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Nonprofit Radio for January 6, 2017: 2017 Legal Tips & This Year’s Board Retreat

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Erin Bradrick: 2017 Legal Tips

The New Year means a close look in the corners. We’ve got the legal issues you need to fine tune. Erin Bradrick is senior counsel at the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO).

 

 


Greg Cohen
: This Year’s Board Retreat

Done right, your retreat will energize and focus your board and get them working as a team. Greg Cohen knows how. He’s senior associate at Cause Effective.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent happy new year for sure, the new year twenty seventeen my voice just crack together come a fourteen year old it’s incessant with the voice i got to get lessons or surgery or something. Happy new year, that’s much more important, i hope twenty seventeen is going to be very successful for you. I hope you’re going to be doing some introspection and inspection and buy two guests today. You’re goingto talk about some topics for you to be the introspective about. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with ryan ola thigh assis if i got a whiff of you missing today’s show twenty seventeen legal tips are first introspection topic the new year means a close look in the corners we’ve got the legal issues you need to find tune aaron bradrick is senior counsel at the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo and this year’s board retreat done right, your retreat will energize and focus your board and get them working as a team. Greg cohen nose out he’s a senior associate at cause effective tony steak too. Charity registration. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com. I’m very pleased a real pleasure to welcome aaron bradrick when she calls in, we had her, but she’s gone, it wasn’t her. Okay, aaron bradrick is not here yet, but she ought to be calling in very shortly at ten a m pacific time, which is one o’clock eastern. So let’s see, well, some of the things that she and i are going to talk about, of course she’ll have the detail. Um, we’re going to start with this topic of charity registration, which i’m planning to fill in a little more on in tony’s take two, but you know, the general idea that you need to be properly registered in each state where you solicit our first introspection is the introspection show our first introspection topic for twenty seventeen. Yes, you need to be probably registered wherever you’re soliciting donations, you need to be registered with the state authorities, and we’re also going to talk about a board calendar. I’m not. Sure, i don’t know, maybe non-profits doing this routinely, i mean, i go to board meetings, but i don’t know whether they are planning the full year. Maybe they are. I’m not saying i’m not saying it’s not happening. Maybe greg cohen has all inside, and tonight we might talk about that later on, but it ought to be there ought to be a yearlong calendar of topics for your meetings, however often their car so that you got some strategy around it and some common sense. Um, let’s, see what we’re going to? Uh, yeah, all right, we’ll take a break and we’ll see if we can get i mean, i didn’t mind i don’t mind summarizing, frankly, but it’s bothering sam sam’s bothered sam doesn’t like it. I don’t know father was like, all right, it’s, my shot duvette piela i want, but i’ll take the advice. We’ll take a break, we’ll see if we can get aaron burr. Aaron bradrick on the phone. If not, well, you’re going to stay with us anyway. Nobody’s going anywhere, we’ll see what happens. It’ll be an adventure for everybody. 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. Hello, i’m j c. I’m joan, and welcome to twenty first century entrepreneur. We bring education in sight, knowledge, awareness, trouble, craziness and fun for you, the entrepreneur who’s looking to build your business and your community. Listen every friday from noon toe one eastern on top radio dot n y c, and you can tweet us at twenty first c e radio or talk alternative. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, and we did get aaron. It appears that i may have made a mistake. There’s an allegation that i made a mistake. I’m pulling a trump. This is me and i’m pulling a donald trump. This is alleged hacking. This is a land that there’s a mistake. I’m going to go back and check the record. I actually, you know, on dh i’ll apologize in advance, erin, because there’s a good chance. I did make a mistake. I’m usually pretty good, but maybe i did let’s see let’s give her air informal introduction she’s a senior counsel at the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco where she is calling from she’s, a regular contributor to the very popular non-profit law block dot com and the practices devoted solely to non-profit and exempt organizations she’s at aaron bradrick and the firm is at neo-sage group dot com welcome, aaron the same story and sorry for that computer and i was planning to call in at ten. Thirty. So, uh, sorry about that, but i’m glad to be here. That’s okay, i may be the one who’s. Supposed to say sorry? I thought we ok, obviously i thought we said i i thought i said ten pacific, but i made you know, you there’s a good chance for because i’m booking a lot of guys glad. Glad we’re on now. Yes, and thank you for doing it. Spur of the moment. Okay, so i gave a little introduction into just a couple of the first two topics that you and i we’re going to talk about the filing requirements for charity registration and the board calendar, but i just gave glossy overviews so let’s talk about this charity registration filing thing. You think this is something good to look at in the beginning of the year? Yeah, i mean, i think the basic idea is that the new year it’s, good climb for organizations, kind of take a look in the mirror and see what they have coming up for the next year, make sure they’re organized, ready to go with a fresh start. And i think one of the things that we’re seeing lately is particularly at the state level regulatory agencies really cracking down due to the lack of compliance with registration and filing requirements. And it could be something that’s easy for an organisation to overlook. We recommend kind of the beginning of the year taking a look at what deadlines you have coming up for various filing requirements, which often turned on when your fiscal year and for the organization. I’m not just the annual returns that are filed with the irs and potentially with state tax authority, but also with potentially a charitable oversight and sees which is the attorney general and any ongoing filing requirements with the secretary of state or department of state and creating a calendar for you the year of when the silent or do and making sure you have a point person who’s designated to make sure the organization doesn’t miss the deadline. Yeah, that could be that could be a tough one for smaller organizations where the organization has a lot of filings to keep up with it’s it’s it can be difficult for someone to devote, like a quarter or a half of their time to these compliance issues. Yeah, absolutely. And particularly for all. Fall into your organizations where you don’t have a staff member, you can designate the responsibility of making sure these were met on the problem that we also see with a lot of these organizations is particularly when they’re all volunteer run when there’s a change in the officer structure there’s a change in the board, they don’t update these regulatory agencies with her new address, so even if they do miss a filing deadline, mostly agencies will send out reminders or have notices that the deadline has passed and that you have not seen an opportunity to make this filing before their adverse consequences from missing the deadline. But if you haven’t updated with a new address, sometimes organizations aren’t even receiving notices at all, not even aware that they’re missing with that fine, but we’re seeing greater consequences for missing these types of filing requirements, so it is really important for organizations to make sure they have some sort of system in place to make sure things don’t fall through the cracks. There’s something related to that that happened a few years ago? Now i know you’re talking about going beyond what’s required by irs, the form nine ninety whichever variation on organization may do based on their size, but but it was like three years ago or so ah, a couple of hundred thousand non-profits lost their tax exempt status for failure to file their version of the nine, ninety. Yeah, so the irs regulations we’re past that said that if an organization fails to file on exempt entity return for three consecutive years, then immediately upon the third missed filing, they’re exempt. Status will be automatically revoked. There’s no discretionary basis for preventing that automatic revocation. So if you missed three years of your nine nine year whatever for my ninety year required to file, then you can be automatically revote. There’s there’s some leeway, but for many organizations, if you are automatically revoked, you have to apply all over again to have your exam status reinstated. We’re actually up to almost seven hundred thousand organizations that have been automatically revoked over the last, i guess, six years, seven years now. Oh, okay, i didn’t know it was that large, and maybe that maybe that initial wave was now that the first wave of, like, three hundred thousand that wasn’t six or seven years ago, was it? No, i believe i believe they started them in two thousand ten, but i’d have to confirm falik automatic. Revocation put into effect, there was a big there was a big serge, a bubble, whatever in one year, but i think i was only, like three years ago or so roughly because because i know this show is six and a half years old, and it didn’t come at the beginning of that. I mean, those may have been happening, but then there was that huge one. Like i said, like close to three hundred thousand or so. All right, so okay, look in your look, look in the dusty corners, check your filing requirements, basically let’s say let’s, go to the let’s, go to the board calendar. You do you do you think most non-profits are setting their agenda for the year in advance? Are they doing that? I think probably not, but i think it could be a very effective tool. I think some larger organizations previewed organizations with large staff that helped to kind of coordinate the board meetings or, more likely, that be setting some sort of calendar for a full year. But i think he’d be helpful even for smaller organizations are entirely volunteer run organizations as well. I think it can just help. To set expectations for various meanings in advance to make sure the meetings are effective and efficient and that the board really covers everything it needs. Teo during the meetings throughout the year, yeah, it makes great sense. You you look at the whole year plan and make sure that everything is covered. So maybe you have some training on financials are you want to cover programs and you want make sure i would think you give equal time to all your programs or maybe wake them based on the preponderance that they proportion that they bear to your organization’s revenue or activities or something. But you won’t make sure everything is covered. It makes sense tow look at it for the whole year. Um, and you also suggest leaving some space for things that are going come up at hawk, of course, you know, it would be nice if we could predict in advance everything that was going to arrive throughout the course of the year, but i think that’s a very rare occurrence. So it’s important to make sure that in scheduling kind of topics for a board meeting, you’re not so rigid that there’s not opportunity for the board to discuss the really pressing issues that arise throughout the course of the year. You, uh you call this stargazing? I like that on time. Stargazing. I’ll have to give credit. I think jean takagi uses that term a lot. My colleague at any old locker. But we like the idea that, you know, a big part of the board function is really thinking big for the organization. So it’s not just necessarily thinking about the financials and the more procedural and legal aspects of government, but also thinking about, you know, what the organization can really accomplish, what its mission is, what is exempt purposes are and how it can best carry those out with the assets that has access to the kind of thinking big picture thinking about the potential of the organization. In fact, that could be a problem with a lot of boards is that they do get mired in the detail and they ignore the the larger role that they that they should be filling. Yeah, look at that time that’s looking critically at markets and competition and potentials, maybe scrutinising current activities to decide if we should be doing