions from from the new board members, so that they become fully apprised of the issues as they go along a two day board, uh, section in which a lot of information is thrown at the person, uh, simply doesn’t stick its a matter of repetition, understanding and going through the process themselves. And as you know, we all learned best when the when the problems are immediately in front of us. For example, with board liabilities, a lot of boards will bring in a lawyer and and lay out the potential liabilities for a boardmember in their particular situation, uh, they hear a lot about the laws, but they if you’re not a lawyer, they frequently forget it. Uh, so when an issue comes up ah, that the that there might be a a personal liability in in the situation, it’s up to the ceo and the board chair to remind the new people and refresh the older people that this particular situation might be affected by this particular legal precedent. Would you put new board members on a committee right away, or would you keep them at large? I would keep, um, at large unless they have a strong desire to go on a committee and of course. A sze yu know i suggest that there are really only three committees needed. Yeah, on this is a way of getting into the corporate model. What are those three committees? Well, first that’s. Very simple. You have a planning and resource committee. Uh, that looks forward. It looks towards the strategic plan. It looks towards the resources that i have both human resource is and financial resource is it looks forward to the planning that is, that is necessary. It also has a special responsibility that the other committees don’t have. And that is to is teo monitor and mentor ad hoc committees. Any man, uh, if special issues come up of a strategic or policy nature ad hoc committee need to be formed for that particular issue clearly, because because we don’t, we only have three standing committee, so we’re going to get this right. We’re gonna need ad hoc committee, particularly everything. Ascot committed to take care of the issues. They come up, come up esso, and then that that their their their responsibility on the other side of the picture is the assessment committee and assessment committee simply assesses how we have done. Okay. Oh, and that includes the arctic function and the er in states such as california, where you need a separate audit committee. A subcommittee of that assessment committee performs the audit function, meets with the auditors this all seeds up to the to the executive committee. The third committee, which has the traditional executive committee duties of of ah, of acting for the board and emergency situations, and taking a final review off the various reports that air coming through before they come to the board. So it was, you say, have a board of twenty one people with seven on each. You will find that by the time it gets to the board through the process is the large part or nearly all the board are familiar with the issues they may disagree with with some of the proposals and have other ideas at the board meeting. But everybody is full of pretty much everybody is wholly informed. You say twenty one board members as an example. So this is can this corporate model worked for organizations that have just maybe half a dozen boardmember xero their way, we could divide that in four or however we want to. Arrange that depending upon the needs of the corporations of the non-profit uh, this is a flexible model, okay? And people have used it in different ways on dh dahna, for example, i once met a person, a new organization that didn’t have any standing committees, all committees of the board were ad hoc committees reporting to the entire board. They were happy with it. I would have been happy with it, but evidently it worked. It worked for them. All right? So there’s flexibility is this more what we see in corporations and you have to you have to help me out because i don’t i’m not familiar with the corporate model is is this more typical of the way corporate boards operate? Very few standing committees? Maybe not exactly the same, but very few standing committees, lots of ad hoc committee’s. Well, this is being proposed by the ah by some major consultants. Now, as you as you noted in the book, however, i hate to say, but i’ve been at this for more decades than i care to admit and in turn ah, they’re a ce faras. I know. Based on the sales of the first two. Books there, which was the first to additions, which were their sales of over ten thousand copies. I would estimate the thousands of boards have adopted it on dh. However, it is still controversial among some boards and its best used with boards who have, ah, a about a million dollars budget and roughly let’s say about ah ah, over ten to twelve, fourteen full time employees when it comes to the nation type of non-profit board uh, the i think the traditional model of bored involvement in operations is necessary because, uh, they’re simply not the man power to get it done. The basic problem in the process in the change is that boards begin with board involvement in operations, and when they grow, they still sick with the old model stunting the growth of the organization, frustrating the chief executive office operations officer and on dh missing huge opportunities that they could have right in their growth gene, i’m not clear on, but i’m not clear on something. Is is your recommendation for smaller organizations teo to stick with a more traditional, smaller younger organizations? I guess. Yes, more traditional sport model if you have an organization with a budget, for instance. I know one that i’ve been very close to. Uh, it has only has a budget and does great work. Charitable work have two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year in that case, uh uh, i would stick with the traditional oer organization, however, in the book. Hey, hey still need tohave on audit committee of some sort. And the book describes what is necessary to have that, you know, once or twice a year a cz the accounting issues and financial issues come up. And of course, the corporate model is important, too. I have in mind, as the organization grows exactly that’s the transition there were going. I’m just saying that’s the transition that your urine compensation and allows you, teo, to growth a very large to a very large organization. If you want to go in that direction and and it’s sort of mandated once you get a larger number of poise and ah ah, nde larger financials to handle if you’re in the area of over a million, if you’re in the area of one point five, two, three, four, five, six million so forth i had one client a couple years. Ago that still had the old model on dh they had a budget of six million dollars and, uh, the chief executive officer said to may look, i could be running away with this board, you know? They’re just not had supporting me in the way they should be supporting me there, worrying about the details on the operational details that they hear about now that’s the policy versus paper clips. Yeah, and just there worrying about hypothetically the paper clips just to remind listeners that gene fram is professor emeritus at rochester institute of technology and the author of that book policy versus paper clips. Jean what? What can we expect? Aside from maximizing our growth potential? Sounds like more efficient operations. What else khun kayman organization expect if they adopt the corporate model of board governance? Alright, well, ah one is the the board members feel that they’re doing meaningful things. They think they see that they’re proposing projects. They’re monitoring their development, uh, they’re getting to know the staff. Eso if the succession issue comes up, they know who, uh who? Ah, who? The, uh, prime candidates might be. And they become really mohr involved with the organization, as i indicated in policy versus paper clips. Ah, the ideal organization is a partnership between the board, the management group and the staff. They are all working together, there’s communications there ideally and ah, and they’re all focusing on the the objective of meeting the needs and the grow, often the growing needs of the client. Okay, we just have about a minute and a half or so before the break. What about employees who are accustomed to going to board members with with problems that assume that’s gotta stop? Yes, that has to stop that’s what they refer to it is the end run in the non profit organization. So the end runs have to stop, and they and everybody has to understand that it has to stop so that people are not. People are not reporting to board members, they’re reporting to they’re they’re they’re supervisor or maybe it’s the ceo and president. But yes, but we can’t be going to board members for everyday problems. No, we can’t pay, uh, salary levels, uh, problems with promotions and so forth and so on. That’s particularly difficult and smaller community and smaller communities cerini where many of the employees might know the, uh, the board members personally, you know. So that becomes important. So there is a transition period, uh, which can take anywhere from two to three, maybe even four years while this adjustment takes place. Okay, jean jean, we have to take a break. We’ll have plenty of time or to talk after this. After we go away for a couple minutes, i’ll come back. Tony’s take two and we’ll keep talking to jean frame about the corporate model. Stay with me. We have two more with jean fran. Of course. Coming up first. Pursuant. It’s a simple problem. Solution statement. You need to raise more money. The pursuing tool velocity helps you. How can i make it simpler? Yeah. It’s one of the latto one of their tools at its designed to keep fundraisers on track with goals and that’s, whether you have devoted gift officers or you’re the sole fundraiser or director of development or you’re the executive director doing fund-raising probably all the more reason you need technology in the smaller the shop, the more efficient you need to be going to be going toe ntcdinosaur provoc technology conference. I’ve got lots. Of technology interviews coming up more about that shortly. But you need technology. Velocity is one of these tools that can help you. Um, no more index cards. I hope i hope. That’s analogue oriented by now, but or spreadsheets. Please check out these tools pursuant dot com crowdster they have a deal for non-profit radio listeners eager get thirty days free or fifty percent off. That means you can try a crowdster peer-to-peer fund-raising sight completely free for a month or you get the fifty percent off which means pay for a month and get him on three or pay for two months. Get two months free. Add it on claim your ah crowdster deal which everyone works better for you claim it at crowdster dot com and in the chat window, tell them you’re from non-profit radio and which deal you want. They’re all prepared crowdster dot com now time for tony’s take two a dream realized since i was five years old roughly i have wanted a house by the beach ah mei grandmother and grandfather grandma grandpa martignetti used to take me to the beach in belmar, new jersey and they had a home there and my parents just dropped me and my brother off for weeks at a time during the summer. And even when school was, you know it was whether was even before i was school age. But then school time, you know, summer vacation. Of course, weeks at a time, we’d be grandma and grandpas, belmar, new jersey beach house and i just like i got sand in my blood, and i have realized the dream. I now own a home in emerald isle, north carolina, and the beach is across the street, and along with the beach comes this ocean that is twenty four seven it’s, remarkable. It never stops, and i hear the ocean. I see it, it’s, it’s, across the street’s, my across the street, neighbor. So it’s all ah, very pretty special, um, no longer in new york city full time now, just part time, more time down in ah, in emerald isle and, uh, there’s a video called my dream realized and that’s at tony martignetti dot com with a little more detail about this, but, um, yeah, very special realized dream non-profit technology conference that’s coming up its later this month, march twenty third, twenty fifth. I’ll be in san jose, california. I hope you’re going to be there. I’ve been talking about it, it’s an excellent conference, lots of smart people helping you use technology. As i was saying earlier, you need it. You can’t you can’t get away from it. And if you’re not using it, not embracing it that’s just like, you know, neutral on it. But if you’re not embracing it, you’re probably not as efficient as you could be in lots of different operations, but fund-raising program other administration h r time management, you know, whatever it is, um, you need to be embracing technology in twenty sixteen pursuant is going to be there. They’re going to be right near me. I’ll be getting interviews on the on the exhibit floor space, i’ll have a booth and then we got a green room right next to that for guests who come early, big, big, you know, big establishment but non-profit radio big presence there pursue it would be right near and i’m expected to get around thirty interviews, maybe even a little more over the three days. This is my third, um, the interview schedule. I’m going to put that up at tony martignetti dot com. You could see who’s coming up which days the conference info is at inten dot org’s and that is tony’s take two for the two hundred eightieth show three hundredth show is going to be coming up. The anniversary is always july. I don’t know exactly which day i didn’t look too counted out. But the three hundredth show is going to be coming up in july. That will be our sixth anniversary. Let’s do i feel like i feel like live listener love so let’s. Ah, let’s hit the live listeners and there are many. Ah, i got some of my new neighbors in north carolina. New bern is with us and chapel hill, north carolina. Thank you very much. Live. Listen, love there, but also cleveland, ohio, pittsburgh, pennsylvania where i spent a very formative four years at carnegie mellon university. I was able to graduate in four years. I was remarkable. Class in nineteen, eighty krauz in nineteen eighty four, no nineteen, eighty four that’s. Right, ninety, eighty was the golden knights. It, uh, northern valley, old japan elearning i’m opening up a lot today. It’s. Unusual. Yes. Krauz ninety four, carnegie mellon, pittsburgh p a live listener. Love to you coming back to new jersey. Florham park. Cool. Ah, brooklyn, new york. Live listener love. Oh, there’s. Another, uh, duncan, south carolina. Not too far from north carolina. Los angeles, california. Nyack, new york. Welcome. I don’t think i’ve seen nyack before. St louis, missouri. I was stationed in aa. Ah, whiteman air force base in in ah, knob noster, missouri. But i did not live in knob noster. I lived in warrensburg, and somebody puts all this info together. That’s all on facebook. Anyway, i think s o st louis? Yes, i used tio used to spend time in st louis. We would take a train from st louis down to