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Nonprofit Radio for November 6, 2023: Your Website Performance

 

Charles LehositYour Website Performance

The first of its kind, 2023 Nonprofit Website Performance Report reveals startlingly disappointing performance across nonprofit websites. RKD Group’s Charles Lehosit explains the shortcomings and how to make the advances needed, so your site’s vital signs improve.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite Hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into Primo Dinia if you pained me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, your website performance. The first of its kind 2023 nonprofit website performance report reveals startlingly disappointing performance across nonprofit websites. RKD groups. Charles Laos. It explained the shortcomings and how to make the advances needed. So your site’s vital signs improve on Tony’s take two. Thank you were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org. Here is your website performance. It’s a pleasure to welcome Charles Laust to nonprofit radio. He has been described as an entrepreneur solutions, architect, strategist, technologist, and futurist. He’s got a lot of people describing him. Uh It’s uh it’s, it’s admirable just that you got that many people thinking about what you are as Vice president for technology at RKD Group. Charles develops solutions that answer nonprofits business needs. He’s a leading expert in application development, email marketing, lead generation, mobile development website development. We’re gonna talk a lot about mobile versus website and artificial intelligence. He’s on linkedin and the company is at RKD group dot com. Welcome to nonprofit radio, Charles. Thanks Tony. Nice being here. Nice to meet you. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. Thank you. We are talking about the 2023 nonprofit website performance report. Uh I’m sure you believe that this report was, is important. We needed it, right? I’m not gonna ask you, you know, but what, why, why should we be paying attention to uh the speed with which websites load? So um two things, one organic traffic is such an important source for uh traffic to your website and ultimately for your online revenue, right? There’s probably no nonprofit on earth would like to say, yeah, I, I’m fine to give up some, not some organic traffic from search. And so because of organic searches, like uh critical role in that valuable traffic. A lot of nonprofits are paying for um SEO or uh to optimize their website. And so this is um this is a, a critical uh component in that optimization and it’s something that nonprofits that are paying for SEO should doubly pay attention to because um you know, the it’s very easy to wipe out your seo investment. If you are, you know, you pay for seo and, and optimize a page, it’s, it’s not frozen in time as updates are made to that page, as updates are made to your site, you’re making impacts that are uh impacting your, your core web vitals. That’s some jargon. And uh and ultimately your, your page speed uh scores. All right. Well, we got a few things there. Now. What’s the jargon? You said, You said it so fast, I didn’t even catch it. So, uh Google, Google has coined the term core web vitals, core web vitals. CWVS. Of course, it’s common knowledge. You CWVS, it’s like EKG, you need an annual EKG. Uh you, you gotta watch your CWVS exactly a little bit, uh more frequently than annually. But, um, not every day, not every day. We do have some people that just obsess and I love you all that obsess over it just don’t obsess over it every day. Uh So core web vitals describe um the end user experience with your website and it’s completely defined by Google. And if we think about like Google has a pattern of doing this, right. Google has told us over the years that security matters. And if you don’t have an SSL certificate, if your website doesn’t have http S support in it, uh then that’s gonna impact your ability to rank and be found in search results. If your website doesn’t support, um, mobile, uh then that’s gonna impact your ability to be uh to rank in search results. I remember though, I remember those being issues that we, we have to pay attention to mobile now because whatever it was, 85% of users are opening page, we websites on mobile. So now we have to be mobile optimized. That was like that was like the uh there was a cry for a year or so, you know, um accessibility was another one. Exactly. Stability is important. Um And I remember the HTTP S too, the uh S we all got to get a HTTP S. All right, this is the, this is the uh it’s the, it’s the, that’s the banner call for the year. Now, we all gotta be secure sites. I remember these things. Exactly. So Google’s definitely ratcheted up like, you know, think of like security is important. No one’s gonna argue against that, you know, mobile optimized is, is, you know, in accessibilities board, no one’s gonna uh argue that but you think of the stairway of complexity and now it’s almost like they’re saying you got to leap three or four steps on this next one because they’ve really combined. Um There’s more than one metric and, and the core web viles where security was really binary is you either have, you know, an SSL certificate or you don’t, you are secure, you’re not and, and mobile optimized, you could argue is the exact same way. And so core web vitals are, um, are definitely uh more complex uh metrics for, for really all organizations. All right. So it’s, it’s, it’s more technical. We’re, we’re, we’re refining. I’m not sure, you know, uh a, a to me, accessibility is a big thing. Security. Very big thing. Mobile optimized. Very big thing. Um I, I mean, these are important. I’m not saying I’m not saying the report is frivolous but uh I wouldn’t have you on if I thought it was frivolous subject. You know, we I’d be talking to someone else naturally. So and so you would be too right now. So, so, so, so I’m not saying that, but we’re like, we’re, we’re getting uh more degrees of refinement. So maybe more precise, precise degrees of refinement of the, the our our internet experience experience. Google is trying to define what a good user experience is and that’s, it’s so hard, right? And so what Google is trying to say is that a good user experience starts with, how quickly does your content load, how quickly is the most amount of content available? And, and when your content is available, uh does it shift around? So when someone starts to, to read something on your page, does the content jump to another area and they have to go look for it uh like an Easter egg? And so that’s, that describes uh at a high level, the core web vitals and, and Google is really trying to say this is what um this is what makes up a good user experience. OK? And just make it explicit for us why Google gets this credibility? I mean, how, how much of search is still done on, on Google versus the, the, the, the alternatives? Yeah, like all of it. No, not all of it. It was like 99% and then 1% for bing and, and, and, you know, I think a lot of people in the search business are paying attention to A I agents and what they’re possibly doing to Google’s business. But the reality is that um Google search, Amazon search uh being searched. These are, these are um this is where people go to seek information, get questions answered still today. And so Google dominates that space and so that allows them and has allowed them for years to dictate the terms to say, you know, hey, if you want, this is what you need to do to um you know, be found by Google’s users, right? So what Google wants to do what they want to avoid is for, for you. Whenever you’re searching for something and you go to a result that Google’s put in front of you, they don’t want you to go to that result and then have such a poor experience that you come right back and you then maybe give up on Google and go somewhere else, go to Facebook or go, go somewhere else. And so um Google is, is uh you know, letting people know by these metrics, the folks that are, that have better co of violence that have better, they are performing better. They will uh outrank you if it’s one for one, you know, if you have the same similar content and um you think about like cancer research, so similar content, similar like health related articles, uh the article that has better core rev vitals is going to uh uh should outrank the, the, the other. OK. All right. Thank. Just wanna make this uh make it explicit why, why this is important. Um And clearly, there’s some Google self-interest too. They don’t want people to get results that they’re not satisfied with. Uh because you know, that’ll, that’ll hurt their, that’ll hurt their own, ranking, their own, their own experience. Uh People’s experience with them, I should say, yeah, and they have to provide value so they can provide more advertising. OK. Yes, we’re very concerned about their, their bottom line. All right. So these core web values, is that what is that the uh the multiple factors that are measured uh in the, in the report, these are the core web values. That’s absolutely right. Like overall, OK. So cool. Let’s start with uh just following your report. Uh Le let’s, let’s first tell folks uh cause I may forget later. So you have a lackluster host. I’m sorry about that. I may forget later to tell folks where to get the report. So where can they get the full report? Oh, gosh. Um So, well, it’s at the RKD group dot com group. This is our 2023 nonprofit website performance report. And if you Google uh nonprofit website performance report will, would be the first result. Um And yeah, we also have a blog post that I wrote um called Website Performance Matters and you’re probably failing at it. Um very cheeky there. Sorry. And that links to the this research um which is, you know, freely available for, for everyone, right? And the research also links to the blog post. We’re gonna talk about both because the blog post has the uh the what to do about the poor performance that you are uh that odds are you are experiencing? All right. So it just gave away a little bit, but let’s get into the details of the first uh core value, you know, vital, core value, we core web vitals, they are like vital signs, right? Your blood, you have to measure your uh your oxygen saturation, your blood pressure, your heart rate and your overall performance of your website. Exactly what, what is, what, what is overall performance? So it’s a, a cumulative score that’s based off of a lot of jargon. Um So let’s, let’s, let’s mention the jargon names and then we can unpack those, but the cumulative score is based off of first contentful paint. That’s 10% of your score speed index. That’s another 10% of your score. Largest contentful paint that’s 25% of your score. Total blocking time, 30% of your score and then cumulative layout shift, that’s 25% of your score. Hopefully that we’re gonna talk about some of these, the the content, especially the content full. Uh One the first, the largest we’re gonna, we’re gonna break these down. So not to worry uh Charles is not in jargon jail because uh we’re go, we’re gonna, we are gonna define these and talk about them. It’s time for a break. Are you looking to maximize your fundraising efforts and impact this giving season? Donor Box’s online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals from customizable donation forms to far-reaching easy share, crowd funding and peer to peer options. Plus seamless in-person giving with donor box live kios. Donor Box makes giving simple and fast for your donors and moves the needle on your mission, visit donor box dot org and let donor box help you help others. Now, back to your website performance. So overall performance is a, is a an amalgam of the fact that the uh the vitals that you just mentioned, I love, this is vital signs. You know, it’s the health, it’s the health of your, you know, just like the health of your body is based on your weight and body mass index and like blood pressure, etcetera. The uh the vital signs of your website. All right, same thing. Uh Overall performance. Uh I, I’ll, I’ll leave the headline for you. How are we doing overall performance? So, overall performance, um you know, 80% of nonprofits are, are failing um at their core web vitals. And I, I think many are many more are paying attention this year than ever before. Uh But I think many are still, this is an area that’s new to them and, and where they need some uh some help with awareness and education here. And um you know, to kind of develop like new habits, new good habits, as you mentioned. Uh how do you keep your healthy, bo your body healthy, you know, the same, same kind of starts. So applied to your, your website uh when it comes to adding, adding new content, what are you eating? What are you putting into your website? Well, is that new image uh optimized for the web or is it, you know, a giant five megabyte file, that type of thing? OK. And now for each of these vital signs, uh they’re evaluated in mobile, you evaluated them. You, you, you, you did, you do the study or you just uh were you actually doing the, the, you were 2000 websites that you evaluated? Did, did you actually do the work? Did you actually do the work? Put the, put them in uh both um I came up with the, the concept and um I do a lot of this work uh for individual uh nonprofits like our, our clients at RKD. And so, um, you know, we started with, uh I think a list of uh 3000 nonprofits and uh that got whittled down a bit, but we had a, a really good representation of uh the industry and the different sectors uh within our industry. And uh so, absolutely. Um uh I was, you know, part of this part of this study. Um It’s, and you’re right, there is a, a desktop version of these scores and a mobile version of these scores. If you’re paying attention, you know, your desktop scores are a lot more forgiving, they’re probably a lot better than your bubble scores and your mobile scores. You probably wish uh you could ignore this. But what, yeah, we’re gonna talk about each, each of these factors, as I said. But why is it that overall mobile uh uh performance on, on mobile devices is much poorer than on desktop devices. Why is that? So, um it is, is primarily the, the amount of content that we’re putting into our, our pages, right? And so uh think of, think of anyone’s home page and there’s uh almost no end to what people feel like I need to. This is the f front page uh o of our, our online experience of our user experience. And so there’s so much there and we often want it to be interactive and so maybe we want video to it. And so video on desktop is more forgiving because most people have a broadband connection, video on mobile. Uh you know, Google will judge you over like a four G connection. And uh and so it’s less forgiving to have all of this like really heavy interactive experiences and content on on mobile. And so I, I think that’s a good spot to say like achieving 100 isn’t the end goal here. Um You know, we wanna have positive scores, we have good scores so that we rank well. But um sacrificing what you need to communicate, a message shouldn’t be the goal. Uh Meaning like here, here is a uh uh a dark page with light text, here’s a, a light page with dark text and that’s it like that’s, we’re not, no one’s arguing that we go there to that extreme. Although that would, you would score really well. Well, that was, yeah, but that was back in uh dial up and uh DS L days when, before, before we had images and everything was text and, and page load speeds were like 30 seconds. Yeah. And so um and, and some of the mobile scores are still impacted by um that like a four G connection uh time. And so we know we know that’s not everyone on mobile. And so we just have to be aware of that’s, that’s part of uh what, how Google is kind of ranking and judging our, our mobile scores and the report breaks it down by uh by sector. You have probably eight or so uh sectors for each of these vital signs. We’re not gonna go into them. Folks can get that kind of detail if it’s, you know, arts and culture versus education, etcetera versus human services, et cetera. But um we’re, we’re, we’re doing poorly in mobile. Uh I mean, the, the percentage of yeah across the board, right? It doesn’t matter what your sector. Um the um the the percentages of pages that either failed or were poor were poor or needed improvement is very much higher than the ones that were made it good. Unfortunately. Un un un very true. OK. And uh and desktop uh much different desktop scores, it’s across all sectors. It does. And, and one of the reasons for that is Google doesn’t put the same threshold of four G on desktop like it does on mobile. And, and so it’s easier to, to score higher on on desktop. And part of the reason that is also if we think about like where do we often start when we’re designing? So many are still starting from desktop and then thinking well, this all of this will just kind of scale for mobile but it’s mm it’s still quite a bit uh for mobile there. And it’s, it’s why, you know, if we, we think about what might it take to score better in mobile. It’s gonna probably take a lot more folks starting with a mobile design and scaling that up. Interesting. Ok. Ok. Uh ok. So let’s move to our, our next vital sign. 1st, 1st I I, the layman’s term is first piece of content. That’s exactly right. Yeah, but you have a fancy, you have a fancy term. What was it? So, first, contentful paint, first, contentful paint. It’s contentful or contentful. It’s, I guess it’s got to be contentful. It, it is, it’s paint 1st, 1st contentful paint. Exactly. Why don’t they just call it first piece of content? You know, why do these mit engineers need to need to complicate things? All right, it’s the first piece of content that loads on your site, right? That so it could be a text block or it could be an image or it could be, I don’t know your header or what, what? Right, any of those things could be first. And so this is really, um this me metric measures the first point in which the user can see anything, anything. And the first paint, um a, a fast first paint should happen in, you know, 1.8 seconds or less, which today sounds reasonable. But um you know, we start adding doodads and video and we start looking at it maybe a three second first paint and then all of a sudden you’ve got a lower score right over three was poor, isn’t it? Exactly. Exactly. Uh Right. So, between 1.8 and three was uh needs improvement and then over three was poor. Where did we get? So, attention deficit that three seconds is a, is, is a long time. Um That’s a, that’s a, maybe that’s a, uh when, when did we, when did we, uh when did the goldfish beat us on our attention? On an attention span? Right. That’s a metaphysical question. Uh Maybe more for a neuroscientist or something. So, uh but all right. So three seconds is poor for the first piece. And then we’re not talking about the whole, we haven’t gotten to the whole site yet. This is for all the content we’re talking about the first piece longer than three seconds poor. Exactly all the largest, the largest pain is probably a natural place to go next, right? So I just want, I just want to make clear that we’re uniformly bad. 1st, 1st piece uniformly bad on mobile, uniformly better at desktop. It’s so much easier to score better on desktop, right? OK. Yeah. Largest go ahead. Largest paint will be um the, the point at which the largest content is loaded. So that, that, you know, maybe just dropping content f and just call it first paint, largest paint in your head at work. So largest paint would be, when is the majority of your content available for the your end user, your visitor, your, your prospective donor or supporter. And this is you know, shockingly fast, right? This needs to be shockingly fast. So you think about if a good score is 1.8 seconds or less for first paint, a fast largest paint is still uh 2.5 seconds or less. And so it, it the majority of your content cannot uh take too long to follow the first part of your content. And in Google size, right? So still under we’re under three seconds, 2.5, 2.5 seconds. Yeah. And you know, there’s a lot of studies in the ecommerce world that, that show that the cost of doing business. If your ecommerce site, you know, if you could shave a second off of your ecommerce site, what that normally does to, uh to um revenue and conversion rate and, and we don’t like to think of donors and, and nonprofit constituents in the same way, but they’re the same people, the same people that are shopping on Amazon are on your web, right? Amazon and its ilk have raised the bar for, for all websites. People expect that kind of seamless performance uh experience uh because they get it from Amazon. So, so they’re ticked off when they don’t get it from your nonprofit. Exactly. But which is not really fair if Amazon can do it. Why can’t you? Well, uh, ok, because Amazon has, I don’t know, trillion dollar research budgets and tens of thousands of engineers and you don’t. But, uh everybody’s, let’s face it. Everybody is not that, uh, not that forgiving when they evaluate, uh, their experience with your nonprofit. Uh, I, I see that even, especially among, I’m thinking about board members who have their own businesses. Uh, they’re a lot more forgiving of their own businesses than they are of the nonprofit board that they sit on. Um. All right. All right. So, let’s, let’s take a break from, we’re gonna get to the next one after largest content, but uh folks can evaluate their own websites. Oh, yeah, the same, the same way you did, right? With the 2000 that you put in, where, where do, where do people go to evaluate their own site and, and have it measured quickly? Yeah, great question. So, um in Google, Google Page Speed Insights, uh the URL is page speed dot web dot dev, um you don’t have to remember that if you just Google Page speed insights, this page speed one word insights would be the second word. Uh This should be the first result for you and then put in your URL and, and keep in mind when you put in that URL, that’s just one page. You’re testing, you’re not testing your whole site. And so, um just keep in mind like in, in probably when you’ve got people giving you opinions on this, um like a board member, uh they might, if they took a peek at your scores, it’s probably just your home page, which is probably the most content heavy page and, and you have, you hopefully know your top landing pages that drive, uh, you know, your most valuable traffic and this, that and the other. So, uh, don’t just look at your home page, don’t just look at a donation form, take a look at your top landing pages and see how you’re doing, um, overall. Ok. Right. So that perfect sense. Yeah. Right. If you just put in your dot org and, and there, right. It’s just a home page, but you can drill down to those top pages that are, are that, that get the most hits that are most important to you and put those URL S in. And I did, I went to the tool. It’s very simple. It’s just like a Google, it’s just like Google search, just put a URL in and, and click and you’ll get scores on all these uh in all these factors, the vital signs, I don’t know what it’s called, but all the vital signs will be evaluated for your, for whatever URL you put in. I like that. I’m gonna just start calling it vital signs as well, like like respirations and and blood pressure. All right. Um Next one is our speed index score. What is this vital measuring speed index, how quickly your content um is visibly populated? So, uh this is just ultimately, how quickly does everything load? I know this sounds like it should already be captured uh in first paint and largest paint. It’s a separate metric for whatever reason in Google’s world and a fast speed index should be, um you know, 3.4 seconds or less. This is the whole page though. This is the whole page. Initially, we were measuring first piece of content, largest piece of content. Uh This is the entire page. This is the whole page. And do you think about the progression from 1st, 1st paint in 1.8 seconds or less? Largest paint? 