everything that we are doing etcetera, so these bigger picture items um and i think one of the hardest things for boards is actually to take a critical look at current programs and to make the tough decisions so, you know, if something isn’t working as well as it may be ought to be here isn’t necessarily the best use of the organization’s asset. Is there some kind of big changes that need to be made and those air filter big conversation? You know, there’s, not one that just happened in a short, you know, fifteen minutes section of ah one board meeting, so making sure that there’s room on the calendar for any of those types of conversations that should be taking place and perhaps will come up organically, you like to take a look att governance policies and there there are some that are in new marais tid in the form nine, ninety let’s get you why don’t you take those off? Go ahead. Yeah, the form nine ninety asks about a section has a section in the form nineteen doing be about policies, and it does actually say on the form nine, ninety itself that these policies aren’t required under the internal revenue code, but it is possible it somewhere required under applicability student law, so it is important for an organisation to be aware of any state laws that apply to it. But the policies that are mentioned on the form nine ninety are conflict of interest policy, a whistleblower policy and the document retention and destruction policy. The fact that they’re even included on this in a return form is just signal, i think, from the irs with either things that the irs was kind of thinking are important towards good governance of an organisation and are things that the organization doesn’t have in place, even though not legally required could be advisable and recommended from governance perspective. And then also from a marketing perspective, the ninety is so widely available that potential donors volunteers boardmember sze doing due diligence, whoever’s looking at your your nine ninety e i think it just doesn’t look so good to say no, we don’t have the conflict of interest policy, whistleblower policy, etcetera. Even though the irs, even though the form says they’re not required, i think it looks bad to check off those no boxes. Yeah, i could potentially and you’re right, you know, particularly, i think funders have access to nine, nine years and we’ll take a look at them and they are publicly available document the last three years, as you noted, so again, it it could be, you know, while not legally required, it could be a signal that you have good governance policies and good governance practices in place. You do, in fact, have these policies, of course, though having a policy in and of itself is of no use if you’re not actually making sure everyone is aware of the policy and following it and enforcing it so that’s another part of what we recommend, kind of the beginning of the year or some other time that the organization designate was appropriate based on its annual calendar, but taking a look at what policies you do have in place, whether they’re working for the organization or whether any changes should be made, whether everybody actually knows where to find the policies and his reviewed copies of them, and then also whether there are any gaps in your policy so there’s something that, you know, it would be helpful to have a policy on and you don’t yet and would it be appropriate to kind of put that on your task list in terms of coming up with an appropriate policy on that topic? Ok, one that’s coming to mind is it policy and the use of private personal devices for for organizational purposes? Do we allow it? What what do we require if we do allow it? You know, etcetera, what do you feel about that policy? We don’t see that as having been adopted by many organization, but i think it’s just becoming increasingly more relevant in the way that most organizations operate today, so it actually could be advisable, particularly for larger organization with larger staffs are a lot of volunteers that are potentially using technology resources that belonged to the organization. The use of of resources also comes up, particularly in the context of lobbying activities and political activities, which for five whillans trees you know, obviously, lobbying activities for public cherries have to be an insubstantial amount of their overall activity, but political activities are completely prohibited, and even you seven organizational resource for improper campaign intervention activity could be problematic, and i think a policy could be particularly effective in that area as well. Okay, lobbying ceo compensation is one that you like to see? Yeah, sometimes it doesn’t necessarily need to be in a formal policy, but it is something that the organization often need to be aware of the importance of and make sure it’s falling some sort of i’m specific process for determining appropriate ceo compensation, particularly here in california, we have a requirement that the combination of the ceo be approved by the board or unauthorized committee when it’s first offered, when the period of employment is renewed and then whenever it’s modified, even if it’s modified data word. So there are certain requirements in place with respect to ceo compensation and then also at the federal level under the internal revenue code there’s certain requirements with respect to how you determine whether compensation amounts are appropriate for having a policy in place could be good, particularly for an organization that has significant turnover. Andi it’s in its board, where there might not be a lot of awareness of what practices and policies should be followed with respect to determining compensation. Jean and i have talked about the competition hyre the presumption, etcetera, it’s, it’s in a previous share we’ve we’ve we’ve done something on that listen, sentiments and california because i said you’re in san francisco, but what are you hearing about the suspicion succession movement? Are we going? We’re gonna be down to forty nine six for you to start off the flag. It’s going to be a balance, therefore, i think probably not in my lifetime. I don’t think you do. People talk about a lot of talk about it. Do people talk about, like, over drinks and dinners and things? The result of the election have led to many conversations over drinks in my circle. I will. I will certainly say i’m not searching me. People are christian. Too hard for succession, but it’s definitely been floated. Okay? Yeah. All right, so it does come up. Okay. Okay, forty nine is, uh i was you were talking. I was thinking to forty nine as a prime. It would be hard to be weird to have a prime number, aziz Numbers, but not a prime 7 times seven is forty, so i was wrong there, but i mean, i hope it doesn’t happen. I there, there those who will we’ll send you off. Gladly, but i’m not among them. I hope we still, i’m glad to hear that way. In your mind. We’re keeping you in the union intact. Idealware okay. Let’s see so oh, and then, you know, we haven’t talked about any fund-raising policies, but you might have a gift acceptance and crediting policy and that’s something i work a lot with non-profits and i often find an existing one is not being followed. So in terms of either acceptance, i mean there’s a lot in there that non-profits forget is in there and then same thing with crediting they, i find it’s a policy that gets created and then often ignored. So, yeah, i can often be the problem with particularly these types of policies that are kind of thought of as the core required policies. People might even forget that they’re out there. So i think having some sort of process in place where the policy they’re easy to access and everybody that needs to be aware of them is well aware of what you know what they actually say. And i think the gift acceptance policy in particular, i think there’s often this conception that misconception, maybe that every gift is a good gift, but sometimes the strings that come with gifts for gift that aren’t actually easy to divest us can you be a little bit of a curse in disguise, i guess. And so it can be important to make sure that if there is a gift that isn’t no cash and there’s something that is more complicated or difficult to get rid of for the organisation or turned into value and that there’s some sort of process, we’re reviewing that gift and just making sure that acceptance really is in the best interest of the organization. Real estate comes to mind when you suggest that there may not be great. Real estate can be an enormously valuable and wonderful gift for non-profit on the other hand, i’ve had situations where it was a disputed strip of, like, four feet wide or so maybe ride, and it ran the depth of the properties. I was like two feet wide, one hundred feet deep, and somebody is trying to give it to us, you know, because it was denied and it was easier to give it to a third party and let us a trifle hassle with it. So there’s two ends of the spectrum, it can be magnificent, but around real estate in particular that’s, real estate’s, not the only kind of risky gift. But in particular you really you got to do your due diligence before your organization name goes on the deed for that property that let’s go to aa financials. You won’t take some time in the beginning of the year to do financial oversight. What do your thoughts here? Yeah, i think particularly for an organisation on a calendar year that has just wrapped up. You know, its last its last year. It could be a good time for the board and perhaps it a rather high level. But just take a look at what financials that has access to it. You know, the beginning of the year for the last year’s performance and then think about, you know, what needs to change in the future and then how it can arrive after those desired financial changes. So do any changes to the budget that’s been adopted for this coming here need to be made based on last year’s performance? Basically, just kind of taking stock. Obviously, reviewing the financials is, you know, an important part of board service and should be done more than just once a year. But i think reviewing it kind of that year and can be particularly important, i’m gonna have a guest next week. Diane leonard is going to talk about grant program, a grant calendar for the year, and one of the things that we’re going to talk about is timing your revenue with your budget when you expect when you’re expecting in her case, the grant revenue to come and make sure that’s appropriately timed so that you’re not, you don’t find yourself with cash shortfalls and a programming grayce program management, etcetera, timing those let’s see okay, oh, another thing with the financials to tony is that often you have boardmember zor even some gym staff members, they’re coming from just a range of backgrounds and have a variety of experiences, and sometimes not, you know, it’s not in everyone’s set of skills that they understand how to actually read financial statement something you could be really important as an organization to make sure that you have a process in place for providing some sort of basic level of training on reading financial statements, particularly for directors on denny cast members who don’t have that background, but who need to make sure that they understand the financial statements well, some people do it as part of an onboarding process with new employees or new directors and other organizations will set it up it’s kind of an annual or biannual sort of training that is available for anybody who hasn’t otherwise gone through it in the past elections. If you ah, if you’re going to be doing elections in the year, you want to make sure that you’re following your policy on elections, whatever your by-laws say, yeah, absolutely and, you know, we see sometimes organizations that have just always done their elections a certain way for years and years, and they’ve never taken the time to actually look back at what they’re by-laws actually say, and then one step further to make sure their current by-laws were actually in compliance with africa ble law right now, you’re by-laws were drafted twenty years ago it’s possible that the state law that governs elections and what has to actually be in yur by allies has changed, so can be appropriate to take a good look at what the legal election procedures are the requirements under the applicable law. Make sure your by-laws comply with that and then make sure you’re complying with your by-laws and it’s also kind of ties into the board meeting calendar we’re discussing a few minutes ago and making sure that if you do have elections that are required during this year that you have them scheduled in the calendar and notice that’s required in advance is also scheduled in the calendars that you’re not missing any deadlines, the risk there that he has some sort of disgruntled director or them voting membership organization and disgruntled member. If you don’t comply with the requirements of your by-laws or with law, then you could have potentially the decisions of the board or the or the members subject to challenge, and that just isn’t a good position to being from the organization we have just one minute left, aaron so let’s, let’s get teo, you want to review the articles and by-laws and are our purpose and mission statements? Yeah, and this is one of those things again that, you know, congested, good to counter for the beginning of the year. It was a good reminder. Take a look at what your articles say. The organization’s purpose is make sure whatever the bylaws say, it’s purposes is consistent with what’s in the articles and then take a look at what the organization is actually doing and make sure it’s still complies with the stated purposes. If the organization’s purposes have shifted somewhat over time, then it may be the right time to take a look your articles and by-laws and maybe make some appropriate revisions necessary. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there, aaron, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Don’t you have a great day? I pleasure. Aaron bradrick, senior counsel at the non-profit and exempt organizations law group, she’s at aaron bradrick, and the firm is at neo law group dot com, and her boss is jean takagi at g tack. So if you want to comment on aaron, all good comments, of course, then you could you contact gene. Thank you, erin, thank you for any happy new year. So long. Thank you again by this year’s border treat with greg cohen is coming up first. Pursuant, they can train you in a thoughtful plan to reach your twenty seventeen fund-raising goals. It’s a. What they have is basically a map to your best prospects. Strong relationships. It’s, a four week webinar, siri’s there’s one a week, and it’s called fund-raising like a boss. I’m going to skip the kick reference this week, not that i was asked to skip case germans, i mean, it’s, my show, i do whatever i want. I just i’m choosing not to make the cake reference this week, and this siri’s fund-raising like a boss, starts on january eighteenth, voice cracked again. If you can’t make the live webinars they have you covered, you give access to their archive of each of the four you’ll find the siri’s fundez like a boss at pursuant dot com quick resource is training and then webinar siri’s. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising it’s fun philanthropy. I like that philanthropy, it’s corny, but i’m not even sure i thought of it. It’s. All these things are only good when you think of them otherwise, thes puns are distasteful and hated, but if you think of it, you know it’s it’s genius, i’m not sure if i came up with this with a, i’m not sure that i saw it on their site, anyway. Philanthropy. It’s spelling bee plus comedy plus concert plus dance plus philanthropy that equals we be spelling. So that means spelling bee plus comedy plus concert plus dance equals we be spelling minus philanthropy if you move it over let’s change sign, but we’re well, we want to solve, for we’d be spelling, so keep over everything, everything else over on the left side, so don’t move it over so those things equal, we be spelling. Check out the video, the video there. Three minute video explains the whole thing highlights one of their fund-raising events. The video is at we b e spelling dot com now for tony’s take two, all right, i’m wagging my finger a little bit. Ah it’s an occasional admonition that i make around charity registration, which aaron and i touched on. I wanted to say a little bit more about your need to be properly registered in each state where your solicit donations it’s a morass, it’s awful. I wish it didn’t exist lots of people we should did exist, but it does it’s a morass because every state has its own forms and timetables and fees and definitions of what’s a solicitation, whether it talking, email or texting or u s mail, etcetera. So i’m just urging you to stay. On top of it, it is work that i do if i can help you, let me know, but it can be managed internally as well. However you do it, stay on top of it, please, because you don’t want to be the next headline. The trump foundation had a lot of problems with that. I did a video on that bunch of months ago, like, was that october november trump foundations very embarrassed that you don’t want to be the next headline. Stay on top of that and that is tony’s take two got to send live listener love the live love goes out tio, new york, new york, multiple new york, lovett, multiple new york, new york ah, union, new jersey red across the the river’s over there, the hudson river, staten island, new york. Right across the other way, actually, union and staten island. You could get to union through staten island. If you go across the verrazano and then staten island, then you go across the outerbridge, you get to union, so i don’t know if you all do. You all know each other just because you’re connected by bridges and i don’t know, stat now. Is with us, and so his union, the u k is with us. We don’t know which country and uk or it zing gland it is england, sam says, is england? We don’t know the city can’t see it korea’s with us on your haserot but we can’t see your city, but we know you’re with us. South korea always very generous. Thank you. We got hoochie minh city, vietnam and grow now germany! Good dog live listen love also to oakland, california, new bern, north carolina and, oh then go in south into obregon, mexico live listener love to you and the other live listeners podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand now. Yes, it’s the new year we’ve gone from ten, two thousand twelve thousand it’s happened. I’m ready to say it it’s it’s often enough that i’m calling it twelve thousand over twelve thousand podcast listeners each week pleasantries to you. I’m glad you’re with us and there’s affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country let your station no, please, that you’re listening whenever they fit us into your schedule throughout the week, i’m glad you’re with us affections to our affiliate listeners and i’m also glad that i can welcome back greg cohen he’s, a senior associate at cause effective, where he has trained and coached on fund-raising and governance for the boards and staffs of hundreds of non-profits since two thousand six, for over thirty five years, he’s been helping non-profits, including starting up and leading many he’s at greg cause the organization is at cause effective and that cause effective dot or ge. Greg cohen, welcome back to studio. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you. Cool topic. You brought it up to me late last year and i love it because we haven’t focused on this board retreats, border treats this can be valuable if you do it correctly and it could be a disaster if you screw it up that’s, right? So let’s talk about doing it right first they got don’t do things, but but just a little motivation. What can we get out of these if if we do them correctly what’s going to happen for our board? Well, this really fouls well from erin’s comments about shaping. You’re bored with intentionality. This is show has prepared, you know i’m gonna it’s it just happens and it’s beautifully coincidence, yes. So there it was on the menu. Okay, thank you. Start interrupting. So what you can gain if you think about your board is forming a high performing team? A zahren said for many of the things that she talked about, there isn’t time within the typical board meeting, particularly for areas that require reflection like let’s. Look at if our mission is still relevant to the activities of the community that we’re responding to. Maybe you’ve added knew board people and you have members who haven’t really gotten to know each other, like on any team you want people to bond, you want them to have a shared conception of their purpose, and you wanna have some ways of operating together might be the agreement on that schedule, that board calendar for the year of how we’re going to conduct our business, and what do we want to accomplish relative to the needs of the organization? So the retreat is about taking more time to reflect without the daily pressures on those key areas of governance and on how the board should perform itself as a team. Take out the bigger picture all these bigger picture items that aaron was referring to. Absolutely being more strategic and less, you know, in the in the in the forest stuck, and i’m stuck in the woods, right? It can range from how has our community changed other new populations and needs? It could be what changes in our revenue mixed dewey anticipating that’s going to be on the minds of everybody with a new administration in washington. And how do we get ahead of the possibilities and plan in advance and planning in particular as a governance function is best done at a remove from the monthly board meeting where you have a lot to accomplish in the agenda? How do you like to do these offsite weekend? How long? Give us a little flavour for right? Well, so it all depends, of course, on how much you want to accomplish and the availability of of your board. Ideally, i would say offsite someplace nice, relaxing that supports the conversation and people can into relate comfortably and there’s room for breaking out in smaller groups weekends, because that gives you blocks of time and i think it’s hard to do retreat in less than half a day. And many retreats actually go a whole day. Some organisations are extraordinary and devote a saturday in a sunday to a retreat. That’s a little unusual, but i think the more you remove it from the day to day constant context, the more you’re going to encourage people to interact and think differently. Okay? She liked to see a weekend day, right? You’ll also avoid people calling into their office checking email, you know, i mean, they you know, yeah. There’s. More of those distractions. You can control the circumstance of the meeting. That air offsite, it’s. Just a wifi ofthe exact it, of course. Those other access, but okay. All right. So what you want fairly distraction free, right? I mean, this is important. This is important time. Okay? Of course. That’s also going to depend on budget you have to spend for this. Maybe a board members home. Have you seen that? Can that work? Yeah. First for a relatively small group that can work very nicely. Okay. If there’s place tio sit around and actually deliberate, you need something like a conference table set up, but home can work very nicely. First board on the smaller side. Okay, okay. Um this, uh, could have some value around orientation for new board members. How we hardly fit that in? Yeah, absolutely, from okay, a number of perspectives, usually during a regular board meeting, there isn’t time to set context for the items under discussion. A retreat allows senior staff and bored leaders to explain a little history to put an issue into into context for new board members so that they get a better map of the environment in which the non-profit is working. Secondly, it’s really important that board members get to know each other on a social basis and interact, particularly if they’re deliberating on hard issues. It’s really good if you’ve had the chance to talk to someone more informally, you know, a little bit more about their background, what they do about their family, personal time, that makes for a stronger team, and you want to build team building activities into a retreat to make sure particularly there’s integration of those new members into what might have been, you know, a pretty cohesive group beforehand. It’s hard for the newest person to break into a club where everybody seems to have special knowledge way don’t have to do ah, walking over hot, broken glass. I love that you do? Yeah, i’m talking about what is it like? It was drew people to our board. What am i doing wrong? No, but i mean there’s, no question, a cohesive team. And you want to have interpersonal relationships that go beyond the business that’s conducted in the two hour board meetings every however often month, quarter, whatever you want to get to know each other exactly. And that’s one way not everybody is very forward and offering their opinions to establish some safety in the room for a really meaningful discussion of an issue. If i don’t really know how i’m going to be received by the person across the table haven’t built up trust, i’m probably going to be a little inhibited, particularly as a new boardmember from from knowing that i can speak my mind. Yeah, comfort with comfort level with that. Is there any favorite exercise? You have that the around team building and he, uh, like you play a little game? Yeah, all the classic ice breakers that involve won a lot of interaction between the board members and to some revealing at revealing some. Aspect of someone’s personal life that one wouldn’t ordinarily discover in the board introduction. I cross dress, you