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Nonprofit Radio for February 23, 2018: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising

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My Guest:

John Hicks: Turbocharge Your Grants Fundraising

John Hicks returns with 9 steps that will burn the tires off your grants program. He’s principal and founder of DLBHICKS LLC consulting.

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week she’s grace shandan a in new orleans. She helped us out by referring videographers for the upcoming non-profit technology conference where we’ll be. Grace, thank you so much for your help. If you want to check out grace she’s at grace in nolan congratulations, grace on being non-profit radios listener of the weak and thank you for your help. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of duitz handup cia if you mentioned the off color idea that you missed today’s show turbocharge your grants fund-raising John hicks returns with 9 steps that will burn the tires off your gran’s program. Look at me making car metaphors. I don’t even know how to change. The only thing i can do is change the windshield wiper fluid. First time i used a ah ah phillips head screwdriver. I had to go to the emergency room s so there won’t be a lot of car metaphors beyond this. This one, john is principal and founder of deal be. Hicks llc consulting on tony’s steak too don’t get don’t get hung up on the money we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio bye weinger suppose a’s c p a’s guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna may slash tony tell us what a pleasure to welcome back john hicks. We believe this is his third time on the show. C f r ee principal and founder of de lb hick it’s, a consulting firm providing fund-raising and grant seeking guidance to non-profits from grassroots to global. His career spans over thirty years. He’s on the faculty of columbia university’s masters degree in non-profit management teaching grantwriting and he’s a lecturer for rector’s university’s institute for ethical leadership he’s at deal be hicks and deal be hicks dot com john hicks welcome back to studio that’s. Great to be here. My pleasure to have you deal be deal be all we keep here’s deal be. I love the story behind deal be tell it. Sure, thie lb stands for dylan’s lightbulb as in bob dylan. Years ago, i came across a copy of the ai pennebaker’s great documentary don’t look back, bob dylan’s nineteen sixty five tour of the u k early in the film villains getting off the plane at heathrow airport in these walking in this press conference carrying a large light bulb and he’s getting asked all the innocuous questions you know are you folk? What is your message? And someone asked me, what is your message? This is my message keep good had always carry a lightbulb and i thought that was probably about the best piece of advice i’ve ever heard in my life and i adopted is the personal mantra. And so when i launched my own firm, i said, you know, i’m gonna work. Deal be into this, get the light bulb in there and that’s t l b if you go to the website, you can learn a little more about that incident and the home page has ah, lightbulb image. It has a light bulb. Do we know why dylan was carrying, like both do you know this day? And no one knows, i think is this is the typical bob dylan thing where somebody handed in my white, bobby is like, this is cool, or maybe it’s not, but i’ll make it cool, okay, cool. There you go. All right, um, glad to have you back. I love it. You can come to studio all the time. Wonderful, yeah, it’s, great to be here. All right, so you got you got these nine tips for ah turbocharging, you know, kicking up your grantspace o gram to the next level. And you’ve got some advice that coincides with the panel. That was on last week when i moderated at the foundation center. Right. That’s cool. Yeah. Um, so let’s, i mean, let’s. Ah, what? Let’s overviewing first, what are what do you feel like non-profits just generally or not getting quite right when you got nine tips here about things that non-profit should be doing better, but just eyes the thinking not right around. Grants mean what? What? Generally what could we be doing smarter thinking better differently about grant? What grantspace wise? Well, i was looking grantspace as being the kind of philanthropy that brings to things to the table for a charity they bring a grant will bring you cash and also brings you cachet. Okay, so, it’s, thank you. Somebody else’s supporting you that they believe in your work. Exactly. Upleaf non-profit radio sponsors you got it. And the thing about getting grandfather bing is that you go through a more of a due diligence process, which means that if i’m able to go to aa donor-centric divisional donor and say i have a grant from this foundation of that foundation, and particularly if it’s a pretty well known foundation, it says to that person, han cubine through due diligence process. And so i think, first of all, it’s getting non-profits to think about what part does a grant or grants for a grant program play in their philanthropy, and also, i think, it’s the heart of the nine steps to turbo charging your grants, outreach, it’s, it’s all about rethinking your agency. It’s like rethinking your story. And how do you use that to engage foundations at a much higher level? And i think i’ve always held that any charity could do this. I mean, it is this is not just large charities is i think grassroots charities continue. We wouldn’t be on non-profit radio. This is all absolutely for the billion dollar endowment and above you got it. Yeah. Okay, now i know for sure they can. And that’s that’s why that panel was so valuable last. That was last week. Yeah, i think there was a lot of discussion about this. I mean, if you if your listeners go back and listen to that the podcast again, i mean, you’re going to hear these grantmaker sze talk about the importance not only of engagement. But it’s, coming in with a story and a vision for where your organization’s going next, and if you can get them to buy into that direction, you can not only get a grant that you could maybe could get a sizeable grant or an impactful grant, and they’re going to term grand exactly, yeah, changing the conversation, okay? And you’ve got ideas on that coming up, you know, thinking long term versus immediate and what’s recurring costs, etcetera and what’s growth costs will get there. Okay, so that’s the so the first one you have focusing on the right the right kind of money. Tio tio, ask for right, i think it’s understanding where your organization is and not trying teo under reach or overreach. So i think the important thing is i see a lot of charities come in and say, you know, i’m under filling under a lot of pressure from my board or the staff that i have to go for the gold swing for the fences and get gates may not be the right fit for you, it’s choosing the part of the donor pool you want to swim in as i’m find of telling. Clients and the other part of raising the right money is making sure that you’re not getting money that sets up expectations that you can’t fulfill this is another thing i ran into his a consultant is walking in the door and seeing a lot of grantspace literally lying around where the agency is struggling to fulfill the promises made, but they just weren’t able to bring the rest of the money and so it’s making sure that you’re driving the bus, that money is coming in to support your priorities and what you do. Well, yeah, so what causes this? This gap is it is not adequate planning on the part of the part of york, it can be inadequate planning, but, you know, i’m also fundraiser, and i acknowledge that a lot of us were there a lot of pressure to produce, and so it could be that, you know, we have boards, we have bosses who are, you know, asking us to go for this grant that grant and, you know, you’re just you’re you’re in response mode, the nine steps, i think get us back into doing this proactively so i you know, later in our conversation, we’ll talk about things like a strategic agenda and envisioning, and that kind of helps us, you know, move the ball forward, but close this gap between expectations and and reality. It’s usually said it better an idea tony must get say that so don’t think you should be sprite. What i’m just point out is that you’re surprised that i okay, hold i thought, it’s time for a break. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to wagner, cpas they are, they have i have with for them a brand spanking new testimonial. Um, coat weinger cps has taken the time to research and understand our rather unique industry and its regulations. Ah it’s a sign of their commitment to provide excellent service. They make themselves accessible to our team members, which speaks volumes on how much they care about their clients. And quote, this is from a midwest agency that finances alleviation of economic inequality. Look at this. They make themselves accessible, they care about their clients. Can you talk about your accountant and your audit firm that way? Can you say that about them? I mean, even get personal. I’m going to make this personal. I’m going to get ad hominum in a good way. You eat each tomb. This is the guy you want to talk to. You want to talk to eat, which tomb? It’s, personal wagner, cpas, dot com. Okay, let’s, go back to john and turbocharging your grants. Fund-raising yes, so we’ve got ideas coming up that air going toe close this gap, basically. Dahna let’s, see. What you want, talk about next, but you, you you, you you go well, we were timeout, visioning, and maybe we should talk a little bit about goal setting because i think that’s at the heart something related to what we’re just talking about you, if you don’t get that, you don’t have the goals right? Then the expectations are going toe is going to have that gap between what you asked for and what they’re expecting, right? And so well, in a lot of cases, gold setting stops at raise more money, and you did last year, our costs are going up here’s, where the costs are going up and that’s pretty much the end of the conversation, and what i’ve come to find out over time is that the organizations that seem to do a better job of getting money on the grant seeking side are the ones who think about their goals into categories there’s sustaining goals, which is essentially what are carrying costs just for the operations and carrying crossfit program so we still need to bring money in to make sure we keep the doors open. We keep doing the essential work that we do. Best, but then there’s another set of goals which relate to investment. So i call these investment goals, and i only think of it is you put money and you’re going to get a return on it, and we’re going to do something a bit more than you know we’re doing right now is so on the operation side, he could be staffing it could be strategic planning could be capacity building and ever on the program inside it’s all about creating new programs and growing new programs were growing the programs that you have. All right, so this carrying costs versus new investment, right? It’s it’s not this is not is not the same is short term versus long term. No, i think you know, because because carrying costs could be long term. Correct, right it. Is it those air like you’re basically your overhead? Is that fair? Or now? Nobody’s that’s programs program too, right? It’s programmed it. So just feel free to say you’re wrong. I’m not gonna shut your michael. Wait. We rarely occasionally we do, but i won’t let you, so okay, so, it’s. Not that right. It’s it’s you you’re forced to think long. Term if you want to make this type of, you know, new investment kind of asks, right? Exactly. I mean, i know another way of putting this is that sometimes, you know, i yeah, i’m so privileged to meet incredible people who are working miracles with small amounts of money. They come in with a fairly small, modest program, but when you look at what they’re doing, they’re making some pretty deep, meaningful change in people’s lives, and sometimes i’m so blown away by what they’re doing with limited resource is i’m i look at them and say, you know, if you’re doing this on a shoestring, imagine if we had the shoe yeah, she was all about the investment. Great. Where do we go next? And how do we take this? And either deep in it r r make it bigger look atyou extending the shoestring metaphor. Okay. So smart. Okay. So insightful. Okay, no, ramsey, if he had to shoot. All right, all right. Um, but now this you know, there might be a fear of putting the putting the potential funder off, because now we’re asking for more money. And if we’re looking at this new investment kind of money. We’re not going to put a thunder off by asking for more money if the money has a purpose. I mean, think about it this way. I remember our this sounds important years, i’m not going to put a funder off by asking for more? I don’t think so. I mean, you know, years ago i heard abigail disney talking to a group of non-profits at an event here in new york city, and some thing she said was that she says, yeah, i have a lot of money and i’m a philanthropist, but without you, my money means nothing because i don’t go where you go. I don’t do what you do. I don’t see what you see when i find you, you become my ears and you become my eyes and you become my hands, and any organization can be part of that picture. That’s very touching. Yeah, yeah, okay, so ask for what you need. Not what you think we’ll be approved. As for what you