mardi gras. Did that for two. Years in a row from the beautiful st louis train station st louis live listener love to you, atlanta, georgia and san jose, california, where i will be in aa was it ten days or so? Roughly let’s? Go abroad? Mexico city, mexico window star days tehran, iran i don’t know how to say it, but live listener love to you. I don’t know the would that be farsi. I don’t know what foresee i’m sorry. I hope you’ll accept my live listener love in tehran. Tokyo multiple in tokyo, japan of course. Konnichiwa and seoul, south korea always checking in and multiple there too. My always question do you know each other on your haserot? Also, bolivia is with us. Bolivia welcome live listener love. Okay, let’s, get back. Teo eugene fram and his book his book, of course. Policy versus paperclips. Gene let’s. Keep talking. Okay, what about you? Mentioned? Just briefly. Let’s. Talk a little about assessing the work of the of the ceo. Who does? Does that fall under in this corporate model? Well, that’s the that’s. The assessment committee makes sense. Ideally, the assessment committee looks at, uh, two aspects of the of the ceos. Work and the organization’s outcomes you don’t look for processes, you look for outcomes and, uh, these khun b those, uh, those data which are what we might call ha ha ah, hard data and that’s the data that you have with accounting records, records of membership, what a number of clients, things of that nature that you can easily major. And then there there qualitative ah, measures that you can measure and has should make sure which most or many organizations don’t major, for instance, impact on the community or or excuse me image. Ah, in the community, things of that nature more qualitative. And in that area, i suggest that you do what we call dahna, uh, use imperfecta metrics. In fact, i have an article out on it, and i’m sure if any of you ah, if you take a look at my, uh website, you will you will see it there. Or if you even put it on in under my name, you will find it is available on on the web on. And that is a process that i suggest with the co author that if you use in perfect metrics over time that you khun dr process dr provoc progress and develop exchange it. Develop change. Excuse me. Jeans, blogged, itt’s. A little little lengthy. So i’m going to suggest that the easiest way to find jeans teo, do a google search on eugene fram? Yes, thank you very much. I have now have ah, ah. In fact, i have an anniversary right now. I’ve just put out my hundred fifty fifty it’s block a titled what non-profits ceos think of their boards? Other recent ones, air program reductions are mandated. What can a non-profit do? Okay, in another one just for example, is management knows all what does a what’s a non-profit director to d’oh. Okay, and people will find you. Really? I think. Easiest through a google search. Now, this year’s have put my name into google and there there’s a lot. A lot of links there for you. This use ofhim. Perfect data. Gene, won’t you say a little more about that? Doesn’t doesn’t sound like something we’d want to rely on. Well, if your process is good and you sample, uh, reasonably well, you get data. That is not exact. But you get a feel for it. Uh, for for example, i once have was on the board of a of a charitable non-profit that was targeted. Ah, to counsel. Ah, p ah! Various people in the community was heavily supported by the united way. And we weren’t getting many. Ah ah ah ah! We weren’t getting many respondents from the inner city, so i suggest it as the boardmember uh, that i, uh, talk with some of the people in the community. What, that time no one was the settlement houses and ah, and see in the inner city, uh, which were community centers, which is a better word for them and and see what they perceived is the problem. Esso i went to them, and i found out what i what they thought were the problems. And now you’re only talking to three people, but they knew the communities there. And the, uh the first thing that happened was the aids of the community centers called ah, my, uh, my president and ceo and said, guess what? One of your board members coming down to talk to me, so i ah, and he said, yeah, i know. And we had agreed to this prior to that and so i listen to these people. I came back. I gave him feedback. Hey made changes to try to ah garner a greater proportion of the clientele from the inner city. And then after a year, uh, went back and talked to the people and i said, as are many changes and they said yes, there’s been modest changes, but there’s still more that needs to be done. I fed this back to the present ceo. He made changes. And then at the end of the second year ah, there were there were substantial changes, and the board got out of the business of of evaluation at that point. All right, so buy some. Buy some key interviews of the right people, right? Yeah, we don’t have statistical significance. And exactly, but on everything that surrounds ah, proper peer reviewed research. But who can afford to do all that all the time? Exactly. And and the article contains practical examples. Were both myself and my co author, jerry tally, a sociologist. Uh, both of us have been in ah, and quote in the business a long time have have used the model and have found it very, very helpful and over. Time if you repeat this asai did and and the example i gave you it was only a about a two year run until the things started to turn around and then the ceo was evaluated on on on going from there you mentioned earlier something i wantto spend a little more time with the proper title, your recommendation for title. For the the chief of the of the organization, you feel pretty strongly that executive director is not sufficient. No uh, executive director can mean various things because it’s, used in in a in a wide variety of ways on executive director, can be a volunteer who manages the budget of a small church with a let’s say, a two hundred thousand dollars budget. An executive director, khun b, for instance, one i’ve encountered recently ah, was the was the head of a ten million dollars dahna a charitable organization with over one hundred employees, and, uh, i don’t think, uh, the title executive director in the twenty first century, even in the last part of the twentieth century, gives, uh, the chief executive officer off a non-profit the position and stature that that, uh, that he or she needs toe work effectively. So what do you prefer to see? I prefer once you get into the make the make the transition, i prefer president and ceo because people understand their what that means. It’s clear that that person has read sponsor ability for operations, except those decisions that have to be made by the board. And that title may have significance for board members also that they recognize the responsibilities of of the president. Ceo exactly on dh to add to that. And in many cases, the non-profit president ceo has more management responsibility than a number of the members of the board. For instance, if you’re a professor, you loft and ah, don’t have any management responsibilities, um, never had it. Okay, you worked as an individual contributor. Same thing about a physician who is, uh, who has a single practice. Ah, same thing with the, uh, a lawyer who is, uh, who has a a single practice or even a part of a major law firm. They just haven’t had the responsibility of the that the president and c the chief executive has off of the nonprofit organization implementing this. A corporate model seems to me there’s a lot of trust between boardmember sze, between the board and the president, ceo between the staff of the organization and the president ceo between the staff and the board. It sounds like there’s. A lot of trust required. Yes. You have to have trust it’s it’s. Really? Uh, if you’re and you picked it up exactly. It is a trust model it’s. A model in which you have to trust the ceo. Uh, you have to trust the staff that they are professionals. But on the other hand, it also calls for rigorous evaluation. It’s not the traditional evaluation of the border, the staff where they send out a questionnaire at the end of the year and and ask people to return it. You don’t get full returns and the questionnaire is poorly formatted. It takes investigation and robust evaluation. And what are we going to do with trustees who are reluctant to give up the the managing the paperclips responsibilities? How do we manage those people with difficulty? Yeah. Hope you got something better than that. Otherwise i’m taking you off now. I’m going to cut your mic down. If that’s the best you can do. No. With some people, you have to give them what they might consider a meaningful activities, such as, uh, chairing the annual dinner on things of that nature who are not working, who are not interested in the policy. For instance, if you have a major donor, who, uh, just is not interested in policy and strategy, and wants to do that over time. What you hope will happen with the ah corporate model with my model is that, uh, the, uh, board will turn over to people who have these dynamic interests and understand that they have to do a robust evaluation, not a cursory one, and that the majority of the board will be those types of people. We got to take a break. Jean fran stays with me. And i certainly hope that you do, too. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they are levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests 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. If you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr robert panna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Welcome back. We’re wrapping up. We have about another five minute it’s. So and want to continue with with jean for the that time and talk about some of the advice that you have around week board practices. There’s there’s. Something on your blogged. There are a few posts on your block about overcoming week board practices. One of those is one of those bad practices is overlooking absences. What do you suggest there, what’s the problem. And what do we do? Well, you have boardmember sze uh, who, uh uh, fill a board members, uh, board position and they’re consistently absent. And, uh, this is a very touchy situation. They may be very fine. People have great skills, but they simply don’t have the time to attend board meetings, which have obviously critical to the organization. Uh, i think the best thing you can do is to try to talk to these people, try to retain them on the board or understand, uh, what they’re missing by not attending the board meetings in some instances. Ah, it’s it, khun b a a termination discussion. For instance, i just recently encountered one and which, uh, the board chair had this discussion with the person and she said, i’m just sorry i like the organization. Ah, and and i’m i’m tied to the mission, vision and values, but i’m doing international travel and my best, the best i can do is to open up the position and resign in other cases if you can find the root cause of it and do something about it for them that’s that that could be ah, that could be another alternative, but it’s very situational on dh, very individual to see what you can do. Teo, handle the situation you had suggested earlier. There may be a different role for the person, maybe it’s not our board. Well, something else they can do to support the organisation in this one, they’re, uh instance that i just, uh i mentioned i i, uh, had talked to this individual and i said to her, well, look, uh you’re it’s obvious that you can’t do anything immediately, but your role made in your job may change again. Uh, have you asked about taking a leave of absence from the board and ah and ah ah, future time. A year, year and a half. Two years, maybe things during that change around and so she’s still connected to the board in some way, i may even get minutes of the board and so forth. So on as a way of retaining that person’s interest in the organization because she was she’s, a very fine person. Thoughtful, analytical does critical thinking and had very broad x variances. Kind of the dream. The dream boardmember. So you try to make these accommodations. What about insufficient due diligence on the board first? How do we how are we going to recognise that? Well, i think that’s again the, uh the, uh the board chairs ahh responsibility along with the chief executive officer. When things are not discussed in an adequate detail that they bring the issues up that they pride to do some of the due diligence for the people. Because again, the board members are not being compensated by large. They are. They have other job that are their main main concern. And so you may need to help them along on the dew dealings. Due diligence side jean has other identified bored weaknesses and and how to overcome them on his on his blogged jean what is it that? You love about working on boards? Well, i i like the people. Ah, and i’ve served on a number of human services are, you know, charity type boards as well as, you know, trade associations and so forth, but on the boards that especially those that are charitable in nature, you see in these organizations, people who figured early stand ten feet tall, they do much more than they are compensated for, they do it willingly, and they really have the client’s interest that mind, ah, at heart, and and then in their mind, you know, i’ve seen ah, social workers in on and homes buy-in group homes ah, take take some of their clients to their own homes on weekends, or even take them on vacations far beyond what is required of the people in order to ah, help them overcome the handicaps that they have. You know, those are just examples, and when you see people like that really dedicated it and you can contribute in your way, you know, i can’t do those sort of things, but i can contribute to they’re doing it, we have to leave it there. Eugene fram, professor emeritus at rochester institute of technology, google him remember it’s like the fram oil filters fr am googling to find his blogged his book is policy versus paper clips it’s on amazon jean, thank you so much for being a guest. Well, thank you for having me been my pleasure next week. Professor adrian, sergeant on relationship fund-raising did you think that i forgot the affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries perish the thought podcast pleasantries to those listening on whatever device or whatever time you’re very welcome at non-profit radio and i’m very grateful for your support pleasantries to you and affiliate affections, especially our newest affiliate, w l r lanchester affections out to all the am and fm station listeners throughout the country. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go? And i just don’t know about that. 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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 a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts 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 gotta 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 18, 2015: Run Like A Biz & Program Your Board