know, friends. Exactly. Exactly. That could be something. Could be a great accomplishment. I want philip boardmember to know exactly. Okay. Alright. Eso bringing drawing people out of right there. Business. And what do you do for a living and having them seeing in their full personality? Not just there. Jacket and tie image at the table. Okay. Okay. Um, let’s. See what else? What else? What else could we could we do around these do in this? Well, so retreats offer an important opportunity to develop leadership among the board, and we think planning is really important. So i know when i was an executive erect the first time i did a retreat, i waited too long. And then i realized g i need someone to run this. And the week before, i called someone who was a facilitator and said, can you run my board retread on saturday? And he said, well, what do you want accomplish? And i said, well, that’s, what i’m hiring you for and i really i recognize how unfair that was now that i look back. Because with a good border treat, you think you you wantto builds a common idea of what you want to accomplish during the day. So we like to form a planning committee of board members and staff and then a sine preparation roles so that many of the board members, if not all, get a chance to lead a part of the discussion and ah, shared leadership. Yeah, exactly. And that models the kind of back and forth and deliberation that you want to teach your board meetings. So this is a chance in a plan fashion to say each of us can have a role in guiding the discussion among our peers. So, like you rotating facilitators, friends, well, it might be on topic. So you have each chair, the chair of finances going toe provide an overview of how we did last year in finance and what the challenges are coming up in this year and that might be heavily supported by a staff person. But the key thing is it’s a boardmember who’s articulating it and the message below the the direct messages each of us can master this you like to see a facilitator? I was ah, instead of the board chair running the retreat, you don’t want to see that. I’d like to see every member of the team be able to participate in a full way without having to do that facilitator role of kind of looking down in saying how’s, this whole group interaction going that’s very demanding. Okay, we want full participation of the executive director and the board chair in discussions and save them from the facilitation role. Okay, facilitator is an outsider. It could be i mean, sometimes for the staff person broke, you know? Could be yes, it could be a fourteen year old like me. Okay. Ah, of course we a cause effective love it when people hyre outside facilitators. But if you had it a skilled staff person but that person could play that role too. I usually for the team building. If i’m working with an organization that uses that in their program, i have a staff person coming and running exercise like the ones they run with their clients. For instance. I see. Okay, we’re going out for a break. Greg and i are going to keep talking about this year’s board retreat on. Ghost. Gonna ask him to talk a little about what cause effective. Does 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 guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trans sounded life that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i am his niece, carmela. And i am his nephew, gino. And i am the doting uncle brillo head sometimes called tony, at least over the dinner table. Um all right, i want teo, have you explain what cause effective does greg as consultants and non-profit itself? Because it’s an outstanding organization, i refer people to you when they ask questions that they and they need help that that i can’t give, i refer them to cause effect of what you people doing over there? Great. So first of all, we have been around for thirty five years, as you say, we’re a non-profit but were organized like a consulting firm and that we have specific engagements with clients, and we work together to find a way to fund that our focus is primarily on helping groups learn how to be more effective fundraisers in the area of relationship based fund-raising so not so much grantspace ship from government or large foundations or large corporations, but more that one to one kind of fund-raising typically when on organization wants to start raising money from individual donors, and that hasn’t been their emphasis, because maybe they got most of their funding from government of foundations. Now they want to diversify, they didn’t recruit aboard for that purpose and the board is saying, whoa, that wasn’t in our contract that’s when we step in and starting from where each organization is paint the dance steps on the floor that lead them to becoming effective in reaching out and building a sense of community among perspective and other donors that’s the most common type of referral that i’ve sent to you is someone is basically asking, how do we get to the next level? We’re all event driven, and we want to have individual donors, how do we do it? I send them to cause effective great. The other area that relates particularly board retreats is that we think boards are the vanguard of that individual relationship based fund-raising and the best motor motivation for a boardmember to go out and fundraisers to be is to understand the needs of the community and the mission and be driven to raise money. So the group has the resource is to fulfill that mission in the fullest way. So to do that requires really connecting every boardmember to the conception of the potential for the organization to realize its mission if it found the resource is cool. Thank you. Talk to them that you you do. You only work in the greater new york city area were primarily focused on new york city region because our work involves a lot of coaching and being in place. We like to say we embed ourselves with a client. So were present at board meetings that staff meeting staff trainings and there’s. A lot of trust building. So the work has tended to be done best when we are local within the tri state area. Okay, i don’t know what to say for the rest of the country. There are there are we do go out and speak and share our methodology at national conferences. Okay. Everything from the junior league. Teo bi annual conference for social change. You also have an excellent newsletter that i get that julie levine, the executive director, puts out. So, you know, you can sign up for the newsletter. This is all you’ll find. Because if that door okay, exactly. All right, let’s, circle back to the border, treat staff roll what’s the staff role in supporting this. You mentioned they might. They might be facilitating or maybe not facility, but leading cem. Session more supporting the board members to do that to lead those sessions. So i think staff always in relation to board is providing the legwork and context to board members to carry out their governance work so it might be collecting data and might be helping the board members identify what are the most important issues to be discussing in a retreat. Now, particularly exactly the partnership between the executive director and the chair is is always key. But you know, the development director might work with the head of the fundraising committee to say, what is it that’s going to be most helpful to emphasize? To get the board members particularly jazz for fund-raising in the coming year or get him ready for the gala are whatever are the key challenges in each area of governance for the year in the appropriate staff person who provides support to the board members in those areas, i will say, generally speaking, most board retreats on ly include senior staff there. Ah, sometimes there’s a portion where there’s joint board staff as portion of a retreat but really, i believe boards need their own time, so and their own focus. Oh! I’m not in favor of bringing in a lot of staff to a country of their own retreats. Or they might come in for a session exactly on dh, support that somehow and then depart. Yeah, that shouldn’t be here, right to have staff come in and talk about successes in their programs, to give boardmember sze in a nice taste of mission and to get to know a key staff person better even bringing a client for that purpose. But they come, they do their piece, and then they leave. Okay, okay. If we do this on a weekend saturday or sunday, do you like to see a dinner afterwards? Should we be asking people hang around for dinner or are people more likely to just leave when the business is concluded and not stay for the dinner? I i’d like to pull the board because if you have a board that has young children, for instance, they’re the boardmember probably less eager to skip dinner with the family on a weekend. If you have a board that’s older, they may be willing to devote more time and it’s lovely to have to finish with wood dinner together that i said, check in and see what the majority of the board feels. Okay, okay? You have some ideas about things that we want toe stay away from things teo avoid in our in our retreat buy-in you don’t want people doing a lot of reporting when that stuff that they could be doing in a regular meeting, right? So that’s a tendency to say, alright, this, as i say, we want to bring people up to speed and be on the same page, so we’re going to say the same thing to all of them in the room, but what happens is that they sit as passive recipients of that information, so better as you say, provide a report and then figure out how to structure a discussion that that brings in the latest information that you want people to absorb but make them do a little reading and then use that information in deliberation during the the retreat, i will say there’s an exception, there’s a portion of it of a retreat where providing information is appropriate, which is if you’re training for a new skill. So aaron mentioned more you mentioned providing the ability to read financial statements or something for us it’s typically fund-raising techniques like doing a practice, ask for money or practicing an elevator speech where there’s a piece of training involved and we’re really conveying information that’s appropriate for retreat, but for bringing people up to date on the daily activities of the organization. Save that for report and use the time when you’re reporting for the bigger stargazing issues. Okay, you also want to be judicious about what you include so that you’re not packing too much into the day and nothing gets adequate time. Exactly so ah, common issue is we didn’t do strategic planning this year. We need to get the strategic planning process done when we have everybody together, because we’re not gonna have together again in a room for five hours for the rest of the year, so let’s do fund-raising governance, strategic planning and, oh, by the way, we’ve got a bunch of other governance things that we didn’t do, i’m going to put it all, and then people feel overwhelmed and they don’t take away the key lessons well and everything. He’s done sloppy then examine those air such big issues, any one of them could could be a five hour planning planning session. Exactly. Okay, so so you got a pair it down to just a couple. So everything gets the attention that that’s, right? And i think some key years, their touch on touch on mission, touch on fund-raising touch on how the board is functioning in its overall governance, and then you can pick some issues that are specific to the group to focus on, even have a guest speaker who relates to ah, the area of mission for part of it. And the thing is to keep it lively, have it very participatory. I like to say a successful treat is one where people are disappointed that the day has come to an end and they say, why don’t we do this more often? Cool. Let’s. Wrap it up. We just have, like, thirty seconds left. You like to see good food? Absolutely. And wine to have wine, not overload the end. Yeah, absolutely wanted to paint at the end to celebrate the success is no that’s cool. Yeah, yeah, but if you’re bringing piela people giving their time on the weekend, you want to reward them with a with a pleasurable experience. No booze at lunch. Great going, senior associate itcause effective. You’ll find him at greg cause and again, the organization is cause effective and also at cause effective dot org’s. Thanks very much, greg. My pleasure. Good to have you back next week. Digital inclusion furthers your impact and your annual grants plan it’s with diane leonard. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com. A creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Thank you for that, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and the green. 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 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? 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Nonprofit Radio for December 2, 2016: Find Fantastic Volunteers & Board Unity Or Dissent