2.5 seconds or less? And now the whole page in 3.4 seconds, it’s a, it’s not, you know, you’re talking about hundreds of a second milliseconds. It’s not a lot of time in between these things happening. All right. So 3.4. So the, the for the whole page, you’re letting you go over three seconds, but not, you can’t have 3.5 over 3.4 is needs improvement. Right. Exactly. And what was poor? What, what above what score is or above? What time was poor for the, the speed index score? Oh, gosh, let me actually look at the report on that one. Ok. I just, uh uh I’m just amazed by the lack of a lack of attention or lack of patience that we all have. I’m not, it’s not like I’m saying, I wait, I’m willing to wait 30 seconds for a page to load. And so a poor is together. But no, you’re actually right. A poor score is, um, so needs improvement is, um, sorry, I was actually reading the wrong thing. Um, it should be, uh, over four seconds for Needs for, uh, oh, so it gives you four seconds for the, it gives you four seconds. Yeah, for, for or for poor. Oh, over, wait, over four is poor. Ok. That’s not a lot of time for an entire page. Four seconds. And, and there’s so there’s research that sh that, that if people have to wait too long, they will, they’ll just go away. So um yes. And so what Google, you know what Google is saying is they’re seeing is like you click on a link and you come back or maybe you clicked on what a lot of people probably talk, you click on four links and you know, you’re, you know, you, you aren’t engaging with them or you’re not engaging with them long enough. So that Google goes like, ok, um you spent so many seconds here and it wasn’t enough, you know, this is quick, quick tangent, you know, but in, in Google Analytics four, there is a metric called an engaged session. And the default Google has deemed the default time for an engaged session is 10 seconds. And I, I think that most seconds that’s engaged, I think is engaged. I thought like 30 minutes is engaged. No, no, I think, and I think most of us would actually go like 10 seconds is, um, somebody just kind of window shopping. It’s just kind of like, what, where’s your phone number? What, where’s your address? Like 10 seconds is, and so in Facebook and Google’s world 10 seconds or more as an engaged session. Uh, but I think for a nonprofit that’s trying to make meaningful connections, uh You know, your metric should be, um, a minute, you know, it’s come on, I mean, I, I think Google needs more baby boomers. Uh, and, and, and great generation because we would say like 20 minutes is an engaged session. All right. Exactly. All right. Anyway, that engaging with a person anyway. But even a website, uh, 10 seconds. All right. Uh, yeah, a minute. It just doesn’t seem like a lot of time. I don’t, I mean, you’re reading things, I mean, videos, I understand videos are supposed to be 90 seconds or less. Um, all right. What a world we’re living in to flush it out like this. I mean, I’m, we’re all living it every single day but to talk about, to talk about these speeds, it’s, uh, it’s almost surreal that II I, it’s, yeah, it’s surreal. It’s hard to, hard to imagine it being true now for, uh, our nonprofit friends out there and, you know, when you’re ready you can change your, you can customize your definition of an engaged session and so your engaged session doesn’t have to be Google’s, um, you know, 12th definition you in the future, you can change it to be 30 seconds to a minute, 20 minutes, you can do that. But if you have Google Analytics for off the shelf with that, uh, default setting, it’s 10 seconds. Ok. All right. But it’s changeable. All right. At least, at least the thing is forgiving uh to by human, by, at least by my human standards anyway. All right. Um Let’s deal with accessibility. We’re, we’re doing, this is a good one. We’re doing, we’re doing, we’ve improved over the past many years and this one is the, the best of all the scores that we talked about. All the vital signs that we’ve talked about so far. I agree with you. I agree with you. We’ve in our physical uh locations. We are, have made our physical locations more accessible and inclusive. Uh It’s important that we make our online um content more accessible. Charles is Charles is showing the thickness of his glass. Charles has bad, bad eyes. All right. And so uh I’m not the only one and so we um Google is, is definitely made accessibility um a factor. And so um this is not a hard one to get, right? And you want to get this right? Is it actually 100% overlaps with Seo. So, you know, the alt text on an image. Well, that’s part of accessibility and that also is needed for Seo your good, good page headlines, good page titles. Uh good uh contrast so that people can read. So we’re not doing uh Tony. Let me, let me hear your thoughts on um gray font on a like really light gray font on a white page. That, that, that sounds terrible. I mean, 61 I would be, I would be squinting. Why does this have to be so hard to read? So, yeah, that um contrast is uh important and because it makes it easier to read. And so Google just has seen from people that um where things are, are hard to read. Um whether or not accessible for uh folks, they, they leave and they don’t come back. All right. Uh Th those are the vital signs that uh that I’d like to cover because I want to spend the rest of our time talking about what to do about these issues that you will have discovered when you go to page speed insights uh tool that, that Google tool. Um All right. So you have some advice about uh what, how to prioritize because you know, we, we wanna, we wanna have a good experience for our users. We also want to rank high as high as possible in Google search results. So how do, how do we approach the, the uh the remedy to, to what we, we are likely to discover because we’re all doing so poorly, especially especially in mobile. So um the, I guess I would say step zero is make sure that this is a priority for your whole team. Um You know, if you have a, a partner, uh it’s like an seo specialist or an agency that’s working with you, it can’t just be a priority for them because if you have different team members or even different teams that are creating content, uploading content, uh updating content on your website. Um You know, your, your website is rarely a static set and forget it thing. It’s, it’s um always being updated and touched. And so any investment that you make, um really, you have to have uh step zero b everyone on your team, everyone with your organization that touches the website has to be um you know, following um your own guidelines for uh your healthy vitals uh to have your, you know, healthy and positive vital signs once you’ve got that cause that’s really gonna be whether or not, hey, you know, I spent so much money I invested in, in improving this. And is it going to be the just as good as it was when the investment was delivered, the work was delivered or is it, is it eroded? We would, we really want to avoid uh wasting that investment. So, uh once you’re past steps here, I recommend that you do an audit of your website tags. And so these used to be um hard coded pixels. You know, people used to put a Facebook pixel and a Google pixel and every other pixel like hard coded into their site and we were taught. All right. That’s not the best way to do it. We have moved all of our tags to a tag manager, like Google tag manager or TLI m most nonprofits are using uh Google tag manager, so we’ll stick with that. And so that’s a good thing. Google tag manager makes it easier to control like where a pixel loads where, where an advertising tag loads or doesn’t load. Um What uh I think too many people do is they add tags and then they, but they’re not actually going back and saying what shouldn’t be here anymore. And so, uh here’s a, here’s a little question for the audience is uh how many of you out there uh have Google Analytics three tags still uh loading and your tag manager um As Google Analytics three isn’t capturing, isn’t collecting data for you anymore. And I bet, I bet it’s more than zero. So the tags and this is a, here’s a, here’s another uh neat trick to try. They call it a trick. It’s not, it’s not a trick if you have the ability to have a, like a staging environment for your site. And I hope that you all do. So if you mean, if you have a developer environment where you can make changes and it doesn’t, it doesn’t impact um the your, your site visitors experience do your page speed insights with no tags, like no tags on your, your staging side and see and then, then take a look at what the uh the same uh page speed score is with your production site with the tags on. That’s the cost of all of the, you know, conversion tracking your digital analytics. Um That’s the cost of, of, of that. And I’m not arguing like we, we need that knowledge, We need that information, but there’s a cost to it. There’s an expense and it’s going to impact your, uh, your vital signs. Uh, it’s gonna ultimately impact the, um, the page, uh, the page speed as the time to load the page will be like, do you have 200 tags, 300 tags and tag manager? And it’s all of those are loading. And so, um, it’s good for you to see the total cost of those. So you can know. Well, how often do I need? Can I, can, I just do spring cleaning once a year? Do I needed to have a program where we are looking at, um, retiring tags and removing tags every quarter? Um, it’s probably not, it doesn’t need to be that frequent as every quarter. But if, um, you’re not looking at it at least once a year, chances are, you’ve got like dozens of tags that could be, um, retired and removed and, and that are adding to your, that are lowering your score. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate and thank you for listening to nonprofit radio. I am grateful that you support the show that you’re listening to the show and I understand you might not listen every week, right? You might see a topic doesn’t work for you, but overall you’re subscribing and listening. And I am grateful I’m channeling you. I’m thinking about what topics interest you, guests, interest you, even while I’m talking to a guest, the questions that you would wanna ask. So I’m doing what I can to encourage you to listen and, and I’m, I’m, I’m glad that you’re there. I guess that’s all to say. I don’t take our listeners for granted. I’m grateful that you’re listening and I’m working hard along with Kate each week to uh keep you alone. We want you listening. So, thank you. Thanks for being with us. And that is Tonys Take two Kate. Thank you so much, nonprofit family for sticking with us and for staying with the pod father at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Thank you. All right. Yes, absolutely. Grateful for our listeners. Well, we’ve got Buku but loads more time now, back to your website performance with Charles Laos are tags getting added incrementally as, as content updates. Is that what happens to me? I thought tags were were, well, I had a misunderstanding about tags. Uh I, I thought they were just to describe o overarching, you know what the page is about. Oh no, no, no, that’s so there’s a tag in like wordpress can describe uh the content or the like, you know, describe maybe an image. Are we talking about page? Are we talking about page level or talking uh talking about um uh the the page level? But it’s not in the not in like your content management system, this would be uh like a Facebook pixel so that um your, so that Facebook can know whether or not this person converted on a Facebook ad or Google Google level where Google can know this person converted on a Google ad or, and that type of thing. So all of that, those are all pixels and tags that end up getting loaded on your site. And so those, you know, we, they were originally called a pixel, which sounds like a really innocuous thing, but really anymore, they’re a bit a piece of code that can load or pixels. And so it’s a bit of javascript that can load more code and, um, and it ultimately impact the, uh, the, the how fast or how not fast your sites. OK. OK. That’s for our, for our listeners and for me that that’s sufficient level of detail on tags. Pay attention to your tags, audit them. Sounds like semi annual, you know, twi twice a year or somebody should be paying attention to them at least once a year. I would, I would say at least once a year if you have, uh, you know, under 100 tags, if you have like, uh like 300 tags or more, then this should be a semi annual uh routine for you all. Ok. Excellent. Thank you. Uh, sliders. You’re concerned about sliders. Now, sliders is that these are these images that when you open them, I guess they’re mostly on a home page. But no, they could be other pages too. That’s true. I mostly see them home pages though. The, the, the images slides and there’s five or six dots for you to know how many, how many images there are gonna be or you can select them. Is that a slider? That’s exactly right. That’s a slider. These things. Uh They’re not so they’re not, they’re not so vogue anymore. They’re not um they’re a little out, they’re out there. I still see them around. I didn’t know people have a hard time letting go of their sliders. Right. OK. Why, why are they not as popular as they were like, what, three years ago or just or so? Was it in four years ago? Yeah, you’re right. No, they, they were the standard um three or four years ago for sure what happened, what happened to sliders. So, user experience experts and Google folks like Google have really been steering us away from um sliders where you have one space that has five messages, seven messages and it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, when you’re talking about that that main hero spot on your home page that first loads. There’s I I completely understand why you wanna have. Well, here’s message one and here’s message two. Totally understand why. Uh That is the um that’s gonna result in the, the, the biggest loss in in your health, your uh health vitals, your core web vitals. Um especially if you have, you know, 357 images. It’s not the text that loads in it. It’s the, the images because all of those images load on your site uh in the slider. And so it’s adding to the overall weight of the site. And um kind of a AAA good little sidebar on sliders is the um not enough nonprofits are optimizing the images for the web. And so, you know, it’s, it’s uh very common to see a one like every image to be one megabyte or larger. And so then, all right, you’ve got three images that’s three megabytes, five images, five megabytes and you’re talking about over a four second load time on mobile for sure. And so um here’s a little, a little secret for anybody. It’s free, tiny PNG, tiny PNG. Um you drop drag and drop your images into tiny PNG and they will, it’s a free service and it will uh give you an optimized version. So uh if you’re working in, I don’t know Photoshop, you’re playing around with how much compression should I do or don’t do, don’t do that just drag and drop your images to tiny PNG and um and use that free service to make sure the images on your site are optimized for the web. Cool. Well, I love free resources, tiny PNG dot com. Yep, that’s it. All right. All right. So sliders. So I get for, for, for folks that never implemented sliders when they were popular when they were vogue. So now you’re ahead, you, you, you, you’re so far behind, you’re ahead. You didn’t, you never did the sliders. Now, you’re, now you’re ahead. So it was, it was valuable. So it was worth it to not to not be, not be uh cutting edge. Now, that sounds like my approach to fashion. So yes, that is uh behind your head. That’s exactly right. You’re waiting for bell bottoms to come back. I am too. I know I am. I, I’m waiting to take out my bell bottom suits again. Um All right, sliders not so popular. Not a good idea. Uh The technology changes, I guess because they were, they were the seem to be the standard for website design for, for uh I don’t know how for how long, but I’m thinking like four or five years ago, they were, they were very popular. Lots of, lots of sites converted to the big, big bulky slider files. It was innovative at the, at the, when they first came out, it was innovative because like my, my, it solved the problem. My problem was I need to highlight more than one thing. OK. Yeah. All right. Uh What else? Uh We talk image optimization. I know that’s I snuck in there. Um tiny P NGA really great resource, tiny PNG for wordpress users has a wordpress plug in. Um They have a paid service and tiny PNG also um will let you put in a URL for your, you know, like similar to page speed inside. You can put in your um the page URL and it’ll analyze all of the images on that page and it’ll let you know um where you can do better and then it will offer you a download to have all of those images uh fully optimized. It’s I mean, oh my gosh, what a what a valuable free service. It’s, yeah, we love it. We love it. All right, tiny PNG dot com. Um You have something to say about light boxes, light boxes. So these are pop ups. These are moguls we’re going to call it but you can see but you lightbox, you can see through it, right? Light box where it’s semi uh semi transparent, semi opaque. These also had their moment. Uh I think, I think lightboxes came before sliders, I think. Yeah. Well, the definitely the, like the advertising pop up, that kind of I think introduced this idea of like, hey, why do I do that on my own side? Like I’m not, I I’m trying to say this is what I want you to focus on right now. This is the most important thing for you. So yeah, join our newsletter, sign our petition. OK. Light boxes are, are they, are they out like sliders or they’re, they’re just, you need to be judicious about their use or what we need to be really judicious. Google has um really judicious to the point of don’t use them if you are. All right, Charles trying to nail you down. All right, you don’t have to be so definitive. But if you’re in a competitive market, if so, if you’re um if you’re a food bank use them, you’re, if you’re a food bank, you’re probably not competing with another food bank in your immediate area, use them. Uh If you’re in a competitive market, let’s say, let’s call it cancer research for it to be easy. You could, you could say disaster relief. Uh If you’re in a competitive market. Um Google has said uh light boxes are no on mobile, light boxes are no mobile. So if you are using lightboxes and mobile, that’s a problem. Uh And, and Google is saying that uh translates to a poor user experience. And so lightboxes, that means if you’re, if you’re in that space where you have more competitive peers, we’re not, we might not be saying that you directly compete with them, but there’s a lot of uh competing options. Um then uh lightboxes, you should focus on lightboxes on desktop only that if you’re in a space where you’re the only one focusing on animal welfare in uh Lawrence, Kansas, you’re fine to do cause then you’re not really competing for ranking and um uh animal shelters in, in Lawrence, Kansas. And so you find to use light boxes on bubble and desktop, just know, ultimately, there is a cost to that in, in your core web vitals, but it’s um black boxes and mobile for competitive uh markets really, really risky to your organic search traffic. Help me understand lightboxes versus pop ups. Are they, are they now the same when you’re, when you’re saying light boxes do you, are you including pop ups? No, I I was distinguishing but, you know, again, you know, lackluster host. Uh I don’t work in tech, I work in planned giving fundraising. So to me, a light box was, was a pop up that you could see through and a pop up was a pop up. That was um ok. Couldn’t see. 00 OK. I was talking about a pop up. That was so my, my, my definition of a pop up was more of the, the lightbox that was um opaque. But I guess because I think, you know, you know, the definition. So let’s describe it as um if it’s a pop up and it doesn’t block any of the background behind it. I mean, it, I mean, it doesn’t have any shroud then uh Google is OK with that. If it, if you have a, a pop up that has, or, or a light box, it has a shroud, meaning it’s semi opaque, it’s semi transparent but it blocks content in the background or your access to it. Then uh that’s what Google is saying. That’s a nil on mobile if you’re in a competitive market. OK. All right. And clearly, uh my definition and my understanding is outdated. Don’t be surprised. Uh So pop up, pop up is what we, we refer to them as pop ups. I mean, I’m sorry, we refer to them as light boxes. That’s what, sorry, I’m sorry. All right. Light boxes, light boxes, stop saying pop ups. That’s the last time I’m gonna use that word, the light boxes. All right now, you know, I’m not following this the way you are. Um What, what else should we focus on Charles you got in there in order to make sure your content loads the fastest you should be using what’s called a CD N which is uh a content distribution network. Um You really wanna seek hosting solutions that are integrated with the CD N so that you don’t have to try and solve for this separate. But um you know, so a hosting solution for those of you on wordpress uh WP engine has uh a built in CD N for you and you should take advantage of that for anyone. Uh That needs a separate solution, cloud flare, cloud flare has a really great uh and, and really, really cost effective CD N for you um to help um essentially deliver your content faster. So um the concept this, what this used to describe is that your server might be in California and your site visitor might be in DC. And so the CD N will host images and on their servers closer to DC. So that, that request doesn’t have to go all the way to California to go get the content to go all the way back to DC. And so instead um us clo uh a CD M like cloud flare might have uh your images on your site posted in uh like uh North Virginia data center. So that it’s um that site visitor had accesses your, your site content, faster CD N, faster content CD N content distribution network. Yep. OK. OK. And then you have some advice specifically for WordPress since WordPress is such a popular hosting uh creation platform, WordPress. Um So many nonprofits are on WordPress and uh really, so many websites are on wordpress. And so if you’re on WordPress, um you should really be on WP engine as your uh web host unless you’re doing something. Um There’s a, there’s a few people that maybe W pigeon is w pigeon isn’t the best option for. But the most part, if your website is um um gosh, how, how do I qualify this for you? I under under 10,000 pages WP engine is a really great option for you. Under 5000 pages WPN is a really great option for you. WPNWPWP one. You wanna make sure you want to ask your tch and consultant or if you’re on like you have one Go Daddy hosting, this is not something you want to stay on. Go Daddy hosting for your site. You wanna eventually go OK? If I’m that some of the things that you would do to optimize your health scores or optimize your core of vitals, you can’t do without a proper host. So WP Engine is a proper host for wordpress sites. Uh Go Daddy, sorry, go Daddy. Not so much for you. Um Within WP engine, there is uh an option called uh WP Engines Advanced Network that um is like a, a easy button for uh page performance and page speed. And so uh if you’re on WP Engine, it’s, you’re probably not using that yet. And so definitely uh ask um your website partner, your uh internal technical folks to about the advanced network. The, the next thing for wordpress would be Gutenberg. Uh Gutenberg has been out for a number of years now. Gutenberg uh is the, this is funny to, to say it’s the native editor in wordpress. So meaning like when you, when you are on wordpress, when you are editing content, the native editor that ships would wordpress is Gutenberg. Well, it wasn’t the first editor that ship would wordpress. And so over the years, people worked with their favorite editor that came with so many bells and whistles to make it, make it easier to edit content. Well, those legacy editors um are load the content loads slower than content and Gober and so um people have actually um there was a, a button to defer like I don’t wanna use Gutenberg and I’m gonna, there’s actually a plug in, they would use to Defer uh Gutenberg and push that back. And uh definitely, if you’re, if you’re building a, a new site in 2024 in wordpress, it should be in Gutenberg. It is uh your se your seo um uh consultant or partner will uh will love you for that and so will your pay speed scores? OK. It’s all about the vitals. All right, Gutenberg, go to the original, go to the original printing press, use the Gutenberg. Here you go. We’ve come full circle with uh with technology there, right? All right. You have one more. I got Auto for WordPress, WordPress develop sites. Yeah. So this is again an easy button. And so auto optimize will um gosh, you wish you had this for your own uh life where your body would just sort of exercise itself and would avoid um any kind of bad eating habits. But auto optimize is uh does a lot to advance and improve your page speed scores. Um It’ll also improve your uh images and um also um make your, your, your sight load a lot faster. It is um going to be a lot less expensive to test out auto optimize and see. Did it break anything? Is it, did it, did it improve anything than to uh you know, hire a really expensive uh consultant to do all this work by hand. So definitely um consider if you’re on wordpress, test these things, test these things in a staging or development environment, meaning not in a live environment where we might break something for a site visitor or a donor. And so when we test these things in the staging environment, we can say, oh, this doesn’t break anything and it gave us a 30% improvement to our scores or 50% improvement to our scores. We’ve seen some really drastic um improvements to scores with auto optimized and it’s, it feels like in some ways it’s the easy button for uh wordpress sites, Charles. We’re gonna leave it there. All right. So the, the uh the report is 2023 nonprofit website performance report. You’ll find it at RKD group dot com or just search that report name. Uh And I think, you know, uh to the uh you, you, you’re looking at your own scores like bone density and A one C and cholesterol and triglycerides and uh total cholesterol and uh high density and low density lipoproteins. You gotta look at uh you know, you gotta look at your, at your first piece of content, largest content, your speed index scores. These are all vitals, vitals. Are you looking at your own health, health metrics every day? Right. So, is there a parallel? I mean, uh, well, a little more often, I mean, we hopefully you’re doing a uh primary care physician visit once a year and eyes and uh, dentists should be twice a year. So some of these things are a couple of times a year, right? Some things we obsess over, like you might obsess over blood pressure more than triglycerides. But we’re, we’re, it’s all, it’s all in a balance, right? Is that a fair analogy? It is. I think if you’re obsessing over it daily, that’s an unhealthy obsession. And, and I think if you develop good habits, like you would with, uh, your own, uh, diet and exercise routines then for your website, um, like that priority zero or step zero, I talked about then, um, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you are looking at your core. We vitals, uh, quarterly or semi annually. Um, I would look at it more than once a year, but I wouldn’t look at it every single day. That’s just, uh, when you see a change, uh, on any given day. Yyy, you know, it’s, it’s, I, I think that is, uh, uh, a distraction. All right, Charles Lajos, he’s on linkedin RKD Group is at RKD group dot com. Charles, thank you very much loved it. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Next week, it’ll be one from the archive. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you to find it at Tony Martignetti dot com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. This giving season donor box, the fast flexible and friendly fundraising platform for nonprofits donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for August 29, 2022: Your Tech Problem Is Actually A People Problem