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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My Guests:

Hillary Schafer: Run Like A Biz

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Hillary Schafer brought her 12 years on Wall Street to the Jefferson Awards Foundation, where she’s executive director. She shares her ideas from building core infrastructure to employee policies.

 

 

Gene Takagi: Program Your Board

Gene Takagi

Your board probably recognizes its fiduciary responsibilities, but does it know its role in overseeing programs? Gene Takagi is our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO).

 

 


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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. We’ve got a listener of the week naralo brancati on twitter he’s at bronco leggio he’s in roma italia, where i’m headed shortly and he’s a frequent retweet er of non-profit radio posts, which i very much appreciate so listener the week carlo hey, congrats to latto you messed it up. Lincoln got two lattes cioni carlo chaillou bello, thank you very, very much, carlo. I’m glad you’re with me. My cat would bear the pain of odo psoriasis if she had to hear that you missed today’s show run like a biz hillary shaefer brought her twelve years on wall street to the jefferson awards foundation, where she’s executive director she shares strategies from building core infrastructure to your employee policies and program. You’re bored. Your board probably recognizes its fiduciary responsibilities but doesn’t know its role in overseeing program. Jean takagi is our legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo and this is from our show on january tenth, two thousand fourteen on tony’s take two work smarter, responsive by pursuant, full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com. I’m glad to welcome to the studio hillary schaefer. Prior to joining the jefferson awards foundation as executive director, she worked as the head of us institutional equity sales in new york. For citigroup, she was one of the highest ranking women in the equity business. In the late nineties. She was the executive director of economic security two thousand fighting to save and remodel social security. The foundation is at jefferson awards, dot, org’s and she’s at beard. Hillary on twitter. Welcome, hillary schaeffer. Thank you very much. Glad you’re in the studio, thanks to be here. Eight and a half months pregnant, eight and a half months pregnant, we got you at the right time. What’s behind this twitter id beard hillary it’s, my maiden name is beard. Okay, until re beard was taken, i presume and hillary beard is probably taking swiped by some. I had that done on youtube. Some joker i hope he was named tony martignetti stole the channel name tony martignetti and i had you riel tony martignetti but he doesn’t use it so it’s ah, people don’t have trouble finding me. Not that anyone’s looking, but if they were looking, they wouldn’t have trouble finding me on youtube. Um, tell me about wall street what’s it what’s it like making a living equity say institutional equity sales what’s it like, what does that mean, that’s that place, like, actually, frankly, loved it. I did it for twelve years. I went into wall street thinking i would do it for two. Yeah, we’re really, really fell in love for long enough to stay for twelve instruction. Likely sales is basically where you manage the relationships for the largest institutional investors who invest in stocks. Okay, so on behalf of citigroup, so on, you’re like, on account, uh, liaison to big companies buying stocks. Sort of. Yes, i minimize their eyes. So egregiously okay, clearly egregiously. So, what do you how do you how do you keep big institutional buyers happy? What you have to do, too, with more of their blackness is making money, right? So investing in stocks that go up and shorting stocks that go down. And so ah, lot of the business of the equity business of citigroup is to provide really good insights and ideas and research into the companies that they care about and delivering that content into your clients in a way which is consumable smart, if it’s with their investment style, um and helps them make money is really the core of what you do. Okay, but then there are all of these other services that citigroup offers and help clients run their money from financing stocks. Teo, all of the things that go around the core of running that business, okay, banking and credit relationships, things like that, things like that. Okay? And so core of that business is sort of managing that entire relationship to make sure they get the resource is that they need in orderto successfully run the business and a transition to non-profit work. What? What occasioned that? Frankly, hurricane sandy, i had left wall street. I have two little kids already at home, and i decided that i wanted teo figure out what i wanted to do next. I had no idea what that was actually, frankly thought it would be in the finance world. Yeah, and hurricane sandy hit new york, and i was sitting in my living room working on a business plan for a finance business, okay? And i just got really passionate about the idea that there were children who had gone to bed safe and sound the night before that woke up with no signs of food or shelter or warmth, their security. And so i went to work from my living room to create programs that generated millions of more meals, hundreds of thousands of blankets and warm winter coats for families all over the tri state area and my husband on dh, the executive director of robin hood both basically sat me down and said, please don’t go back to finance the passion that you feel around helping people is so significant. Do something else. Stay in the non-profit you gave away your entrepreneurial dream, the plan you’re working on. You’re going to start your own business. I did put that aside, although running a non-profit is inherently incredibly entrepreneur. Okay, if it’s done right if it’s done right. All right, all right. Um, tell us a little about the jefferson awards and the and the foundation. Sure. So we we basically power public service. We’ve been around since nineteen metoo started by jackie kennedy, senator robert taft junior and my father, sam beard. And the original idea was create a nobel prize for public service in america. Ah, celebrate the very best of the country. You celebration to not only say thank you to people do amazing things, but also as a force multiplier to inspire others to do something good. We then translated into programs that accelerate and amplify service for people of every age. So, starting about ten years ago, we became one of the largest creators of public service in the country through training mechanisms and programs that engage individuals again of all ages to do service ranging from the donation of a single book from a child to a child all the way up to young people in adult toe like who are impacting millions. Of lives and it’s ah, jefferson awards so what’s the awards side of this. So when the awards is the celebration peace. So we are effectively the gold seal of service in america. We give out a we give out jefferson awards the national level, you would know basically every name. Okay. Who’s, one of jefferson word over the last forty three years. And then we have a media partner program where we partner with local affiliates, newspapers, etcetera but primary news outlets in communities all over the country. But today, reaching to seventy eight million households on dh, they are empowered to take the jefferson award and celebrate local grassroots unsung heroes. All right, a nobel prize for ah, for outstanding program work and and saving lives for impact impact. How about the foundation itself? Just number employees. Just a quaint little bit number of employees. Annual budget. Yes. So it’s about twenty seven employees, we have a, uh, about a ten and a half million dollar annual budget. Um, of which much of that is in-kind it’s about a three and a half million dollar operating revenue budget. Okay, and we’re going to go out for a break. In roughly a minute or so, so just, uh, gives a little overviewing of what? But some of the lessons are that you brought from equity sales on dh wall street. Teo, your charitable work, and i think the biggest thing is just that any organization, whether it’s, for-profit or non-profit, needs to be world class in order to be successful, and that starts with everything from how you manage and set your employees up for success to your back end systems that govern how you pay your rent, you know, pay your expenses and collect your revenues to don’t hurt management, teo everything that you do needs to look and feel like you set for-profit world, but it’s really for impact. So i’m guessing you believe non-profit is your tax status not your mindset? Correct? Yeah, cool. Okay. Ah, of course hillary stays with us. We go after this break. I hope you do, too. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Hillary schaefer let’s ah, let’s, dive into some of these lessons that you’ve brought with you this world class let’s start in the back end investment in infrastructure like c r, m databases, data management so that’s a that’s a terrific place to start because really every non-profit is powered by who they reach and how they reached them and how they communicate with, um and management of relationships, whether that’s a whether that’s, a donor, whether that’s, somebody, who’s won an award from our perspective, whether that somebody who has just invested in you are in your programs and how you understand that relationship, how you manage that relationship is all driven by the back end. Traditionally, people would use spreadsheets or just use, you know, sort of word and lists in their own brains, and fundamentally, it doesn’t get you as far as you need to get, and technology today is so sophisticated and there’s so many great great data pay systems that can integrate seamlessly with your website and with donor management tools and with, um, all mechanisms that you need to communicate effectively and really segment that communication into something that makes sense for that individual. It’s. Almost a shame not to you not to use it. Yeah, segmentation, and we’ll get to the benefit of that. I’ve had other guests. My voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old. I’ve had have a congratulations. Thank you. Everything else operates at, uh, the requisite age at fifty three, but my voice occasionally. Yeah, so we’ll get to the value of segmentation because people want to be talked to personally, not not and mass and like everybody else, but so but this can be hard to invest in me, we’re talking about this is not serving program directly. This is not helping people directly. How do we overcome that mindset that we can get by with, you know, the lackadaisical, the the database that we’ve got her the internal presses we figured out our work arounds, you know, we’re okay. It’s it’s finding you say that, right? Because they actually when you invest in a really good database management system and client relationship manager, which is what c r m stands for, what you get out of it, that multiplier effect that you can get from having true, powerful relationships and understanding of all of your constituents, all consolidated is worth every dollar you know, and frankly there’s so many great systems which are out there, and they’re not that expensive. The most expensive part is the time of your staff, an external consultants, which you often mean teo, take what is all of the stuff that you’ve cobbled together and to make. It work for your organization. So an organization as an example we had brought in sales force. We use sales force. Um, we frankly had the wrong system installed with sales force. It took us a long time to figure out how to get the right system installed in all of those things. But it’s also taking us the better part of eighteen months to clean our data. Teo optimize our data to segment it appropriately so that we can communicate effectively with everybody in the way they want to be communicated with and a fair amount of staff time. And it’s, that investment of taking somebody away from something that looks like perhaps it’s more important to their day to day life and put them into what’s really tedious work. Ah, in order to be a better organization. But for us, if i think about it, if we have a database that reaches sixty thousand people, our ability to grow from an organization that reaches sixty this sixty thousand two, two, six hundred thousand to six million all contingent on us having optimized rc era. This is key. So if you want to scale, you have to have the infrastructure two to support that every organization wants to be at the next level i get so many questions about, you know, how do i get to next level? Can you refer me to somebody help us get to the next level? But i think often they don’t they’re not set up to get to the next level. They don’t they don’t have the support that they need, even if they were able to teo, multiply by ten there, you know the size of their their outreach. Without data, you have no chance. I’ll give you a great example in the nonprofit world statistic terrifies me, but something like sixty percent of donors don’t repeat on average across the non-profit space every year. Yeah, don’t come back, right? Well, don’t patrician right that’s because we’re not loving the people who are there. Everybody is focused on the next level. No, you’re focused on the next person you forget about the person who’s already said to you with their dollars. I care about what you do at the heart of that is your database management system. I had a guest, peter shankman, um social media expert and marketing guy and his book is called zombie loyalists and basically had a last december. I think i had eternal you’re all your clients and customers into zombie loyalists that love you so much that they’re zombies for your work, and they’ll do your marketing, your pr, your communications for you, but ah, some of what he says boils down to the way to get the client you want is to be awesome to the client. You have that’s exactly right? I mean, i think about it from a from a fund-raising perspective, what the great fundraisers tell you is you should have four contacts with a donor for every time you ask them for something no in orderto have those four contacts but matter to them, you need to know what they care about that needs to be in your database. You need to understand them that meets not only being your head, it needs to be institutionalized in your database. Ah, and then you need to have systems which set up, which push you to reach out to that person, to make sure that you’re not forgetting to touch them four times before you go back to them and say, here’s, your invoice your sales force is a really cool example that you mentioned because for small shops, it’s ideal, the first ten licenses from sales force are free to non-profits and then they have a very deeply reduced fee for going beyond ten licenses. But i think for a lot of listeners, ten licenses is enough for more than enough. So, you know, on i’ve had guests on from the non-profit technology conference and t c talking about the benefits of salesforce, you know, i think that’s right and sales force khun b a terrific tool, it’s also it could be not that expensive or if you have the budget, the amount of tools that they have that you khun scale in two really optimizing take you to the next level are huge, so we don’t have we personally don’t have the budget we would love to have to spend with sales force, but we have a big, long wish list of things we would like to spend on specifically with sales force, with the tools that they have something bothering me to my head now, i didn’t mean to say lackadaisical databases, i meant to say lackluster, lackluster debate lackadaisical. Database doesn’t make any sense lazy, lazy self, you know, so that people could be lackadaisical. But the databases lackluster let’s talk a little about the segmentation, the benefit of communicating with people and showing that you know what their interests are when their birthdays are what they, how they like to be communicated with let’s, explore this know people are people all right, everybody wants to feel touched individually. Nobody wants to feel like they’re part of a marketing campaign or that they’re part of a sort of a blast. People want to be touched individually. It’s why things like instagram work because they feel touched by a photograph ah, it’s the same thing with with donor or constituent segmentation everybody wants to feel like especially in the nonprofit world where you’re talking about