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns: Find Fantastic Volunteers

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(L to R) Liza Dyer, Gina Roberti, & Taryn Kearns at 16NTC

Who is your ideal volunteer and what are your best strategies to find them? Our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resources. From the Nonprofit Technology Conference they’re Liza Dyer from Multnomah County Library, with Gina Roberti and Taryn Kearns from Reading Partners.

 

 

 

Gene Takagi: Board Unity Or Dissent

Should “shut up” be part of your board meetings? Gene Takagi, our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO), returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board vs. speaking with a singe voice. (Originally aired on 12/5/14).

 

 


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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. Urban stead. They messaged me. Caught your radio show today we’re a small non-profit in philadelphia. Found your show absolutely relevant and helpful. Absolutely relevant. Unhelpful. Not just relevant. Unhelpful. Absolutely. Thank you very much. They do urban farming with at risk youth in philadelphia, which i love that’s where i went to law school. Temple, temple university law school. Now the beasley school like the old, like that old show with mrs beasley the rag doll on was that a family affair with brian keith and mr french anyway? Ah, urban st they’re at urban stead and urban stead dot or ge? Thank so much, herb instead. So glad that you found non-profit radio and that it helps your work. What work? Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Urban stead. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into pica if you forced down my throat. The idea that you missed today’s show find fantastic volunteers who’s, your ideal volunteer. And what do your best strategy is? To find them, our panel shares online and offline tips, including lots of resource, is from the non-profit technology conference there lies a dyer from multnomah county library with gina roberti and taryn kearns from reading partners very literate group also bored unity or descent should shut up. Be part of your board meetings. Jean takagi are legal goal legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations. Law group returns to weigh the pros and cons of dissent on your board versus speaking with a single voice not originally aired on december fifth. Twenty fourteen on tony’s take to your trump challenge. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com here is find fantastic volunteers from auntie si. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc the non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This is also part of ntc conversations. We’re in the convention center in san jose. Naturally, where else? Where else would we be? And my guests? Yeah, session topic is fantastic volunteers and where to find them we’re going to meet the guests very shortly. First, have to do a shout out for the swag item for this interview, which is a very hot item appreciated by all three women on the panel. It’s ah, it’s, a red box it’s, a red box, one night rental only liza holds her movies longer than i’m a night, so this is no value to her. But gina and taryn love it, and it is from unleashed unleashed technologies. Red box promo code. One night, we added to the swag pile. And don’t walk away with it, ladies, alright, let’s, meet our guests. Liza dyer is first of all, she has the professional designation cv a certified in volunteer administration. She’s, a program coordinator for volunteers services at the multnomah county library and multnomah county, encompasses portland, oregon. And it’s, oregon not oregon. There’s no e at the end of oregon, i’ve learned that many times. Gina roberti is community engagement manager at reading partners. And taryn kearns is the americorps volunteer coordinator at reading partners. And i started closest to me. So liza is closest to me. And then it’s gina and then taran they’re topic is yes, the fantastic volunteers and where to find them. Let’s, talk down the end there, taryn. What is it that you ladies field non-profits or not getting maybe quite right with volunteers. Gino was in with the face is coming. What you got stuff i want you look it’s. Tough looking issues. You really like the question? Okay, what is it? Well, i’m sorry i directed for tarrant, but i’ll give you the follow-up if she doesn’t, she doesn’t lackluster job at it. Then you can you khun ad on? What do you mean she will do great. Karin, what are we not getting right about volunteers? I think there’s a couple things that we’re not getting quite right volunteers. Perhaps one is retention a lot of non-profits struggle with retaining volunteers, long term reading partners, we retain roughly thirty percent of our volunteers year to year doesn’t seem like a lot of volunteers. We do retain our amazing, but we’d still need to constantly invent new strategies to keep those volunteers engaged, excited and coming back for more to serve our population. You’re retaining thirty means you’re losing seventy percent of your volunteers each year. True? Yeah. That’s. The same as donorsearch a tous ticks no non-profits lose seventy percent of their donors each year. All right, gina, how did she do anything great? If anything, you’d like to add teo terrans assessment of what? We’re not getting quite right. Well, she did great. Okay, i actually think attention. So retention one problem a problem. I actually think we’re really fortunate reading partners where we have dedicated staff to focus on volunteermatch judgment. And i don’t think all non-profits have the capacity to have paid staff. So i feel like that’s you need people who are focused on volunteers and engaging them, appreciating them and developing the program. So i feel fortunate reading partners, but i know that’s not everywhere, and so i feel like that’s what we’re getting wrong in the nonprofit world do we have strategies to help people who aren’t devoted to volunteer management but have other responsibilities as well? We have some ideas for them. You came to the right place, we will have some okay way have twenty five years together, so okay, we do have some ideas, okay? Liza, anything you’d like to add? Yes, oh, something that really leads into a retention is that a lot of non-profits don’t know what they’re looking for in a volunteer, so they don’t know who they are actually trying to attract before they want to retain them. So they go out and they say, yeah, well, take anybody if you believe in our mission will take you, but you don’t really focus on what they’re skillsets is what their knowledge, their background, their availability. And so once you can do that and figure out who your ideal volunteers are, then you can work to engage them and retain. Them for the long term. But it starts with that first relationship. Excellent lead in let’s. Begin there. How how do we identify who the ideal volunteer is? Yeah, perfect. So something that you can do is create a volunteer persona and figure out who? Just like, when you do marketing personas or daughter personas, you can figure out what are the specific skills that i’m looking for and all of that khun lead into a position description. But you also need to think about. So if i am recruiting somebody who can teach computer classes, who are they? Where are they currently at? What is their availability like? So in portland, we have ah, few tech companies, not as money is down here in silicon valley, but we have a few and so, you know, do they have daytime availability? Maybe if they have a corporate responsibility program, they can come and and volunteer during their work time. But if not, well, then you kind of have to taylor, you’re programming maybe have your computer classes at days and times when volunteers are available. Okay, what should we be thinking about? A cz we build these personas? What attributes? Yeah, so you want to think about not just their knowledge and their skills, but also their beliefs or their values? Because if somebody doesn’t have alignment in terms of your organization, then you might not be a good match. So on the one hand, if i am recruiting a bunch of volunteers to stuff envelopes doesn’t matter that they believe in army mittens, maybe, maybe not. If i’m recruiting somebody to teach classes like, for example, citizenship classes at multnomah county library, i’m gonna want somebody who believes in the things that we do and making sure that they have a welcoming personality that can make sure that people feel welcome and also that they believe in the concept of intellectual freedom so people can come in, use the library. We’re not judging them. We’re not censoring anything. We believe people should have free access to information. You know, if somebody doesn’t believe that we’re not a good fit for that. Gina, are there other attributes we variables we can describe to our volunteermatch personas? I think liza covered a lot of really well, well, the age wouldn’t talk about age. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Well, i think it just varies per per volunteer opportunities like reading partners. We have one type of volunteer that we look for. So and for us, it’s fourteen, to retired is the age range which brought age, so we have a bigger audience that we can recruit for. But we also we have a volunteer opportunities monday through thursday between nine and five. So what liza was saying is, here in silicon valley, it works for us because there’s a lot of companies and they have huge corporate social responsibility departments who helped, you know, connect us to the companies, but, you know, oftentimes we’ll find high schoolers there over programmed and, you know, they’re only available between three and five or people who don’t have the same corporate culture of volunteerism they want to do evenings and weekends, and that doesn’t necessarily fit for reading part doesn’t work for you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Other strategies for finding the ideal volunteer. Taryn besides the user, the volunteer persona. Did you talk about others in your your in your own? Do you programmed yet? Yes, you did. Okay. Ten. Thirty? Yeah. Were there other ideas? Are we exhausted that that part of it? No. I think that there’s so much to talk about a sfar strategies go if you want to get into that and, you know, separate from identifying the ideal volunteer. Okay, great. So based on each type of volunteer that you’re looking for, you need to really assess the community as faras. What kind of resource is either online or actually in person are around you, it’s helpful to be so aware of what schools are around? Maybe if any clubs meet at local coffee shops during the day. So as you get that information and create either a visual layout or just have it in your mind, you can start to target those locations for either long term volunteer opportunities or short term and fill those needs match those volunteers are available at certain times and have different interests with the needs of your organization. So what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna go into the coffee shop and start talking up reading partners and whatever organization is that they may be a strategy for the coffee shop. What if there’s a no solicitation sign on the door? Well, we’ll probably have to obey by that sign, but most places you feel like you go into a place and it’s a gut feeling that you get if they’re open. Teo connecting community members with local opportunity. Right, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna other strategies? Anybody i don’t necessarily have to pick on you. You want to raise your hands? Anybody guidelines? Yeah. Another thing that you can do is you can survey your staff and find out what our who have been the most successful volunteers in the past. And so, if you say, pick your top ten percent that you would say, i want these people and i want to clone them, and i want to have volunteers at that level on lee, what is it about them? So is that their age? Are they retired? Are they high school students? So they have a lot of technical knowhow. Or is it somebody who has, you know, they are willing to just do what needs to get done? Like if you have a clerical volunteered, you don’t need somebody to go above and beyond necessarily. You just need them to be reliable, dependable and get the work done. So who are the volunteers who have been the most successful? And then you can use that to create your ideal volunteer. And then you, khun specifically target your recruitment for that type of person. And plus you this ideal volunteer that you want to clone? How do we find her? Yeah, you know, who does she know? How could she connect us to people like her? Absolutely right. Okay, okay. Excellent. We got other before we go online or not, i know you have online strategies to we’re not there yet. Other offline in real time. Face-to-face strategies for recruitment. These are excellent. I’d like to build upon that point you just made about how can you talk to someone that’s? Your perhaps ideal volunteer, maybe sametz already volunteering for you and get that person to talk