need and what you think you’ll get and ask for funding that’s going to get you to the right opportunity. So i always feel that philanthropy is about the possibilities, what we’re able to do next about opportunity, i remember once i had was working with an organization here in the city, and the ceo was taking a grantmaker through the building and showing them the program and talking about program growth and halfway through the visit, the thunder looked at the ceo and said, look, i know you’re going to be coming to me with a grant proposal, just make sure you ask me for enough money to do what you need to do, so you don’t have to come back and ask me again. Mmm, yeah, all right, they they want to be asked so they write tony with foundations remember, we’re dealing with the donor constituency that’s in the business of giving money away. Yeah, so let’s help them do their jobs and they want to do it right? They don’t want it. I have half cocked and then, like you said, you know, request to come back having to come back in eighteen months because you didn’t ask for enough, right? That that looks bad because you look at your not about you, not a good plan or then and you do the best. You can i mean, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances, but, you know, put some thought into it, and i think you know, most of our listeners, i’m sure do this. Well, we’re making sure that they will now i’m glad you said our listeners before he says my listeners, uh, and then you kept talking, so i let it go. But this time you said our listeners, they’re our listeners. They are our listeners, right pronounce non-profit radio uh, we should make that way to make that one might take aways okay, um, all right, so we have carrying cost versus new investment money. Now we have sustaining grants versus investment grants. What way? Supposed toe? You want us to be thinking about these? What does this mean? Right? So it’s thinking about yourself, gorgon jail, it’s, its’s, it’s sustaining great it’s, the staying expenses, investment expenses, and then the you have to think sustaining investment grants and the way you write these things are a bit different. I mean, sustaining is, you know, essentially you’re making the case in the proposal the application for why we need to keep the doors open and keep doing what we’re doing. And i think there’s grantspace driven by results, here’s what we accomplished last year, here’s what we have the promise of continuing to do this year with investment grand proposals, you’re talking about kicking it up a notch and you know where we’re going next to me? Here’s the roadmap here, the opportunities this is why we’re, you know, trying to grow a program from one hundred thousand dollars one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and the idea is it’s investment, i’m asking you to put money and with the promise or at least i’m the best of my ability. I’m promising that we’re going to get some stronger results. And so, it’s, i think it’s a little the way the proposal gets presented. It’s probably a little bit different in terms of some of the language and and some of the presentation, perhaps now, this sounds like some some of what was talked about in the panel that we have had on last week. Yeah, yeah, you had a number of the grantmaker she talked about, you know, that you have to not only just come in and show us the opportunities, but, you know, you have to show us that. You have ah, i’m going to use the metaphor of road map. You have an idea of how to get from point a to point b and why my money is going to make a difference. One of things i talked to my students a lot about in the class at columbia is that yes, professor, go ahead, share your sugar wisdom, you’re not a professor, but you know, they we talked a lot about risk taking a shin, which is maybe an odd thing to talk about a class on grantspace the end of the day, a lot of what we’re doing for donors just for major donor you can do it for foundation is your mitigating risk. You don’t want the donor to feel that they’re putting a lot of risk on the table when they give you money. So in what we’re fortunate in the world of foundations as we can right of thoughtful grand proposal make a nice presentation i can show you how to get from point a to point b so i can give you exhibit a so now subsumed in this, by the way wrote roadmap isa fine metaphor, just like you don’t go to automobiles that drive on roads, because then i won’t fault. You know, like i said, i t entrust my first experience with a phillips head screwdriver was very bad. So you can imagine me with a set of ratchets or whatever those things are called. This sounds a lot like the are no subsumed in this, though, is the thing that i get asked. A lot of i hear a lot about is, you know, should you ask for overhead support in your in your grants and subsumed in all this is is a definite yes, right? I mean, you got to keep the lights on. We gotta keep salaries paid, my approaching this the right way, what you are, i mean, that’s. The question that comes up quite frequently is the foundation’s fund. Overhead expenses, i think, first of all, there’s ah, there’s, ah, misguided notion that foundations don’t like to pay for overhead. I mean, there’s, a few foundations who don’t, but most of them understand it, and they get it. I mean, i mean, it’s essential, these essential essential expenses, they are essential to carry out the program if i can’t pay my rent. Exactly. And and the thing is, is that what what i find sometimes is that when you really start looking at the costs and the expenditures from from unorganised ation and how they’re supporting their programs, you find that expenses that are categorized as overhead or administrative or not, i mean, i work with all a lot of grassroots organizations, were the c e o is coming out of her office and she’s working with kids and she’s working with families? Well, she’s not overhead, she’s actually also direct program. So, you know, i mean, firstly can have toe really hold your budget up to the mirror and say, you know, is this truly accurate? I mean, you know, there’s, a lot of hard work and ceos out there, especially in grassroots organizations where their essential and so they’re a lot, you know, probably more of their costs might be included in a program budget for a grant proposal. Hard working for sure, we know that absolutely, um yeah, so yet you gotto any clients story that comes to mind, like we’re you know, they were thinking low and you encouraged them to think bigger, and they ended up being successful. Maybe they didn’t get every dollar they asked for, but they got something bigger than you bigger than they were initially asking for. Yeah, i mean, and i should hope so. I’m putting you on the spot? No. Never happened, you know? Then then we cut the mikes. No, absolutely not yours, you know, cut mine. Well, everything covered, like, well, first of all, i just try toe look, i get it goes back to the light bulb, you know, i just don’t get you, you know, i’m just i’m just simply illuminating what’s in front of us a lot of times, and i find that i have probably any number of stories where i’m working with a client, and all i have to do is show them that this foundation could give more money and they say, well, gee, i think i have these opportunities and get them to think it through, and i’m like, hey, i think i’ve got something i could take the foundation and they do a fabulous job of presenting an engaging the thunder. Maybe i have, you know, shown them that opportunity, but at the end of the day, you know, i want to give credit where credit’s due, my my krauz clans raise good money because my clients are really good, smart people who are doing great work. Well, it’s a collaboration, you’re also contributed a modest surprised to find a modest professor. There aren’t too many of those and they say no, professor, but i’m going to start a band still be called modest, professor, no, it’ll be de lb, everything in your life is deal be about the ball. Yes, modest professor deal bur but he asked me a specific example. I mean, recently i was working with i am working with ah, you know, wonderful charity on dh. They help kids with cancer. And you know what? What was really great was they had this wonderful opportunity to apply for a grant from a major national foundation and they had a great contact. And i think the early conversations was about a fairly modest create, maybe ten thousand dollars. And when we said that really looked at what the opportunity, wass you know, what could this charity do? Inspect the shoestring signal? Ten thousand bucks on a shoestring and what’s the shoot that you turned out to be fifty thousand dollars. So we worked up a proposal of fifty thousand dollars, and the upshot is the foundation funded it because they felt like it was a really good investment for their money. And i think they’re probably going to be happier giving the fifty thousand dollars and seeing what they get is a result. Look, just in case any of our listen, my voice just broke a fourteen year old voice krauz get out ok so far. Um, in the case, i mean, listeners, you know, it’s just have to be your first show. I mean, there’s over twelve thousand of you. So, you know, maybe some people come, i guess every week we get new editions if you wanted. You know no more about the nuts and bolts the relationship. Building specific strategy’s about that. You want to listen to last week’s show? Because that was a panel from the foundation center that i moderated and there’s a lot of discussion. That’s what? We were based on that the whole discussion was how to build your relationships with the with program officers. Foundations, foundations are made up of people so that’s, you know, like, certain possible john and i today r more hyre level enormously valuable and there’s all this strategy and planning and goal setting thinking through what you’re going to ask. This is enormously relevant too. But, you know, last week was mohr detail, i guess nuts and bolts on on the relationship building here today we’re below more strategic and high level. You see how the show fits together, you know that people think this just comes. It doesn’t just happen. This thing is planned out contrary to the belief of twelve thousand people listening. But it is planned. So i just got lucky this week and last week s o okay, you have measures around some of these things. You have measures for each of your nine nine strategies. Thiss one is just simple. What what’s the ratio of sustaining grants to investment grants. So we want to see maur, i presume. What? See maur investment grants, right? Thinking longer term. And you’re trying to grow your organisation and its its capacity. Well, i’m actually trying to look for healthier ballots. I mean, yeah, if i have a fair if i have a good core of sustaining grants, first of all, it says i have people who are renewing, okay? So they like, i mean, think about foundations like subscribers, they love the program, and they’re continuing to support a year every year of a year that’s a that’s, a great sign, but am i also bring in, you know, a good number of investment grants, that kind of kid again, kick it up a notch mean and get meat love every night for dinner, but if i’d given the topping on it every once a while, i mean, it gets more interesting, so there you go. Okay, this is a vegan show, so that was a bad metaphor now, i don’t know, i just made that up just to embarrass you. Now, listeners, you can have anything you want. I don’t care if you’re over lacto, you know, whatever i belong to buckslip food co op, but you don’t have to dahna yeah, eat whatever you like. Okay, make sure you have the right grantmaker tze on your list, okay, and this sounds to me this one sounds a little like it’s coordinated with your goal. Wolf, you want your goals and your and the people, the organization’s you’re asking for money from to be consistent, but you can say it more articulately than that. I cannot know what i mean by that is do you have? Do you have recognized leaders supporting him? Program? I mean, if i just giving examples, i work, i do a fireman or work in the youth development world works with your various charities who do wonderful work here. And if they want to bring a new program online sometimes where my research starts, this isn’t terribly scientific. But it’s look at well, who were the top ten foundations funding this kind of work? Say, in new york city? Or in whatever community, wherever you’re between your work, can i land three of them? Can i bring three thought leader foundations who work in this space to the table and have them funding my project? That’s that to me that’s the right set of funders? I mean, that’s that helps me with my focus. So i’m not chasing money all over the place. This is very strategic thinking, though, you know, you’re not just looking for foundations that support the work you do, but specifically, you know, some of the leadership foundations. Yeah, support you. One of the things that about that panel discussion, which i thought was so great i moderated. Thank you know, is it was thank you. It was artful. Thank you. Was all thank you’s. Absolutely. Thank you. I thank you again. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. The thie it was just that there was so much conversation about partnership. I kept hearing a word over and over and over and over again. And i think foundations are looking for really good charities to partner with. And we should think about that on the set in reverse, like, well, which foundations? So i want partnering with me on this work that i’m going to dio and that helps toe open. That conversation makes the conversation natural, and it makes the proposal flow means were there for a reason. Ilsen all right, john hicks together. Uh, ask you to hold on temporarily because, uh, let’s, take a break. Pursuant. They have a new resource for you, and it is. Demystifying the donor journey it’s ah it’s, a white paper demystifying the donor journey, overcome stewardship, stumbling blocks and build deeper relationships with donors i love i’m going to just give you a sample of some things from the table of contents. Where are you taking your donors? Three common stewardship stumbling blocks? Step back and consider the ideal donor experience stand out with immersive digital experiences place an extreme focused on the beginning of the journey and making the donor experience a top priority, and then it closes with next steps. So that’s what’s in this white paper, i want to take a couple of pull quotes out of it, it’s an undeniable fact the donor experience and how we steward them is directly tied to retention in a major and impactful way, and retention is the key to building a long term, sustainable fund-raising program end quote, right? So you’ve heard we’ve had lots of guests on reminding you the cost of acquiring new donors vs keeping the donors you’ve already got. So that’s what this white paper is geared towards helping you do keep the donors, you’ve got it’s all about stewardship, you know there’s a pull. Quote an international donor experience? Erase that reverse quote an intentional donor experience is essential in today’s increasingly noisy world stewardship works. Developing a donor journey isn’t just a nice thing to do for your donors, it’s one of the leading influencers in their desire to give again again, you know, it’s keeping the donors you’ve got. Then it goes into almost things i read off on the table of contents and you are going to find it at the listener landing page, which is tony dot m a slash pursuant radio okay, time now for tony’s take to you knew it was coming your daughter relationships. Now we’re on the individual side talking about institute institutional with john and pursuing and some content in the individual side, you need to go deeper than the dollars that come in from your individual donors. They do they tell you they’d like to do more, but they can’t or they sincere about that than you. My advice? You probably should be sticking with them. Don’t give up on them. Keep on building your relationship with them. The gifts will come just you got to be patient if you believe that they are. Sincere about their desire to doom or stay with them. And i say more about that on my video, which is look beyond the numbers and it’s at tony martignetti dot com i’m driving in their lets people passing to see how slow you’ll see how slow i drive on many five i even got an email about a ll the people passing me in the video. It’s embarrassing. Okay, it’s, time for live listen, love, we’ve got to do it, and, uh, we’re starting out. San francisco, california, westfield, massachusetts alright, west to east love it, um, brentwood, new york, new york, new york, multiple it’s always multiple new york, new york he’s here in new york, new york just think multiple all the time. Um oh my going back eating, going back west, garden grove, california. We got anything in between california and new york and massachusetts don’t know. North hollywood, california, staten island, new york. I don’t know, there’s. Nobody. Ah, fly over territory is not listening today. Live, of course. You know that catch the podcast twelve thousand. Um, they mention twelve thousand listeners. Could do, um, let’s. Go abroad. Germany. Gooden! Todd! Oh, there’s something. Abroad. Oh, that’s, not abroad. Tampa, florida that’s, then that’s domestic? Yeah, that’s here. Okay kapin florida’s there. But still we still got big fly over territory. Not with us live today, germany. Guten ta q kay, i don’t know which country is that northern ireland is wales, scotland or england by population. Of course it’ll be england, so but i don’t want to presume uk welcome. You live here with us? Um, houston in the czech republic, wonderful live with their love to you, and i think that covers the ones we got so far. And on the heels of that, of course, has to come the podcast pleasantries. Did i mention over twelve thousand? I’m not sure if i did over twelve thousand listeners in the time shift, whatever device, whatever time i’m grateful that you are with us pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country, including fly over territory, by the way. But they’re not listening live because their station puts the show in wherever, wherever they want in their weekly schedule. But affections always go. I don’t care what time you’re listening day or night. We could a weekend affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners throughout the country back to you now. John hicks. We’re going t o keep terrible charging. All right? Oh, that was your that was your word. I did not. I would use it a lot of times. I don’t. I’ll use what guests aa recommend that the log topic says, or what their article says that i like. But i thought, you know, we’ll be adventurous. Let’s go with turbo charge. Alright, i made an exception for you. Thank you, tony. My pleasure. Um, let’s, move on. So what do we say? Everything. Well, we see everything we want to say about the right grantmaker before we move on. I mean, we’ve we’ve we’ve started with goals that we’ve we’ve kind of looked internally. What do we need to do by way of list, bill building. And now we’re goingto start talking about some external things. Okay. Okay. So, let’s, do you want talk about? Well, we start with the next one, which is building your v q. Vic you don’t you get us out and get yourself out of george in jail. What’s that there’s enough and define your visibility closure, yeah, which is, you know, it is what it is. I mean, the idea is that you want to be visible. Um, i bonem i think that grantmaker sze don’t i work in a bubble? And sometimes we think that you know, grantmaker is they sit in their offices and they kind of stay and they’re on their side of the street, we stay on our side of the street. The reality is that a lot of grantmaker zehr just out there and looking, they’re very aware of our community of practice, and they get to know who we are largely by are just being out there and being visible. So, you know, any time i’m working with a nonprofit organization and the ceo gets out of his or her office and they go to events and they are in the press and they are writing and they air speaking and they’re publishing and they’re advocating grantmaker sze get to know them, and i think that counts and i feel that a part of that quote oppcoll turbocharging processes thesis turbocharging to the ground now we’re not going to beat it to the ground, but part of it is, the more you’re out there, and you’re raising the visible the for your mission and your agency and your work, the better it is for you. I mean, it helps you with framing your grant proposal and who you are and what you’re able to dio credibility. Is that very good? It was another word for this credibility, but that will be your seek. You. But you prefer vik you. Well, let me see you as well. Could be sick. You don’t want to rewrite your blood post anything, all right? And it could be fashionable geek. So, yeah. Okay, uh, that would be your grants, your grants quotient. There you go. Um, now, a lot of this came out in the panel from last week. People, we were talking a lot about networking being visible in the community going to events. Yes. And you and you start to get known essentially, what you’re saying is you’re saying, right? And the only maybe knew once i’d throw on this is that i mean, there’s, there’s visibility. I like to think about visibility with content. And what i mean by this is you can go to parties and goto events and you can meet people, but what do you leaving them with? What impression are you making? And so some of the things we’re going to be talking about such a sze yu know yur strategic agenda where your organization’s going next-gen part of is having a story to tell someone when you meet that grantmaker here’s, here we are, here’s the opportunities that are in front of us love to come and talk to you more about it. So you know you’re you’re peeking their interest. Yeah, for sure. You you want to not only be visible, but you wantto have credibility behind that content behind that. You wanna make a good first impression is imagine how good it would be if if a funder got your application and already knew your name, do the organization name before they even when the application arrives right there knew in advance, right? Because you’re in the community. And of course, being in the community includes thie online communities, the online network you want to build your vic you there as well? Absolutely mean any. You know, the way i look at it is the when your proposal shows up. In the foundation’s office, with a bunch of other proposals, if they’ve heard of you, they’re going to pick up them, philip, and they’re going to read the letter. They’re going to read the proposal. I can’t pretend that doesn’t happen. Yeah, there’s a wonderful book, which i have my students at columbia read every semester by a guy named martin ty tell which is the insider’s guide to grantmaking and it’s a great behind the scenes look at the grantmaking process and and he talks about things like this i mean, you know that, you know, if we know something about the organisation, it doesn’t hurt, yeah. Oppcoll have you ever seen where a foundation approached a, uh a potential fundez ee ah, non-profit and asked for a asked for a proposal, i was sure it happens all the time. I think it does. I think that particularly the foundations who hyre professionals, i mean, think about this way a part of your job when you work for a foundation is to make the board of the foundation smarter about what’s going on in the world that they’re being asked to fund in, so if you’re out there, if i worked for a foundation, and i get to know something about the work of your organization. I might pick up the phone, call you and say, hey, i want to learn more about you as a member of one of my classes got a call from a foundation pretty major foundation wasn’t along our radar screen, they just called out of the blue and said, and we’ve been hearing about you would love to come and talk to you just happen to stand absolutely wasn’t on your radar screen out. Does that mean you’re doing defective research? Inadequate, nick? No, this is a no, no, this is actually a donor. Advised funds that size that’s a whole nother time can’t find that. Yeah, those air, those air buried what their funding is very, very hard to find. Yeah, it’s, not it’s, not public. Really it’s not anywhere. Is it it’s? Really? Not now. Okay. No negligent research buy-in deal. Bx make that clear. Make that explicit. They do not do negligent research. Okay, um okay. Strengthening your network. This is very much related. Strengthening your network. Um, strong foundation. And you know grantmaker zehr. Are they doing this? You want to be wanted again? You will be out and known in the community. Yes, it might be a question. You know, i would be asking this question, which is, well, what’s the difference between your visibility quotient and the network? Well, the network is actually taking a role of x and all the people that you’re meeting and all the people who are supporting you and beginning to reverse engineer it a bit. You know, one of your panelists on the show last week and talk about our gave a great example of, well, if i’m funding you, i could introduce you to other funders, and that happens more frequently there. That was a good conversation, absolutely. And it makes a lot of sense because usually a, you know, think of it this way foundation once they’ve written the check and they’re supporting you there a stakeholder, they have a vested interest in seeing you bring other money to table toe, build on what they’ve helped you to create or to grow or expand. And there’s nothing wrong with working that in reverse, you know, just a strategy, a tip for everyone and i’m seeing this work is thie. Get a funder got one of your grantmaker zoho ask them to host some kind of a gathering where you can come in and talk about your work and what you’re seeing as a result of your work or talk about a topic were they inviting to this? They’re usually inviting grantmaker sze whom they know because they want to help you. You get your story out there and get people to know you. I mean, it’s, not a solicitation. You’re not going to be handing out pledge cards on the individual side. It’s the same is like a parlor gathering. Exactly. Exactly. It’s ah, you know, it’s always better in the parlor. This is usually the boardroom, but well, yeah, because it’s institutional, but there, there, there there are parallels. Yeah, you get don’t don’t don’t hurt my analogy. I mean, i went along with your metaphors. Metaphors and analogies are important. Yes. I adopted your terrible judgment metaphor. So, you know, you certainly couldn’t support my analogy. I’m totally supporting her nails. It is only a mall there. That’s analogous ball is what makes it an analogy of all is ok. Um, yeah. So you’ve seen this work? You’ve seen this absolutely wonders will do it. It’s common it’s more common than you think. I emerging pro tip now. Well, you