emotion. You are effectively touching people where where they want to improve the world, but you’ve got to understand which part of it inspires them. Yes, ah, and and also people like being cared for around the things that matter in their daily lives that have nothing to do with you. You ah, their children, their children’s ages. What? They d’oh? Ah, what their hobbies. Are where they like to travel all of those things. It just matters it’s all about having one on one of relationships. And the better your relationship is, the more likely you are to be able to maximize. And everything you’ve mentioned is data worth preserving its all data. You have to have people love it when you send them a note that says, happy birthday, no, super simple. It is very simple now. So what kinds of reminders do you get based on what kinds of things aside from birthday? What other kind of yeah, what others? Ah, it tends to relate to things that people have told you. Okay? And so for us, it would relate specifically to our program. So we have five different programs that have very, very different calendars. So that could relate. Teo, i i just need to get us a of the date because i know you desperately want to come to our national ceremony in new york city in march. Ah, but it could also be i know you really want to be. Ah, judge at our students in action conference in minneapolis. Ana and so getting that date to you in plenty of advance notice. It really gets down to that level. All right, so the, uh, the value of segmentation and investment in infrastructure. What about investment in consultants? You mentioned consulting? Nobody knows everything they need to know, but this could be tough to bring, bring other people in and have a fresh set of eyes evaluating you. It’s interesting on the consulting sight because i i personally have two two minds about consultants. Often i feel like you get charged too much for a percentage of somebody’s brain no on dh that’s the greatest risk with consulting. Ah, but also often they’re just expertise. You don’t want to bring in house. You can’t afford to bring in house, but you need somebody who has fresh eyes who knows something really specific that you don’t know ah, and with without which you can’t can’t go to the next level, you can’t execute effectively. So sales forces a terrific example. Um, there are so many tools inside sales force that enable you to do things like optimize your data and get rid of redundancy and all of those things, um and to, uh, to make it spoke for your organization. For think the ways in which you want to connect with people, i couldn’t do that myself, and i don’t have anybody in house who could do that for me. Could you just send your data data manager, database administrator to a sales force conference or course, yes, we do that too, okay, but it’s not enough and for the cost to bring and you know, you gotta you gotta weigh out the cost. So the question is, can you find somebody who is affordable to you in your organization that helps bring in those that kind of expertise in? I’m their things like building out an effective communication strategy where if you don’t have a big, robust communications team who can think about everything from database management, teo email to social media to all the things that go into digital infrastructure ah, and communications calendars and all of those things. At some point, it becomes really smart to bring in somebody from the outside to say, i’m building you a structure i’m helping you think about inside your organization, for you what a structure would look like, that you can afford let’s turn to our people, i think my voice is, my voice is crack again. It’s. A big bag, maybe, you know. So your people important asset, probably your most valuable asset most important, most expensive it’s expensive. I would guess inside most non-profits that that people are seventy eight percent of cost big, big, big percentage, um and making impact in the world all relates to the people who you were in power to make that impact on your behalf as as either a full time employee or an independent contractor. Treyz and losing employees is as expensive as losing the donors we were talking about, if not more so, you know woobox the amount of time you then need to spend teo find the person, bring them in house, and on average, it takes six to eighteen months to really optimize an employee. That’s a long time to invest in somebody new if you have somebody who’s good who’s sitting there right in front of you. The most important thing with people always is that they feel like they’re being set up to succeed. And they’re being given the tools that they need. Ah, to succeed. All right, how do we do this? Ah, well, that everything from the really basic and can feel very cumbersome to a management manager. Piece, but ah, gold setting and reviews letting people know where they stand, being really straightforward with them about what they’re doing that’s terrific, and where they need to develop development goals is a big, big, big piece, and i don’t mean development is in fund-raising i mean, personal development, professional development around how can you be a much more effective employees? For the most part? Certainly in my experience, whether it’s on wall street or in the nonprofit world, when you sit in a review with somebody, they barely hear the good stuff. Ninety nine percent of what you tell them could be good. Everybody waits for the butt, the but needs to be real, meaning it needs to be i understand you here’s, where i see helping to take you as a human being and as a professional to the next level, and being able to deliver that in a way which is non threatening but having systems and structures around delivering reviews around goal, setting around, holding people accountable to those goals and around understanding them and wanting to be on their side are all the the most important things you can do, and it doesn’t matter. What kind of an organization you’re out to do that my guest last week, we’re from the university of pittsburgh, and they were talking about incentive pay, something that pitt has set up, and they’ve defined what an exemplary fundraiser is it’s basically achieving two hundred percent of your goal, but that’s a big organization, university of pittsburgh dahna might there be other ways of implementing incentive pay around? Aside from strictly money money come, you know, incentives are interesting in non-profits because, um, a, for the most part, non-profits don’t use sort of base bonus type structures, but there are tons of other ways that you can make somebody feel really good about what they d’oh and whether that’s simply celebrating their accomplishments to the other employees into your board. People really thrive on that, but it can also be other things, like giving them an extra days vacation. Um, you know, sending them home on purpose when they’re kids sick and you tell them that family comes first, you know, all those things that’s really more around culture, but there are there are smart things you can do where you say, you know what? I don’t have the dollar to give you. But i do have a day to give you or two or whatever it is. Whatever it is, that you’ve earned benefits structures are very important, um, covering people in their families and how you do that and how you communicate it. Incredibly important and totally under sort of undervalued in the mindset in the nonprofit world about what that means to an individual. And you say, i care about you and your health, and i care about your family in there. We have just about a minute left or so we have a couple more than more than a couple minutes. How much time do we have left? Sam? Okay, dahna then let’s. Ah, my mistake. Let’s keep talking about some some policies around employment. Maybe around training. Like you’ve got a new employee, you’ve spent the requisite amount of time recruiting you believe you’ve got the best person, the orientation, the training process onboarding process oven employees that one of the single most important things that you d’oh. So with us, justus a simple example. First, everybody gets a very long, very detailed employee manual that they have to read, but they really understand what the operating premises are of the organ you’re holding your hands, like four inches apart for inches. It’s not for interesting. Okay, okay, they’re recording, so that would be way too much street. All right, but i use my hands a lot. I think i’m going to italy and i’m hundreds in italian, so i didn’t think you were using them enough. That must be the eight and half months. Pregnant part. Yes, i understand. Ok, the but having that set of expectations in somebody’s. Mind where they read it. They have to affirm it. They have to tell you that they’ve read it. That tells them everything from how many vacation days they do have, how they can accrue more vacation, what the benefits are to them, how they can get in trouble, how they can stay out of trouble. What a whistle blower policy might look like. All of those things very, very important. But then bringing people into the culture of the organization into your programs where they really feel armed. Tio ah, to be an effective employees. Ah, it’s. So fundamental. So we we set up a schedule time with all of our program managers. We have our end of its staff. When they come in they go. They shadow individuals who do either their job or even other jobs inside the organization. Because you got to understand the entire organization. I think in order to be effective in your silo. Ah, and then we do profession. We were very open to paying for people doing professional development and encourage it. Ah, and then we do regular staff retreats where everybody comes together and we work on pieces that feel like they might be holes in the skill set to the entire organization again, investment where its infrastructure of people you just you can’t shortchange these things and expect to scale on grow the organization. I mean, for the amount it costs me, tio run a staff retreat every year, eyes about one percent of what it costs me to pay my staff. Yeah, that is a very worthwhile investment to make that staff be a leverage oppcoll army, we’re gonna leave it there. Hillary shafer she’s uh, executive director of jefferson awards foundation there at jefferson awards dot or ge and again on twitter she’s at beard hillary. Thank you so much, hillary. Thank you. Well, pleasure and gun muzzle tough. Congratulations on your pregnancy. Thank you very much. Tony steak, too. And program you’re bored with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant, billboard it’s, integrated management of email landing pages, micro sites, donation forms, mobile pages, mobile mobile communications. And this and the social networks. Really? I mean, a lot of stuff that hillary and i were just talking about infrastructure. You’ve heard guests talk about multi-channel engagement billboard by pursuing is multi-channel engagement management, including the analytics with strong data and analysis and you’re constantly learning and revising and learning and fixing and improving that’s how you get better, so supporting all this. All the engagement through multiple channels is this, uh, tool billboard, which will, as everything pursuing, does help you find tune and raise more money pursuing dot com. My video this week is the second set of ntc non-profit technology conference video interviews. The subject is work smarter there’s distance collaboration, moving your data and files to the cloud walk to work that was with beth cantor and re to sharma encouraging you to make walking part of your work day not as a break, but as part of your day, take your meetings walking and two other video interviews. Links to those interviews are under my video at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, eighteenth of september thirty seventh show of the year here is jeanne takagi with program you’re bored jean takagi he’s, a principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco gene has been gene has been a regular contributor to show it’s got to be going on three years gina, i if it’s not three it’s. Very close. He had it’s, the non popular of the non popular beautiful. He had it’s, the popular non-profit law blawg dot com non-profit law blogged dot com it’s very popular. And on twitter he’s at gi tak g t k happy new year jean takagi. Welcome back. Happy new year. Tony it’s. Great to be on. Thank you. I love having you. How long have you been a contributor? Every month, i think it’s been a little over three years. That is it. Is it over three? Love it. It could be. I think we met three years ago at a bar in san francisco. If i remember, right? Oh, for sure. It’s. Not like we pick. I picked you up there where i knew you before. I’m not that easy with contributors. I mean, yes, we we knew each other. And then we certainly did meet that’s, right? With along with emily chan? Yes. That’s. Right. Um, let’s see, our board has our board has some responsibilities and around program you’re concerned that they’re not. They’re not fulfilling those responsibilities. Yeah, i just feel like there’s there’s, maybe some lack of attention paid on board the board’s roll on program oversight i think so often went especially when you talk with lawyers or accountants were talking about financial oversight, and we’re saying we’ll make sure you’re solvent, make sure you have enough money to pay off your debts, they become duitz we don’t really talk very much about programs, but certainly the management folks and the funders air talking about programs and whether they’re effective and efficient, that furthering the mission. So, you know, i thought we should explore a little bit about what the board duties are in in that event as well. Can you just remind us first, we’ve talked about this a while ago. There are three duties that board members have i was faith, hope and chastity or on the greatest of those is but yeah, the three duties are the duty of care and that’s act with reasonable care in providing direction and oversight over the organization, the duty of loyalty, and a lot of that has to do with avoiding conflicts of interests that are not in the best interest of the organizations but are more for the best interest of an insider and the duty of obedience. Which lawyers air very interested in and that’s obeying with both the outside laws of you know, that apply to the organization and the internal laws like the by-laws and other policies that the documents may have those air the three to be to be concerned with. Okay, and and around program program is essential. Man. That’s what charity’s exist for his programs? Oh, my voice just cracked like i’m a fourteen year old exist that’s, exciting stuff. That’s it is. It is that’s. Right? Well, you make it interesting. That’s. Why? I love having you back. You make the what could very well be a dry topic. I think you make it interesting. And listeners do too. Yeah. That’s. What? Charity’s air here is for a program. Yeah, exactly. I mean, who cares? The indie at the end of the day, if we’ve got great financials, it’s none of our programs are effective, and we don’t do a service to the community. Precisely. So what do we need to be doing? What the board’s need to be doing around around program? Well, i think in meeting those three duties, the critical aspect for boards to make sure they’re reasonably informed ah, and just get a program report every month or every two months. You know, a ten minute program report from executive director or program director is fine and good. But does that mean the board really understands the programs and whether the advance the mission? Ah, and do they understand how the program’s advance emission? And did they ever ask you more difficult questions about are the program’s effective at advancing the mission? Or do we have alternatives? Or should we think of alternatives that might be able to advance that mission mohr effectively or more efficiently, given the limited resources that we all have? First up in this is and we have talked about this. Your mission needs to be very clear. Yeah, and one of the things you have to do is make sure you go back. And this is the lawyer speaking. Make sure you go back to your articles of incorporation and by-laws and make sure that the mission statement that years, thinking that you’re furthering is consistent with what the law says. Your mission is. And that’s that’s how it’s displayed on the governing document and in figuring out whether we are effective. At meeting our mission. Now we’ve gotta identify cem numbers, right? I mean, it’s, not just gonna be a ten minute report from the program director, we’ve got to be looking at some numbers to figure out whether