 

Ananda Robie & Sam Dorman: Your Tech Problem Is Actually A People Problem

Wrapping up our #22NTC coverage, Ananda Robie and Sam Dorman sort out why your nonprofit’s technology problem is very likely a people problem. And they share their roadmap to better technology tomorrow. Ananda is with the Center for Action and Contemplation and Sam is from The Build Tank.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:02.70] spk_0:
and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with cause Elijah if you burned me up with the idea that you missed this week’s show your tech problem is actually a people problem wrapping up our 22 Ntc coverage. Ananda roby and Sam dorman sort out why you’re nonprofits. Technology problem is very likely a people problem and they share their roadmap to better technology tomorrow. Ananda is with the Center for Action and Contemplation and SAM is from the build tank on Tony’s take to wrapping up national make a will month we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D Just like 3D but they go one dimension deeper. Here is your tech problem is actually a people problem. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. You know what that is by now through all the interviews we’ve been doing, it’s the 2022 nonprofit technology conference and you know that it’s hosted by N 10. The smart folks who help you use technology as you’re doing your important work with me now are Ananda robi and SAm dorman. Ananda is digital Managing Director of digital products at center for Action and contemplation Sam dorman is co founder At the build tank Ananda Sam welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:02:23.64] spk_1:
Thanks tony

[00:02:24.87] spk_2:
Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

[00:02:36.99] spk_0:
The pleasure. Pleasure to have both of you. Your session topic is your technology problem is actually a people problem. Sam can you, can you give us an overview of what folks are often, uh, misconstruing about the real problem perhaps at at their smaller, mid sized non profit

[00:03:30.65] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. My partner chris and I, we, you know, founded the bill tank to try to help organizations resolve their pervasive technology pain, which is, um, which is really common. It’s just about every organization is struggling under these, these same restrictions where they just don’t have the technology that allows them to do what they want to do and it’s holding everybody back and it’s creating all all kinds of pain points. And so what I think that people don’t realize is so often it’s not actually a problem with the technology, the symptoms, you know, feel like their problems with technology, but it’s a gap in a certain kind of technology capacity. Um, and it’s about actually getting the right internal team doing the right types of things, which is sometimes not what people expect it should be. And Ananda is a perfect example of that kind of person. And the team she has built at C A C is a perfect example of what it looks like to go from those sorts of pervasive technology Pain points to actually really using leveraging technology to its potential to help increase the organization’s impact

[00:03:58.76] spk_0:
ananda what are some of the symptoms that you were you were feeling at center for action and contemplation?

[00:04:54.00] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, luckily I was so blessed that by the time I came to the C a C, they had already met chris and SAm and gotten bought in on the digital product team model and investing in structuring technology Well. But prior to coming to see a C in previous roles, I’ve had, I did experience that other nonprofits or in higher ed, which has been my kind of career path. That really what’s most common is you hire folks to do a job and then technology is treated like off the side of their desk. So you might hire a development director who’s responsible for fundraising for your organization, but then they’re also responsible for, you know, keeping the donation platform up and running and troubleshooting issues or if you need a new platform going and finding it and uh, you know, putting it into place. And so it’s just means that people a have too much work on their plate. So their workload is too much and then you don’t have the right people with the right kind of interests and skills doing the work. And so there’s a whole model for how we kind of have distributed ownership and break down the ownership between content folks and technology folks.

[00:05:10.36] spk_0:
Okay. You say there’s a whole model, Is that, is that part of what your your session was about?

[00:05:51.03] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. So, so, we, you know, we pulled together this thing called the road map to a better technology tomorrow. So chris and I were always trying to share everything we can as resources. We can work with some organizations like the CDC, but we can’t work with every organization. But it also feels like a lot of these things, once you understand the concepts there not that hard, they’re pretty based on common sense. They’re definitely not common practice, but uh, we try to share everything freely. So we put together this roadmap with just sort of six key steps about, here’s how you go from where you’re, where you are now to building this kind of capacity that’s gonna be able to supercharge you. So, in the, in, in the session, we just walked through those six steps.

[00:05:54.01] spk_0:
Okay. And this is the road map to better technology tomorrow. Like something from the 1950s,

[00:06:01.43] spk_1:
your

[00:06:02.85] spk_0:
new electric stove is the the kitchen of tomorrow for the happy homemaker.

[00:06:09.47] spk_1:
We kinda did. It’s a little bit tongue in cheek. We, we like to have a lot of fun with the work that we do. And so we sort of, it felt a little bit like it was like mad men branding the road to a better technology. Yeah,

[00:06:37.24] spk_0:
that’s what I think of it immediately, but before we All right. So, we’ll go through the roadmap Sounds, uh, sounds very exploratory what sam, but why why are we defaulting to blaming, uh, faulting technology? Is that, is that because it’s easier than looking introspectively at our team and our skills and gaps there in? Well,

[00:06:44.52] spk_1:
it’s hard to

[00:06:45.16] spk_0:
blame technology.

[00:07:49.02] spk_1:
Well, it’s understandable. That’s where you feel in the pain. So people just don’t have the basic tools that they need. If you’re trying to accomplish anything, you’re trying to, you know, not to use the example of a fundraiser. You’re trying to raise money if you’re a communicator, if you’re a program person, if you’re an executive trying to understand what things are working, the pain point is focused on. We don’t have a system that helps us track our donors well, or understand their journeys with us. Or a lot of pain is felt with websites, you know, like everybody needs to use the website as a key. It’s like your front door. It’s also your engagement pathways. It’s a key property. And very rarely do organizations have it where everybody who has needs with those properties, with those, with those technology platforms, is actually getting those needs addressed. And so, you know, they, that’s where you feel the pain. But what people don’t understand is it’s because there’s a lack of ownership and lack of stewardship and it’s not a highly technical kind of lack of ownership and stewardship that’s missing. It’s a highly strategic, highly communication based set of skills that needed to steward these platforms and make sure that everybody’s getting what they need out of them and have sort of a long term oriented view. It’s exactly the kind of stuff that Ananda is so strong at.

[00:08:08.05] spk_0:
Okay, okay, so it sounds like the shortcomings uh manifest themselves in people’s performance because we don’t have the kind of tools we need, you know, the things you ticked off saying that you’re you’re more eloquent in describing that I’m going than I would be, so I’m not gonna bother, but I’ll just say it’s everything you just said, but it manifests itself in poor performance or overworked or

[00:08:57.22] spk_1:
Yeah. And I’ll just say, you know, it’s sort of like you have, you you you you wanna you get great people around you in an organization, you have a really inspiring um mission and you get great people around you and it’s like getting a bunch of expert chefs in your kitchen and then all you give them is a bunch of wooden spoons and you say cook a gourmet meal, they just don’t have the tools, they need to make their amazing, you know, and so what you wanna do is you want a situation where you have someone whose job it is to just make const consistently enable their colleagues to do better and greater work via those sort of technology systems. So promise of technology is just not commonly realized for most organizations, it’s just paying up and down the up and down the books

[00:09:06.58] spk_0:
because the people at that dining table are gonna say these chefs suck

[00:09:10.08] spk_1:
right?

[00:09:10.81] spk_0:
Yeah, you’re gonna say something

[00:09:12.73] spk_1:
back.

[00:09:13.80] spk_0:
I’m sorry. But

[00:09:15.34] spk_2:
no, I was just gonna say, I think um

[00:09:17.99] spk_0:
when

[00:10:12.60] spk_2:
we say it’s a people problem, it’s that’s not to be misconstrued that it’s a problem with the people currently in the organization having a deficit or something. It’s usually a people problem because the right staffing to steward your technology has not been put in place. So it’s really a people problem often in terms of a gap in people for the technology. So it’s a misconstrued notion that, you know, when you get technology, it would be false to think that good technology is just plug and play, you get it off the shelf, you plug it in, you play, it works for your org forever more. Um, that’s not the case for anything. Your organization is growing and developing and adapting and evolving. Um your technology needs to do so as well. But in order to stay on top of that, you have to have the staffing of the folks like me who are responsible for treating that technology almost like a product. So we’re gonna make sure it stays up to date, it gets um serviced and updated and replaced as needed. So I just want to make sure no one is hearing this as it’s a people problem within your org. I’m sure the people within existing orders are phenomenal and they likely have too much to do and a full time job in addition to potentially looking and focusing on technology, you should have a specific stripe within your org that is focused on the technology much like you have stripes focused on your programs.

[00:10:40.30] spk_0:
Okay, thank you. Alright, banana. Are you, are you familiar enough with this too to launch our journey on the, on the road map to a better technology tomorrow?

[00:10:45.91] spk_2:
Well I’ve had the benefit of truly like working under chris and SAm’s mentorship for the last six years. So I like to think that I’m very familiar

[00:10:53.79] spk_0:
with it.

[00:10:54.46] spk_2:
Yeah, SAm and I have kind of been on a little bit of a publicity tour lately. I feel like where Sam you know because he and chris is brilliant minds are what came up with the kind of road map and then I get to offer a bit of the color commentary about what it looks like in like implementation and actuality versus

[00:12:51.20] spk_0:
theory. Turn to communications media relationships and thought leadership. First comes the relationships then comes the leaderships leadership but I couldn’t pass up the rhyme. You gotta have the relationships before you can get the leadership the thought leadership because you need those relationships so that when an opportunity for thought leadership emerges either because there’s some big news hook or you just have something that is compelling that you need folks to hear. You gotta have uh you gotta have the journalists and the other content creators in a position where they’re gonna pick up the phone when you call, they’re gonna reply when you email. That takes relationships turn to knows how to build those relationships. So you gotta have the relationships, then you can get heard. Then you become a thought leader in your field, turn to communications, they can help you build those relationships. And while you’re working on your messaging, that can help you craft that also so that you become the thought leader, you ought to be, you deserve to be turn to communications. Your story is their mission turned hyphen two dot c o. Now, back to your tech problem is actually a people problem. And what about buying leadership by in Ananda? Was was was was C A C beyond that. When you got there, you said they had already bought in. So, had you, like, had you passed that phase, Is that something you didn’t have to deal with?

[00:13:32.75] spk_2:
I mean, I think it’s always ongoing. I’m always telling the stories that it takes to make sure we’re investing in technology properly from a capacity and funding in time perspective. But I really was fortunate when I joined the Sea a sea, that our executive director, Michael Michael Poffenberger had attended one of chris and SAm’s talks and really just connected with their approach to technology and wanted them to support the C A c is really up upping our game when it came to tech. Um but one of chris and SAM’s requirements was that if you want to partner with them, you’ve got to have internal staffing to kind of fill that gap that is all too common when it comes to tech. Um, so hiring my position was basically the organization’s response to this is the direction we’re gonna head when it comes to structuring our technology and this is the first position we’re gonna hire to make that happen.

[00:15:11.64] spk_1:
tony maybe I’ll add. It’s also really important to note that a non as part of the leadership team now at C A. C as the chief of this team and that’s one of the things that we really emphasize is important. You know, the actually the first step in the road map we were going to talk about is you must be willing to invest and it’s about investing, not only resources, but time and care and focus. If technology is not part of what your leadership knows and understands, then you’re making decisions sort of devoid of what you can actually do in the world. You know, it’s like technology nowadays as your arms and legs to do almost anything in the world as an organization. And so if you have a bunch of people at leadership level, making decisions about programs and what you’re capable of or timelines or anything like that without that strong back and forth communication with those arms and legs and you have an organization that sort of lurches forward and can’t walk straight. And so it really makes a huge difference when you see a situation like CSC where nana is there as part of the leadership team, able to say yes organization. This is what we’re capable of. And also, um yeah, we can we can do these tradeoffs that we’re talking about at a leadership level, but here’s what we’re gonna have to dip prioritize and here’s what we’re going to prioritize. So it’s just sort of a whole different approach of, of investing in technology is a key skill set for the organization.

[00:15:17.61] spk_0:
Okay. And you said that’s our first, our first of the six steps is investing, but not only in the technology, but also in in the organization the people

[00:15:48.39] spk_1:
well. And that’s why we start with saying, you have to invest as, you know, you have to be willing to to hire people in this certain type of uh, you know, a certain type of capability and that means salary and that means head count and that’s one of the most expensive things. There are, so a lot of times we say, you know, that’s, you got to hear the bad news first, which is, it’s gonna cost a lot, most organizations are woefully under invested in internally internal technology capacity. And that’s just the truth of it. So when, when people come to us and say, you know, is there an affordable way we can do a B and C. We say no. If you want to be good with your technology and good good meaningful impactful outputs, you have to invest in terms of resources in terms of development, in terms of external experts and in terms of your internal team

[00:16:13.51] spk_0:
ananda what what’s the annual budget at Center for Action and Contemplation and and how many employees?

[00:16:20.30] spk_2:
Yeah. Great question. I believe our annual budget is close to about nine million and we have about 55 employees.

[00:16:35.89] spk_0:
Okay. All right. I want listeners to understand the context of what investment means. Why is at the center for action and shouldn’t contemplation come first and then comes action after you’ve given after you’ve thought about what it is you might be acting on, you

[00:16:51.54] spk_2:
know, one of my favorite things that our founder father Richard moore says is that actually the most important word in our title is the word. And because what is good action without sufficient contemplation? And what is the point of contemplation if it doesn’t result in good action? So and is the most important regardless of which order? Those words come in.

[00:17:08.97] spk_0:
Okay. All right, thank you. And thank you Father Also. Alright. All right. So, um Sam is there a place for folks who have you know have a smaller organization like uh suppose it’s like half the size of of C a C s annual budget like it’s 4, 4.5 5 million

[00:17:22.95] spk_1:
dollars is still

[00:17:24.56] spk_0:
a place that that they can improve their relationship. I’m gonna say their relationship with technology.