to their friends about opportunities. Peer-to-peer volunteer recruitment is one of the most successful strategies because if you haven’t in, you know sametz already volunteering for going elearning organization and they can vouch for you going to tell you how awesome it is. You know, exactly when i’m teaching kids and their learning and it’s great, you’re much more likely to want to even just try it out and see if it’s a right fit for you, right? Yeah. And i think that using people’s personal networks leveraging those to create further connections is so useful. Excellent works for reading partners is that you get a lot of of your volunteers through testing volunteers with public latto personally. Okay. Anything else we should talk about? Offline. Real world? Yeah. It’s something that i saw it actually in a cafe in nashville, tennessee was a table number sign. You know, you place your order and you get a table number sign has we’re number the restaurant. It was in a restaurant, okay? Restaurant. And so i get my table number and it’s two or whatever and the rest of it is actually a kind of restaurant barbecue, you know, it was like it was like a healthy, you know, like begin. Yeah, s o they have those in tennessee as well. Although it was one of the one you were at the world. I was at the one and only you have it and you were at it. And so i get my numbers are in, and it has the number. But it also has a brochure about a dog rescue non-profit and it was specifically on the back of the tent, the number ten, it was. No, it was it was, you know, sticking up out of ah, like a metal holder and so on. Both sides that had information about volunteering a great partnership. Absolutely. Okay. Have any of you done that successfully with local businesses where they’ll they’ll basically let you have your solicitation materials? No, but like restaurant did mention that to us. And that is on my list of things that we will do next here in silicon valley. You got some places in mind? Yes. Okay. Okay. Next interview. I’ll update you. Okay? You’re presuming you’re gonna be back. Don’t don’t be presumptions will determine that in a couple minutes. Okay, uh, that’s. Excellent. You got ladies. You’re full of ideas. Anything else off line? I don’t mind if we talk more offline before we go online. Nothing else, really world. I think one more thing is another in person. Strategy is inserting yourself the organization into local community events. Say the community center is having a resource fair for non-profits maybe homeowners association or any other business to come and have a free table. Talk about what they do. Connect people that air interested from the community that’s a wonderful way. And often you, khun basically get a free space to just either recruit volunteers or spread organizational visibility. Once you create a presence for yourself and you start going to these types of events and meeting the same people over and over, they’ll say, ok, actually remember seeing this logo. I remember seeing your face, you’re here, and i like it, right, right on dh, there are community organizations, like maybe a chamber of commerce or something, exactly, uh, yeah, okay, karen, i don’t know if you know, gina agrees with very much of what you say, a lot of nodding, i say they work very closely together, we dio, she approves of everything i don’t you don’t not when she speaks, though, so you’re very disapproving of mentally, not idea, so you are okay, we believe you. Okay, okay. Okay, so let’s go online. Who wants to start? Gina, once you start, do you in the middle? Some online strategies you have for recruiting volunteers? Awesome. Fantastic volunteers. Yes. That’s a very good question. So i would say speaking for us at reading partners, we have actually always had our typical social media pieces of facebook, right? And this year our specific region has utilized twitter more. Andi, i think we honestly we have just skim the services to what we can do with our online recruitment on we definitely pay for facebook ads and things of that nature on dh has been extremely helpful. But it’s working it’s working. But you know what the problem is with that is that you need more money in order to make that happen. So it took a while to get some movement on. As soon as we got movement, we realized our budget is depleting. We had to go for the second movement. And now it’s like, what is it going to look like to continue that the ads and things of that nature. Okay, so so you were spending more than fifteen or twenty dollars? Yeah. Yeah, you’re okay. And what does that look like? Way have fourteen regions and we all need ads and our eight regions. And what does that look like for marketing budget? Ok, sorry, so facebook ads, but they’ve been valuable. You most definitely paid off. Yeah, yeah, liza, how about you and multnomah public? Yeah, so we utilise all our social channels as well. So facebook, twitter, instagram also flicker. We post photos there as well, and something that some of our volunteers participating is called a m c l hel p so m c l multnomah county library. Hel p is a selfie that you take while you’re helping or volunteering, right? So, yeah, so we every year we have a summer reading program and to encourage kids to read all year long. And we have eight hundred volunteers close to eight hundred volunteers for that program, ninety percent of which are under the age of eighteen years old, so ninety percent are under eighteen. Yeah, and those are our volunteers. That’s. You know the participants. We have over one hundred ten thousand participants just for the summer reading program. So we were looking for a way to engage our summer reading volunteers. Many of whom have smartphones and want to take selfies, and so we encourage them. Hey, take a selfie while you were at the library hashtag it this or, you know, put it on instagram and show your friends what you’re doing this summer, and so that could be a way to recruit volunteers and get them to you show their their other friends what they’re doing for the summer. What are we doing in the channels in these facebook ads or instagram? Whatever to advertise the the volunteer possibilities, what we what we saying? What are we showing, etcetera? A great regular facebook campaign reading partners, which each week we have a feature called thank you tutor tuesday we feature a picture of the tutoring question and the student they work with if both have photo permission don’t use real names in many instances, but it gives a glimpse into either of them working together or them doing something fun together. Maybe during a spirit week with cem, funny props of what it looks like for them to be volunteers, and also matched that with a quote from them about their volunteer experience that lets them speak from their own perspective and give people that do follow us on social media is chance to say okay, maybe i could do this and work with a student that looks super happy and keep with their tutor. Right? Must be other stuff we could talk about online before we before we go to the next topic. What else? Yes. Oh, at melanoma counting library. We have a monthly volunteers spotlight, which is not a new thing. Many organizations have monthly voluntary spotlights to showcase what their volunteers were doing, and what that is is it doubles as both a recognition tool and a recruitment tool. Because you are recognizing the volunteer by saying, hey, you are so great that we want to talk about you and we want to post you know, this blogger on on our website, and then we share it on our social media channels, but also when other people see that they see oh, that’s, what a volunteer does who you know is teaching a citizenship class or is delivering books toe homebound patrons. I’m interested in that not just learning about somebody else doing that, but maybe i can do that, too. And so it doubles. Is recognition and recruitment excellent, excellent. All right, i like, uh, thank a tutor tuesday. Gotomeeting every partners your own hashtag was that your idea? I think it was a collective decision. Okay, i like i like a little rations. So on this show, i ii send live listener love because show street live, i have podcast pleasantries for the podcast listeners. I’ve affiliate affections for the am and fm station listeners, you know, so i do tony’s take, too. I’m over the moon with, as listeners of the show will know, with a liberation. Okay, uh, well, should we go? There we go offline. Anything else? What? I got online on the networks go online network. So good. I want to say, i don’t know if we even mention this, but we definitely use that reading partners, you know? Volunteermatch and, you know, volunteermatch croup, mint websites get amount of our two shot out. Some of the ones that you use a helpful idea. Why am i drawing a blank? So we definitely is craigslist volunteermatch is an idealist, idealist, idealist. We’ve done volunteer center, which is more local to the francisco bay area, but we’re on many and all, especially more local, more local, you know, centered silicon valley pages. Okay, that’s been a huge help over those who know where to go or choose to go to those kinds of pages for volunteer opportunities right way, use volunteermatch and also hands on greater portland, which is part of the hands on network through points of light and so hands on greater portland is more focused on the portland metro area. Volunteermatch of course, you can search through, you know, different areas, but is more national. And so both are great because with volunteermatch if you get people who moved to portland, we have a lot of people moving to portland, then they already know about volunteermatch from their past community, and so they just switched to portland, and so we find a lot of people who moved to the area are looking through volunteermatch postings and finding us, and even if they’re not interested in the specific position that we’re recruiting for, they will then be drawn to our website, find something else, apply and then become a volunteer. Yeah, you know, i want to mention one more that is it’s probably giving us some success because it’s fairly new it’s next door and for when you’re trying to engage the community when a a current volunteer for us, lives in the community in which we’re serving and they post about it it’s that peer-to-peer but of a larger network of community members that maybe we’d never even touched, which has been a really cool thing to try out. It’s cool, it’s cool. What next? Next door next door? Yeah. Okay. All right. Go. Another one that i haven’t used for recruitment yet, but i have scene people who are seeking volunteer. Opportunities uses read it. So i have a google search alert for anything mentioning volunteermatch portland, oregon and it’s just a way to be aware of what’s going on in the area and sew something will come up and somebody will say post on reddit for the portland read it general think gina likes your ideas about to put it in her notes way steal the best ideas, okay? And and so they you know, they’ll post hey, i’m looking for a volunteer position where can i go? And then people talk about hey, you should try the oregon food bank. You should try free geek, which refurbishes, you know, older computers and gets him into the hands of people who need them. And so those air probably the two that i see most often is is the oregon food bank and freaky, but then other ones will say, oh, well, i’m really wanting to volunteer at an environmental organisations so somebody might recommend friends of trees or something like that, so yeah, and that’s another thing is that with oregon food bank, you can. I’ve personally volunteered there, so i’m a huge fan. I had a birthday party there. I had a fallen bir birthday where i volunteered and then ones on the other side, i think of the first has to be mine, to be funny calling peer-to-peer and so, yeah, so volunteering at the oregon food bank, posting a healthy on twitter and instagram, and then we went to a place called oregon public house, which is a non-profit pub in portland and had beer eso with any of those aiken then go online and say, hey, have you tried oregon food bank? Because they’re great and here’s, why? All right, let’s, just move. Teo some of the partnerships, i think my voice just broke moved too. But thirteen years old. But partnerships you talked about finding and cultivating partnerships. Now we just touched on his very lightly. We’re talking about the possibility of what i mentioned chambers of commerce when you were talking about local organizations. Is there more we can say about finding and cultivating these partnerships? To find volunteers who wants to go wants to volunteer to talk about partnership volunteering opportunities? I can certainly speak briefly more gina’s area of expertise. She’s, right? I shouldn’t say anything quite the experience cultivating partnerships, but it’s important, teo follow-up i don’t know if you need to call it a strict list of partnership planning steps, but haven’t idea of first what you can offer or what your strengths are as an organization, then see what that potential partner can also offer you it’s making sure the relationship is mutually beneficial. If you want to move