our we’re having the outcomes that we want, right and it’s such a such a difficult question and that’s, why it’s it’s all about keeping informed? Because, you know, the whole area of program evaluation and that cantor and and a lot of institutions like the stanford center on philanthropy in civil society and mckinsey and, you know, the non-profit cordially foundations, and they all have been raiding all sorts of things on program evaluation and how we need more metrics and, you know, but all of that is great, but this is really hard stuff for a lot of non-profits to do so, yes, trying to figure out what what measurements are are important for us to figure out. Are we advancing our mission effectively? And then are we advancing it efficiently is really hard stuff, i think tip typically non-profits will, you know, measure how much money we’ve raised, how many visitors we’ve had or people with served? How many? Members we have. What is our overhead? Ray shone with had discussions on that topic as well. And, you know, those are interesting figures and all important. And i don’t want to downplay that. But what about, you know, then you know, the number of client desert. For example, does that really tell us what impact that’s done? No, before the clients. And you know, the program staff may know that, but how does the board know that if we have if we served a thousand clients last month, did we did we serve them by giving them one meal? Did that change their lives? Did we do more than that? Did we provide services? What? What and impact are we trying tio aim for? And what results are we getting those air really difficult things to try to figure out. But i think the board needs to push the organization in that direction. Of trying to figure out are the programs that write programs? Are we effectively implementing it? And if you want to, you know, evaluate your executive and evaluate your programs. You’ve gotta have a good understanding of that. I feel your passion around this, jean. I really do. It comes it’s it’s palpable. Now, in managing these programs it’s not the board’s roll. Teo, be day to day. There’s clearly there’s a delegation that has to be happening. Yeah, absolutely. And and the board certainly has the ability to and should be delegating if they have staff in an executive director. Particularly, um, delegating those duties on those people. And especially, you know, holding the executive accountable and tasking executive and making sure the executive has resources to be able to do this, to try to figure out what measurements should we take? Teo, evaluate our programs. What what’s important? What do we have the capacity to do now? And what? What do we aspire to do? What are outside stakeholders wanting? What are the foundations saying we must have? And what are the donor’s expecting from us and how to our competitors provide that type of information back? I think we just need to push. Our executives were lucky enough to have them to figure some of those things out. And none of this has done overnight. Of course, tony. But you know, you you’ve gotto work at this, and sometimes you’re going to move. Forward, and sometimes you gotta move backwards, but you’ve got to keep pushing, pushing ahead. You just asked five or six really difficult but critical questions out it’s a good thing, that’s, the podcast cause. Now people can listen. Go, go back to the past one minute and listen to those five or six questions of jean, just just named, you know, difficulty, but, but but critical. And and yet the board’s oversight responsibility remains when that can’t be delegated. That’s right? So, you know, the board, khun delegate management, but the board can’t delegate its ultimate oversight of the organization and it’s, you know, it’s responsibility to plan the direction of the organization. So status quo, if you know if that’s all you’re satisfied with and you don’t aim to do anything else with that, you know, that may not be that may indicate that you don’t have the best board in place, and i was a little shocked teo learned, i think two days ago guidestar held a web cast, and there was a survey done of executive directors, and seventy five percent said they were unhappy with their boards and there’s a big disconnect there seventy five percent. Prove it. Okay, what else? What else, uh, is part of the boards oversight of program? Gene? Well, you know, one thing i kind of want to emphasize as well is that i don’t want to put all of this on the board of directors, and i realized that the vast majority of board members are volunteers and have busy lives otherwise and are doing an amazing job trying to contribute to their organizations. The disconnect with the exec director is usually because of communications and a lack of understanding of their respective roles. So i just want to put a little bit of a burden on the executive director as well, to make sure that they are emphasizing board development and helping the board understand its responsibilities, and sometimes bringing in experts, even though they may cost a little at the outset could be really valuable to an organisation to try to figure out what these roles are and again put in a little investment up front, and you can get payoff down the road even if you have some failures along the way. But it’s just that continuing to push forward to trying to understand what you’re doing who’s responsible for what? On figuring that stuff out the metrics themselves again. Our khun b, you know, exceedingly difficult if if i asked you give us metrics on changing laws when we were fighting for civil rights. Um, well, that might take years or decades to get any measurable results per se that might make a thunder happy. And you know what would have happened? In the early sixties, if, you know, civil rights organizations just had their program shut down because boards didn’t get the right metrics, that would have been ridiculous, right? So we have to understand the limitation of these measurements as well, but continue to try to figure out what important steps or benchmarks we’re shooting for and what’s important to do, even if we don’t get the metrics on and make sure our funders and donors and stakeholders understand those limitations. Well, just a minute or so before before a break gene, what? What kind of expert would help us with this? What would we search for? Well, there there are some consultants out there who specialize in program evaluation, and there there are definitely resource is out there. I have named a few organizations already, but let me give you a few more the foundation centre and they’re grantspace website has got some excellent resource is on program evaluation, the national council of non-profits also has some excellent resources. They’re they’re definitely resource is out there, and if you look for non-profit consultants who got program evaluation expertise, i think that can be a starting place. This is also a ripe area for collaboration amongst organizations that are serving similar populations, or have similar missions to try to meet together and talked about how they’re measuring, you know, their program, results and what would work for maybe, you know, across the sub sector that that they’re serving, all of those things are really important. I think again, executive leadership is really important to get the board in motion, but the board also has to hold the executive responsible for making sure that happens as well. Let’s, take a break. Gene and i, of course, will keep talking about the board’s responsibility around program and the executive director’s, to lynette singleton and at lays, right. Thank you for thank you very much. For those very, very kind thoughts on twitter. Hang in there. 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 godin. 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 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. Well, 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. More live listener love junction china ni hao, the netherlands gary indiana the home of christmas story, right? I’m pretty sure a christmas story that movie took place in gary, indiana live listen, i’d love to gary, indiana, and we’ve got a couple checking in from japan, hiroshima and kobe konnichi wa, farmington, michigan live listener love out to you. We have a question from twitter jean very loyal listener lynette singleton asks, do we know why there’s this lack of love between executive directors with and their boards, any ideas what’s contributing to that? I think i’m sorry, tony, that i think there are a number of factors that make be contributing to that, but i think the first is lack of understanding of the rules at each place and then it’s it’s a matter of communication between the two parties, there are great expectations that that board’s place on executives and the reliance on the executives tio tio make do with limited resources to produce amazing results, and that can sometimes be a very heavy burden on the executive without a lot of support from the board and exactly what the board’s role is in supporting the executive. Director’s also, i think they’re many areas where there’s a lack of agreement or understanding between those roles and, you know, fund-raising is actually one of the areas of x. Actually, some controversy, i think, you know, is the board involved is the board’s role dahna to raise funds for the organisation. From a legal perspective, i might answer no to some extent, from a more operational perspective, i would say, of course it is, so they’re they’re different considerations, and that was a charity navigator study, right? I’m not sure. I thought you said i’d start with, i’m sorry, the organization that did the webinar. Okay, okay, god start. Pardon me. Ok wave talking, talking about program meeting the mission, but there’s also legal requirements around program as well. Sure, and then the board should make sure that the executive is ensuring that the program is in compliance with whatever applicable laws might be there, whether it have to do with the facility of the organization or the employees and volunteers working for it, their basic risk management steps that they may want to take a swell, including ensuring that there’s proper insurance for whatever activities are are involved. Obviously, if you’re doing a summer day camp involving rope climbing and like that that’s going to be a little bit more significant in terms of risk management than if you’re just doing administrative work, lots of legal compliance, things, licensing, permitting and in all of those things, well, can board members be personally liable if laws are being broken and that’s why we have directors and officers insurance, isn’t it? Yeah, part partly why we have that it’s usually, you know, if there’s some sort of negligence involved when the boardmember acting not as a boardmember but as a volunteer for a program, then you’re probably looking at commercial general liability. Insurance to protect against, you know, somebody slip and fall and blaming the volunteer who was supposed to set it up, the board members, directors and officers insurance will really protect against decisions that the board made that ultimately, you know, in hindsight, we’re negligent or grossly negligent, and, you know, if they decided to hold a program in involved involving bungee jumping with six year olds and without adequate supervision, that would you know, that would be the type of negligence that that could get boardmember personally liable for something like that. But volunteermatch boardmember czar really, really, really rarely hell, personally liable absent some sort of malfeasance or self dealing benefit themselves. Okay, i’ve seen some six year olds on the subway that i wouldn’t mind having participating at that bungee jumping off a cliff. I could i could give them a little shove to get them started, but not not kids. I know nobody related to me, only only what’s people have seen some hype it that it go well, now they’re real. I’ve seen him in the subway, i just don’t know who they are. I can’t name them, but i could point them out easily. Probably on my way home, i’ll encounter a few. Um, what else should we be thinking about? You know, your get before i asked before we do that, you’re an anarchist. Also, you’re making us. I got two troublemakers on the show today. You are making us ask questions that are very difficult, but but critical? Yeah, you know, e think of lawyers and consultants more broadly. That’s what what we do, we can’t implement the changes that we talked about, what we want to raise the questions because we want boards and executives to really be thinking about these things and discussing them, and that’ll help break down the barriers and the misunderstandings and hopefully make more executive directors feel that their boards air great, make more executive, make more boards feel that their executive directors are doing a great job as well. As i said, i feel your passion around this. We have just about two minutes. You have another thought around this? Yeah, you know, just tio, make sure that again and i’ve talked a little bit about this is that there are limitations to what metrics can provide to an organization and some things just take a really long time to figure out research i mentioned lobbying on civil rights issues is one example, but research as well, you know, for going to engage in research of a new program and how it’s going to work or developing a new medical device or drug that’s going to be beneficial to developing nations and the people there who might not have the resources to be able to afford these things. We’ve got to be a little bit experimental, and i know you know, there’s been preaching to the choir about embracing failure and sharing it so we can learn in advance, but that really is something that all echo as well, that, you know, we’re going to get metrics and sometimes the metrics they’re going to show we failed, but if we never fail, that means we’ve never really pushed the envelope of making a more substantial change, and we’re just sort of, you know, relying on making little incremental changes, and we have to think about our organizations and say, are we detective organization that just wants to stay status quo? Do we want to make little tiny, incremental changes year by year, or do we? Actually want to look at solving or advancing our mission in a really big way and actually take some risk and find some programs out there that might be more risky and that might fail and help educate our funders and our donors and our supporters of that, you know, this is what we’re doing, and not everything is going to work, but this is the way to advance, you know, our cause, a lawyer with a heart, jing jing takagi really so grateful that you’re you’re contributing to the show? Jean, thank you so much. Thank you, johnny. And thanks for basing this serious subject to make a that’s. All right, wait. I have a little fun with it. You’re an anarchist is no question you’ll find jean at non-profit law blogged dot com that’s the block that he had it and he’s at g tack on twitter. Thank you again, jean, thanks so much next week, smart interviewing with cheryl nufer talking about behavioral interviewing and job descriptions. Heather carpenter is co author of the book the talent development platform. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Thanks for being with me today and i assure you the singing will return make no mistake pursuant full service fund-raising you’ll raise submarines more money i’m not talking about those one little person diving bells that xy ologists go down into study. I’m talking about ohio class ballistic missile submarines with one hundred fifty five person cruise plus twenty four ballistic missile tubes filled with money pursuing dot com i gotta send out live listen, love affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries were a couple of weeks ahead, but you know the live listener love goes out to everybody who is, in fact listening live whatever country, whatever state, whatever city live listener love to you affiliate affections to our many am and fm station listeners throughout the country and the podcast pleasantries too are over ten thousand podcast listeners in that time shift listening whenever you darn well please damn well, please, whenever you damn well pleased. I can say that our creative producers, claire meyerhoff, hard to believe we have one sometimes, but she’s there sam lever, which is our line producer. The show’s social media is by susan chavez susan chavez dot com on our music is by scott stein. 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Nonprofit Radio for August 21, 2015: Online And At Risk & Your Board’s Role In Executive Hiring