[00:17:31.79] spk_1:
It’s a great question. You know we have done this with very large sort of

[00:17:38.48] spk_0:
two great questions in a row. It’s all downhill. Yeah

[00:17:39.66] spk_1:
pretty much

[00:17:41.58] spk_0:
batting

[00:18:54.94] spk_1:
average, batting average is solid so far that we’ve done some very large sort of enterprise scale organizations. We’ve done it with tiny organizations and people ask me that often like well you have to be a certain size and I think the answer is no you don’t have to be a certain size. So I used to work out of an office where there was social enterprises that were being incubated. And so like people starting uh you know, triple bottom line businesses as they used to call them. And what they would do is either the founder uh would be someone with great technical sort of oversight capability or your first hire was sort of a C. T. O. Or a technical co founder. And so nowadays it scales down to I think the size of two, if your organization has a headcount to half of that capacity is probably focused on your technology because anyone starting an organization today understands how essential that is to be able to do anything in the modern day world. The problem is a lot of old organizations are trying to get away from this really old model of like the tech person in the back corner who just thinks of all things tech and everything. Tech goes through that person. We often say that’s like having a department of paper where everything on paper goes through one person in the back room. It just doesn’t make any sense. Everything is technology at these days and you have to be more sophisticated about what who you’re putting on what there’s a lot of different skill sets that you need at the table. Most organizations have their traditional I. T. Covered. Most organizations have their super users of technology covered. And almost no organizations have this particular gap which is technology stewardship

[00:19:15.10] spk_0:
Amanda. What were your credentials before you came to see A. C.

[00:19:55.68] spk_2:
Yeah so I um I actually studied film in college and I think that’s really comes from, I had an inkling towards technology. I really loved editing, I loved editing software and afterwards I went to work for a nonprofit. My goal was to actually be in the creative team. But but as a part of working there, a part of my job was using salesforce. Um And I was kind of what is traditionally called an accidental admin. So using salesforce for a couple of years they’re like, hey you’re really good at this, Would you be interested in doing this more full time learning more, taking on more responsibility. Um And I said yes and I think it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. Unfortunately our nonprofit went through a pretty massive downsizing. Um So they kind of kept on people who were like the jack of all trades and could do a lot. So I was kept on kept on as primarily the technologist but I’ve been working in Salesforce now for about

[00:20:16.08] spk_0:
12

[00:20:16.66] spk_2:
years. Uh So now certified Salesforce admin and focus on our digital product team. So I oversee our Crm Web and I. T. Teams for the C. A.

[00:20:24.93] spk_0:
C.

[00:21:30.54] spk_1:
Maybe tony I might add that. It’s like a perfect background. So you know one of the things we say is when you’re looking for technology people a lot of people think that means oh we gotta we gotta hire a bunch of developers um And that’s usually the worst thing you can do. Usually development is something that’s not easy um to hire for to manage to to evaluate the quality of work. And it’s one of the best things that you can outsource because there are firms that that’s their job, that’s what they do, that’s what their specialty is. But this sort of this sort of skill set that Ananda is such a master of this sort of like this communication based sort of ally ship based strategic layer of technology stewardship that comes from all all kinds of backgrounds and so oftentimes in an organization, people already have people like this that could be amazing stewards of their technology but they’re just not tapped for that, They’re not put in the right roles. So it really is, it really opens the floodgates for who can come in and help as opposed to sort of competing for the same highly technical, um, you know, people with, with, with depth in a, in a technical area. You’re really looking for people who are just, you know, great communicators and understanding of the big picture and allies, natural allies and uh for for their colleagues to help them do everything they do better.

[00:21:55.43] spk_0:
I think big picture big picture technologist is is valuable the way you, the way you described it. Let’s let’s move on to our let’s continue on our journey. Sam what you and your partner have, uh, what’s your next, what our next stop? What’s our next stop on the

[00:22:40.26] spk_1:
journey? We’ve already been hopping around in a few of these and you can, you can see them on on the road map. But I’ll mention one piece that Ananda referred to earlier, which is this, this we have this model of trying to separate out the just because of a chart we we created long ago, it was the Blue team and the gold team. The Blue team was this sort of tool. Optimizers like Ananda and the gold team was the people who are trying to use their tools to accomplish their work. So most, most of the people on our chart an organization, they might be like fundraisers communicators, program. People, executives, any number of things. They need tools but they need them to accomplish their work. And like said what often happens is they don’t have the tools they need. So they sort of finally go out and they’re like, I’m gonna build a Crm or I’m gonna build us a new website

[00:22:49.66] spk_0:
and

[00:23:02.20] spk_1:
now they’re on the phone with developers and talking about platforms and all the stuff that pulls them out of what their strength is instead of work focusing on their areas of expertise, which could be fundraising or anything else. And you’ve got these other people like who are just natural tool optimizers who can sit down with those people here, what they’re trying to do and say, okay, I can go figure out how we do that in technology land. Let me spend all my time on all these crazy paths that that takes. And then we come back together, have a meeting and I can tell you the three options and we go from there. So it’s it allows people to focus on their areas of expertise and and when you see that all of a sudden the machine really starts humming a lot more.

[00:23:32.29] spk_0:
So uh summarize the second stop for us. How would you, I mean if if the first one was invest, nothing has to be a single word. I don’t

[00:23:59.21] spk_1:
know that’s fine. The second one is differentiate three key areas of technology. So that’s where I was talking about, not just the sort of everything goes through tech but you’ve got traditional I. T. Which is something else which is setting up your computer’s security and software and hardware and all that. That’s a different set of skills. You’ve got your content users, your your super users and then you’ve got the the team that Ananda leads which is actually your your tool optimizer team, your digital product team

[00:24:09.47] spk_0:
stewardship to you call technology stewardship

[00:24:12.73] spk_1:
technology stewardship. Exactly.

[00:24:14.58] spk_0:
Alright.

[00:24:45.49] spk_2:
Yeah. I think one of the um you know chris and SAm have a great one liner that I always love to mention when we’re talking about this part of the road map which is that everyone likes to geek out somewhere. And I think that’s the importance here is like are the folks that you have hired within your organization able to focus the majority of their job on what they were hired to do that they’re likely experts and excellent in or are they getting distracted by having to work on tech or technical people having to contribute more to content. So the idea is making sure that folks who like to geek out on development or marketing or creative customer service program execution really get a partner that then is responsible for making sure that we find and build and train on, allowing them to have the best tools possible to do their jobs well. Um and that will just alleviate a lot of dysfunction and a lot of missed opportunity for um, just prioritizing capacity.

[00:28:50.81] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. 4th dimension technologies. They still have the free offer exclusively for nonprofit radio listeners. You get the complimentary 24/7 monitoring of your IT assets. It lasts for three months. They’ll be monitoring your servers, your network and your cloud performance. They’ll monitor your backup performance as well all 24 7. If there are any issues, they will let you know ASAP at the end of the three months, you’ll get a comprehensive report telling you how all of this is doing against different benchmarks that are standard. You know, you want to know how you’re, how you’re faring compared to where you ought to be faring. And they promised to throw in a few surprises as well. It’s all complementary. It’s on the listener landing page, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. It’s time for Tony to take two national maker will month is coming to an end. So sad. But I am celebrating to the bitter end. We’re not letting any of national make a will month go away, leave us without full celebration. And to that end I’ve got more ideas, more reasons really. They’re not just there. They are. My ideas, they’re my thinking. But these are, these are reasons, this is not in the abstract reasons why wills are the place to start your plan to giving, I’ve done 13 through 15 already. I’m gonna do 15 through 13 through 15 already. I’m gonna do 16, 17 and 18, the last week of August and you can see the compendium of reasons at linkedin so far. Eventually they’ll be on my blog. But right now you go to linkedin through the month of august, you will see the cornucopia of reasons why planned giving should be started with Will’s simple charitable bequests. So go to my linkedin and you will see the vast array of reasons That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load more time for your tech problem is actually a people problem with ananda roby and sam dorman. I’m thinking about fundraising, which is what I do. I do plan giving fundraising consulting and thinking about how the supplies and fundraising, like there are people who are great at relationships but not so good about the simple, the simple, very simple user task of documenting the relationships and the activity and the steps and things. So, you know, like for them, if there could be some smoother way, like maybe they could dictate instead of having to type or you know, maybe give them a portable device, you know, they can, they can do it on a, on a on a pad or a service, you know, instead of having to carry their laptop or feel like they have to go back to their desktop to to preserve things like that. I think that’s a simple example. It’s a

[00:29:20.61] spk_2:
simple example but it’s perfect. I mean that’s the epitome of my job is like what do you need to do in order to do your job well and if one of those things is documenting your interactions and there seems to be a roadblock to doing that well let’s find out why is it like that you are constantly maybe out in the field doing your work and there’s not a good mobile app in order to complete that. So you’re having to wait till you get back to your desk is the platform, you’re using the UX UI really clunky to use are you just not trained? Have we now not provided the reporting that then shows the return on your investment. So you have this incentive to see how all of your work is paying off. There’s not necessarily a single or simple answer. So the trick is understanding the need and the reason and the why behind that need, understanding what the roadblock is and then alleviating that and that’s different for different people, some people that might be a technology use equal issue and other people that might be not understanding the need or the reward behind doing it

[00:29:49.06] spk_0:
well

[00:30:16.31] spk_1:
so well said and you know when you hear a non to talk, you can just imagine the power of having a colleague like that who’s just sort of a heat seeking missile for problem solving and knocking knocking hurdles out of people’s way. It’s completely flips the sort of traditional dynamic that you have for technology which is if you got a problem submit a ticket and we’ll get to it when we can, you know, that’s like the opposite of what anna and her team are doing. They’re out there being like tony your we you know, you’re out there trying to fundraise for us. We want you to succeed your our colleague, your ally. Like how can we help you do that better? And what you find is that once people realize they have that kind of a team on board, those sort of that kind of allies in place. The ideas just come fast and furious and then the R. O. I. Just sort of spikes where all of a sudden everybody is more powerful and more effective with the hours in their day, the R. O. I. And it’s just unbelievable. But it starts with that upfront investment

[00:30:48.00] spk_0:
see all right, continue us on the road map.

[00:31:53.81] spk_1:
Well yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of this. So we differentiate those areas of technology, you build this team, a technology accelerator team or a digital product team like talked about and then it’s all about hiring the right kinds of people which we’ve talked about that sort of strategic stewardship level layer and then one thing we didn’t talk about is insourcing and outsourcing the right things. I did mention this idea that you don’t want to generally in source uh development, you want to hire, you want to work with external partners. Actually, the last step of our road map, we call make magic with external partners. And even though that’s sort of flowery language, we chose that on purpose because when you have the right dynamic, you have, you know, sort of a superhero internally, like Ananda working with a really skilled external developer or external firm giving sort of depth of strategic and technical expertise. Well that will take us on a certain, you know, certain type of work that they’re doing, but also for their, for their web work. They working with a terrific web firm and for their Crm work, they’re working with a terrific crm firm and not just, you know, the traditional thing is just handing the work out to somebody and then they do whatever they do and they deliver it and good luck. And on day one, you know, you figure out whether you can use it or not, it’s the opposite of that. It’s, it’s very much an ongoing partnership, just probably not to talk about this because that’s where you see a lot of the power, it’s not about building a team internally, that’s going to do everything, It’s about building a team that’s going to steward it, figure out who are the right players that you need on the field.

[00:33:53.49] spk_2:
Yeah, I think often like this part of what the roadmap that we talk about can be very surprising to folks, especially if you’re saying like, hey build a technology team and the first thing is maybe not to hire like an extra under the hood. Super incredible. 10 times certified developer. Um that’s not what we would look for as the first hire doesn’t mean you’re not going to grow and expand into meeting that kind of expertise within your org um but for me, technical knowledge is one of the easiest things to learn and like SaM said the contract for so yeah, what we want to ensure we’re not doing is outsourcing the brains because if you do that then you really risk making bad investments and bad prioritization so you might be doing the wrong work or not actually getting at the root of what’s needed because truly like no one has better knowledge of the needs and nuances and changes of your organization than someone internally. So you need someone internally who is truly tasked with owning and stewarding, you know, the strategy, technical work and investments for your platform. The way that we do that is like, you know, we do all of our own admin work inside and then we have a phenomenal partner for our sales force team that if we need any coding or high level development, there’s not enough of that work for us to need to staff a full time position, but we have a great partner that we can outsource that work to um but again, like sam saying it’s not just an outsourcing, we don’t have a partner that’s just an order taker. They’re not just like, yes, we’ll do it. They really come to the table and we expect and ask of them to bring their wisdom and their critical thinking and their partnership so that they up our game, so they’re just not execute ear’s, they’re actually asking questions and giving advice about how we’re investing in our technology as well. So we get an additional phenomenal external partner on our

[00:34:18.62] spk_0:
work. And I can see why you said earlier that you’re constantly making the case for a particular technology investment, you know, what’s the, what’s the return gonna be, how is this gonna improve our efficiency? You know, I can see how your regularly making this case these cases all

[00:34:47.30] spk_2:
the time. Yeah. You know, and we started with moving the air, creating a Crm team internally and advocating for this type of investment on crm structuring the team in this way, finding the external partners in, you know, replacing old platforms that were not performing well with newer technology. Um, and then a few years down the road, you know, went back to chris and SAm, I think our executive director went back and said, hey, we’re experiencing a lot of pain on the web, like what’s going on over here, and they’re like, it’s the same issue you’ve got to treat and staff your web technology like you have crm. So we’ve brought web into the fold and made the same kind of advocacy and same kind of investment for internal staffing, Internal stewardship and external partners.

[00:36:03.20] spk_1:
Yeah. And you know, Tony. I think you see the same sort of like when there’s pain, there’s turf penis because people are just fighting to get the basics of what they need to do their work. So they say, no, this is ours, we’re gonna hold on to this is, you know, I had to go build a new web site. So I’m gonna hold onto this with everything I got, once you have a team like Ananda hired this amazing uh, product manager for web jesse jones. Once Jessie’s in there, people are only too happy to sort of let go of control because they know that she is gonna look out for their needs and do it 10 times better than they could have done it themselves. And meanwhile they get to do their fundraising or communications or program work and focus on that. So it’s just this process of getting everybody optimized onto the skills that they are best suited for and the things they love to wake up in the morning and geek out on, you know, what better option is there, that one, you’ve got the tools all that, that you need and two, you get to do the work, you’re excited about with them. It’s, you know, a lot of it is common sense, but it’s about bringing the right types of people in

[00:36:28.82] spk_0:
ananda? What have we not talked about yet that you want folks to know about this the process or the investment maybe questions that came during your session that you think are were valuable.

[00:36:33.03] spk_2:
Yeah let’s see what have we not covered yet. We’ve covered a lot.

[00:36:38.04] spk_0:
Well non profit radio is a comprehensive podcast. I hope I hope you’re not surprised by that.

[00:36:43.06] spk_2:
I expected nothing less.

[00:36:44.64] spk_0:
Thank you very much. Thank you that’s the validation I’m looking for. Thank

[00:36:48.60] spk_1:
you very

[00:36:49.47] spk_0:
important to me it’s very important

[00:37:59.95] spk_2:
um I would just say I think the only other thing that um I have discovered in my work here that um is important is often people can start conflating um digital product team members with more like traditional I. T. And so one of the things that has become important about my role is really protecting my team’s time in their remit so often you know when you put these really ally oriented folks onto your staff and they start fixing all of these pain points or debacles and make things run smoothly and get improved and partner with your gold team members, your content members. Um you can start to develop a reputation as almost like a fixer and so one of the things is then all of a sudden you’re getting all kinds of questions like hey can you fix this printer, can you work on my computer, Can you do this? So I think you know we touched on it earlier about the three different areas of technology but really keeping that distinction and not letting you know I. T. And digital products kind of become one in people’s minds because then all of a sudden you have folks who re we have the potential to be force multipliers for your organization whose time ends up getting eaten up by you know fixing that are important but they’re not really what the remit of this

[00:38:14.17] spk_0:
exactly

[00:38:24.51] spk_2:
which is so important if you need to print that’s important to your job. But that’s not a force multiplication for the productive nous. And the mission of your organization said it’s a different skill set and they should be treated and maintained separately.

[00:38:34.04] spk_0:
Sam same question for you. Anything you’d like to uh I’d like to add that we haven’t talked about yet.

[00:39:26.23] spk_1:
No it indeed it has been very comprehensive and I appreciate the time to talk about it. I guess I would just say um that the the this path is very possible. Organizations can make this transition and like we say it there’s no shortcut you have to put in the time to focus on the resources you have to care enough uh to really invest and to invest in all those ways but you can walk down this path that’s why we’ve tried to share these resources as as openly as we have. It’s all there like the bill tank dot com slash roadmap you can read through it. Um it’s just about the sort of common sense of things are not going to be great unless you have great people stewarding them, just like every area of your organization. So I guess the thing I want to, I just want to offer some hope to people who are struggling under the burden of systems that hold them back instead of supercharge them that it is possible, you know, it’s not possible without investment but with the right investment in the right structures it is possible that everybody has the tools they need to work more effectively to be more happy at their work, to be more effective at the end of the day and to have more impact

[00:39:46.44] spk_0:
and you’ll find the resource at the build tank dot com slash resource map source roadmap of course that’s roadmap. The build tank build tank dot com slash

[00:39:58.45] spk_1:
roadmap which

[00:40:00.13] spk_0:
is the roadmap to better technology tomorrow for our happy homemakers

[00:40:04.77] spk_1:
19

[00:40:11.24] spk_0:
50s. Alright, that’s Sam Dorman, he’s co founder at the build tank and also Ananda robi, managing Director of digital Products at Center for Action and Contemplation. Ananda SAm thank you very very much for sharing. Thanks

[00:40:22.10] spk_1:
tony

[00:40:24.06] spk_2:
pleasure,

[00:41:45.33] spk_0:
thank you and thank you listeners for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. Next week. We now return to our regularly scheduled non 22 N. T. C. Programming principles of sustained fundraising with larry johnson. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o and by fourth dimension technologies Yes, I Tion for in a box, the affordable tech solution for non profits but also get the free offer, the listener offer all of its at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. You know, just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that. Affirmation Scottie with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for January 3, 2022: Social Media Outlook For 2022

My Guest:

Charrosé King-Mathews: Social Media Outlook For 2022

Charrosé King-Mathews reveals what to look for in the New Year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:03.04] spk_3:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio

[00:00:13.14] spk_1:
big nonprofit

[00:00:14.26] spk_3:
ideas for the

[00:01:42.34] spk_1:
Other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast Happy new Year. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Lauren Jill papilloma ketosis if I had to say that you missed this week’s show Social Media Outlook for 2022 Sharos King Mathews reveals what to look for in the new year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University. tony steak too. Lots of Good 2022 Wishes. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Here is social media outlook for 2022. It’s my pleasure to welcome for her first time Sharos King Matthews, she is a strategic communications instructor at Howard University where she’s also pursuing her PhD in communication culture and media studies. She researches and writes about rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. Share Jose just left the faculty of N 10 after five years. She’s at Sharos CK Sure Jose. Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:48.94] spk_0:
Hi, it’s great to be here.