know, beyonc, this is a this is a pretty old school approach. When they were doing it, then they felt they stopped doing it mean grantmaker sze then now they’re doing it again. I think the key to making this happen is being ableto walk in with a presentation that has really information. It’s not just a come meet my agency and this’s what’s happening in this area. Yeah, in this fund, in this priority that we know you’re all funding, right? Here’s, what we’re seeing here is troubles we see coming in the future. Here’s opportunities. Yeah, right. It’s like, sort of analysis. Like a market announcer. Yeah, exactly. You’re also very positioning yourself is a thought leader. You know, i have information for you. I have some best practices for you and they can get a good conversation going. Okay, i love that. Okay. Yeah, i don’t think my right. It’s not. I don’t think a lot of people are thinking that way. It’s great and approach to approach your funders and asked them tio to do it. Okay, so what’s your measures for that one for strengthening your network. I mean, the measures i have here, you know how many meetings with colleagues or potential donors that we secure? I think a big part of it is. Did you get out of your office and go meet with your grantmaker zx? Did you did you meet with colleagues? Did you see how much did you use that roll of x and the other is, you know, how many potential grant orders that we add to the network? That’s? The other thing too, is, is you can meet grantmaker zand not asked them for money, but you can get to know them. Add them to the network. Maybe the timing isn’t right. Maybe you are not ready for a bill. Imola. The gates foundation grant, but doesn’t prevent you from getting to know a program. Officer cates, i mean, maybe they can’t give you money, but maybe they could suggest other people. You can talk to me. I find a lot of its disappearance. Simple networking. What would your follow-up be, teo? To an event like that? Eyes the eyes, the non-profit that present what’s. Interesting. I just had a conversation with a client before camp here for the show. I’m aware that i heard about what we’re talking about. Numbers about that, well, years, years and years of steady and very deep. Don’t don’t underestimate, yeah, i am not underestimating you. Slice it, it’s, essentially, they’re producing a white paper on one topic, and they’re going to use that as the follow-up tow an event, so they’re going to have some grantmaker is in the room, and they can follow-up with content latto demonstrate how good you are, and there you have it. Take a break, indulge me for a break momentarily, please. Tillers credit card payment processing. You gotta check out their video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us this is your this is your passive revenue stream. You watch this video and then get businesses in your community. They may already. I think your best prospects are the ones that are already supporting you get them to watch the video and ask them to consider switching their credit card processing from whoever’s, doing it now and gouging them on fees over to tell us why would they do that? Tell us has a hundred percent satisfaction among among the companies that use them, and also their fees or lower. And in fact, if they can’t reduce the fees, then they’re going to give you the non-profit that referred the company two hundred fifty dollars, so you can’t lose but that’s not that’s, not that’s. The short money the long money is the company that you refer, that they look at the fees they sign up with. Tell us and then you the non-profit will earn fifty percent of the revenue month after month after month that tell us earns from that business or hopefully businesses so that’s the long money that’s, the long stream, one hundred percent satisfaction. So the likelihood of a company leaving tell us is low. Check out the video it’s at tony dot m a slash tony tell us now is time to finish up with john hicks and turbocharging the metaphor that i very graciously, i think adopted. John john doesn’t acknowledge that granite graciousness, but but i acknowledge it for myself. Okay, have we exhausted o and then now you had one more measure for strengthen your network. How many potential? Grantspace? No, you did say that. How many do we add to our network? And they were talking about the follow-up see that’s, my trouble cone and coming back follow-up anything more to say about content paper seems like a very good idea. Yeah, yeah, i mean, just, you know, come out, come back with something that would be useful to the thunder. And yes, sometimes we that’s a grant starts with not asking for money, but giving the thunder something that they can use. Okay, for sure. Giving them yeah, you’re a team player. You’re adding value to the community, right? That we’re all funding. Okay, you got build. A bigger footprint what’s this all about building a bigger footprint is think about two things one which is, can i take the work that i’m doing and how my leveraging it leveraging means either working in partnership with another organization or being a resource to another organization i made that, you know, provide the kinds of services your charity does, tony, but maybe you’re able tto refer kids or families to me and i can help. Well, that’s building a bigger footprint, another way of building a bigger footprint could be working on a consortium product project excuse me, and another way of thinking about is, you know, deepening the impact of what you’re doing. I mean, i’ve worked with a lot of organizations where they may work on a program where the maximum number of kids they conserve might be fifty, sixty, seventy it’s less than a hundred kids. But if they’re able to provide a deeper level of service that’s expanding the footprint because they’re going to get stronger results and it becomes a demonstration site and a placed oh, test out best practices. So you too, changing the conversation, it’s, not just a programme. It’s helping. Seventy kids. It’s, it’s actually working in a very deep and meaningful way. This is related to one of the earlier points. Maybe was the first one the investment in long, long term investment type grant seeking exactly exactly. So i just think it’s, you know, leverage as much as he possibly can were you just rewording these things so that you could come up with nine? You know, it was you had seven naralo like you had six and then you weren’t satisfied that seemed weak. So you had to they are a little different. They are a little different, but i don’t want these padded that we’re not about it. I guarantee they’re not all right hyre we’re on here, you know, we don’t we don’t accept aah! Slack content on non-profit radio no, we don’t have that here. We never have except that one time we did the show on on on the fermentation oh, yeah, that was that was that was bad content. I thought i thought we’d try something completely unrelated, which was in the podcast world. Big mistake, but i learned immediately fermentation in the middle of the guests that wasn’t even happy, but i i couldn’t shut him off. I didn’t have a heart. I invited him. It was my idea. Okay, the fermentation that was bad content. But that was one out of three hundred seventy seven shows. This happens to be shown over three hundred seventy seven. So, you know, you could forgive one one, three hundred seventy seventh, actually. And then if you count the number of guests mean, lots of shows have two guests, so, you know, we’re up, like, eight hundred ghetto and then some have four guests, so we’re over a thousand guests like, one out of one thousand one one thousand point zero zero one that that one one thousand? Yeah. That’s not one ten thousand point xero xero ones that one one thousand it is felt that is ten hundred thousand one one thousand. So one one thousandth of the guests being slack, you should stick with non-profit radio it’s a safe bet i’m gonna do all my budget. There was a small digression, but yeah, now you don’t want me doing numerical analysis. I didn’t even know i wasn’t sure what the point zero zero one was one month out osili two interns in the room, looking it up, they haven’t even answered it yet. Um, i need an intern. I need an intern. If everybody i need something to blame for this. So so, you know, the one one thousand i need something to blame on that. Blame that on. So if you if you could suggest if you know anybody want to be an intern from non-profit radio, have them come have them send a resume because i need something to blame. Let’s move on to ah, now we get to the this’s with strategic agenda cubine teasing this all show strategic agenda. What is it? Well, strategic agenda is i don’t know if i’m among the only one uses this term, but i mean it’s just basically being able to say to a grantmaker here’s where we’re going the next eighteen, twenty four, thirty six months and here’s where our focus is going to be and hear the most important things that we need to be doing to make a significant difference in the world. I mean, you could say strategic plan. But whenever i say the word strategic plan, the client’s inevitably think, well, are we looking at going through? A six month, nine month process of planning and introspection sometimes there just isn’t time to do that, and what i’m just trying to come up with is, you know, if you met a grantmaker tomorrow and you want to try toe, have a conversation to get that grantmaker really interested in possibly giving you money, i’d like to be able to not just say here’s, my mission statement here is the work we’re doing. It’s wow, let me tell you about the opportunities we have. We’re going to be doing a, b, c, d and e and you had a number of grantmaker tze on that panel going backto last week’s show who talked about it’s better not to come to us with just one idea asking us to find it because, i mean, when the panel said, what if you pitch the wrong thing to me? And i say no? Then the conversation stops come to me with a general overview of what you’re doing so, yeah, walking with a general overview, but the way you i think undress this up is to say, hey, here’s, where i have some opportunities to accomplish some really exciting good for people and whatever the time horizon you’re working with twelve, eighteen, thirty six, whatever the number of months and you could piqued their interest, how do you prove that the money would be well spent? Because it’s it’s all it’s all prospective? Well, if you’re going to put anything on a strategic agenda, you you have to have your hands around the numbers, like, you know, right now, i mean, i’m thinking of one fly in where they’ve launched for fairly new initiatives in the last year and those initiatives air showing promise there, working in some challenging communities here in new york city, they know their numbers, they know how many families there working with. They know how many kids and adults are impacted. They all said no, how much they could grow this program if they were able to bring in enough money. So there’s story, if we meet any thunder, is that, you know, we’re working with nine thousand people across four sites we know we have the ability and the opportunity to work with fifteen thousand our budget is x if we’re able to raise it toe why we can make this happen that’s a pretty powerful story. So so grantmaker maybe that’s a good use of your money. Excellent. Excellent. John’s giving you think you just just wrote you a template for ah, one paragraph you got expand on that. You got what you need. You need deal be hicks to help you out. So all right, let’s, go to our last our last of the turbo charging strategies. Know where you’re heading next? Yeah. So that means the other strategic agenda? Yeah. It’s like, essentially, you know, this gets us in the long term, you know, do we do we have a long term story for our agency or you do it? It’s, you know, if we’re able to go from a to b ing the next thirty six months, but just kind of looking at, you know, beyond the horizon, you know, this is where we think we’re going next. This is the part of a conversation with a grantmaker on believe and sometimes it gets evident when the application our proposal that proves to grantmaker that you have a clear understanding of who you are, where you’re going, where you sit in your field and that you have a you have a realistic sense of scope. And i think that’s awfully awfully important. You’re able to do this and you engage him a different level than you get the money and you turbo charge. Oh, john, look, look. The wrap up, he does. You see that? Look at that, huh? And you, turbo charge. All right, we gotta leave it there. He’s. John hicks. Cfr e you’ll find him at deal be hicks and deal be hicks dot com deal be, of course, don’s lightbulb. Thank you very much, john hooks. Well, thank you for having me on real pleasure having you back. Thank you. Next week, any sample ward returns? What about buying likes and fans? If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, sepa is dot com and till his credit card and payment processing you’re passive revenue stream tony dahna slash tony tell us. Ah, creative producers claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. And this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. Be with you next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff 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 do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell, you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for August 25, 2017: Raising Risk & Avoid Social Weariness (ASW)