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Diane Oates: Online and at Risk?

Do you accept donations online? Have a “donate now” button? Are you using crowdfunding sites? You may need to register with lots of states, not just your own. Diane Oates is an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division of the Florida AG’s office and a former National Association of State Charities Officials (NASCO) board member. (Originally aired July 11, 2014.)

 

Gene Takagi: Your Board’s Role in Executive Hiring

Gene Takagi

Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), walks us through this important board responsibility: hiring the executive officer.  (Originally aired July 11, 2014.)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with dextrose gas trea, if i was forced to stomach the mere hint that you missed today’s show online and at risk, do you accept donations online? Do you have a donate now button? Are you using crowd funding sites? You may need to register with lots of states, not just your own. Diane oates is an assistant attorney general in the consumer protection division of the florida attorney general’s office and she’s, a former national association of state charities officials boardmember that’s nasco and that originally aired on july eleventh twenty fourteen also, your board’s role in executive hiring jean takagi, our monthly legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo walks us through this important board responsibility hyre ing the executive officer that’s also from the july eleventh show last year on tony’s take two, i’m not speaking to the new york times we’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here is online and at risk with diane oats with me she’s an assist, associate assistant attorney general in the ohio attorney generals charitable law section. She had been with the office for eight years. Managing a broad range of cases, including charitable gambling and charitable solicitations. She has handled multiple investigations and enforcement actions and is ohio’s point person for multi state enforcement actions. Diana it’s, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony, for having me on. Thank you very much for holding on. Sorry about that. No problem. I hope you enjoyed the music. Oh, i did, um, let’s. See, so these are laws that non-profits have to comply with. And a lot of these laws haven’t really kept up with the new solicitation methods that that charities have that’s correct. A lot of the laws are are older and do not address any sort of internet solicitations. Ah, there are such guy lines is the charleston principles which charities can follow in determining whether they need to register in a variety of states that they are soliciting online right? And we’ll get a chance to talk about the charleston principles. It’s, it’s, but there’s there’s not only online. But then there’s also the mobile giving world, of course, and that is growing by leaps and bounds. We actually just had a multi state they nasco it’s, the national state association charity officials put out some wise giving tips for charities on how to manage ah, and be wise on the internet when doing any sort of mobile giving or any sort of internet solicitation. So you definitely charity should be definitely protecting their brand and making sure they know who is soliciting for them on the internet. Um, and we’re going to get to that document in the wise giving tips the primary question, i think, is what what is a solicitation? And unfortunately that really varies from state to state, you’re correct. In a lot of states, the definitions might be a little bit different in ohio. Uh, it is when a person asked for anything of value, so it can’t be money can be time, and that donation would benefit a charitable organization or a charitable purpose and that’s that’s fairly consistent across the states. But but there are there are nuances when you start to drill down into well, okay, so sending us mail asking for a donation. That’s, that’s. A solicitation everywhere but as you start to go down, too, email oppcoll having a donate. Now, button on your site, driving people to the donate now button that’s, where it starts to get a little murky across the states. Definitely, and that’s, where the charleston principals come into play, and that’s, where the differences arise, because i believe only two states, tennessee and colorado, have adopted the charleston principles into law. Ah, many other states, including ohio, used them as guidelines for when to determine if a charity needs to register with our state if they have such a thing as it donate now, button or any sort of online solicitation. Okay, so we know that they’re adopted in only two states. Right now. Suppose you’re not in aa one of those two states. Can you just pick up the phone and talk to somebody and ask whether they use the charleston principles as guidelines? I would advise calling either the attorney general and your state or the secretary of state’s office, whichever office has the charity regulator located in it and see how they treat the charleston principles you could call up if you’re in ohio, call up our office, we would be able to tell you we used merely as guidelines to guide us as to whether charity needs to register. Obviously, if you are located in a certain state, if you’re located in ohio and you’re soliciting from there, you would have to register anyways, if you’re not let’s, say you’re located in west virginia, then we would go through the factors with you to see if you would need to register in ohio simply by having a donate. Now button on your website. A lot of times, though, i find clients make a call like that, but ultimately the final responsive to get is always we can’t tell you or we can’t advise you whether to register, okay, that and that might be the response in some states and ohio. I mean, we we would try to help you out as much as possible again, we can’t give legal advice, but i mean, i think we could steer you in the right direction isto whether you would need to register or not looking at whether you are, you know, mailing or emailing any solicitations to someone in ohio, if you are soliciting through an interactive website meaning you can collect donations straight through that website and whether you’re these are the two big factors whether you’re specifically targeting a person in our state or whether you’re receiving donations from a purse from people in our state on a repeated an ongoing basis or substantial basis, that so we would go through those factors and try to work with the charity to figure out whether you need to register here or not. We would definitely do that, ok, maybe ohio’s friendlier than a lot of states that that may very well be, but and i’m not saying it’s not worth the call it’s just that because it definitely is worth the call. As you said, either to the attorney, general’s office or the secretary of state, it is worth the call. This is that sometimes, you know, the ultimate answer should i register falls on usually it falls to the to the charity and, you know, and they’re sort of referred to their legal advisors, but it’s still worth the call because, um, you can you can get a fair amount of help. Definitely. Okay, um, we have just about a minute or so before break. Why don’t you explain what thes charleston principles are just so so everyone’s acquainted with them? Sure, they are guidelines which, uh, charity can follow, too. See if they should register in a state merely if they are soliciting on the internet. So what they need to look at if they are domiciled in a state, they will probably need to register there. And what i mean by domiciled is if they have their principal place a business in that state, if they’re not domiciled in the state, they need to look at there. Ah, non internet activities. And if those alone would cause them to register in that state, like if they’re mailing or calling people in that state, they would need to register if they are just asking for donations through their website. And if they’re either specifically targeting people in that state on their website for donations or they’re receiving contributions from that state on a repeated and ongoing basis for a substantial basis, then they would need to register in that state all about looking at the contacts in that state. All right, we’re going to take this break. When we come back, we’ll find out where we can see the charleston principles. They actually happen to be my subway read. I carry them with me all the time, and i read them every, you know, like, every six months or so, i just go back and read them on ben. Diane and i will we’ll keep talking about what’s a solicitation on, including talking about crowd funding sites to stay with us. Could you tell at the beginning of that interview that i was badly out of breath? That’s because i was late to the studio. This was the one hundred ninety ninth show. Andi was the first time i had been late. I had teo either called or texted sam. He had to play the music. I like one and a half times over by the time i got here i had run from the subway, which which is what held me up. So yes, if you if you thought i was out of breath, you were right. And then i i was looking forward to the two hundred show and hoping that i wouldn’t be late for that which which i was not let’s, do some live. Listen, love before we go to this break st louis, missouri clifton, new jersey i used to hang out at clifton a lot because my grandmother used to work at a big pharmaceutical company in clifton son of a gun. Which one was that? I don’t think it was mark. Well, there was a big pharmaceutical company i don’t think is very big and clifton anymore, but she used to work there and i would go meet her after and then my parents were dropped me off. We’d meet her there, and then she would take me to her house. That was in clifton, and we have another us, your masked we see you, we just don’t know where you are. So could be the nsa, fbi, cia, some other acronym. We’re on to you, and we are we are investigating. Also, let’s go to aa japan, konnichi wa, too, in chino, maya and mexico city, mexico, is with us. Also. Hola, que tal that’s really about the best i can recall from from high school, but that’s not so bad. I mean, i think, it’s, how you doing? Right. Holacracy tall tower, mexico city listeners and there’s more to come. Let’s, go to this break, and then we’ll go right back into this interview with diane oats. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent got lots of live listener love, let’s start domestic because we’ve got a lot of foreign listeners, of course, but let’s start domestic bethpage, new york. Many in bethpage don’t know who’s in bethpage do you know each other in bethpage live? Listen, her love to you there. Beverly, massachusetts, new bern, north carolina. I just spent some very nice time in north carolina. Thank you. New bern. Columbus, ohio. New york, new york. Live listener loved each of our live listeners. And, of course, there are more podcast pleasantries, of course, to those listening on the time shift where the iran a treadmill car, subway airplane, wherever you are, pleasantries to you. Nine thousand plus ofyou. Okay. Diana it’s. Um, let’s. See, where can we? What? We find these charleston principles to go and read them ourselves? If we would like to do so, i believe they’re located on the nasco net website. You can go to nasco net dot or ge. Okay. And that’s an a s c o net dot org’s the national association of state charities officials of which you are a boardmember. Yeah. And that’s, the organization that created the wise giving tips documents. So while we’re talking about finding documents, what what’s the full name of that document? Sure, it’s the internet and social media solicitations wise giving tips and the tips are for three separate audiences for charities, donors and fund-raising platforms, and it gives recommendations and tips on how to give and fund-raising wisely online. All right, the internet and social media solicitations wise giving tips and that’s also on the nasco website, right? Correct. Okay, crowd funding the crowd funding sites. Those raised a lot of questions. I get this a lot when i’m doing speaking, what if we are using crowd rise or deposited gift? What do who’s supposed to register them? Right? If you’re a charity again, i would direct the charity to the charleston principles. Usually on those websites, you’re not targeting a specific state unless maybe an event is taking place in a certain state or, you know, your charity is located in that state, so and i think it’s unclear also, whether the fund-raising platforms themselves need to register with states that’s still kind of an open question, okay? And also get questions related. When charity’s air working with community foundations and and the foundation is sort of the past through for the for the donations, the question then is who should be fun? Who should be registering and again looking at the charleston principles if it’s just a passer, entity that’s just doing some administrative work with processing donations, they might not need to register, so i would again and advise those community foundations toe look at the principles right for the community foundations and then the charity’s the same who exactly? Okay, but yeah, as we said, unfortunately, you don’t know for sure, except for two states, whether the state is is adhering to the principles. How come, how come, why is it that more states haven’t adopted them either? Officially, i guess through their legislatures or may be not as an act of the legislature, but just officially through the office that manages the charity registration process in each state, and that is a good question. I am not. I’m not really sure of the answer there, and yeah, i should probably talk to tennessee in colorado and see how they got that pushed through. I’m not sure why more states haven’t actually officially adopted them, okay, dahna because they are really cool, and they’re called charleston principles because i believe it was in meeting of nasco that was held in charleston, south carolina, where they were. These were adopted. I think they were. The discussion started there, yes, in charleston, south carolina, that’s. Why they’re called goodbye, not okay, but maybe not adopted there. Alright, yeah, attorney holding my feet to the fire e used to be an attorney, but so now that now i run roughshod over things. So thank you for being explicit. Okay, what about? We know there’s one state where you don’t have to register. Tell us about that. I believe that. Arizona? Yes. Yes, arizona. I believe they recently did away with their registration statue. I’m not too sure about that, but that is not a growing trend that icy. Definitely. I see that kind of an outlier. Okay, okay. So one point does not one data point does not make a trend. Things that i can’t even make a line from one point. Okay, but yes, arizona has explicitly said charities that are on ly soliciting in our state. I don’t need to register and yeah, they had a statutory system around registration and that was repealed or, you know, largely repealed. Yes. Um, now you made a point earlier that we wanted i want, like, just liketo amplify your home state where your incorporated that we should certainly be registered there. Yes, than any place where you have any principal place of business. Well, okay. So differentiating the inc you’re you’re only incorporated in one state, right? Because you’re not you’re not not-for-profits corporation, and that can only be one state. But you could have places of business. In lots of states, you can have the principal place of this that’s, probably in one state, but then you can have multiple locations everywhere and if you’re, you know, conducting solicitations from those locations and yes, definitely should be registering in the states. Now you’re you’re a, uh an important player in this because you’re a nasco boardmember but it’s so, um, divers, because we’re fifty difference sets of statutes and, um, timetables and fees and things do you do you get frustrated by this process? It it can