[00:02:02.94] spk_1:
Pleasure. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. But tell me tell us a little more about your your research and your writing on rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. What what what what does that work look like? What is that?

[00:02:05.89] spk_0:
So I am you know, starting out so I’m going to be discovering what that work looks like. But I’ve I’ve always been um very interesting.

[00:02:16.94] spk_1:
I’m sorry, what do you think it’s gonna look like? What do you hope

[00:02:35.04] spk_0:
it’s gonna look well where where I’m starting from is like um I’ve always been interested in in creativity and art and being able to express oneself through artistic mediums and helping other people to do that as well. Um and I think creativity is like a a huge social driver for for change. If we look at like music and art and fashion in the way that people are drawn into movements by the ways that we can use creativity in order to, you know, engage people and get them to think about different things. Um but also on the other side of that that you know, rest is so important to creativity. And looking at the ways that, you know, systems of oppression have stifled communities, abilities to produce creative work by with you know, low wages that require them to work, you know, constantly just to be able to afford a living and you know, um well in my case as a black woman having ancestors who are brought here specifically to work and how that has, you know, our relationships with work and and you know, as opposed to living in more creative and and pleasurable life and how we can, you know, move towards everyone being able to have those more um creative opportunities and how that can change our world for the better for everyone.

[00:04:14.14] spk_1:
Cool, All right. They’re they’re interesting tensions because you’re writing about rest and creativity. To me those are in opposite. I mean, you’re you’re you’re not you’re not at your most creative when you’re resting, creativity is, you know, is activity, stimulation and then and then rest. But then as methods of healing and resistance to me, those are in opposite to, you know, you I don’t they’re they’re, you know, they’re both they’re both critical, but I don’t see them as consistent. Like you when you’re healing yourself, you’re not in a resistance, you’re not in a resistance state state. Resistance to me is, you know, agitation

[00:04:23.78] spk_0:
and

[00:04:30.44] spk_1:
and and advocacy, you know, But that’s not that’s that’s in opposite to healing, right?

[00:04:31.15] spk_0:
Yeah. So it’s like I’m thinking like the balance of the two and how you you you know, need one to have the other and and that kind of thing and seeing how they are synchronous and you know, um I just I want people to everyone to have, you know, be able to live healthier, more fulfilling lives and, you know, all of that stuff

[00:05:12.24] spk_1:
healthy but also productive and resistant when needed. Absolutely, yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. Like there’s it’s two different spectrums to me rest and creativity, healing and resistance interesting. Alright. This Yeah, I’ll be, look, I’ll look forward to your dissertation in how many years? How many years does this program take you, do you think?

[00:05:17.44] spk_0:
So. Typically about four. I will be finishing up my classes this year and then I’ll be focusing just on my um dissertation proposal and then my dissertation.

[00:05:44.34] spk_1:
Yeah. And research. All right, very good. Welcome. Alright. It’s glad to have you. So you’ve got some savvy ideas coming, coming out, coming off the n 10 faculty as well. So howard faculty and 10 faculty. Uh I’m not sure which is more prestigious. Well, you know, Well one is, one is prestigious in lots of respects and the other has its niche in nonprofit tech. So they’re both,

[00:05:50.89] spk_0:
they’re both prestigious. They’re both quite prestigious in

[00:06:08.04] spk_1:
their own. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Um Not zero sum by any means. They can both be highly prestigious. So you’ve got some ideas around social media trends. What you see coming for 2022. What do you see happening with our social media platforms?

[00:06:11.84] spk_0:
Some things that I’m seeing are more audio only features um like on twitter on facebook, which would be great for people who listen to podcasts. Maybe that’s that fits in well. Um and even like um

[00:06:35.54] spk_1:
facebook is facebook is coming to audio only a little slow. I mean I’ve been I’ve been podcasting since 2000 10 where they’ve been, where they’ve been, where has facebook been

[00:06:40.13] spk_0:
has been around for a very long time has been around. Yeah.

[00:06:43.52] spk_1:
But where, where they they they’re coming late to the format.

[00:07:09.34] spk_0:
Yeah. And I think so. I think that happens like with technology sometimes we, we like jump ahead and it’s like sometimes we might lose things that were good before and we have to kind of rediscover them and they, they show up in a different way in in some ways, like we see here on, on like twitter and, and facebook also, Tiktok will be um, is working on streaming. Well, it’s released in, in some countries internationally, but it’s another example of, of a platform focusing more on audio only content. Um,

[00:07:24.84] spk_1:
wait, so, so Tiktok moving away from video,

[00:07:26.74] spk_0:
Not away by audio only also

[00:07:51.74] spk_1:
in addition. Okay, okay, Alright. So, alright, so let’s talk about this. This audio only trend. Then you’re saying facebook twitter, Tiktok uh, promoting audio only formats. What do you see? Non profits are able to do? I mean, how do you see leveraging that?

[00:07:53.64] spk_0:
Well,

[00:07:54.79] spk_1:
Like are they all short form like this, Tiktok, you know, like Tiktok audio format limited to 15 seconds.

[00:09:58.14] spk_0:
So on. I know, so each of them is, is a little different. Um, I know on, on twitter for example, you can have like, um, instead of like a live video that’s going on, you can have an audio room where people are chatting, anyone can listen in, but you know, only certain people can chat. So you might, that might be good for like, um, if you’re having a panel discussion or something like that and, and maybe video is not as important to it. Um and you can, you can do it that way, especially if you are uh you know, working, working virtually in people in different locations. Um video is not as important. That can be helpful and um also like when now they have a lot of different ways that they will appear on these different platforms. Um but I think as always, and I want to say this for for like all the transfer that we’ll talk about, you know, you want to think about how it works for your organization in particular because there’s they’re popping up with different features all the time. So you have to think about how, how do we best communicate with our audience. Um so I think, you know, in short form places you might, you might share like specific snippets of your podcast. If you have, if your, if your organization has a podcast, maybe you would share specific snippets or maybe particular quotes or updates that you could share like with the photo and then um like a message that goes along with that photo, which is also, I think the benefit of that is it’s a bit of a lower um you don’t need as much equipment or export technical, know how like you would need to do in order to create a video, you know, with the video, you need to to, you might need to do some editing or you might need to create some graphics, but if you have photos, you can use those in lots of different places and incorporate audio with them, you know, um, on certain posts to enhance the, the content.

[00:10:18.54] spk_1:
Okay, okay, very interesting. Audio, audio only. Do you, Do you envision that, that, that Tiktok audio only feature will still be limited to the, to the 15 seconds.

[00:11:16.34] spk_0:
Um I’m not, I didn’t, I don’t remember reading how long it would be um but okay, so, so Tiktok is also moving into like, because they use a lot of music and stuff on their platform. They’re also looking into Tiktok streaming, like having a streaming service that is a competitor to Spotify. Um and then you also have Spotify incorporating more social media into. There’s so you see a lot of, a lot of um, hybrid things happening um between between some of these like audio and social media in particular right now and I would say we did see this a lot with with video. I mean we had vine was huge and, and you know youtube, of course we still have Youtube. Um but a lot of these things are the things that we, we already used to communicate and they pop up in different ways depending on, you know, what features are available on how the different audiences communicate with one another. Um, on those different platforms.

[00:11:40.04] spk_1:
That’s interesting, you bring up vine, how come vine went away but tick tock. It is, it is, it’s flourishing.

[00:12:39.04] spk_0:
How come, what is that? Yeah, I know, I’m fine, it was right, so vine went away and instagram at that time started having short videos too. So it was like instagram kind of picked up that short video format and then vine, you know, wasn’t needed as much because you have, you have your photos and your video on instagram then, so then we lose vine, but we have olive vines, features on a different platform. Um and I think that’s something that we really want to think critically about when we’re looking at these trends and the different platforms that come up because there are a lot of politics behind it, you know, it’s something it’s, you know, which ones have the most money, like instagram is owned by facebook, so they have a lot more money and resources and facebook is everywhere all over the globe um you know, in, in nearly every country, whereas you know something um for as a, as a um you know, contrast, we have Tiktok which what has been threatened to be, you know, shut down in the US unless they, unless they, you know, sold part of their company to an american owner. So we have things like that that are going on in the background that, you know, we have to make um certain apps, you know, have more ability to reach more people. So it’s also, it’s about how we use them and whether they are service serving people’s needs and you know, that it’s fun to use and all of that, but also we need to think about, it’s not always just, um, the audience that determine which one is a successful platform.

[00:14:29.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Your Communications Plan for 2022. Does it include social posts, blog posts, newsletters, your annual report, website updates, board reports, fundraising appeals. Acknowledgment messages, staff, communications, process documentation, training, documents onboarding or maybe those last couple don’t fit into your communications plan. They still have to be written. Do you need help with your writing in 2022 Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to social media outlook for 2022, does that mean that we should not be pioneers or even maybe early adopters when a, when a platform emerges, you know, that, that we not invest time in it when it may not, It may not survive? I mean like should we wait 18 months before we jump into a new platform?

[00:15:02.24] spk_0:
I that’s a really good question because I mean that’s what we’re talking about here, trends. We wanna know trend because we want to know how do we react to these new things. Um, and two that I, I would say like for if you’re a smaller nonprofit and I’ve worked at many, you know, you don’t have a lot of resources you want to, I would like to think of think of the social media, um, managing that as a, um, capsule wardrobe. So I don’t know if anyone familiar with the capsule wardrobe defined that we have, we have

[00:15:09.48] spk_1:
on non profit capsule wardrobe will definitely land you in jargon jail.

[00:17:48.74] spk_0:
So, right. So, and so a capsule wardrobe if you think of, so you can think, I think a great example is Fran fine on the nanny. She has a very, you know, dramatic wardrobe. However, if you pay attention, she’s pretty much always wearing a black turtleneck, black tights and black shoes and then she’ll put like a fun jacket or a fun skirt on top of those things. And, and so that’s um, you know, a way to extend a wardrobe on fewer, there are fewer pieces and just choosing like a statement piece. So the way I look at that is like, um, in with your social media, you want to have good bones, good structure. You wanna have, you wanna have some image templates that you can use. And then when there’s a, you know, I just talked about images before and putting audio with them. So if you already have great images that you’ve worked on and put a lot of care into curating, you can then add these other things on top of them as these trends change. Um, I would also say as far as new platforms coming up, I think it’s always worth your time to at least create an account so that if that platform becomes more popular in the future, you’ve already claimed your organization’s name on there. Um, so that it’s easy to find you and you, and it’ll be, you know, more cohesive part of your brand. So I think that’s always worth it because that doesn’t take a lot of time. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s fine too. That’s fine too. Because you’re, you’re putting your time where, you know that your audience is and, and you know, what’s going to pay off because, you know, without a lot of time and resources, we have to be very smart about, um, where we’re putting our focus and social media because it’s so vast when you send stuff out, it can just go out into the ether and no one, you know, it might not get traction. So you need to be very smart about how you’re using your time. So I would say like, yeah, you’re right. So you have your, your core images and the kinds of messages that you know, that you can use. Um, also this might be referred to as evergreen content content that you can use all the time. Um, you know, no matter the time of year, but it’s always relevant to, to your organization. Um, I think that’s a very important thing to have in, in kind of your capsule wardrobe, um, of, of social media fashion, you know, your,

[00:18:30.84] spk_1:
your, your capsule wardrobe, your capsule wardrobe. Yes, I scolded your core capsule. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Um, well, I’m a guy, I want to be, you know, I want to be up. I want to be, I want to be timely. My, my time has long passed. Um, so, alright, Yes, absolutely, of course, evergreen content repurposing, you know, you want to be smart. You know, if something goes on your blog, maybe you can maybe you can pull a 12th, clip, an audio and quoted somewhere, you know, on twitter

[00:18:31.17] spk_0:
or facebook or, or,

[00:18:50.34] spk_1:
or, or Tiktok when, when the audio only features are, are, are available. Um, and then, you know, and then it could be part of, maybe it could be part of an email. Uh, maybe maybe it lives somewhere else on your website. You know, maybe it could be a social media post in print instead of audio. Um, right, so you want to be smart about

[00:19:01.84] spk_0:
right? And one um, uh, an acronym that I use for that, that I’ve heard is cope create once, publish everywhere. Okay, so like your blog post, you created it once. But then you’re using all those pieces of the blog posts in different places on your social media or your website and your blog and your emails and all of that.

[00:19:58.74] spk_1:
I love it create once, publish everywhere. So we got our capsule wardrobe. We have our, we have our cope. Okay, what? Um, all right, So this is interesting. This audio form. I mean obviously as a podcaster and I’ve been a longtime listener of radio and I think radio is just such a intimate format. It feels close. I mean, I got my inspiration for this show from radio shows. Um really interesting, you know, in one respect, it’s a, it’s a step back from, from the video because now you’re only getting really getting half the, not half the content really, but half the half the stimulation. I mean there’s the but but I don’t consider a step backwards, but but

[00:20:01.72] spk_0:
somebody, somebody could

[00:20:02.69] spk_1:
say, well, no picture anymore, what you know, but the video is the trending, but now, now now audio is trending.

[00:20:09.94] spk_0:
That’s why

[00:20:11.54] spk_1:
that’s why we need you on to make sense of this for

[00:20:14.27] spk_0:
us. For

[00:20:15.89] spk_1:
me, I’m not gonna maybe other people maybe more sad, but make sense of it for me please.

[00:21:19.44] spk_0:
So as you were talking, I was thinking, you know how you said like, radio can feel much more intimate than watching the video. And I it kind of reminds me of like reading a book versus watching a movie, the way you described it kind of like, and sometimes, you know, using our own imagination. And and with with the content that were there were there were reading or listening, using our own imagination. I think also helps us build a bond in some way. Whereas when you have a video, it’s like you don’t have to use your imagination, you can see what this person looks like and where they’re sitting and how they’re speaking and all of that kind of thing which I think takes away some of I think that’s part of like our creativity that makes us, you know, interested in having, you know, not knowing everything right away, you know? And and I um especially think like with audio, you know, you’re you’re very you’re not thinking about how you look, you’re just you’re just you’re just really um participating with the content,

[00:22:13.44] spk_1:
interesting. That reminds me of of a host I used to listen to on National Public Radio terry Gross. She she never wanted to be in the same studio as her guests, they always remote and and there was no camera feed. It would she she didn’t want the visual stimulation, she wanted to focus on the conversation and that’s it. She didn’t want the person in the room, she didn’t want to see them wherever they were, whatever studio they were in, she didn’t want to see them from there. It was just the conversation. Mhm interesting. Alright, of course I’m blowing, I’m blowing it here because I I can see you right now and we may put this on Youtube. Uh

[00:22:15.11] spk_0:
well you’re stuck with the lack of choice that people have the choice so to watch or or just listen,

[00:22:21.02] spk_1:
that’s true, you can turn your screen, you can turn off your screen absolutely, you could, you could go for the go for the creativity and, uh, and just listen,

[00:22:29.84] spk_0:
I guess it’s

[00:22:42.94] spk_1:
not so good to just watch though. That’s not gonna be good. Like don’t turn the sound down and try to read the lips that you’re, you’re missing, you’re missing too much content there, that I wouldn’t suggest doing it that way. All right. Um you think Tiktok is growing too, you have a, you have a prediction about Tiktok and instagram.

[00:24:08.44] spk_0:
Um, yeah, so I was reading this and I think, um, hoot suite that Tiktok is growing will surpass instagram um, in the number of active users. Um, and you know, that’s, I mean, we do see a lot of, a lot of the, you know, younger audiences on their like gen Z and stuff like that. Um, and, and I, and I was also reading about, um, okay, well, let me say so, I always want to be like, it’s great when companies can grow and it shows how popular they are. But I do also want to go back to, you know, what we just said about why certain platforms grow faster than others or might succeed where others don’t even though they have the same the same features, But, um, and so, and I start with Tiktok, um, and instagram and, you know, which one is popular is important for our organism, which one’s most popular is important. But we also want to look at where are our audience is in particular. So if you know that your audience is, you know, um this demographic, which is, you know, it’s um boomers who live in Arizona or, or whatever demographic it is, and it doesn’t, it’s not, you don’t see your audience on Tiktok, then it it doesn’t make um too much sense to go on there. But as we said, go and claim your account, make your space. So if you if it ever as the demographics change because that’s important to remember to demographics change over time. Um if we just look at facebook, for example, facebook was only open to university students. Um, so that was a very small demographic, but then it grew and grew. So, so we can see like these are where, where the numbers are for a moment. But that changes. And we can use that information to try to help make our decisions. But we should always remember that none of these are hard and fast rules. And we have to think about ourselves as the expert of our audiences and think about how social media is a tool to help us reach those people that that we know best

[00:25:17.84] spk_1:
and you’re good point, you know, knowing where they are and and knowing that that may shift as well, grandparents were not on facebook 15 years ago, but now it’s common. Well even before the pandemic for grandparents to stay in touch with grandkids through facebook. So,

[00:25:23.17] spk_0:
right. And, and a lot of my students do not use facebook anymore.

[00:25:28.01] spk_1:
Right, well their their grandparents around

[00:25:29.76] spk_0:
it, they don’t want exactly that’s going to look at pictures of your family and stuff, but not talk to your friends.

[00:25:36.74] spk_1:
Facebook is a perfect study in shifting demographics.

[00:25:39.69] spk_0:
That’s an excellent. Yeah, very interesting.