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Maya Winkelstein & John Hicks: Raising Risk

Risk pervades every grant you get. Lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flesh it all out with Maya Winkelstein of the Open Road Alliance and John Hicks from DLBHicks.

 

 

Amy Sample Ward: Avoid Social Weariness (ASW)

Amy Sample Ward

With our own ASW, Amy Sample Ward. The social networks are 24/7 and can overwhelm you. But there are ways to make them work for you. Amy knows how to make your social manageable and strategic. She’s our social media contributor and CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

 

 

 


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Duitz hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with media asta no, pericarditis, if you broke my heart with the idea that you missed today’s show raising risk risk pervades every grant you get, lots of things can go wrong. Is it appropriate to discuss potential problems with your funders? Does that advantage your grant competitors? We’ll flush it all out with maya winkelstein of the open road alliance and john hooke hicks, john hicks from de lb hicks and avoid social weariness et s w with our own s wmd sample ward the social networks twenty four seven and can overwhelm you, but there are ways to make them work for you. Amy knows how to make your social manageable and strategic she’s, our social media contributor and ceo of the non-profit technology network, and ten on tony’s take two show our sponsors love responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com, and by we’d be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. We be e spelling dot com. We just corrected that problem. Hey, maya winkelstein is on the line. She is executive director of open road alliance, finding new ways to deploy capital to achieve maximum social returns. She had been there consultant. And they loved her so much. They put her in charge. So i guess there must not have been any non solicitation clause in that contract. We’ll flush that out. They’re open road, alliance, dot or ge and at open road tweet. Welcome, maya. Heidtke durney. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. My pleasure. We have john hicks on the line yet. Okay, we don’t have john hicks yet, so sam’s going to give him a call, but that’s. Okay? Because i want to start with you anyway, maya, um, we want to talk about risk to talk about risk and are funding relationships, but, uh, yeah, i know why. Well, uh, you see the opening of the show riskiest everywhere it has stopped anyone on the street and said, hey, the world is unpredictable vehicle, you’re disagree. Everybody agrees. Andi makes sense that in the nonprofit sector, where by definition we’re working with the most vulnerable populations and look vulnerable and challenging. Geography and problems that unpredictability is just a fact of life, but this reality often doesn’t translate into the way that grantmaking works the way that project planning and particularly the going on grantee relationship functions. Andi, we think that change, okay, if i know you have some stats about how ah unlikely it is that a grantee will be asked to assess the challenges that are facing them in the in the program or project that they’re that they’re seeking money for on dh like, okay, you’re welcome, you’re welcome to work those in and but but then, but if if if we’re not being asked to raise this, this issue of risk, don’t we end up disadvantaging ourselves because our competitors in the grantspace may not do the same thing? Absolutely right now we’d like to say that the word risk is a foreign letter word, and you’re on, and i think about the situation as an emperor has no clothes. The truth is, we did do a survey in twenty fifteen, where we interviewed two hundred foundations two hundred non-profits and asked him about it what’s really interesting in that survey is that the foundations acknowledged that risk percent as much hutchisson non-profits it princessa agreed on the number, and the number is one inside the one in five projects or wanted five grand’s legend to encounter some type of roadblock or obstacle that’s going to need additional funding in order to achieve impact on time and in cold. Okay, that zoho both sides acknowledges so to, as you said before, seventy six percent of thunders don’t ask any point in the application what goes wrong and went under so now guarantees don’t tell. So we do have this this dilemma and the question about competitive advantage, i think there’s a really important one because there is a lot of fear among non-profits you know, why would i reveal my weaknesses if you know somebody else competing for the grand isn’t but the truth is, uh, when you don’t talk about brightstep friends, we’re not brave and say, hey, you know, there’s, other things that could go wrong, you really just shooting yourself in the foot because things are so go going to go to go wrong one way or the other, and the difference here is simply for patient setting. Well, we don’t expect a set. Expectations appropriately, they’re thunders then it’s not surprising that they’re blind sided or react negatively when you come up. All right, all right. Um, i saw the so we believe i’m not surprised to hear one in five twenty percent of funded projects will have trouble. I’m in trouble is inherent in anything we do, whether it’s commercial or non-profit i’m just still i’m trying todo playing devil’s advocate i’m trying to think of think like a ceo or a grant writer who is wants to be transparent and set expectations, okay, but my board or my ceo from the grant writer says, look, i mean, the competitors are just not going to do this. We’re making ourselves look like we’re inferior because we’re going to raise challenges that the other people competing for this exact money are not going to raise, and they’re going to look superior and we’re going to look poor, right? And where one where i encourage non-profits to play teo freedom, your donor’s instincts as an investor that’s open lately what all donors are, you know, when we send money out into the world, it’s not baking powder self-funding back and sleep at night, we’re in an era of philanthropy where we want to see change, um, we really do treat our philanthropic dollars as investments for looking for maximum return on investment on if you think about it in the private sector, you know, who am i going to pick the company that tells me that everything’s perfect and they’re never gonna have any problems or the management team that said, hey, look, you know, we’ve looked at all of the issues, these air, some things that could go around, but this is how we’re managing it. Uh, you’ve been really treat with management as a sign of confidence in your management team position it as, uh, a competitive advantage to your advantage that you’re thinking about these things and your competitors are if somebody tries to tell me that something one hundred percent guarantee that for me is a much for red flag and the honesty and transparency of saying, hey, what could go wrong? But i’ve got a plan in place, okay? Okay. That’s ah, that’s. Excellent. That would be persuasive to me. Position as as an advantage. Somebody who tells you that there’s no risk is not doing a complete analysis. You know, they’re they’re superficial and were detailed, etcetera, depending how far you want to go in trash trash in your competition. Okay, that is a great intro, right? We’re goingto going go out early for our first break. When we come back, we’ll bring in john hicks, we got him on the line now, and, uh, we’ll get into where does this start? I mean, is this a chicken and egg thing? I mean, to me, it seems like funders have the greater responsibility. They’re the ones with the applications, but we’ll talk about that on dh, more about, you know this, don’t ask, don’t tell about risk that that were in 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 they were on facebook live, so i want to give shouts shout outs to carry my croghan good to see you, carrie it’s been awhile, it’s been quite so quite awhile. Thanks for being with me, man and jeff rose and also and there are others there are multiple others, but i can’t quite see them all right now, but we’ll get to them more facebook live shoutouts, let’s bring in john hicks john hicks is principal of de lb hicks consulting deal b is for dylan’s light bulb and if you don’t know that story, it’s at deal be hicks dot com he’s on the faculty of columbia university’s master’s program in non-profit management and a contributing author to the books after the grant and the non-profit handbook fund-raising he’s at de lb hicks john hicks welcome back. Glad to be back. Thank you. You’re you’re on vacation in north carolina, are you? Is that right? Yeah. Absolutely beautiful day down here in the outer banks. Well, thank you for joining us on vacation, john. Thank you so much. Thanks for doing that. Uh, jon, do you heard the intro, i hope. Where yuan for that? I was okay. What do you think of this idea of raising risk? Other people might not be well, i think it’s incredibly important it’s something we talk about a lot in our grants glass at columbia university about mitigating risk for the donor and mitigating risk for the non-profits and i was one of very quickly right off the bat compliment maya and her team on raising this topic for grantmaker but i think it’s also everything that i’ve seen has been developed by by the team. I would love to share my plan to share this with my client because i think non-profits have to be looking at risk management in terms of developing long term, sustaining positive relationships with donors, but also, you know, you have to do a reading, undertake a really solid reality check when you’re starting a new program, you know how how much can you realistically do? How much can you realistically deliver? Um, so it’s an important topic and, you know, it’s, just so great to see this being, you know, brought out in the way that it’s it’s been taken on my uh, where do you feel the responsibility lies for starting what you want to see happen a lot more often than it does in, like thirteen percent of grand applications or something dependents look like depending whether you asked the funders or the or the grantees, you’ll get different numbers as to how often it’s it’s raised, but in both cases it’s in the vast minority of applications, do you feel like it’s the funders? Responsibility? Because they’re the ones asking the questions they’re the ones with the with the applications so open it, lee risk itself is a shared responsibility. I mean, these often heard the conversation, and rightly so that non-profit can’t do their work for that thunders and thunder achieve their objective non-profits so we really are equal partners in in sharing and the successive failures and rick, every project that we partner on, but the reality is that there’s also a power dynamic within that partnership, and that power dynamics is very clear and it’s such a the thunders so as much as i do think there is a place and is a safe for non-profits to stand up to breathe ray’s, tow, have the conversation. To raise the issue uh, really, if we’re going to see widespread change, it’s going to have to come from the underside and it’s gonna have to really be be demanded as thunders. And i like to sort of think about it as risk monitoring an evaluation was pan of fifty years ago, right? It wasn’t until even though non-profits knew that they could do better at measurements were trying to do better measurement to billy and sam impact of their products. You know, it’s not told donors have a really big lever when they asked for it. And when they funded that’s, when things really start to move and change, all right, let’s, let’s drill down into some of the how tio, how to do this my way if i’m of i’m a potential grantee and there’s no mention of challenges, risks, obstacles in an application for for granted i’m applying for how do you like? How do you encourage organizations toe raise the issue? Do they wait till there filling out the application? Do they started in the preliminary phone calls that we hope that they’re having before they submit an application? How do you like to see? This one of the things we found on the underside in particular is not that thunder don’t want to know about bricks or don’t want to ask about it’s just that it’s not part of the grantmaking mainstream grantmaking culture, and so it doesn’t even occur