get frustrating. And we definitely hear from our constituent charities that it is frustrating and that’s why we do have twelve states that are working on a single poor, cracked the website where charities khun go and register and they wouldn’t have to duplicate the process over and over again. Okay, this is the single portal initiative. Exactly. What more can you tell us about what state that is? Or i don’t mean state. You know what? What state it’s in, etcetera. What can you tell us? Uh, well, the single portal project is being headed by twelve pilot states. They include california, illinois, alaska, colorado, connecticut, hawaii, massachusetts, michigan. Mississippi, missouri, new hampshire and tennessee and basically it’s, a project that has three components one obviously is to create a unified elektronik registration system that will allow non-profit organizations and then they’re professional fundraisers to goto one site and fulfill their registration requirements for all states eventually at that site. Um, another component is also to be a public website where anyone can get this information that’s filed, academics could get it tio create analysis of emerging issues and trends. The public can look up this information to make more informed choices about their charitable giving and also non-profits can look up this information to compare thie effectiveness and cost of their professional fundraisers that they hyre and third, this would be a great tool for regulators. They could direct their limited resources away from registration and toward their core purpose of preventing fraud and misuse of charitable funds. Is this ah, envision to be a free site for charities? Um, that is a good question. I not sure about that. I know that this is kind of a three year time period where they’re going to try to get this off the ground rather soon and have it. Build up in phases over the next three years. I am not sure about the fees. I do not know that. Ok, ok. Um, timetable do what stage is it at now? It is at the beginning stages. Thie pilot states created a nonprofit organization in delaware. Teo, help develop and operate the website. And they just decided that the urban institute they chose them to design and build the single portal website. So it’s in the process of being built. And they are also establishing an advisory committee to help with the design and operation of the system. Okay, is it is it funded yet? Or were steven still too early for that it’s in the process of funding and the the non-profit, the multistate registration of filing portal the non-profit that was formed is reaching out to the non-profit community. Now, with grant proposals to help build up funds for this project. Okay, so that’s something to look forward to. Handup so is there not yet a timetable? Like when this should be live? Or maybe not all twelve states, but at least some initial minimum viable version? Um, i think i mean, the goal is to roll. Out the stages in the next three years. So hopefully in the next, maybe two years, the registration sites would be up and running. But please don’t call me that, okay? Okay, we won’t. Nobody listens to this show anyway, diane so you’re fine. Okay, well, we know that arizona standing alone. Not a trend, but are there any other trends that you do see coming up? The big trend icy is internet fund-raising on and that’s. Why nasco did put out this wise internet giving tips the intern fund-raising on the internet is growing. I believe in two thousand three it was about six point four percent of all charitable giving, but still it’s growing lead some bounds year by year. So we were really urge charities. Teo be aware of their presence on the internet and be aware of who’s raising money for them on the internet. A lot of thes fund-raising websites, they download the database of charities from guide star. And then anyone can just go on and start fund-raising for a charity, which is great. But you also want to make sure that no impostors are going out there and claiming that their associate it with your charity and trying to gain access to your donations, so check out the wise giving tips on also the charleston principles those will help you, andi will put, ah, put links to those on the takeaways from the show, which go up on the facebook pages afternoon diane, please leave us with the nasco conference that the charities are welcome to come, too. Yes, definitely. The two thousand fourteen nasco conference is on monday, october six, at the hyatt regency washington on capitol hill in washington, d c the theme this year is the evolving role of charitable regulation in the twenty first century. There are a lot of great panel scheduled i’ll just mention a couple first will be disaster relief and opportunities for collaboration between regulators and the not for profit sector. Um, our luncheon topic is our charities really charitable with our keynote speakers? Thomas kelly, who is a professor at u n c school of law, and john columbo, who’s, professor and interim dean at the university of illinois at chicago school of law and then one panel, i think, is going to be extremely interesting about ratings and evaluating charities. We have three. Panelists are taylor, who is president and ceo of the better business bureau. Wise getting alliance. Daniel bora chop, who is president of charity watch, and ken berger, who is the ceo of charity navigator. And then we also have panels on a messa you bit executive compensation are wise giving tips and then also a single portal update, so it should be a great conference, and you can get more information about the conference at nasco. Net dot org’s, thank you very much. Art taylor and ken berger have been guests on the show when we did the, uh, the altum the myth, the what was it, thea, the overhead myth letter that’s, right? We have the three signers of the overhead myth letter on and those they were two of them. All right, diane, thank you very much. Thank you, my pleasure, diana it’s, associate assistant attorney general in the ohio attorney general’s charitable law section. And i have an update tio what? Diane, i’m just talking about if you’re interested in this year’s nasco conference, that is october fifth of this year and ah, nasco net dot or ge is the place to get more information. I called my mother on the brake and asked her the company that my grandmother used to work for in clifton i was mistaking it was not a pharmaceutical company, but was i t and t international telephone and telegraph? Do they even exist anymore? It and t i don’t i don’t know if they do, but that was where there was a big plant that my grandmother worked at when i was growing up. Tony, take two and your boards role in executive hiring are coming up first. Pursuant, they do full service fund-raising they have web based tools for small and midsize non-profits do you need more prospects? I hear that a lot that that’s a problem. You need more prospects at higher levels and related to that. How do you know who’s capable of upgrade? This is what pursuance prospector platform does. It finds your upgrade ready donors. So you know who to pursue for larger. E-giving trent riker is the ceo at pursuing he has a background in non-profits for about twelve years, he leads this company. They are data driven, technology driven, and prospector platform is one of pursuing smart online tools. You’ll raise more money pursuant. Dot com, check them out new york times i’m not speaking to the new york times, and i implore them to stop stealing my guests. It happened latest incident. Latest incident was just last week. Remember, will mccaskill, the professor from oxford, oppcoll what happened? Okay, i do love scott stein, but not his time. Are we okay? Okay. I don’t mind. Scott stein a little. Well, who? Um it was a phantom sam throwing his arms up. He doesn’t know what happened. All right. Anyway, we’ll mccaskill so he’s on the show last friday. Of course, talking about his show doing good, his book doing good, better. And then on saturday, he’s in the new york times profiling his book doing good, better you believe that? And there was another time it was about two or three years ago and i’m sick of it. It’s happening too often do two points like that make a trend? Absolutely. The video where i explain this in more detail and you’ll see my ire. Is that tony martignetti dot com knock it off new york times do you know about fund-raising fundamentals? That is my monthly ten minute podcast devoted to fund-raising only for small and midsize shops, it’s fund-raising only not on ly for small and midsize shops, large shops could listen to, but i’m not thinking about them when i’m producing the show it’s a burst of fund-raising info i would say it’s only once. A month, i do it for the chronicle of philanthropy. So that’s published on their site and like non-profit radio, i picked the brains of experts and you listen on your own schedule. That one is not live. That is strictly a podcast. Recent ones preparing for your next recession with paul rosenberg from the bridge band group and boosting your plan e-giving with our own creative producer claire meyerhoff there’s info on fund-raising fundamentals at tony martignetti dot com and at the chronicle of philanthropy. Although gotomeeting durney dot com because i need the traffic and chronicle of philanthropy is doing just fine. That is tony’s take two for friday twenty first of august thirty third show of the year. Here is r wonderful. Ah, informative. Smart contributor on the law, jean takagi on your boards role in executive hiring jean takagi he’s with us. You know him? He’s, the managing editor, attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the very popular non-profit law block dot com on twitter he’s at g tak g ta ke jin takagi welcome back. Hi, tony in congratulations on one ninety nine. I’m looking forward to two hundred next week. Cool. Yes. I’m glad you’re gonna be calling in for with us. Thank you very much. Thank you, it’s. Very exciting. Really? One hundred ninety nine shows ago. It’s one hundred ninety nine weeks it’s it’s. Remarkable. Um, we’re talking this week about the board’s role in hiring the executive and i’ve i understand that there are a lot of executives in transition. I think so, tony and it looks like some surveys have confirmed that it’s certainly been syrians with some of my clients and even on boards i’ve sat on over the last couple years. And there’s, a great group called compass point out in san francisco there nationally known as one of the most respected non-profit support centers and together with blue avocado, a non-profit online publication, they have a national survey on leadership succession in transition going on just right now. The last time they published the results with in two thousand eleven, and they found that sixty seven percent of current executive anticipated leaving within five years and ten percent. We’re currently actively looking to leave right then, and in two thousand eleven, the economic times weren’t so were so great. So sixty seven percent anticipating leaving within five years that’s a pretty staggering number. So now we’re already three years into that survey into that five year projection. Yeah, and sixty seven percent of two thirds. So if we had held this show off until two thousand sixteen, then it would have been moved. But there’s a new one coming out, you said, yeah, well, they’re they’re just starting the survey online now so you can participate on that. I don’t know the website, but if you, you know google non-profit transition survey executive transition survey, thank you, you’ll get that okay, and its compass point it’s a compass point and blew up a goddamn kottler who you’ve. You’ve mentioned blue vaccaro before i know. All right, so, yeah, two thirds of of ceos were expecting to be in transition within five years and where we’re only three years into it now. So the presumably these people are still looking. What? But boards don’t really spend enough time preparing for this kind of succession, do they? Well, you know, in many cases they don’t, and sometimes, you know, they might stay, they don’t get the chance because their executive director comes up to them and give us in two weeks notice, and now, you know, the board may be used to meeting every month or every other month or even every third month, and now all of a sudden they’ve gotta ramp up their efforts and find an executive to come in in two weeks. That’s going to be really tough to do on dh, you know, again, if we say at any given time, two thirds of the non-profit executives are looking to leave their job, you know, it’s very likely that within your board term, you know, you may have an executive transition to manage, and sometimes with very little notice. So that’s that’s? Why? I think succession planning is just really a core duty of non-profit board. Well, how do we let them get away with this two week notice? I mean, the ones i typically see are you know, the person will stay on until a successor is found, you that’s, not your experience. Well, you know, you’re really lucky if you if you do get that situation, i think most non-profit executives are hired on at will basis. Meaning that there’s, not a contract to stay there for a given number of years. Either party can conception, rate or terminate the employment relationship at any time. And as the average, you know, employee may give two weeks notice to go on to another job there. Many executives who feel the same way that they, you know, they may feel like they own allegiance to an organization. But another opportunity comes up and it’s not going to be held for them forever. And they may want to move on. Um, and they may feel like what they gave the board really advanced notice that they might be looking for something that they might get terminated. So they may keep that information from the board until the last two weeks. Well, because all right, so that i am way in the dark because i would. I just presumed that executive directors, ceos even if small and midsize shops were not at will. But they were but that they were contract. I mean, when i was a lonely back in my days of wage slavery, director of planned e-giving i was in at will employees, which means you can end it. Like you said, you could end at any time and so can they like, if they don’t like the color of your tie one day they can fire you, you’re at will. But but that that’s typical for for ceos and and executive directors. Yeah, i think for smaller non-profits it’s very, very common. Oh, i just always assumed that these were contract positions with termination clause is and no. Okay, but, i mean, you know, it’s, your practice, i’m not i’m not disagreeing with you, i’m just saying i’m okay, i’m learning something s so that’s that’s incredibly risky. So it is. It just put you in that position of saying, well, i need to replace somebody immediately and i don’t you know, as a board we don’t meet very often can we even convene within the two weeks to find the process going? It’s going to be so much better if he had a plan of what happened in case you know, our executive every doesn’t give two weeks notice, and even if the executive says, you know, in your scenario, maybe a longer notice, maybe, you know, in six months, if they do have a contract at the end of my contract, i don’t plan to renew, you know, i think we should go through the process of looking for for a successor and having a plan or thinking about that plan that is just coming up with something on the fly is going to probably result in a much better choice for selection of a leader in the future and that’s going to be critical and how well the organisation operates and how the beneficiaries of your organization are going to do are they going to get the benefits of a strong organization or are thinking is suffer because the organization can’t do it? You can’t advance mission as well. It should. Yeah, i mean, you’re you’re calling it on the fly. I would say two weeks notice for an executive director. Departing is is a crisis even four weeks notice? Yeah, in many cases you’re you’re absolutely right. Okay, i’m right about something. Thank you. You’ve got