forward with more of a formal agreement in the future, make sure both parties are really going to get what they want out of it and along the way, sorry, go what types of organizations are we talking about? You have some examples? Yeah, we have one of our strongest partnerships within the silicon valley region of reading partners is with the department at san jose state university here, locally it’s child in the adolescent development and their students who go through several different classes learning about various stages of child development, and they come to us. We have a program tailored to their needs as far as a service learning requirement, and their program it’s little bits is actually tailored to our curriculum and tutoring so local college you could look at college university another example of successful partnership. Organization? Yeah, new partnership we have just going on is with actually a food truck collective that’s all over the basement. Portland. I know, right? Okay. Great terminology around trucks, which you’ve gotten since i was there, but a cluster. What was it? A pod? A pod, right. That’s right apart? Yes, i heard that. It’s a cluster of trucks. You don’t call it a cluster or collection? You call it a pod, but their carts there lorts their carts, not truck that’s, right? That’s why i’m getting that wrong to not trucks the cards, but you would never say i’m going to the part of cards. You would just say i’m goingto just like on the pot. I mean, you might say that, but i wouldn’t wait. Don’t have carts here in silicon valley. Well, their truck’s, but they call them courts, owe their trucks. You put your right thumb and there’s a lot of a lot of times. They’re trailers that really there that you can’t drive them. They just have to hitch onto something. But either way, they’re called the coal carts. I’m going to the cards or the pod, but not the part of cards. Not say that you would be laughed out of portland. Okay, um, we gotta wrap this up in a few. Actually, this one fast. All right. Well, guy’s got about another minute or so let’s focus on the partnerships. What was the one you were just mentioned? The new one you were starting at? It’s called off the grid. Food trucks and group. Yeah, they have a very important emphasis on community in their markets. So we’re able to get an in with one of their markets in san jose. And we’re gonna have a regular appearance at there sunday. Food truck gathering its great. Let me turn the liza. You have any, uh, successful partnership type organisations? Yeah. So, atmel, uma county library. We don’t have too many formal partnerships in terms of volunteer, but we do reach out to our there’s, a local cohort cohort of library students from emporia university. And so they meet here in portland. And so we can send information about different volunteermatch positions that we have for them, and then they can come and get engaged. There’s also? Ah. Library media specialist program. I believe at portland community college. And so we can easily reach out to that college. Okay, so look, a civic organizations is tearing. You were saying like minded organizations where there are potential volunteers. All right, you’re gonna wrap it up. There are ladies cloudgood some excellent unison. Amazing, remarkable panel. Okay, liza dire. I have to turn. I know should with multnomah county library and know that m c l but she’s a cva so divided volunteered ministrations and the program coordinator for volunteers served asses and next to her in the middle is gina roberti, community engagement manager at reading partners and taryn kearns americorps volunteer coordinator also at reading partners. Ladies, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Lots of ideas. That’s a good resource is do i love the tools? Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc sixteen the sixteen. Ninety cf courses the hashtag but it all stands for non-profit technology conference in twenty sixteen at the san jose convention center thank you so much for being with us board unity or dissent coming up first pursuant fund-raising like a boss that’s therefore part webinar siri’s starting in january if you like to bake, you could fund-raising like a cake, boss. Your master discovery questions major gift solicitations, prospecting and prioritising and getting your board to fundraise oh, that’s, critical board fund-raising you can’t make all four sessions, no problem, they have you covered. You’ll get the recordings info is at pursuant dot com slash training slash webinar and again it’s called fund-raising like a boss, we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising are you kicking off millennial engagement in our new year twenty seventeen do it with stand up comedy, live music, dancing and raising money and spelling. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. First, i did your trump challenge video. Now this week i have your trump challenge reduction director’s cut and the director’s cut you will find that toluca, the jack russell terrier and i have a challenge for you at your end going forward based on what tallulah and i believe might be in store under a trump presidency to lula has very good insight wait and that’s why i enlarged her part in the reduction director’s cut version both videos, the original and the director’s cut or at toni martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two here is jeanne takagi with board unity or descent. Jean takagi. You’re out there, right? I am, honey, i know you are. You’re the managing attorney of neo, the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, that’s still true, right? Absolutely. And fire yourself, all right, and you also still edit the popular non-profit low block dot com, and on twitter, you’re at g tak gt a k right, all correct, okay, just like the check. Double check the biographical information every every once in a while. And plus, being an attorney, i don’t like to ask questions that i don’t know the answer to, so i knew that was all correct. All right, gene, we’re talking about unity and dissent on your board this arose from, although we’re not going to nit pick the details of this, but this arose from a university of virginia proposal that that board members silence their descent and there was a little bit shocking for some people to read in the paper when they read about ebba talking about so sad, discouraging or actually prohibiting dissenting board members from publicly expressing their view. And that was just a proposed policy that somehow got released to the public, and some people were very, very upset about it thinking of it a censorship um and that caused them once, you know, the public was made aware of it. There was all sorts of articles in the washington post and other newspapers about it, and they rescinded that part of the proposal, but they kind of added a more common governance spot after about well, you can talk about your descent publicly, we won’t. We won’t chill that from happening, but once a decision is reached by the board. The board members each have a responsibility to ensure that the board’s actions and decisions are successfully implemented. So they really downgraded their initial thought. But it was a a source of a lot of controversy at the time. And i think it’s a really interesting subject. Yeah, i love that. Some dissenter released to the public, the non dissenting policy hyre and that there that’s interesting at virginia. I just this is just a small detail, but they call their board the board of visitors. I thought that was interesting. Hey, i i i do it. Well, i don’t know what the historical artifact of that is, but it is their governing body. Yes. This’ll all go back to the days of this is from thomas jefferson, i think is the founder of via university that’s a little bit ironic and some people’s mind about, right? You know, quenching public dissent? Yeah, this statesmen who spoke out of, um and they’re doing just the opposite. But askew said it turns out they’re not doing it, that that part of the proposal was was killed. There is, in fact, value in diversity and dissent. On aboard, right? Yeah, absolutely way need tohave open discussion. And in a lot of governance, experts will say having a culture that encourages open dissent is actually one of the most important indicators of bored effectiveness, the opposite being, you know, usually a culture of group think and rubber stamping one person’s decision and all just sort of reinforcing, you know, the first point of view that comes up rather than actively debating and thinking about, you know, critically thinking about what would be the best decision of the board amongst all of the possibilities. So so every board vote should not be one hundred percent in a unanimous in fact, it’s you’re saying it’s a good sign if there’s there is disagreement. Yeah, but, you know, from from time to time and that’s, you know, a pet peeve of mine and many other lawyers that work with non-profit boards to see by-laws that say board actions will only be taking taken if there is a unanimous vote in favor of aboard actions. That’s really just chills. You know, the board from discussing, you know, individual boardmember from discussing their dissenting opinions. That’s part of some by-laws of some organizations that has to be a one hundred percent vote. Yeah, after my gosh, she is an uncommon to find consensus. A xero required vote, teo get bored. Action. Well, but consensus could be an easy majority or two thirds or something, but but you see it often that it’s one hundred percent unanimous requirement. Yeah. It’s not uncommon. I wouldn’t. I would i would say, you know, it’s, not the majority of by-laws permit that, but certainly i’ve seen several that that require one hundred percent consensus vote in order to take aboard action, and that is to promote their culture. What they feel like is a culture, a beauty. Mmm. All right, there are ways of dealing with the descent in a in a board discussion on dh valuing the honesty and the openness and the diversity if you just if you just manage and facilitate the conversation yeah, you know, you’re absolutely right. And i think it takes a really skilled chair of the board or whoever is the presiding officer at the board meetings to really encourage that. That dissent without letting it, you know, devolved into infighting and ah, and, uh, a culture where nobody wants to be there, and everybody is apprehensive about showing up at the next board meeting because there is that culture of stress and tension and disagreement. So it is a bit of a balancing act, and i think it actually like many, many things take some exercise. The effort, teo, create that culture of open dissent where, you know, people can descent. This takes place in families too, doesn’t it? Tony, especially in italian cultures, open dissent and at the dinner table, but always mine afterwards. Yeah, i went after the thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house. When, when i was walking down the sidewalk in getting into the car to drive home, i realized how quiet it was. I felt like i had been in a springsteen concert for, like, four hours. And then i was back at home and my ears were almost ringing. Yes. So there’s a healthy descent at least among my cacophonous family. Yeah, for sure and my part of the family. And i have ah, through marriage, some italian family as well. And yes, it is this healthy dissenting atmosphere, but it’s very vibrant it’s encouraging of discussion. Um and at the end of the day, they can move forward. So, you know, creating that culture is not necessarily the easiest thing, especially for non-profit board, who may not meet so often like the way family gets to meet andi, everything gets remedy, you know, the next time they have dinner, but when you meet, like once every other month or once every quarter on and that’s, the only time you see these people, you may be a little hesitant about, you know, starting a fight by by presenting a dissenting views. So i think it takes practice. And, you know, one way you might practise is and there’s some dangers to this as well. But in short, formal, just say creating a doubles advocate for a particular issues, you know, in a particular issue, maybe where the board all sees the thing, you know, in the same light and would all vote unanimously in favor of it. Maybe at that time assigning one person to just raise issues and take the other part and encouraging discussion to see what happens. And you may end up with still the same opinion, but ah aboard that’s learned to discuss things a little bit more. Vigorously and critically look att issues and weigh conflicting viewpoints. There’s a policy governance model from interestingly, from a married couple, the carvers that has some very good ideas for howto manage this whole process and maintain good governance. Yeah, and they’re they’re aspects of the carver policy governance model that i really like and and it is a model that encourages discussion, even passionate disagreement, i think they say to rip represent the diversity on the board, hopefully the diversity in all kinds of ways, on the board, with different perspectives in different ways of looking at things. But i think part of the model