to them, and one of the things that is also absent on the underside is very serious for thinking about their own risk tolerance and being able to define that. So one way to ease into the conversation without going straight to hey, you want to me to give you a risk assessment is to ask the thunder about their risk tolerance. Askin, you know hey, what is your profile? What are the types of risks that you like to see potential grantspace taking? And what are some of the risks that you tend to lead to a void in your grantmaking portfolio? Not only is that dahna night entree to the conversation, but it will also give you as the applicant, some really interesting on dh hopefully helpful information around here. What will be a better fit for that particular thunder? All right, john, how do you feel about when when it’s appropriate? To to start asking these questions may be asking the funders risk tolerance, what’s your ideas on how to raise this. I know what my just said about you is that it’s very early on in the conversation? I mean, this is why, you know, a best practices, particularly taking on a ah large initiative, a new initiative you’re looking at standing something significantly, i i’m a big believer in coveting the client or the organization through having on initial conversation with grantmaker i think that’s where you you asked that question about risk colorants, and then but at the same time, i think the charity has i have a responsibility to have considered that question and be able to speak to handle day are assessing risk and how they have factored of risk-alternatives grain up. So i felt that, you know, a grantmaker handup that obligation to the grantmaker and john, can we quantify these things? I mean, ultimately we’re asking the funder for money. Can we quantify the likelihood of risk percentage of likelihood vs versus potential cost? Can we quantify this? I think it really depends on the program. Tony means sometimes if you’re if you’re looking at replicating something that’s already been found there might be information helps you to do that in a lot of cases that i come across, it may be that thie organization is trying something that’s very new and it’s very i mean, it could be a something new within a community, something new with them, a community of practice, and it may be hard to put numbers around that, and i think this is where, again, engaging the grantmaker and a conversation toe tried to bring out the questions that they’re going to have because, you know, ultimately you’re talking to a grantmaker you’re talking to probably a representative, who is? Mom has a responsibility to a foundation board and, you know, you want to get a sense of where is the board? We’re that foundation board, in terms of, you know, going back to what my dad says, what is their wrist and that mike guy, the metrics and the numbers and that helps you to create and construct a grant proposal that would speak to you know, that you could or you might be able to quantify risk. Let me give you a couple of my hold on. One sec, i just gotta do a lot more facebook live shot out sorry if you want to join us on facebook live, go to the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and joining us most recently craig’s swenson onda cara gammel, cara charles hello hello karen, what a pleasure. Thank you. Sorry, maya. What do you want to get my? What do you want to say about quantifying this for funders? Yeah, i’m really glad you brought that up, it’s something that we’ve actually been looking at open road for the past couple of years and unfortunately compared to certainly the for-profit sector, we just don’t have numbers yet, and this is in part due to some of the other clans patients, particularly when it comes to pricing in cause so that our sector is facing. So we’ve actually been having conversations and working with partners that would stand and non-profit finance son, people who are looking at things like overhead on dh, the survey shin cycle and accurately pricing the true cost of a process. We haven’t even figured that out yet, so this figuring out the next step beyond what is the true cost of a perfect projects. To say ok, and now, based on some sort of actuarial tables or other data that we could drop from here is the risk premium, if you will. I do think our sector is going to get there, but it’s going to be many more years and are you you you’re helping this conversation along the way? This research along, i should say, not just conversation, wei are yeah, we are helping to search along. In fact, one of the things that were excited about is within our portfolio. Now that he’s been around for five years, we’ve got over a hundred krauz funded, which also means we now over have a whole one hundred and miracle data points of what actually does go wrong in our sector. Andi, we’re going to be publishing reports later this year or early next year that begins to offer actually the first data that empirical david, what goes wrong? For what type of project, how often and under what circumstances? But failure has always been and can gentle and related challenge to this question of risk. You know, i say failure is a risk realized so and we all know how difficult it is to talk about failure in our sector so it’s very hard to get some of this data because people don’t want to admit failure. There’s certainly not recording failure. Can you open up an annual report? You see all of the good numbers, right? All of the return numbers, nobody, uh, really truck goes around. Failure is risk allies. Dh jonah, you hear snickering whereas my talks about the annual report, you want to answer them? I mean, no, i’m not laughing at you with everything that, you know, i think that it’s like when i’m sitting here with someone who probably, you know, works with charities on reports, and i’m constantly, you know, playing to my clients, that i think when we come back, we’re behold them to come back to a grantmaker and to honestly say when something doesn’t work, what do we understand about the failure? Why did it fail? How are we going to take that failure and learn something? Promise? I agree. I think that you know that sometimes there’s uh uh, there’s. A lapse in communication where the great you know that grant he feels like, okay, i just have to go back. And talk about all the really good things that happened and you’re right on the point of annual reports, there’s a lot of annual reports that just simply, you know, put a fairly burnished picture out there of the work that seemed done when reality not everything works and the more you can understand from it’s better you’re going to bay so i totally agree with, you know, with the point she’s making yes, producing this show, john, i’ve heard rumors to that effect. Not everything works. You have something you will. And when i said you were snickering, i didn’t mean you were snickering derisively maybe i should said you were chuckling or you were bemused. As as my was talking, i didn’t mean to suggest that you were you were being negative. About what? About what? She was saying that at all? No, not at all. You have a lot of you have a lot of good tools that open road, alliance, dot or ge on dh. One of them is you talk about a risk profile statement. What is that? Yes. Let’s. Go back to the convent and made earlier around. What is your tolerance? Andi? This is a tool that we developed with thunders and nine, but i think it is equally applicable and adaptable for non-profits out as well. One of the things that we found in our work and research is that it’s very hard to take steps to manage risk, to try to minimize it or avoid it. If you haven’t gone through the preliminary step of figuring out what you’re willing to deal with or not right, what is your current service profile statement is basically the idea that you go through a a very deliberate and intentional discussion with your your staff for your board, your trustees, depending on what type of organization you are and you really deliberately come up with what you’re risking, tolerance is and think about it along different not so your risk tolerance when it comes to taking reputational risk might be very low, but you’re colorants for innovation might be very high risk is not a single single variable, either. On the idea of this profile statements and it’s sort of the division would be wow, imagine if every thunder you could go to their website and you could look at their risk profile statement. And you could see in writing where they’re willing to take risks where they’re not willing to take risks, you know that? And it’s non-profit we’re able to look at their programs and strategies in the same light you the matchmaking, if you will, between non-profits grantees, not only is there potential for that becomes easier, but if you don’t know what risks you’re willing thank you, it’s very hard, then to identify and managed. So if you are looking to improve your management in general, you would’ve also have to do that. First step is figuring out what risks you even talking about and which ones are going to be worth it to try and save it for duitz and we need to, i guess, then set aside money teo plan for these could negative contingencies, absolutely, and that gets into the risk management side of it is sort of the objects inside of fifty will he other think cubine mind is that when we’re talking about a profiler with cholera in ultimately that’s a subjective measures, you know, whether or not i prefer to curtis, test with stock or treasury bonds is a very subjective choice on dh. That’s a choice that thunder have every single day do they want to invest in the tried and true after school program? Where do they want to invest in the innovative new inner cities i have model and whether or not which one they pick is as much about the impact that piece of the cross product can provide as much of the currents of the thunder, but that’s ultimately a subjective measure, but once you have that subjective measure now, you can do this management, and you can look at the object in sight of the fact that no matter how little tolerance for averse service you are subjectively it’s filled and exits, and you’re going to need to manage it and you can manage it through budgetary actions. You can manage it with internal policies of procedure e-giving manage it with communications on a whole bunch of other tools have been become much more easy to implement and ready it at your weinger john hicks, anything you want to head there? No, i think an ideal world and if we do live in an ideal world where there’s a lot of grantmaker who are listening to this program. Or are taking the time to go and get their hands on the tool kit, and they’re going, they’re going to use that five again, you know, just applauding the work that maya and her team have done on the topic and i hope, it’s useful to the grantmaking communities well, our our listeners are the non-profits over twelve thousand small mid size non-profit so what? We’re we’re i know meyer’s working on both sides because this is a shared responsibility, but so what we’re doing is encouraging non-profits to raise it with their they’re funders on dh that’s, why i want to drill down earlier and about how do you the asked both of you? How do you raise the question? Because where, you know, we’re hitting the non-profits and now the newly competitive because of maya’s my strategy and thinking on this, the newly competitive non-profits because they’re there now at a competitive advantage that they weren’t roughly twenty eight minutes ago. So i feel bad i feel bad for your competitors, not listening. You should, but you shouldn’t. But i do because i wish they were listening, which we have more but wait, we don’t have an audience to brag about of course we do, but i feel bad for the feel bad for the ones they’re not listening. My, i’m going to give you the last word. We just got about thirty seconds ago. Once you wrap up for us. Sure. Well, i guess that’s the last thing i would say, you know, keeping that non-profit audience and nine is duitz sebi breaks, you know, and stand up. There are a lot of a lot of things that you think you internally and externally with their fenders, put a risk front and center center onda also in terms of your own internal processes, you sustenance on your own. Anyway, even if you don’t know, never hear about it. Yes, what? You’ve just made your program stronger. You’re gonna have more impact and be more successful, which in turn is gonna attract more