something right today. All right. So what do we what do we do, teo, to plan for that? Just well, you know, i think the first thing the board has to do is start toe think about the contingencies. So what do we do and then actually want one thought that comes to mind that, uh, that you raised tony is should we get our executive director on an employment contract? If they are and that will employee do we want to lock it in? And they’re sort of pros and cons with that? If you’ve got, like, not the best executive director in the world, terminating somebody on a contract becomes much, much more difficult than if they were at will employees. So, you know, you kind of have to weigh the pros and cons, but, you know, revisiting your current executives director and the employment relationship is maybe step one. Oh, and suddenly he was thinking about, well, do you have a really strong job description that really reflects with the board wants of the executive director and on the basis on which the board is reviewing the executives performance on dh? Maybe the sort of initial question to ask in that area? Is do you actually review the executive director and that the board you absolutely should? You and i have talked about that the board’s is not part of their fiduciary duty to evaluate the performance of the the ceo? Yeah, i think so. I think it’s a core part of meeting their fiduciary duties that really, you know, as a board, if you meet once a month or once every couple of months or whatever what’s more important, you know, then really selecting the individual who’s going to lead the organization in advancing its mission and its values and implementing your plans and policies and making sure the organization complies with the law. Taking your leader is probably the most important task that the board has, because the board is delegating management to the to that leader. Yeah, absolutely. And i think it’s often forgot naralo overlooked that individual board members inherently have no power and no authority to do anything think so, it’s only as a group. When they meet collectively, can they take aboard action? So for individuals to exercise, you know, powers on behalf of the organization that has to be delegated to them and typically the person responsible for everything is that ceo or the executive director. We’re gonna go out for a break, gene. And when we come back, you now keep talking about the process. The what goes into this process, including the job offer. So everybody 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 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, i guess, directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz gotta send live listener love, let’s. Start in japan with tokyo kiss are a zoo and nagoya. Konnichiwa, seoul, south korea, seoul. Some someone south korea, always checking in love that on your haserot. Moscow, russia, mexico city, mexico, ireland. We can’t see your city ireland’s being masked for some reason, but we know you’re there. Welcome, welcome, ireland, and also taipei, taiwan. Ni hao, nobody from china, that’s, funny, nobody from china today, coming back to the u s, we got cummings, georgia, in ashburn, virginia. Live listener love to you in georgia and virginia. Okay, gene. So now we’ve let’s say, we’ve learned that our exec is departing and let’s not make it a crisis situation, though let’s say this person is generous enough to give six months notice. So, you know, let’s, not make it a crisis. Where what’s our what’s, our what’s, our first step as the board. Terrific. And i’ll just add, even if you don’t, if you know your executive is not leaving any time soon and i think you should go ahead and start this process anyway. Oh, yeah, clearly we should be. We should have a succession plan in place. Yes, we’ve talked right? Okay, yeah. So i think the first thing to do is get a committee together so it might include boardmember some outside experts outside with the board. If you don’t have that internal expertise and just getting different perspectives out there, some of your other stakeholders might be really important in what, you know what you want to look for in an executive in the future. So get that committee together first, get the buy-in of the current executive director. So unless it’s going to be, you know, a succession plan for a termination? Yeah, we’re really unhappy with executive director, right? Let’s not get into that. Yeah, let’s get their buy-in and have them help in the process. Especially with your scenario where they’re giving a six months notice and everything is amicable. Let’s, you know, see? Shoot, who knows better about the organization than the executive director that’s in place right now. So i’m getting there buy-in and help contribution. I think it is pivotal. Does this committee have to be comprised of hr experts? Why? I think having a least one or two hr experts is going to be really helpful. But i i think it’s more than that. It’s, you need program people who understand what the executive you know roll is no respect to advancing the program. You need the fund-raising people to know well, what is the going to do with respect to fund-raising perhaps the seeds, the lead fundraiser and some small organizations as well. So we need thio gather a bunch of different people with different perspectives and expertise to figure this out. And i think that’s a very good point to include a t least a programme expert. Now, could this committee include employees, or does it have to be sure you can absolutely on dh? You know, you might even have have have different subcommittees in there. So eventually this is going to go up to the board. But as the committee’s doing the legwork for determining what? You need an executive director and putting together a job description, and and, you know, perhaps, but the performance evaluation is going to be based on for the future executive director all those things can get, you know, we’d be aided by the contribution from several areas. Okay, okay, what are your thoughts on hiring a recruiter vs vs? Not well, i you know, i think it depends upon what the organization shins resource is our and the organization should understand the marketplace it’s in a swell hiring two great executive director is the competitive thing. So, you know, if you’ve got a lot of resources and you’re able to you want to allocate an appropriate amount of resource is tio what i think again is making one of your most important decisions of the board? I don’t think you want to do this on the cheap at all. I’m just the same way i didn’t want you to do it on the fly or or or in a rushed matter-ness think you want to invest in this, and if you don’t have great expertise inside about on things about, like, doing job interviews and doing background checks on the sex thing, you know how to differentiate between one candidate and another when they all look good on paper and when they’re maybe professional interviewees, but they’re not there, maybe not great leaders. How do you figure all those things that if you don’t know, that dahna an executive search firm could be a great help, and it can just open up the marketplace of potential candidates as well, especially if they, you know, decide to do a regional or even a national search. It really can ramp up who who you’re going to see in front of you and the quality of the candidates that the selection comedian the board eventually will have to choose from. Okay, does the committee now come up with a couple of candidates to bring to the board, or is it better for the committee to choose one and bring that person to the board? How does this work? You know, i think the committee should be tasked with bringing several candidates up on sometimes it may be a multi tiered process so they might go through two rounds of screening, for example, and and at least let the board see who’s made the first cut. And then and then, you know, present to the board, the final, perhaps two or three candidates. If, if you’ve got, you know, the ones that are very close and in quality in terms of what the board want in an executive director, i think that’s pivotal. I wanted to add one. Nothing, though. I’ve seen this done before, tony and i don’t really like it and that’s when. If a search committee or research consultant comes up and says, you know, to the board, tell me what you want in the good executive director everybody, you know, spend five minutes, write it down and send it to me or take it home and email it to me oh, and tell me what you want and then the search consultant collates the the the answers and then that’s, you know, the decision about that’s what’s going to be the qualities you’re going to look for. I think this needs a lot of discussion and deliberation and the value of that, you know, that that thought process and that really difficult thinking and getting all those generative questions out there is going to produce a much better product in terms of what you’re looking for and who you can get and how you’re going to do it. Yeah, you you send this tio use email and, you know, it’s going to get the typical attention that an e mail gets, like a minute or something. You know, it’s it’s going to get short shrift. And your point is that this is critical. It’s it’s, the leader of your organization, you want do you want the contributions of the committee to be done in, like a minute off the top of their head just so they can get the email out of their inbox? Yeah, definitely. We could talk about board meetings and another show, but put this at the front of the meeting and spend, you know, seventy five percent of your time talking about this. This is really, really important, okay, you have some thoughts about compensation, and we just have a couple minutes left. So let’s let’s say we’ve the board has well, i can’t jump there yet. Who should make the final call among these candidates? Is it the board? Yeah, i think it should be the board that makes the final approval, but they they’re going to put a lot of weight based on what? The executive of the search committee, you know, tell them who they’re you know, the recommendation is okay, and i think that toe add one more thing to it is make sure the organization looks good to clean up your paperwork and your programming and even your facilities. Just make sure you’re going to be attractive to the candidate as well. Because if you want to attract the best, you better be looking your best as well. Okay, okay. And the with respect to compensation now, we’ve talked about this before. What? What’s excessive. And there should be calms and things like that, right? So it’s really important to make sure that the board or unauthorized board committee one that composed just board members, approved the compensation before it’s offered to the candidate. Even if you don’t know that they’re going accepted or not, once he offers out there that compensation package, total compensation should have been approved by the board. And you want to do it with using the rebuttable presumption of reasonable procedures unless you know its far below market value. Okay, if you get payed accessibly or if you pay somebody excessively, that could be penalty taxes for everybody. Including the board. Should be careful of that. We have talked about that rebuttable presumption before. Yeah. All right, then. We have to leave that there. I look forward to talking to you next week on the two hundredth great. Congratulations again. And i look forward to it as well. Thank you, gene. Gene takagi, managing attorney of neo. The non-profit and exempt organizations law group, his blog’s non-profit law block dot com and on twitter he is at g tak. Some updates, of course, too live listener love because you were listening to live listener love from july eleventh, twenty fourteen. So that’s a that’s. A little bit at a date, more people have joined us, including wilmington, north carolina, media, pennsylvania. Pottstown, pennsylvania, and spring lake, new jersey. I spent a lot of time very close to spring lake in belmar because my other grandmother, not the grandmother who worked at i t that was my mom’s mom. But my dad’s mom and dad had a home in belmar and i used to go there weeks on end. My parents were thrilled to get rid of me when i was four, five, six, seven, eight years old. Oh, my gosh. Lots of weekends in belmar. And i know that spring lake is a very, very pretty town. Also, uh, what’s the big hotel there where i’ve been for dinner, the breakers. Is that the breakers? That beautiful hotel? Ah, not literally on the water, but pretty darn close right across that little little just across ocean have love spring lake and interesting springlake media and pottstown you’re listening from itunes cool live listen love to each of you also joining us sao paulo, brazil, beijing, china ni hao and belong j portugal live listeners love to each of you now you might have noticed that on that july eleven twenty fourteen show, there was no podcast pleasantries and no affiliate affections. You see how this show is growing and expanding and innovating constantly on one hundred ninety ninth show. The next week was going to be the two hundredth. We don’t have podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections. Now we do so pleasantries out to all our ten thousand plus podcast listeners wherever, whatever you’re doing, affiliate affections love you too all our affiliate am and fm stations i want to waken affiliate affections. I’m just realizing it’s a f f f f f after two dafs squared affiliate affections! I don’t know, maybe that’s too that’s hokey. Besides, i like thea. I like the the ah what is it when all the words start with the same whatever that that i love it’s an alliteration. Thank you saying so. I liked the alliteration, so we’re sticking with affiliate affections. No. After two next week, i told you it was coming. Incentive pay for your fundraisers to fund-raising administrators from the university of pittsburgh. Very senior people share their innovative pay plan for their frontline fundraisers. If you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go? I i believe that i had said that i was going to stop singing weeks ago, but i must have been misinformed. It’s my show and do whatever i want. And if you don’t want to singing host, get your own show, i beseech you, go ahead pursuant full service fund-raising you’ll raise train car loads more money, and i’m not talking about those two person little flat beds that the people pump up and down like a seesaw to move along the tracks like, you know, oh brother, where art thou? I’m talking cattle cars, container cars, tank cars filled with money pursuant dot com. We’re going to go out with a live version of cheap red wine today. This is the live version from the two hundredth show, which was the week after the show that we just turned the two segments from scott stein came in the studio, brought his elektronik eighty eight keyboard, and he played cheap red wine, our theme music. And since it’s snuck in earlier today, phantom lee, we’re going to go out with it. Here’s. The live version from the two hundred show our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer show social media’s by susan chavez. Susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scots. Dine with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great wait can agree on nothing. Wait till our ups from my down wait disappointed in each other. Now tell me, baby, and this love that we found. You know, you used to find me charming, but i can figure out how. And you said, you thought those handsome. But it doesn’t matter now. So came falling for my punch. On just long in time, we’ll allow, because i’m you got her empty promises. A bottle of cheap red wine. 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. It 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. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just 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 sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five.

Nonprofit Radio: Important Legal Stuff

Gene Takagi has been Nonprofit Radio’s legal contributor for four years. Here’s his best advice.