[00:26:26.34] spk_1:
The pioneers were driven off by the by, I think by their grandparents, they were alright, so if Tiktok Tiktok surpasses instagram, alright, so that it’s just, it’s just something I like to be aware of that Tiktok is growing in in audience size that way. And so it might be, might be a place for you to look. Um but maybe not, and we’re gonna get to the maybe not, you know, every right, every platform is not for everybody. Um but again, I love your advice about, you know, claim your claim your spot, get an account in your name, so nobody, nobody beats you to it and then you have to be creative or You know, be Tony-Martignetti two or something, you know,

[00:26:29.19] spk_0:
because

[00:26:38.74] spk_1:
they were the real tony-martignetti you know, All right, so let’s talk about creating, creating content this emerging short form audio

[00:30:11.64] spk_0:
with creating content and especially with short form, I think that’s definitely, you know, a challenge for a lot of social media accounts for a lot of our organizations, especially those that do very complex, you know, work and we want to communicate about it, but you know, this very brief, um, these very brief formats make it very difficult and I always try to emphasize with my colleagues and and reminding myself that social media is a place to direct people to more information. So like, yes, those clips are very short. But you want to make sure you’re using that to direct people where they can get more information. Words, you know, whether it’s, you know, signing up volunteers or donations or or what do you want them to do after? Well, and always have some kind of idea of what you of um, what each of your posts are doing for you. So you don’t wanna, you know, just put any kind of content out there. You have 15 seconds or, or however short the clip is and you want to make sure that you’re, you’re, you know, getting the most out of your time. So, um, when you are like, again, we will go back to the capsule wardrobe, making sure you have those solid foundations, creating some, some graphics that you can reuse. Um, but also, you know, look at what your, your peers um, uh, similar organizations are doing also what your audience is sharing, even if it’s not, you know, specific to your organization, you can see what your audience is interested in and how they are spending their time. Um, I often, you know, in my, in the course that I was doing with the intent, I would often talk about thinking about walking through the day in your audience in any of your audience members shoes and thinking about how are they spending their morning? You know, is that a good time to reach them and, you know, what kind, what are they doing in the morning and how might, you know, your work relate to that in some way. Like if somebody, you know, spends their morning, you know, watering their garden and you are, um, you know, an environmental organization and how you can um kind of show that you have common interests there and relating to what they’re interested in. So looking at looking at what what they are already interested in, but also looking at what some of your competitors and, and similar organizations to yours are doing, and, you know, identifying not just looking at what they’re doing and copying them, but looking at what they’re doing, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and also how you can put a spin on things for, for your brand, um, you know, there’s, there’s a quote, like good artists copy great artists steal that. So, so we want to, so it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, perfectly legitimate to look at what other companies are doing and and try them um, in your own way. Another thing is there’s nothing new under the sun, So all of these ideas are we’re regenerating and, and recreating and which is creativity, you know, thinking of these things from all these different places and they come together to make new things. Um, so when you’re thinking about about your content and how to make it, you know, engaging. You want to go back to the things, think less about the technology and think more about, you know, the very essence of good storytelling and, and you know what makes a good photo making sure that they’re good quality and all of those things can will take you a lot farther than thinking about um friends and and styles because they change so quickly.

[00:31:48.34] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Yes. You have my good wishes for 2022 for the new year. I’m I’m always optimistic at the beginning of the new year. Even when all evidence maybe to the contrary. I still, I don’t know. Uh Pollyanna naivete, blissful ignorance. I I don’t know. But every year I’m optimistic. So I’m optimistic about the new year. And you have my good wishes For your 2022 for you, your family, your work, your nonprofit, all those, all those things that are important. I hope 2022 is very good to you for all of those things in all those different ways. That’s it. My good wishes for the new year. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo. But loads more time for social media outlook for 2022. Alright, that was a lot of excellent. So let’s start with calls to action. You want, you want, you want every piece of content to have some call to action, learn, learn more volunteer, donate, sign the petition.

[00:31:53.34] spk_0:
Even if it’s not a direct call to action, like, you know, sign up. Even if it’s, but even if you know the purpose like, okay, we are interacting with this audience member in order to, you know, build a better um relationship with our audience. Always make sure that that you know why you’re posting and you’re not just spending time sending things out because that’s that’s where you start to, you know, sink all your time into something that might not be paying off

[00:32:51.44] spk_1:
and in in short form audio. I mean if you want folks to go somewhere, maybe two learn more or you know, if there is an explicit call to action, learn more at a landing page, maybe you’re testing the, the, the outcomes so you have a landing page or whatever it is. Short form audio that you have to devote part of your 15 seconds to reading a web address.

[00:33:47.34] spk_0:
So with the, the short form audio, it’s always going to be um in a place they’re gonna have to be looking at something to click on it or have some kind of text with it in order to like it’ll come up in their feet or something like that. So whatever description um or you know, sometimes you, I mean in most places you can comment even beneath yourself. So wherever you see any opportunity to put in that information um is important um to do that. But as far as you know with audio as well, I think it’s also sometimes I see um and that’s actually not, this is audio and text but sometimes I’ll see like very long you RL’s um and I think it’s important to remember to use a U. R. L shorter I think um definitely. And when you’re doing audio, whether you know short for more or a little longer and you want to include a U. R. L. Make sure that you use like um Bentley dot com or something where you can customize it to be something easy to remember and you don’t have to say http excuse, you know, all of

[00:35:08.84] spk_1:
that. Uh I like to go even further. I have, I bought the the vanity domain, you know, tony dot M. A. So I could do tony through M. A. I think is Morocco. I’m pretty sure I bought that. I think I’m every two years I paid the country of Morocco I think I’m pretty sure that’s M. A. Um it’s not Mauritania, I think it’s more, I’m pretty sure it’s Morocco. So yeah, so tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant I can say, you know, non profit radio uh email sign up, you know whatever whatever. Alright so that may be worth investing in a little vanity vanity shorter too but but bitterly of course we like. Yeah, I like free resources. Absolutely. Um and then you mentioned peers, you know, evaluating what your peers are doing, what others see what other nonprofits are doing. So you mean literally looking at there at their feeds and and, and different platforms and see what they’re talking about and how they, how

[00:35:35.64] spk_0:
they talk, yep. And so you should definitely be following your pure organizations. Um, there are also a great resource for creating content. Not just, you know, if you, um, work together sometimes on on a shared project, um, you can help boost each other’s visibility on social media. But you do want to be following following your peer organizations also, you know, as a social media manager. Um, you tend to befriend the other social media managers because you know, you said, you know what other each other are going through. And so that’s actually a great community and um, following each other because then you can reach out to each other. Help. Help because you’re you’re in it for the, for the same cause. So it’s like you’re boosting the same content and and you know, helping achieve your mission overall that both of you want to achieve.

[00:36:27.33] spk_1:
That could even lead to some deeper collaboration. Maybe, you know, I’ve, I’ve had guests talk about the possibility of uh, like doing giving Tuesday, you know, combined campaigns. Mm hmm I don’t remember other examples, but but you know, just shared promotion. Pre shared projects, your promotion

[00:36:38.43] spk_0:
and one of the ones that I’ve had the most success with as far as partnership and shared promotion is um well I don’t see them as much anymore, but for a time there were twitter chats were pretty popular. Um I don’t see them as much as I used to, but whenever I’ve done them, I we would always get like tons more engagement um with our content. That was one of our I will put that on twitter chats and and tweeting at conventions. That is when we would get the most followers, the most retweets the most engagements generally. Um and now I’m thinking, you know, with the twitter um audio rooms and stuff like that. That could be instead of having a twitter chat where you’re typing it out, maybe you have people come in and listen to your panel discussion of experts talking about whatever the theme is and um introducing people to, to your brand that way.

[00:37:32.13] spk_1:
Cool. Excellent ideas. All right. You recommended paying attention to what your audience shares. Mm hmm. So you know what you want to you want to do more of what’s popular and less of what people think? Sucks. Right.

[00:38:48.32] spk_0:
So, um yeah, so, well, before I was a lecturer at Howard, I worked in the office of the Vice President for student Affairs and I was managing the social media there. Um and the school environment especially important to watch what your audience is saying because we didn’t need to watch for any problems that are coming up and stuff like that. Um but that’s the kind of thing I think you you want to look for generally and not just you know, problems um not doesn’t have to be something dire, but you know, what is, what is your audience concerned about that your organization can help answer and um you know, what are the problems that they encounter or the ways that see that they that they feel the issue that you cover, how that impacts their lives. So sometimes it might be looking at, you know exactly what they’re posting, exactly what they’re saying and sometimes it means more about like you know looking at overall and kind of observing, you know what you um you might even notice like challenges and things that come up that that your audience does not. Um but you can perhaps you know show how your work can help with these things that they may not even notice our issues um relating to your organization.

[00:39:06.62] spk_1:
What about the use of analytics to uh to evaluate what what your what your folks are sharing is that can that be valuable there?

[00:41:00.61] spk_0:
Absolutely. You should definitely be um keeping track of your analytics if you so if you don’t have a dedicated person who can look at the analytics every month, you at least want to be downloading them. So you have them um whenever I have started a new position as a social media manager. one of the first things that I do is to go to, um, all of those social media accounts and download as much of their um, analytical history as I possibly can. So if you’re already keeping and, and the thing is some platforms that you can’t go back any farther than a couple of years or a couple of months. So it’s very important to get that right away. Um, even if you can’t look at it consistently, because one day if you, if you do have someone who’s able to dedicate time to that, they have tons of content to go on where they can look at, you know, oh, we had a huge jump in in subscribers um, at this time and then they can go and look at, well, you know, what was going on at that time, What did we post? What was drawing in so much engagement? And so that’s why you really, um that’s why your your analytics are so important and it’s thus about like looking through them every day. Or I’m sorry, every month or so, um, because you know, if you don’t have a dedicated person for that, that takes a lot of time. But being familiar with, you know, around how many followers you have or being able to see the trend of, you know, what is normal engagement for us. So that then you can see when you do have a huge spike, you’ll be easily able to identify like oh here’s where that came from and here’s how we can duplicate that success also because that’s another thing you want to think about. How can we do this again? Um how can we use it for a different campaign or or in what other ways can we can we benefit from you know this content that we that did so well

[00:41:05.01] spk_1:
which are the platforms that you think have the better analytics.

[00:42:49.90] spk_0:
I definitely have opinions about that. Twitter, Twitter has great analytics um you will find so in um in a lot of communications scholarship like peer review journals and stuff when they’re when they’re talking about social media they will often use twitter twitter analytics because they’re the easiest to access. So twitter makes it very easy to to download all of your analytics from your account and put it in an Excel spreadsheet and then from there you can do whatever you want to do with it. Um there are on the on the other end I would say like for example instagram you cannot you have to go to like each individual post and see how many how many had right? So you have to type them in and yeah so and and that that allows um face meta now meta to have you know um more control over that content. Um The facebook analytics I are pretty good but again they are there, you kind of have to keep them within facebook Um So it’s harder to you know take them out and analyze them in different ways. So any platform that’s going to allow you to download them in an Excel spreadsheet is ideal. Um But you know sometimes I have had to go through and I’m writing typing them in individually from instagram. So and and that could that could also you know be a factor in deciding which platforms that you spend most of your time on because you know if you if you are focusing on if you make if you want to focus a lot on your analytics you wanna and and you want to have a platform where you can easily download them and it doesn’t take a lot of extra work. Um So you know these are all things to think about when you’re when you’re deciding you know what works best for for how you present on social media.

[00:43:15.50] spk_1:
What’s another one that’s good besides twitter Analytics one judging the analytics.

[00:43:20.00] spk_0:
I mean I do I like facebook uh the analytics that they that the way that they’re analytics

[00:43:27.47] spk_1:
are in the

[00:44:20.59] spk_0:
classroom right? You can’t export them. So um I’m thinking I mean for the most they tried there so you can I would also recommend. So I don’t know of twitter is the best ones, I don’t know of any other other ones don’t really compare to that but yeah but twitter is also starting to lock down um some of that like it’s not quite as much um data as you could get it before so um but there’s also you know platforms where like Hoot suite for example where you can have multiple social media platforms and see your analytics aggregated there. I do caution though that when you use um you use one of those platforms um the numbers might be a little bit different like there might be like some lag time between you know twitter and twitter on Hoot suite you know so um and also like the labels and the way that data is is labeled so you know on one platform a certain action might be called interactions whereas on another platform they’re called engagements and how they measure each of those things and what they’re called could could be different. So it’s just you know making sure we’re watching for those.

[00:44:52.69] spk_1:
Why would like a twitter start restricting the the robustness of the of the analytics the way you just said they’re they’re they’re tightening that up. Why would they why would they offer less?

[00:45:01.29] spk_0:
You want to charge for it? You want to start

[00:45:03.45] spk_1:
charging a fee to get it or

[00:45:29.19] spk_0:
you know what that’s and you know we we don’t know until they until it’s public. So that is 11 thing that could, I’m I haven’t um I’m not sure why it’s more difficult to get information but you know it’s beneficial to companies you know that information is money to them. So it is beneficial to them when they, you know, have proprietary um keeping content that that is valuable to them. I would um but twitter,

[00:45:43.49] spk_1:
they could have it too and share it with us too. I mean they’re they’re only sharing it with users. Users can only get there there little bit. The company is welcome to aggregate the hundreds of millions of users. They can do whatever you want with your proprietary data. But let me have my little share what are you taking in the era of transparency? What are you taking my little share away for?

[00:45:57.29] spk_0:
You would think, But I don’t know. All

[00:46:36.38] spk_1:
Right. You don’t have all the answers. Nobody does know these black boxes that we’ve all signed onto 2020 years. Sometimes they’re more annoyance than than than than additive but sometimes not not, I’m not, not saying I’m I’m opposed to social media obviously, but they can be very annoying, very annoying. We don’t even, we could spend a whole hour talking about facebook or a day about the annoyances behind facebook and in the shift from organic to paid, it’s just to me it’s just corporate green. All right.

[00:46:39.48] spk_0:
But I think a lot of that is, you know power from the users and putting it back in the hands of the company because users do have so much power and we have a lot of their ideas come from the users that are using the platforms. So I think it’s, you know, wanting to control how, how people use that platform and the information that you can get from it.

[00:46:59.28] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean,

[00:47:03.77] spk_0:
it’s

[00:47:28.88] spk_1:
exploitation. I mean, I’ll use, I’ll use facebook the most egregious example as, as the example, but you think goaded us all in, you know, they have 2.5 billion users now, a third of the planet is they, they brought us in and then they, and then they shepherd uh, you know, much less organic reach now. You want the same organic, you want the same reach, add pay for it, pay for it, pay us pay Goldman Sachs and uh, and you can have that, we have your reach back that we gave you originally and you know, it’s, it’s egregious. It’s uh, just exploitation.

[00:47:43.38] spk_0:
And I, I feel like social media has so much power for bringing people together and, and so that’s why I caution about like with trends and stuff we do need to be critical about, you know, is this trend, was this trend created because it’s something users wanted or because the company needs to innovate and grow. You know, so that’s another reason why you can wait and give yourself some time to see which trends are taking on and what makes sense for you because you don’t want to just be throwing your your time into this machine that is just there to make money for them. You want to make sure that you’re getting the best value out of that,

[00:48:37.77] spk_1:
what a beautiful segue to, to a closing section, let’s talk about, you know, every every platform is not for every non profit you know, you’ve you’ve made the point already, you know, you can uh squat on your account, you create your account and just and just squat it, hold it, but but every, you know, even the bigger platforms, we don’t have to be everywhere.

[00:48:42.07] spk_0:
Exactly, so,

[00:48:43.29] spk_1:
you know,

[00:50:17.66] spk_0:
you definitely right, so there are like you and this is something I say in my class to like in learning about social media and there’s constantly new stuff, you do not have to know everything about it, you do not have to be on every platform, your audience is not on every platform, no single person can manage all of the social media accounts that their social media platforms that there are. So I think the most important thing, you know, is to get back to that good structure and knowing who your audience is and um how to communicate with them and then, you know, using the different quirks of those social media accounts and different features to, to tweak that, but um as far as, you know, you might also want to think of as we’re talking about, you know, these big companies and what data they’re keeping and control and stuff like that, that might also be an a factor in deciding which platforms you’re on like um, back to N 10. Um, and 10 is no longer on Facebook because you know, the, some of the business practices that Facebook has used do um, do not, you know, does not work well with end transmission and the ways that they operate and you know, those are things you have to weigh that. Um, you know, if a lot of your, your audiences on facebook and that’s the only way to reach them, then maybe, you know, you do stay, but you know, you have this understanding of like um, that there are issues and were working around them and trying to make the best of these environments, but you know, they are businesses and so we need to be smart about where we’re spending our time.