says is once you’ve made a vote, you know whether it’s a unanimous vote or if it’s a five for a slim majority vote and that’s enough to take board action, the ceo and the staff have got to treat it the same way. It’s a board decision in favor of going a certain direction and that’s what needs to be implemented. And so the carver model goes on to say, you know, if a boardmember two cents, you know, with that, well, you should absolutely record that descent. So in a five, four vote, you’ll record those who have presented their dissenting opinions, not necessarily by name. However, if they don’t want their name to be to be entered into there, if they’re minutes or public, they may feel that that might chill future board discussion if they’re not in the majority. So, you know, it could just indicate that there was a five four vote and anybody who wants to be on record as dissenting should have their name recorded otherwise, maybe not, but if if the if you do disagree with it and you want to go out and publicly say it, we don’t chill that process, you let them say that, but they’ve got to balance that with a duty of confidentiality, so they have to make sure that they’re not releasing confidential information out there. They have to be careful of not chilling board participation in future discussions. So if they go, you know, john smith disagreed with me, and he came up with all sorts of terrible arguments in favor of that. Well, that’s not going to be a healthy way to descend, you know, naming out individual board members who disagreed with you and, you know, taking down their argument without the chance for them to present the side. And then i think what’s important about the carver model. The balance is that if a boardmember disagrees, they should go on to say, on the record, whoever they’re speaking out to in the public, that the process used by the board with proper so they disagreed, but they were in the minority. But the process used was proper to get all those things out there and that hopefully we’ll create a good culture of open dissent and ability to expect dissenting views in public without harming the organization. All right, there was a lot in there that this is getting into the details. Very interesting of of good governance, right? I mean, a lot of times we talk about good governance and it stops with well, you should have a conflict of interest policy. You have a whistle blower policy document retention. But this is getting into the process of board meetings that create good governance and proper oversight. Yeah. And you know, onboarding typically take actions that board meeting. So how boardmember things air run? How their chairs, what type of discussions you choose toe have. Board meetings when in the meeting do you take your, you know, place your most important discussions? Maybe it shouldn’t be approving the board minutes right at the front where everybody, you know has the energy to vigorously discuss important issues. Maybe that gets put in the back. So prioritizing what you’re goingto, you know, discussed at the board meetings and creating that culture of open descent and possibly allowing everybody toe argue different points beforehand, circulating that in the board agenda and sort of meeting prep materials would be a very good and healthy way to get bored to be able to discuss the most important things to the organization because boards are ultimately in charge of the organization. You mentioned the agenda, and this ah, this carver policy governance model, which, by the way, you’ll find it. Carver governance dot com has something to say about the agenda who should be creating the board agenda because that could that could be a source of of dissension also is what belongs on our agenda for the month or whatever. For the for the meeting. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely true. I don’t actually, i’m not familiar with how, how carver’s model treats who will create the what’s? What typically done is is bored chairs. After conferring with the executive, the executive director’s, ceo of the organization developed the agenda. But i think knowing what i do about policy governance, it is openly encourage other board members to chime in as the chair developed the agenda. Ah, figure out what topics are most important to the organization and figuring out at that point how to proceed with finalizing the agenda and the meeting materials beforehand on dh that’s, very consistent with what carver recommends in there in there model, which is that the board developed its agenda. Not that the ceo create the agenda for the board. Yeah. You know, that’s, uh, i don’t wantto go too far off, but that’s sort of the problem with when the board acts by written consent because whoever drafts that that consent and circulates it is possibly planted just one point of view and argued only one side of it. And that can be very persuasive. And nobody has had a chance to look at the other side. So developing an agenda with only one point of view can make things look very, very. One sided in developing organisation melkis rubber stamped the chairs decision. Okay, we’re going to go out for a break for a few minutes. You mentioned a consent agenda for the break you’re in, george, in jail for that, and we come back. I’ll offer you a quick, a quick parole stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got more live listener to love to send out ottawa on ontario, canada, ottawa, the capital city of canada welcome live listener lived to ottawa in china we’ve got coming. Ni hao my first guest, gail bauer, did some work in china for the great wall foundation. I believe it is. I know she did work with a couple of clients in china. We’ve got hanoi, vietnam, we’ve got turkey, germany and seoul, south korea on yo haserot turkey and germany. I’m sorry, we can’t see your cities your mask, but we know that your country is represented live listener love to you and naturally podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift wherever the heck you maybe arjun takagi the you didn’t actually say the phrase consent agenda. I put that together for you and locked you up in george in jail. But you said consent and you were referring to agenda, so i’ll give you half a break. So could we explain what consent agenda is sure, andi, you know, i didn’t realize that i did not say that i thought i was accused and i was guilty, okay, but i don’t think we’re buy-in consent agenda. Is basically a group of routine, typically procedural, self explanatory, noncontroversial decisions that the board has to make, like approving the minutes of the last meeting, approving committee actions that were very non controversial and it’s done all in one action. So rather than going through them one by one and having a lot of discussion about each one if they don’t deserve that discussion, it’s just something that should have been read before the meeting it’s all presented on the consent agenda, one person moves to adopt it, it gets seconded, approved and then it’s done and you don’t have to spend, you know, half to your board meeting talking about thes routine on controversial board actions that everybody should have read beforehand and instead of, you know, having them read it at at the meeting and wasting everybody’s time. Thank you very much. Probation granted a parole parole granted program when how do we know when a boardmember has gone too far? You suggested that its fine for board members to speaking descent as long as they’re they’re not speaking on behalf of the board and they and they say that. But when does the boardmember go, too? Far, yeah. I wish i had one easy answer to that. And i think i mentioned before, you know, balancing against being a balancing that openness against the duty of confidentiality. So not giving away any confidential information and also not harming any individual on the board or sabotaging, if you will, the board action that ultimately was taken by majority vote, even though you were dissenting on it. So if you try to unwind and unwrap it, that that’s probably not acting in the best interest of the organization could harm the organization and their four year breaching your fiduciary duties. But exactly when when you cross the line is not always clear, for example. And if you thought the boarded approved an unlawful action, both well, it’s going to be you do need to speak out. And at worst case, you need to bring it to the attention of ah, the authorities in much more common cases. Maybe it’s something if you if you feel very strongly about that, you send a private letter out each boardmember and the ceo. And if somebody asks you about it, you just say you disagreed with it vigorously. But the process used again was proper, and a majority voted the other way. And if you really can’t live with that decision, think about resigning from the board, okay, the private letter to the individual boardmember is that’s an interesting approach, but that’s discreet but still could be very firm, right? And i think it allows you to state your argument in a way that you can get all your points across the way you might not be able to do at a board meeting when you know everybody’s interrupting each other and there’s this vigorous discussion amongst, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty people all trying to chime in in a short amount of time. Would you be asking if you felt that strongly about something for the board to reconsider its decision and have the discussion again at another board meeting? If it’s the type of decision that can be reconsidered, maybe it’s something that’s going to be? Ah, a strategic ah plan for the future and not a contract that has already been signed on dh where you can’t back out of it. If it’s something that far off enough that the board decision can be reversed in the organization can change course without any harm, and then yes, i think the board can reconsider it if if they didn’t get a chance to hear your arguments, perhaps because the board meeting cut short and didn’t give a chance give you the opportunity to put out all your points that you thought were very important, sending it in a board letter, at least to the chair of the board. But but possibly toto, all board members and and the executive might might be the right thing to do. Do you see money? Occasions? And we just have about a minute and a half left where an outside facilitator could be valuable for for these these kinds of difficult discussions in board meetings. Yeah, you know, i think when when the board starts to disagree each other and creates this culture, not only have open dissent but of open ah hostility, yeah. So just where they can stand each other anymore, i think you really need to get a facilitator to help. Ah, figure out the process and howto get boardmember to understand their different viewpoints. You also have tio select board members very carefully, not only for for their diversity and skills and backgrounds, but also for their ability. Teo operate in a culture that that encourages dissent on where they they’re not afraid to speak out, even if they may not be in the majority view point. That’s, that’s really important in our democracy on, certainly in aboard as well. My voice just went up like a high school girl like you often voice cracked like a fourteen year old, and i do that all the time. No, but it is very important. That’s, a very, very interesting point two to bring in the recruitment process, the not only the skill that you might be seeking real estate attorney, whatever, but fitting into the culture of the organization and the culture of the board. Yeah, i i think that could even be a valid statement for the organisation when it when it, you know, think about all of the valleys that it wants to to promote is encouraging dissenting views as a core governance or organizational values. Okay, jean, we’re gonna leave it there. I want to thank you very much. You will find jeans, blawg at non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter, you’ll find him at g tack again. Jean, thanks so much. Thank you. You have a happy holiday. Thank you very much. You two we’ll talk next month next week seven security pitfalls. They’re not sexy, but they are very important. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. 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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 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 sort of dane toe add an email. Address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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Nonprofit Radio for December 5, 2014: Corporate Sponsorship Coup & Board Unity Or Dissent

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Sponsored by Generosity Series, a nationwide series of multi-charity 5K events that provide a proven peer-to-peer fundraising platform to charities and an amazing experience for their participants.

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Gail Bower: Corporate Sponsorship Coup

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

 

 

 

Gene TakagiGene Takagi: Board Unity Or Dissent?

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

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