donors regardless. So i do think there’s a lot that non-profits could bring to the table here on but the end of the day without non-profit hundreds of just sitting on piles of money doing nothing. So i think it really, really is a great role that complaint my is executive director of open road alliance, open road, alliance dot or ge and at open road tweet john is principal of de lb hicks at de lb hicks dot com and also at deal be hicks. Maya. John, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your pleasure. Got a void? Social weariness et s w with our own s w amy sample ward coming up first pursuant acquisition campaigns, they’ve got a free webinar, so much of the content is free it’s almost it’s redundant to safely webinar when you’re talking about pursuing but just in case you’re a first time listener free weapon are coming up to help you acquire new donors. It’s on august thirty first what inspires that first gift for a donor? They’ll talk about it. We’ll have lots of examples and and as we do here, actionable strategies just like non-profit radio, if you can’t make it live on august thirty first at noon eastern, then watch the archive listen live or archive, just like non-profit radio and the place to sign up. Is that the new landing page that pursuing has for non-profit radio listeners, that is tony dot m a slash pursuing with a capital p go there, sign up for the, uh, acquisition campaigns webinar and if you can’t make it live, you’ll get emails about you get an email telling you when the archive is available, so it doesn’t matter where you could make it alive or not. Just go, tony dahna i’m a slash pursuant we’ll be spelling, you know that super cool spelling bee fundraisers, millennial fund-raising and fund raising because they do spelling bees that include live music and dancing and stand up comedy, not your seventh grade spelling bee. At least not my seventh grade spelling bee from like, what would that have been? Nineteen, seventy one or something? Or nineteen, seventy five? Whatever. I was not like that. Throw that out. Check him out. The video that will show you all this happening at one of their many events is that we be e spelling dot com. Then just talk to the ceo. His name alex alex career. You’ve heard me talk about him. Get him, alex at we b e spelling dot com or you could pick up the phone. The numbers on the website. Check out the video. We b e spelling dot com have a millennial spelling bee fundraiser for your organization, low risk that’s probably don’t have to raise the risk issue for a spelling bee. I would think, what could it possibly be besides embarrassment now, time for tony steak, too. Listen, i really need you to be supporting our sponsors pursuant, we dispelling two new ones coming, the two new ones coming next week. Yes. Apple owes software is starting next week and also wagner, cps so we’re going for sponsors and peace organizations come to me. I’m very grateful for that because they know we’ve got a very consistent show every single week for seven years and over twelve thousand listeners, and i need you to step it up and show your love to our sponsors. So if you’re looking for millennial fund-raising talk to, we’d be spelling, and if you are interested in lots of free content bond fund-raising management then talk to pursue it, check them out, go to that landing page and likewise will be hearing me talk about wagner, cpas and apple owes software we need to show the love to the sponsors. Please keep respond to keep your sponsors. Our sponsors keep our sponsors in mind, thanks so much, and that is tony stick, too. And now time for a s w r own amy sample ward she’s, a social media contributor, and she’s, the ceo of inten, the non-profit technology network. Her most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about multi-channel online engagement she’s that amy sample, ward dot or ge and at amy r s board. Welcome back in the sample. Ward. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Did you see? I put i’m sure you noticed that she had put your initials in the segment title. Now, i actually thought maybe this meant there was a lot more pressure now that any topic in the future has to be able to fall into a nasco w acronym. No, i don’t. I don’t feel like that now. Besides, i’m the one who put there. I would be putting the pressure on myself because i there. Yes. You don’t hear me. Hello? Hear me? I cannot hear you. I’m not sure if you can hear me. Okay? Okay. Why don’t you call back and call back so i can hear you now? Okay. Okay. Now i was saying that there is no pressure because first of all, i did not ask you to come up with a title that met your initials. I did that myself, so you can blame me for that. And no, not not a precedent setting measure. No, you don’t have to worry. And we just lose amy. We did just back now. Now you are back. Okay. Did you hear? Everything i just said, i’ve been in the system the whole time listening to the whole show. And then when it’s my turn to talk wait cut you off? Yes. Did you just hear my whole diatribe? No, i didn’t hear you. Well, alright, basically. Well, i thought maybe i sum you buy my comment. Oh, come on. You know better than that eyes no silence on non-profit radio that never that would never happen. Okay, well, you’ll have to go listen back. But the short answer is no it’s, not a precedent. Don’t worry, grayce so what? We are talking about setting boundaries around your social. Is this getting to be now? Is this going to be an issue for you and your community? Definitely been a really kind of top of mind. Intentional topic here at and ten, i think i think last fall leading up to the election, regardless of any candidate that any single person was voting for. It was just such an intense election and the, you know, everyone turning to social media all throughout the campaign turned to social media that i think by the time the election happened, everyone was just really at this kind of emotional breaking point around how much content there wass how often updates were coming through and that’s both content from, you know, out less media outlets, newspapers, etcetera, but also just content from each of us write everybody sharing things and adding commentary and just reflecting on things that i think people have you no for almost a year now felt like i have to find a way to take a break, or i may be going to lose it, you know, i’m just reading too much, and i feel like if i’m not, you know, i’ve left my left my desk, but now i better open up twitter on my phone because i want to make sure i’m staying on top of this, that people are getting to a place that i think is really overwhelming. I understand, yeah, there’s so many more people paying so much more attention to the networks and the news. I mean, this is the social networks on dh exactly on i would never advocate against that way. I mean, i’m excited that we have a country that feels like people are paying attention, i think, for non-profits that this is a huge moment for us because it means that when we send out on a call to action or an appeal, we can make less of a point about what it is that’s going on because people are are now informed and waiting for that action and indifferent way, right? So on one hand, as organizations it’s a really great time because people are informed and are paying attention, but as individuals and individual staff, i think if we don’t set some boundaries around how much content we’re trying to absorb every day, we will just burn out. Look how good she is bringing it right back to the listeners wait brilliant were brilliant contributors on this show, the host is lackluster, but the contributors are outstanding example exemplary, alright, so yes, so as individuals and maybe even as organizations to i mean, if we’re a small organization, we don’t we don’t have a devoted social media director manager, this applies on the organization level to so what ideas you got? Well, i think at the very basic, when we’re talking about just boundaries in general, something that i have been practicing and that a number of other staff here it and ten have also been practicing is to kind of use different devices as a way to create boundaries. So for example, i don’t have facebook as an app on my phone, and that means that i’m only going to go expose myself to the world of facebook if i’m sitting at a computer and i can open up a browser right? That i’m not just like on my phone, letting myself be kind of mindlessly sucked into that news feed, so separating which which channels which applications you’re going to look at on different devices means oh, well, you know, maybe in the evenings you liketo have a tablet because that’s, where you read, you read a magazine or you have a kindle or something, making sure that you minimize how many other apsara on that device will help you create some boundaries so that’s excellent. And then in addition to that, i think it kind of goes hand in hand, but it’s picking times of day where you want to engage, so saying, you know what? During the morning when i’m getting up and i’m having my coffee and i may be with my family, i don’t wanna have to start the day already worried about what’s happening in the news, right? So, like i during these times, even though the temptation is there, i don’t check twitter until i get to work or something. So picking sometimes a day where your mind knows, okay, it’s okay to go down the rabbit hole. This is my life twenty minute twitter break when you get into the office or something, but then the rest of the time, you don’t feel like, oh gosh, i should check i should check i should check you say, no, i have that time when i know i’m going to go check it. That’s a tough one. You know, people have been saying that about email for a year for years as manager. Way of managing your inbox on ly check email, whatever two, three times a day instead of i think the is in the aft national adult average, like a hundred times a day, we look at our phone to check email something instead of doing it a hundred times. Cut it down to three that’s a that’s, a tough one. You know, last time i had beth can’t iran and i know you know, beth very well and she’s very smart. She talked about how difficult it was for her to break the habit of waking up and picking up her phone and looking at email it’s, hard it’s shorts and part of it, if you know you have that habit, let the device help you with that, right, you can set your different channels, whether that’s, social media are email or whatever toe on ly shou notifications at certain times or never shown on vacations. I think it is very healthy to make sure your phone is not constantly showing you the number of unready males, because that is just like a stressful little picker, right? So, you know, howto open email on your phone, you can go look at it, but you don’t need this scream at all times to be shouting at you fifty on read emails, right? So you some of the control that you have just by the settings and was identification setting their display settings to help create some space there? Yeah, that’s a great one. You know, i’m going to do that that’s a great, like that little red badge next to my helmet that red number you need that. I don’t need that in your life, right? I’m going to look at that. I’m going to check email anyway. I don’t need to know that. There’s there’s one i didn’t. I didn’t get to. I just checked back. They just check twelve. I closed the damn thing. And now there’s one how did that guy? How did that bugger sneak in there exactly. Just feel good about closing it. Yeah, you don’t need that picture and you know it’s a great one. It’s not a phone app, necessarily. But if you use gmail, i know a lot of folks do. If you use gmail there’s a free ad on called bloomerang and if you in add that into your gmail in your browser, it can mute that incoming email like you were just talking about for you. So it’s not a matter of temptation of saying, gosh, i can’t even open my email because i’m always forced to look at it two or three times a day. You can have it open. You could be sending emails. You can read emails that air there, but it will not show you the incoming. E mails wow, during these times where you say i want a mute email for the next hour so that you’re not tempted to dive into all those new emails while you’re trying to focus on something else. That’s outstanding what’s that called it’s called bloomerang bloomerang and it only works with what did you say? Gmail workflows gmail? Okay, well, i