[00:51:22.46] spk_1:
Excellent advice, very savvy. Thank you. All right. Sharos King Matthews, you’ll find her at narrows A C K. I’m gonna spell her name so you can find her C H A R R O S C King, Thank you very much. Great, great advice. Thank you my pleasure Next week, the log for j software vulnerability with Joshua pesky, eh, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. It may be a new year, but some things never change. Our creative producer is

[00:51:23.54] spk_3:
claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is

[00:51:28.24] spk_1:
our web guy

[00:51:41.66] spk_3:
and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out

[00:51:43.14] spk_1:
and be

[00:51:53.36] spk_3:
great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 7, 2017: The Agitator’s Donor Retention & Your Content Strategy

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Roger Craver: The Agitator’s Donor Retention

Roger Craver is The Agitator and his book is “Retention Fundraising.” He has strategies to help you keep the donors you’ve got. (Originally aired April 10, 2015)

 

 

 

Brett Meyer & Katie Carrus: Your Content Strategy

What should you create for the communications channels where you’re active? How do you stay consistent with your mission? Who’s responsible? Brett Meyer is director of strategy for Think Shout and Katie Carrus is director of online communications at Humane Society Legislative Fund. (Originally aired April 17, 2015)

 


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Hello and welcome tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host i’m going in from emerald isle, north carolina today because the show must go on. We have a listener of the week abila anis, she tweeted. Tony is a snarky host who tells it like it is now what non-profits need to be successful, i would’ve preferred charming or ah charlie rose knockoff would’ve been nice, snarky, probably accurate, but who cares about accuracy? Facts are overrated. She named it best non-profit podcast on her block fact check that is accurate. She’s at abre auctioneer and auctions generosity dot com abila thank you very much for the kind words, but in your block post you could’ve mentioned my youtube channel isn’t mentioned that one it’s really tony martignetti r e a l abila anise congratulations on being our listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into noma phobia if you called me with the idea that you missed today’s show the agitators donorsearch retention. Roger craver is the agitator and this book is retention fund-raising yeah, strategies to help you keep the donors. You’ve got that originally aired on april tenth, twenty fifteen and you’re content strategy what should you create for the communications channels where you are active? How do you stay consistent with ambition? Who’s responsible brett mayer is with think shout and katie caress from the humane society just later fundez that originally aired april seventeen twenty, fifteen, twenty two non-profit radio on stanford social innovation review responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers may be a spelling dot com here is roger craver with the agitators donor-centric i’m really glad that roger craver, the agitator is with me. He’s, the agitator at the agitator dot net he’s been shaking things up for a long time in big ways. He helped launch organizations like common cause greenpeace, the national organization for women and amnesty international. Damn that’s impressive. His book is retention fund-raising the new art and science of keeping your donors for life published by emerson and church he’s at roger craver on twitter and right now he’s on non-profit radio welcome, roger craver. Thanks, tony it’s. Great. To be with you, it’s. A pleasure, it’s. A real pleasure to interview the agitator. I love that the agitator that’s cool like, thank you. Did you think about the anarchist? Did you consider that or no it’s? No, i don’t need that much chaos. I think they’re stirring things up in agitating ways. Good. Okay, that’s sufficient? I understand. Um, why was there a need for a book called retention? Fund-raising? Well, for the last ten years, possibly fifteen years american non-profits and european non-profits have been basically losing mohr donors than they’re gaining. And that is that is a real problem, not only for the present, but for the future. The history of fund-raising before then was the donors were fairly easy to come by, and the cost of acquiring them was relatively inexpensive. And so there was a sort of burn and turn mentality. That so what if we lose, the donors will will get new donors and simply replaceable that’s not possible anymore. And so people who are caring about their organizations future need to be caring about holding on to the donors they have. Early in the book, you cite a twenty thirteen a f. P association of fund-raising professional study that says that ah, a few things, but it starts with flat fund-raising every every hundred dollars raised from new donors was offset by one hundred dollars in losses that’s, right? And it got worse. It got worse in two thousand fourteen, it was off by one hundred six dollars really way are going the wrong way. Um, and then also that there was negative growth in the number of donors for every hundred dollars for every hundred donors acquired, one hundred seven were lost. That’s, right, that’s, right. Pretty a pretty frightening statistic when you couple that with the fact that the number of non-profit has grown enormously in the last thirty years. It’s grown from about six hundred thousand to a million. Five hundred thousand non-profits so many more non-profits chasing far fewer donors. That, in essence, is the problem. And why retention is so important, many more charities chasing many fewer donors. Right? Alright, so that is clearly unsustainable. Um, all right. So what we gonna do about this? Well, that’s, what i asked myself after after watching these statistics for a long time, i decided there there really has to. Be it empirical way too find out why donors leave on what we can do to keep them in the bowl. Yes, the study and so we set out to do and did a two year study of two hundred fifty non-profits in the united states and in the united kingdom and survey tens of thousands of donors to determine why they leave, and then what steps on organization could take to hold on to them? And that it is the findings from that study that i’ve been encapsulated in this, uh, in this book, along with some quite practical suggestions on what organizations khun due to stem this hemorrhaging, we’re going to get to those because that you call them retention winds. Um ah, finger pointing is not particularly valuable, but i’d like to do some anyway. My show, we’re going to do whatever the hell i want. Where do you think that? How do you think this problem arose? This lays a fair, lackadaisical attitude about how we treat our donors and doesn’t matter. We lose, some will gain more back where does the fault line you think? Well, it arose from the days when it was so easy and inexpensive, too acquire donors and at a time when direct response became very popular way of acquiring donors, and so they the mindset became sort of it’s it’s easier to sign the purchase order for direct mail lists and printing than it is to really worry about how to take care. I don’t owe rather casual, okay, so we consign this purchase order for an acquisition, mailing campaign or whatever, whatever channel we use acquisition, campaign and that’s easier than being interested, active and evaluating and then improving the way we treat our donors exactly, because the the reality is that treating a donor well takes thought takes work, takes planning and, uh, takes the willingness to build a relationship between the organization and the donor and that that involves a lot more than simply mailing a letter or making a phone call. And i love that we’re talking to someone who has studied this problem. I noticed a non-profit radio last couple of weeks, i’ve been saying introspection a lot this, but it just seems to be coming up with a number of guests that non-profits need to be introspective about whatever whatever subject we’re talking about. This there’s not enough it’s critical self evaluation? No, there isn’t. And one of the one of the reasons for that there’s a there’s a so called where there’s a horrible jargon term called brett best practice. Okay, what in the earth best practices are? I don’t know and i’ve been doing this for fifty years, but people latch onto that term and they most often compare their organization with other organisations and say, well, if we’re we’re doing about as well as the other other guy, so we must be using best practices but that, you know, there’s, no interest, thie other the other organization might be doing it badly. You can’t you can’t just say that we were consistent with others they maybe, maybe underachievers. And by the way, we have non-profit radio we have george in jail, but best practices has been used so often that i’m not even sure that’s jargon anymore. It’s dahna it’s more like cliche, but we should send send you do instead of jargon jail within you teo ilsen ugo cliche camp union are you near an airport? There’s a jets taking a knife in your back about thirty miles away but one just came over, so okay, well, maybe we’re being a zombie that kept going. It didn’t stop, right? Okay, we would’ve heard it if it stopped. All right. So we’ll put you in cliche camp, which doesn’t sound that bad joke. It’s like for minor offenders. That’s a juvenile would be in there that trade. I don’t use it. No, i don’t think there is such a thing is best practice. And i’ve been hearing state of the art a lot too. Maybe that’s replacing best practices, but there’s, just a substitution. All right, spare us and thought thought leadership we could we could talk all day about jargon jail don’t leadership. Yes, i know there’s a lot of it in non-profits and that’s. Why? Non-profit right there has drug in jail. Sometimes i let offenders off easy and other times probation is it’s harder to come by. All right, we’re gonna go out for a break. And when roger and i come back, we’ve got a good amount of time. We’re going to talk about ah, some of these retention wins that are easy to do and and had a help you build trust with your current existing donors so they don’t depart, 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 we’re pre recorded this week. I’m sorry, i can’t send ah town and city live listener love but you know that i love are live listeners so that’s out to each of you listening live podcast pleasantries those on the time shift, wherever you are, whatever device whatever time. Whenever however many days or weeks later, you listen to non-profit medio pleasantries to you and never forget our affiliates. Very important affiliate affection out to each of our affiliates throughout the country non-profit radio was hurt. Okay, roger craver. Now, how can we be sure that these retention winds are not cloaked? Best practices? Well, so he could be sure based on empirical data as measured from the responses of ah, thousands and thousands of donors. There’s. No conjecture here on my part. You know, there’s there’s, lots of so called best practices dahna where the people say, well, you know, you ought to print your thank you notes on a very high quality paper. Or you ought to get him out within twenty four hours. Or you need tio send x number of cultivation pieces with no. Asks and all that, of course, is is pure tribal wisdom, so our best practice, whatever you want to call it. So here we wait. In this study, we measured what people care most about and what they don’t care about and put it in priority order according to their responses, and came up with a way of the of isolating the seven drivers duitz that make for retention or flipside of retention of courses is attrition. And, you know, tony, all all of this is really based on apart from our empirical data there’s a lot of common sense here, but common sense, it turns out, is a fairly rare commodity. Ah, the business of building relationships, which is what donorsearch tension is all about is based on two, two things consistency and reliability. None of this, uh, listening to this program have serious personal relationships that don’t have an element of substantial element of consistency and reliability. If i if i say to my spouse, i’m i’m going to meet you at seven thirty, and i’m persistently, uh, late or early or inconsistent with that. That relationship is not goingto laugh the same the same when it comes. To your have you been talking to my wife? You’re describing my marriage? Let’s, let’s keep personalities and personal lives out of this, shall we? Alright? Well, people just translated into into the non-profit world if i if i receive a on appeal a prospect appeal let’s, say from from an animal organization and it talks about rescuing puppies and cat and i send them a contribution. And the next thing i know, i get an acknowledgement letter about the oceans and let’s save some whales that is not consistent, and i will not likely be back to that organization with another gift or if they send that acknowledgement letter and it says roger carver instead of roger craver call their their help line, and i get a rather surly or non carrying clerk, and he says, well, i may try to get to it as soon as i can and isn’t very helpful. I’m not going to go back with another gift because that’s an unreliable organization, so we have to understand that relationships are built on trust and the two pillars of trust or consistency and reliability, and therein lies the key to retention because it leads to the next element of of retention, which is understanding the donors, the importance of the donors attitude, you know, it’s it’s, not it’s, not the donors behaviour that we should be concerned about behavior in the sense of transactions giving money or not giving yeah, donors attitude that we need to care about because the organization dahna determines what that attitude is going to be by the organization’s action. Yeah, when you use organization is doing things that affect the donor positively, then the donor’s attitude will lead to behaviour that makes transaction increases the size of a gift renews the membership, whatever, whatever the desired outcome. But it’s, not the donor per se that is to blame are not to blame. It is the organization’s action that determined how that donor feels about the organizations have something that folks really need to understand if they’re serious about donor-centric we’re also talking about perception, right? How do they perceive? Perceive your organization? Is it professional? Does it care about me as a donor? Aside from all the programmatic important work that it’s doing? But how does it treat our relationship that’s, right? And that that tony that is paramount in ah, donors, psyche, no, they people hyre non-profits to do a variety of of a number of jobs sometimes is to make them feel good sometimes it’s, to enable them to be able to tell their peer group that they’re doing this or that sometimes it’s, because they want to do a specific thing, but very seldom is what is that what the organization claims that is in their appeals? Many people really don’t care that you have ten regional offices or that your ceo has appeared six times in the new york times? None none of that is important. Yet organizations just love talking about themselves, and nothing is more deadly and building a donor relationship that let’s move into these retention winds, which i’ll remind people are just reiterate these air based on empirical study, not not conventional wisdom or would just tribal wisdom that has been repeated at conference after conference. Just because one organization does it a certain way and they’ve been successful doesn’t mean that that’s going to be successful universally it’s not really lesson that’s amore that’s an anecdote? Um okay, hyre you like saying thank you? That sounds pretty simple. Why does it? Why does this need to be? Why does need to be said? Well, it needs to be said because sixty four percent of american non-profits don’t bother thanking their donors. We could start, we can start right there two thirds to two thirds of gifts or not not acknowledged and thanked you’re saying are not are not acknowledged or thank some. Some of that two thirds is acknowledged the sense of a tax receipt, but a tax receipt doesn’t go very far to build it toward building a personal relationship. That’s cold? Yeah, yeah, patane has retained this receipt for your tax advisers evaluation? Yeah, exactly, exactly so they the importance of a thank you is that it is the it is an initial step in building a relationship on we’ve learned a couple things through this study that that air quite important one is it needs to be personal, and by that i don’t mean personalized i mean, personal sounding and warm, warm of heart and meaningful to the donor not necessarily long, but it really has to be real, not we’re. We’re so happy to have received your twenty five dollars, gift, it will be put to immediate ineffective use sincerely, x y z. That is not a that is not a thank you. Rather it is. Dear tony, your check arrived. I can’t tell you how happy it’s going to make sammy who tomorrow will have not only a meal, but he will have a toy for christmas on dh so forth so it needs it really needs to connect the donor to the organization and the donor’s gift to a beneficiary in a real sense of the of the word, something as something way before you get timely there’s no automatic rule that it has to go out within twenty four hours, but it should go out promptly after receipt of the gift. Because we in the studies we we’ve done the preferential time is forty eight hours, but donors of forgiving of taking longer than that what they’re not forgiving of are these form printed, impersonal, thank you’s that just ring ring hollow. So that’s that’s the importance of saying thank you? One of the things you mentioned that i want to emphasize is that the thank you doesn’t have to be long? It doesn’t. I’ve heard this and said it many times on the show i heard it from guests. To be genuine and sincere does not require something long. No, i mean, i love you. If it’s if it’s said in a heartfelt way three words that’s an awful lot to a relationship. That’s your right. That’s it that’s an outstanding analogy. All right. Oh, and the book points out that there’s, um, resource is available around. Thank you’s. You have. Ah, there’s a thank you letter clinic at sophie, which is the showcase of fund-raising inspiration and innovation and your vory thoughtful to point out that people can lift thank you letter ideas from there, but not copy and paste. No, not copy and face. But take, uh, lisa sergeant has put that together and done a terrific job, and she she has an attic full of ah, wonderful. Thank you. Uh, campaigns in there and get inspired by it. And by all means use that. You know, shaul had a saying the mediocre borrow genius steals and there’s. Lots of good stuff on sophie that’s that’s worth looking at that will give you ideas. And this thank you. Clinic is certainly one of them. All right. Mediocre borrow and the genius steals. I’m in the wrong business. We gotta transcend the law’s a little more often, but there we go. You want us to be boring? What do you mean what’s behind that? Be boring. Let’s go back to the to the term consistency, one of the one of the realities of painful realities among most non-profits is they get tired of their of their same message, and as a result, because they’re bored. Uh, they they hyre another copy writer or the same copywriter and say let’s, let’s do something fancy or something that glows in the dark. Something different, something exciting? Well, that is that is not only a horrible waste of time and money. It’s also destructive of relationships, consistency is important and that’s what i mean by be boring. You may be tired of the same message you, mr or mrs organization of same message, but the donor isn’t tired of the same message. They they joined for that reason and they want to stay involved for that reason, so be consistent. That doesn’t mean you have to copy this same thing every time, but stay on the same themes that have produced the donor in the first place and the same the same way a good politician will give the same stump speech over and over again. She may be absolutely sick and tired of it, and the press may be sick and tired of it, and her staff may be sick and tired of it. But it is a speech that works with don’t with the voters, and it has to be given over and over again. You have a background in political consulting, too, don’t you? Yes, ideo i, uh, did a lot of work for twenty years for a number of democratic senators, presidential candidates in the course, citizen advocacy, the work for groups like greenpeace, the seal, you and others that’s all tied to politics. You’ve been around, you’ve been doing this a long time. Did you say fifty years earlier? I believe just, yeah, i’m probably older than most of the trees you’re looking at. Well, i’m in new york, so thie average tree life in new york is, i think, seven years, the street trees. So you got you got those. You got those covered, but all right, you’ve been around it. I’m in i admire its wisdom, its wisdom coming let’s. Imperially no! It’s, empirical. Wisdom it’s not anecdotal. Here’s what’s worked for me in my client’s through the decades. Okay, you want to listen to donors, don’t you? Absolutely. And here here is on area that organizations can really score against the competition and can also help themselves because very few folks in the nonprofit world design effort to get the feedback from their donors. You know, the court corporate america spends billions of dollars getting feedback. If you go on an airline, get off that airline the next day you get a survey you goto to ah, hotel, the next day you get a survey after you’ve checked out my heavens, even ihop, it doesn’t survey on the back of the receipts from their breakfast, and the reason they do this is they know that it, uh, that asking for people’s opinion build satisfaction and builds loyalty, and it is so easy to do, and it is so inexpensive to do, but most non-profits don’t do it, and they just keep the mute button on rather than listen to their donors. But by having feedback mechanisms, you can find out that your website, uh, sucks when it comes to the donate page or you can find out that you’re donorsearch vis program isn’t good, and these these feedback mechanisms are there basically widgets that you’ve been put on your website or questions you can put in your direct mail? Andi, uh, get get the donor’s opinion and, you know, twenty one one of the thing on that you don’t have to necessarily get a written response or telephone response from a donor zamir act repeat, the mere act of asking for someone’s opinion and feedback will boost retention by thirty percent. That is a significant difference. Roger, we have teo to start to wrap up. We just have about thirty seconds left, and, uh, i want listeners, of course, to know there are many more retention winds in the book retention fund-raising published by emerson and church, roger, just spend a couple seconds. Small and midsize shops have a big advantage here, don’t they? They absolutely do. And i love your your slogan for the other ninety five percent because they have a huge advantage because they can do things personally and a well run non-profit shop that pays attention to its donors will exceed return on investment by by five to ten. Times higher than the big organization. Roger craver, he’s, the agitator, to find him at the agitator dot net, and at roger craver on twitter. Roger, thank you so much for sharing all that empirical wisdom. It’s. My pleasure, and i join chelsea and your fan club. Thank you, cool, write something nice, and i’ll make you a listener of the week. Thank you again. You’re content. Strategy is coming up first. Pursuant, they have a free content paper for you. Intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining e-giving so its forces um, intelligent. You got that? You listen to non-profit radio done fundraiser, you’re you’re either doing it frontline or you’re probably involved in it in some respect. It’s, not you, khun fast forward guide who doesn’t need a guide ever needs guidance in life and sustaining e-giving the research proves that there is a cause and effect relationship between sustaining giving and donor retention wolber roger and i just talking about you need to raise more money. You need to keep your donors that terrible attrition rate. Get it down what you waiting for? Help yourself you can learn the right way to do sustaining giving notice i did not say best practices, you’ll find this content paper. The intelligent fundraisers guide to sustaining e-giving at pursuing dot com quick re sources and content papers couldn’t be simpler. You read the paper to you and don’t make me do it. You want to be with you for an hour, go to pursue it. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising it’s a game show. Fundraiser reminds me of the gun show actually, the host chuck barris just died like a week or ten days ago gong show had the unknown comic so does we’ve been telling the got comics gene gene, the dancing machine we’d be spelling has dancing dahna show had a live band there’s live music and we’d be spelling parallels amazing between the gun show it’s the gong show plus spelling equals we’ll be spelling so you so the gun show equals we be spelling minus spelling is when you move it over, you gotta change the sign you could solve for spelling. Spelling equals the gun show minus we’ll be spelling everything else can be derived. Andi, i’m not sure about the natural log with the natural log of we’d be spelling is the video nonetheless is at we be spelling dot com natural log of we be spelling now. Time for tony’s take two non-profit video we’re on stanford social innovation review we are a podcast. Yes, sir. At s i r dot org’s now you don’t personally need this because you’re listening live or podcast or affiliate, but for everybody else, the ones who haven’t yet been born. Into the non-profit radio family, those sheep without a flock fighters without a formation, the fords without a fleet, they are the ones who confined us on stanford social innovation review check out my video that makes two videos for you to watch overviewing paying attention taking notes in my video the random dude in alexandria, virginia, signals excitement about this announcement and i look fat. We’ll find that video at twenty martignetti dot com and that is tony, take two here are bret meyer and katie caress with your content strategy welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen it’s hosted by antenna non-profit technology network. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is katie caress she’s, director of online communications for humane society legislative fund. Katie welcome. Thank you so much for having me. That’s. A pleasure. Thanks for taking time on a busy conference. Your workshop topic is content strategy one or one. What are non-profits not doing so well? I could do better at around their content. Strategy. Well, about everybody here has the intention to do much better. I think that everyone here probably is. Looking for something like content, strategy and it’s, just a matter of kind of getting their leaders, the executives onboarding really what it does is it applies like intention and focus to all of your messaging. It’s. A basic plan r the idea that your messages need a plan. A plan focused plan strategy. Yeah, sounds like it starts with goals. Yeah, it starts with goals. It’s just a good idea to start with making sure that you understand oh, yeah, making sure that you understand what your business goals are and discovering how your channel usually is websites with content strategy, but it could be anything social email, whatever making sure that those platforms have goals that are tighter business schools. So you’re avoiding this kind of like sprawl and all over nests of what happens with web sites a lot of time, and the ad hoc put this up things to be just has to go, like, right now, right? I’m taking it that could come from a ceo or a boardmember yeah, and is there someone else senior and becomes hard to say? No, exactly, exactly, and i think that a lot of people who were working on websites or other channels just kind of feel like they’re in this quagmire, right there just likes just drowning and content, and they don’t have the tools to kind of push back or, you know, carve out a better way. So what this says it’s, like we acknowledge that you’re in this like situation where you’re getting input from stakeholders who had all kinds of varying degrees of a definition of what the website is for what this content is supposed to do so content strategy says everybody from their own perspective. Everyone have no perspective, their own priorities, different audiences, and you end up with this website that kind of like pleases nobody, right? It doesn’t drive your business goals, so content strategy says let’s. Ask the question of why, before we do anything and i think that’s kind of revolutionary who worked on the web even the past, like ten years. It’s it’s, just this race to the bottom, like what you said, like publish all the things now, and this has kind of slow down let’s have a plan and it ends up like driving engagement, and it improves your brand it, you know, drives up, conversions, everything if you can kind of get the buy-in take a beat and pursue this, ok, where should we start our conversation? That was great over that was excellent. Overviewing thank you. Should we get started? Well, you should get started by, you know, finding some similarly minded colleagues, right? So talk to your team members about this current problem. Probably everybody started talking about. It i’m sure they are, right. So talk to him about this this, you know, notion that people are pursuing get the, you know, good kind of the buy-in from your colleagues and then start reaching out to people who are, you know, a little above you who could be an ambassador for you to senior leadership and work on getting that buy-in from those folks and then you just start by what you’re basically telling them or trying to get them on board with we need to be more strategic about this. Yeah. Here, our problems. Yes. And here’s, what are potential outcomes are yeah, if we can be a lot more sophisticated about, like here’s, why we’re drowning, right? He’s? All right. Driving here’s where our pages aren’t really converting people here’s why they’re not performing the way we want them go and you don’t even, like start with your business goal and then you pursue it audit we got a big hump dahna okay, just went away. Okay? Great. What that was that was the with speakers. The thie non-profit radio sound system. A cz exemplary it’s beyond question. So that came from the austin convention center. I wish i could run, i could run this convention of the way we run non-profit really agree? I don’t know these losers here. Well, yeah, but so one of the great first step to take us to get an audit done, right? And so it’s an inventory of all of your content, but then it’s the audit phase, which you’re you know, you’re evaluating page by page, and for some people, this could be like tens of thousands of pages on their website, right? Or it’s a couple hundred, you’re evaluating page by page and determining whether that content a piece of content actually lines with what everybody says your business goals are it’s a pretty serious audit? Now you gotta look at every page, every page, and obviously, if you have hundreds of thousands of pages, or if you’re, you know, a merchant’s site you’re going, you’re going to do like a sample size of those pages, right? You’re the idea is to just see, really, hell, well, you’re you’re content is performing and a lot of times that drives a conversation that drives, you know, that gives you the ammunition to make the case that we need. To make a change so an audit is key. It’s the first place to start, and then you’re pursuing just getting that content landscape kind of sketched out determining what you’re ecosystem is right. So let’s say, you’ve got like, you know, thirty things the organization works on for non-profit you’re gonna have all kinds of things somebody’s working on. So you get the executives and the subject experts to agree? Like what? Our priorities right where the organization’s priorities get really clear on that? And then look at how those priorities and those areas are kind of developed on your site. Do you have one thing that’s like this really, really weird offshoot thing? Just like favorite thing, and you have, like, forty thousand pages on it. This should all be driven by the mission. Yeah, exactly. I already should be pretty clear. Yeah, and flow very yeah, smooth from your your mission statement. Yeah, but what you’ll find. But i think a lot of non-profit especially large ones like, oh, my gosh, there’s there’s competing goals were competing priorities and competing interpretations of what that mission is all across organization, which leaves just, you know, a lot of strife in a lot of tension for folks who are, like, right in the middle of that content production system like the web editors. So, yeah, the idea is to kind of, like, sketch out what your content ecosystem should be. So if our priority right here is, like farm animal welfare, we we should have, like, the depth of that contact your sights to reflect that, and it should also reflect what the current priorities are and the tone that you should using, etcetera. But if you have something that’s just, like, really, really low priority, it doesn’t make sense for that to have, you know, take up twenty percent of the site and you’ll find that that happens a lot of times, so okay, okay, so we were going to get some early stakeholders summerlee allies engaged with us? Yeah, who then starts to develop the content strategy. So, you know, you may have someone who is a content strategist on your team, like, if so lucky you a lot of places, all right, let’s assume not. Our audience is small and midsize. Non-profit yeah, exactly, i know and i’m from a huge non-profit and we don’t have anything like that, so usually this falls on the shoulders of, you know that editorial director of a website or, you know, a director of any filler online platforms and usually going to fall on them, and it doesn’t have to be like we’re going to do all of this right now. It can be baby steps. It can be like let’s just take on one like many project and apply content strategy to it, like run that through that screen, kind of demonstrate successive that way, teo to your stakeholders and say, look how well this worked. Look how we drove results this way by applying attention and focus to this, and then you could move on to a larger things, but it always usually kind of just germinates from the web team, maybe someone else, depending on how the organisation structure and maybe someone like development or design. Everybody has a part in this, but yeah. Then it just gets not only getting the work done and turning your website. Are you platform into what you wanted to be? Okay, uh, that all sounds very simple, but there’s gotta be more to it. And we got plenty of time to spend together. So where where do we go now? Well, i mean, yeah, gosh, so it starts with the audit, you know, and you’re looking into how your, how your pages map to your goals and everything, and then you might start with, like, a section of the website, maybe a section that you i feel like the stakeholders there are going to be easy to work with, and they’re going to, like, excited about the process, and so you might start with that that that section that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but very good to make it explicit. You got some of those early allies tell me some of their content is the place to start, you know, and don’t start with someone who are a section of your organization who, you know, it’s been kind of contentious to work with them, and a lot of people talk about how content started she’s about like therapy, right? It’s like all these relationships, because content is so personal, there’s so many people who were owning content across the organization and to them that that page that they wrote on, like horse immuno contraception is think their baby right? Like, okay, well, this makes no sense to an audience. This makes no sense to a user, how are they going to do that? So a lot of this kind of, you know, revision, work or whatever is collaborative, and you’re getting people on those teams who contribute to content and you’re all coming to a consensus on, like, what it should be based on, like what? We’ve all agreed on the goals, and we’ve all agreed on the audience, like, how can we change? And sometimes you get them involved in writing new stuff? It all depends on kind of the scope of the organization and how involved everybody wants to be, but it should be a collaborative process, and it could be merely taking, like, five pages that you took out from the audit and saying, like, okay, well, these pages are they really working for us? And so you get them involved in that early early stages so they can kind of see it don’t feel like they’re being put upon, right? A lot of this is relationship management, and so, yeah, you may take five pages and two of them make the cut on. The new site, but you’ve all worked on that together. Three the me decide to retire or, you know, you can, you know, contingency of planet, right? Like have a couple of bourbons on any composed it, but the whole thing should be collaborates. You have everybody going on the same page from beginning tend so we should be thinking also about our audiences. That’s, right, who’s, who’s consuming this content, right and so that’s. One of the first things you develop as your, you know, working on your goal, you’re also thinking about your audience. And so anybody who’s working in a content strategy, capacity and organizations should be talking a lot, teo, all the stakeholders throughout the organization who are touching that content, right? So my job would be to go to that horse. Amina contraception page owner i mean, like, why is this important to you? Tell me how to use this in your work. Would you really, really want to see this? And what do you want them to do with it on? Don’t get a lot of really, really good information out of that. It sometimes turns out to be less contentious than you may. Have thought it wass right? You’ll discover that like, oh, actually, they’re you know, they’re worked requires something different, and now i can pitch something different to them that’s more useful than like this page on the website that i’ve seen has gotten like twenty, views and past year and so it’s, just a lot of lot of talking relationship management. Um, and then once you’ve got kind of i guess that section worked on or even the whole site, then you just move on to a governance situation and actually see bret coming right here. Maybe he wants to speak on governance. Governance is actually brett’s section right? Red, you better hurry up, man. Come on. Get in here. Brett, please get in here quickly. Cause we just transition to your section. Take your lanyard off, please. Red came in late, but we can accommodate him. And actually, we were just getting to the section on governance, governance. So please put on your headset because you’ll hear a lot better and filter out background noise. And wes is going to bring you into the picture. We got everybody, wes. Alright, outstanding. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, this is brett brett. Brett meyer, content strategist for think shout welcome, welcome to non-profit radio thank you. Coming closer to the microphone, please should be within an inch. All right, excellent kitty was doing an excellent job. Hopefully you were going to join us, but we would have gone ahead without you. So i don’t want you to think that you are indispensable. Great, but you did show up at the exact right time is very good timing if you’re going to be late was perfect great governance, governance around our our content strategy what what does? What does that even mean? The governance of it governance is the plan for the plan. There are a lot of non-profits these days who are under the impression that they need to create as much content as possible, which is kind of the opposite of having a strategy so governance helps you plan who is responsible for what so you’re going to have probably a team of writers. Is that team of writers going to be able to publish content directly to the website themselves, or is it going to go through a review process? The whole thing around governance is making sure that people understand what their roles are, and setting up the map for how content is going to move from creation through publication to the public. Okay, and as we are, these are these are written this’s, a written plan, this government’s plan. Ideally, it is going to be written down. Usually it is more of a word of mouth thing, and people just have a general idea of what their roles are. We always advised that there is that kind of written plan or map of how things work, because people leave and new people come in. And if you don’t have that documentation for how things were supposed to work, it takes them a long time to get back up to speed. Buy-in 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 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. Duitz lively conversation. Top trends. Sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m gale bauer from sponsorship strategist. Dot com. Let’s, go into a lot more detail way got some time left together. What what elements you like to see in in the government governance plan let’s take the idea where it is, it is written. Yes, we try to make sure that things aren’t just happening in the communications department because everybody’s going to have some sort of content that they want to get on the website snd we talked about getting the early buy-in great. So yeah, it’s it’s kind of along the lines of a cross functional team, you have to identify who the best writers are the people who are going to create content that’s going to have meaning for the users who were coming to the website and just generally making sure that they understand what their roles are, who is going to be creating the content who’s going to be editing the content? If you have that kind of evergreen content, they stuff that is going to be kind of a permanent fixture of the website. How often are you going to go back and take a look at that content again to make sure that it is meeting the needs of the organization? Isn’t performing as well as it should be, so part of the governance is also understanding what the metrics for success are and the metro for success are going to be a lot different for the about the organisation information than it would be for, say, the blawg or if they’re doing events. An event is a very time box thing it’s going to have a ramp up, they’re going to be pushing a lot of content or information around the event, but as soon as the event is past that usually doesn’t have a lot of utility as opposed to maybe some of the about us content you want to get across what the goals of the organization is, what the organization does. You want people to really understand what this non-profit is trying to accomplish very important content, so they need to keep coming back and making sure that it’s working, writing down the goals means that they have something to measure against and they’re not just creating content in the dark. Katie, i see you doing a lot of nodding, but there’s things you like to add, i mean, the only thing i would add to that. I’m sure brett nose like you would think really addresses the idea that content is like a living, breathing thing, right? The website this is living, breathing thing it’s very different than an email that you sent out to your list, you know it has to it’s up there all the time. And so what? Brett’s talking about it’s so critical, teo to know that it’s not enough just when you hit publish, you know it’s not like a print magazine. It’s not like an email, he just sent out not even like log, you know, so that’s just the beginning when you hit publish and so this governance is so, so critical to making sure content is still performing, you know, a year from now or that you that you remember that it’s up thinks a lot of times you have a huge website, people were like, oh, that that page? Yeah, it happens to people who are, like, really deeply invested as well. It’s just e-giving huge websites going to it’s going to take over if you don’t govern it let’s spend a good amount of time talking about the measurement and the success metrics go ahead, that’s. Your that’s, your area? Excellent, yes, hyre we’ve been doing a lot of data with our cloudgood data work with our clients recently, so we know for a fact that the home page is not the common way that people come into a website anymore. They’re using google, they’re coming in deep in into the site, through social media or through what’s called dark social, the people chatting each other links buy-in on stuff that can’t really be tracked. So you have to understand that any page of your website might be creating the that first impression for folks, but the goals of the various types of content that you might have on your website are going to be different. So when we do work with clients, we try to help them understand that an event page, a page that somebody might google for. Oh, amplify austin, for example, what? We don’t know exactly what page they’re going to come into at first, but as the data starts to come in, you can see where they’re entering the site and you can help. You can come up with the metrics that are going to let you know whether or not that paige is successful, so if you’re coming into an event page with the registration, you want them to get the information about the event very quickly and decide whether or not they want to attend, and the next step from that would be clicking on the register button, which would be very different from a post on a blogger where you want them to consume the content and then probably share it. So the metrics there going to be slightly different. The important part is to recognize all the types of content and set up the different metrics that will indicate success for that particular organization, because it’s always going to be different, okay? And katie, we were using the interesting example of the equine immuno contraception paige thank, which could be a coin acquaint, contra or something? Yeah, i mean that that was so it was so benefit from governance. I would just so benefit from having those questions asked. Like, what does it mean for this page to succeed? What do you want your users to do with it? And then really, really, like, trail down and see if that’s happening. And i think that that could take care of so much like problem content on so many people’s websites if you’re just sticking to you, like, really direct, objective measurement and then there’s kind of you take away all the, like the sensitivity with that, like, okay, here’s this thing that i didn’t say like, you know, google said it, whatever. Yeah, we still have several minutes left together. What have we not talked about? Whatever i ask you that that you want to share. I like to, and i know that katie agrees with this because we’ve talked about it a little bit. Make sure that non-profits understand that content strategy doesn’t have to be just about the website, and it shouldn’t just be in the commune educations depart multi-channel it is multi channel and the development, the people in the development department who are sending out fund-raising letters that is a piece of content that is going to create an impression and if any one of these things is a little bit off message, i mean, we don’t want to get too far into the whole whole branding part. But if anything’s too far off message or strikes a wrong note with the supporters, you’re probably going to lose thumb, at least in the short term. I’m so glad you brought that up exactly whenever i’ve talked about content started, you know, a lot of people think like, oh that’s, just for websites and even this idea that content is only on a website and just like no like a tweet is content any you know, period it’s, certain pages, that’s, all content that’s why i get so excited about this top because i really feel like it has, you know, with the ability to bring everything together and it can get kind of as big as you want it to be. But that’s what that’s? Why it’s so cool? And the best organizations i’ve seen are the ones who are integrating every single channel into their content strategy and all just completely flows the same ethics the same style, same telling the same priorities and goals and audiences, they’re just really, really woven and deeply, inappropriately and it’s just like it’s cake. I love it. Brett katie knight a zai mentioned, talked about getting some allies early on and then maybe developing a mini project around some of their contents. Do you have? Any other ideas you want to add about trying to get this this team buy-in whether it’s in the early stage or or in the later stages, maybe some, maybe some departments are not as willing as others. What advice do you have there? Katie is absolutely right getting that early win always going to be important because then you’d demonstrate the success or what you can possibly achieve by having a written content strategy other than that getting that leadership buy-in early is it’s not just from the team that you’re assembling, that that’s going to be creating the content. Leadership really has to support this and understand the value they already understand the value, because we’ve been talking about branding at the non-profit technology conference for a long time, there’s a lot of companies who’ve been helping non-profits developed this brand, but the content that is sporting the brand has to be taken into account too. So it’s not a big step for leadership to take, from supporting the brand to supporting the content that is supporting the brand. Yeah, like there’s, so much overlap with just brand and content strategy is the time o que onda geun this all all flows from our mission statement, so that seems like the place to start. Katie and i did talk about that anything you want to add about that non-profits have a built in advantage. They don’t have to worry about what the for-profit companies do because everything should be coming out of their mission and their values when your values driven organization it’s much easier to develop content that has meaning than, say, one, a big company that wants to sell you shoes and thinks that a good way to do that is by showing people succeeding let’s, leave it there, all right? Brett meyer is content strategist with think shout and katie caress, director of online communications for the humane society legislative fund. Brett carry katy, thank you very much. Thinking having real pleasure. Thankyou. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen austin, texas, thanks so much for being with us next week. Gail perry returns. She was just on for god’s sake, but she’s so good i’m having her back, i’m going to drive to her home in raleigh, north carolina, on we’re going to do facebook live and periscope kapin what did britain, katie just say? Be multi-channel we’ll talk about subtle to the ass. 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 be spelling dot com creative producer is quite my off. That lever, which is a line producer. Jenny mccardle is r e m and f m l reach director. To show social media is by susan chavez. And our music is by scott stein. You’re with me next week for not probably radio. Big non-profit ideas for the either ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Jeanne Allen & Nancy Rose: Going Social In The Boardroom

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

 

Carly Leinheiser: Creative Commons 101

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Carly Leinheiser explains what Creative Commons is and how valuable it can be if you need video, images or pubs or want to release your own content to raise awareness. This originally aired on September 26, 2014, before Carly was an associate at Robinson+Cole.

 

 


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