don’t know if it works on other things, okay? I know that it does work with female. I’ve heard i’ve heard of female, so okay bloomerang cool, you’ve great ideas, it’s amazing. What? Well, i mean, i think it’s what’s important, even if those air to specific things that you already do or you don’t care to try, they’re just example to illustrate that there are some ways that we can use technology to help us stay away from technology. There are some good tools are quick little add ons that can help you create some boundaries and some filters so that you’re not feeling overwhelmed all the time that you don’t have to do all that work, right? You don’t have to say i just need to be a better digital citizen and not care to check. Facebook, facebook wants you to check it it’s going to send you notifications every way it can and it’s trying to get you back in there so you don’t need to feel guilty for checking the notification instead. Think about where where should i go turn off those notifications? Facebook isn’t trying to tempt me back in and the emails the emails of facebook sends did you know that seventy nine people like the recent posting you’re non-profit happy hour? Oh my god! Yeah, i got to turn that off, too. All right, that’s, too? Yeah, i got one the other day that i thought i felt so desperate, it’s said. You have not updated your public, i don’t know if it was my profile or just i hadn’t posted to my own kind of, you know, posted into the news feed in fifteen week don’t you want to see it? And i was like, if i haven’t done it in fifteen, we space book makes me maybe you could just let me go, you neo-sage they’re trying to trying to get you back in. You’re not cooking on enough ads for them to suit them exactly. All right, we gotta go out far for a break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the ultimate low tech non-technical way of turning yourself off. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi 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 g n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back and i got to say hello. More shout outs to facebook live, we’re on the tony martignetti non-profit radio page and scott williams with us. Mike hargrove, barbara freeze owner and terra kelly who’s now tower hickey, but i know you’re a star. Kelly welcome. Good to see you, facebook live! Thanks for being with us and there’s people on other pages, too, if you made beyond the talking alternative page. Thank you so much for being with us, facebook live and that leads me, of course, to live listener love the podcast audience the what am i saying? The live streaming audience. Our live love goes out to tampa, florida. Woodhaven, newjersey, ridgewood, new york. Which one you want? That’s, queens. We also have brooklyn. We have new york, new york. We’re missing staten island in the bronx. We got left to get that follow five boroughs, but live love to the three bottles that are with us. Queens, brooklyn in manhattan, andi woodbridge, new jersey. Also besides woodhaven, let’s, go abroad, seoul, south korea cells so of course, always checking in. So so, so loyal in seoul and your haserot cancer, ham, nida, germany. We can’t see your city? I’m sorry, but germany’s with us. Guten tag and rio de janeiro, brazil welcome live listener love to you also on the podcast pleasantries go out of course, to the over twelve thousand listeners on the podcast medium were multi-channel here where multi-channel multi? I know we’re multi personality maybe, but we’re multi multi. So, uh, every time i’ve been on, at least one listener has been on from seoul, i think that’s so awesome. Yeah, yeah, they are soul is very, very boyle. Yeah, i love it. So the podcast were the podcast audience. You’re pulling me back in howto live love. I’ve advanced. I’m past that now. I went to the podcast wasn’t i’m sorry you’re into other channels? Yes, or the other that’s, right, it’s, the podcast audience. The pleasantries go out to the over twelve thousand listeners, the ceos, the fundraisers, the the board members, the consultants pleasantries to you. And then, of course, the affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Thank you. So glad that your station has included non-profit radio in its weekly schedule. Affections to our affiliate listeners and turkey in mexico joined us as well, back to the live love turkey, mexico sorry, we cannot see your cities, but but we know that we know you’re there. We know you’re there. All right, amy sample ward. Thank you for that indulgence, even though you interrupted, but okay, so let’s go to a very i know it is that i love having you on, you know that let’s goto a completely non tech way of setting boundaries, and that is just turn yourself off and take a take time away right from the social net from the networks. Yes, take a little social media vacation. Ah, sabbatical, if you will, you don’t have to close everything permanently. You don’t have to cancel all of your accounts, but, you know, and i think it doesn’t have to be like i’m going to take the month of september off of twitter or something. It doesn’t have to be so rigid and intense, but just saying, you know what? I wantto give a gift to myself of saying that every sunday afternoon is for me and not for the internet, it could be that simple, right doesn’t even have to say, oh, gosh, it’s twelve oh one, i’m already entered into my afternoon of no social media just saying, i i want i know that it will make me feel better. I’m going to give this to myself and then as you start to make that a regular routine, i think it’s easier to say ok like this feels good. I didn’t have to check anything all, you know, all sunday afternoon or whatever today it is, just give yourself that regular vacation very good idea and so simple to do and, you know, be good to yourself, you know? You need you need time away from the i don’t know the pace, the fast pace of the networks and the networks are only expanding and they’re only encouraging you back. Mohr and maura’s, we were just saying before the break, you’ve got to take control, you have to you have to it’s on you. They’re not gonna let you alone. You have to tell them you have to tell them to let you alone. I mean, just in that same way of, like, take control, i think it’s so easy to feel like, especially with channels like twitter where there’s it’s just happening so fast, right is just kind of streaming by that it can feel like you’re kind of this passive participants audience member right there, watching all of this content go by that again, just like you’re saying remember that you can be in control, that i think some of the smartest things to do for using it, not just setting boundaries about when you use it, but when you are using it are to use the list, make sure whatever channel you’re talking about, that you’re kind of filtering that content. It’s okay to follow a million people on twitter but start making a list of specific voices or people or certain hashtags that you you really do care about that you trust that you want to listen to first, and then instead of feeling like, okay, this is my to use that example from before. This is my kind of twenty minutes twitter break when i get to work instead of feeling like great. Now i need to read like all of twitter somehow open first that lift and just listen to those voices that you already know you care more about her that you wanted to listen to first, and then if you have extra time, open up the whole world of twitter, go back to your full kind of followers stream but don’t feel obligated to just always have to consume it all. Use some list on dh kind of filter down what you’re reading. Okay, excellent. Listen hashtags yes, and go there first, cause that’s your most important stuff to you, right? And then, of course, we could weaken turn off certain people if we need to. Yeah. Oh, my god! Unfollowed people just a kn follow-up make that stop if that if that is something that is not productive, you don’t mean maybe they’re your aunt and you feel like you can’t facebook unfriend them just mute them. Tell facebook you never, ever want to hear from that person, but they will still see that your facebook friends you know, maybe you need to maintain that in your family but again let some of those system preference options help you hide content that is on ly goingto make things worse for you. Okay, so and in that similar way i think you know something that’s been really helpful for me and my friends. Outside of work is just being intentional, you know, having conversations with folks and saying, when you realize that every person has started kind of their story or the article that they wanted to talk about by saying, oh, i read this article on facebook or i found this thing on twitter realizing that everyone’s starting place with social media, you know, we kind of had this conversation of i want i want to intentionally go find content that’s interesting to me that i made, you know, maybe i don’t tell anyone about it, i just read it while i was eating lunch. Or maybe i want to talk to my husband about it, but i don’t want to have to start every conversation with i read this article on facebook. I want to feel like i am, you know, i am not beholden to just those social channels i want to go find some other content and knowing that kind of having that realization has helped me and my friends and i have been all have a couple points during the day where we say i want to go like, look at the new york times home page. Oh, how crazy versus waiting for news. Articles to show up in twitter stream so just kind of thinking about how you want to be interacting with with content and media instead of just passively feeling beholden to the channels that you’re already a part of, i think also helps just with that kind of awareness, like we used to pick up the newspaper every day from from from a doorstep. Yeah, yeah, from the news stand okay, okay, which never like two minutes or so left. What else? What else? You have some ideas around filtering fill your other ideas around filtering content. Yeah, something that i found really helpful is that, you know, inside of channels like facebook is having private or semi private group that i engage in a lot more than just that generic kind of big news feed type engagement. So i’m not logging into facebook just to see what happens to be there. I’m logging in to go talk with this community. Andre could be really small or, you know, they could be professional, that i’m not saying there’s only one type, but i think creating some kind of safe private spaces with your friends, with family, with people that you like in any other way is really helpful because even what i have found t use facebook, arlington is two examples of people will still reference content in that group that maybe, you know, is everybody’s sharing that, saying on facebook or there’s a big news item on lincoln that lots of people are interacting with, but it’s a it’s a different way to talk about it in that group than it is often, you know what i’m talking about, where, like lots of different voices jumpin on a thread, and it just turns into a dumpster fire so instead, you know, having a kind of smaller, safer space to talk about things again just makes it feel a little bit more positive to engage their, especially around news items. Then it would be i just feel like you’re commenting on somebody’s post again create small groups that you want teo intentionally interact with versus just waiting to see who’s online and there could even be offline in your really real time real life community. Oh, my god! Okay, we get yes, yes. Oh, yes! Oh, heretical. How heretical is that? All right, we got to leave it there in the sample ward. Thank you so much. Thank you. You’ll find her at amy sample, war dot or ge and at amy r s board next week. I don’t know next week. Oh, no, i do know. Next week i was going to threaten you with fermentation that we actually i thought it might be from fisher, but no, we’re not doing that. It’s going to be with jean takagi. Jean takagi is returning and we’re going to talk about fiscal sponsorship. Big topic. I think we’re going to the whole show. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers claire miree sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez. And this very cool music is by scott stein be with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony 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 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.