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

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Greg Cohen: Board Change Agents

Want to shake things up on your board and in your org? Greg Cohen takes us through the process of identifying, recruiting and exploiting agents of change on your board. He’s with Cause Effective.

 

 

 


Raj Aggarwal, Sabelo Narasimhan & Glamarys Acevedo:
 Authentic Selves In Work
Our panel from the Nonprofit Technology Conference shares strategies for workplace inclusion so that all selves are welcome and accepted. They are Raj Aggarwal from Provoc; Sabelo Narasimhan with 350.org; and Glamarys Acevedo at Mamatoto Village.

 

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with polychrome at ophelia if you stained our relationship by saying you missed today’s show authentic selves at work, our panel from the non-profit technology conference shares strategies for workplace inclusion so that all selves are welcome and accepted. They are raja agarwal from provoke sabelo narra symon with three fifty dot or ge and glamarys azevedo at mamatoto village and board change agents you want to shake things up on your board and in your order, greg cohen takes us through the process of identifying, recruiting and exploiting agents of change on your board he’s with cause effective tony take to the ninety six year old secretary with eight million dollars in her will. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio by regular cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps, dot com and by telus turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s here is authentic selves at work from the non-profit technology conference welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen, ninety si you know what that is? It’s a non-profit technology conference. You know where we are in new orleans at the convention center. This interview is scheduled centerview response, sir. Why not buy network for good? Easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits and they’re sponsoring it. They didn’t schedule it. My guests are raja agarwal, sabelo, naralo kayman and glamarys azevedo raj is president of provoke i say that right provokes correct. Okay. I didn’t ask about pronouncing your company name. I only asked about your personal name. He did a great job amglobal pronounce her company name wrong to propose. They say sabelo robak provoc which is the traditional latin version of alright, alright. And sabelo is north american digital campaign manager at three. Fifty dot org’s and glamarys is the professional development specialist mamatoto village. Raj sabelo glamarys welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much for spending time and sharing your wisdom. Your seminar topic is bringing your whole self to work. Let’s, start down the end. There glamarys what’s the what’s. The trouble what? What? What would you like to? See, people do better when they go to work each day, right? I think our our session is going to be really or, you know, you don’t have a minute neo-sage exactly so this is a little preview, right? Eh? So we’re going to be speaking about, you know, who has the privilege of bringing their whole self to work, you know, and who doesn’t write s o i think some of us work in places where we do not how the privilege to bring our whole selves to work, right? Because there might be, you know, things, implications, teo, those actions bring your whole self, and then maybe some of us work in places where we feel like we’re getting closer to being ableto have an environment where we bring ourselves to work, what is the whole self? What do you mean? You have to forgive my voice? I’ve done about thirty these interviews what i say, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say the whole self? That is a great question, so i believe just in from my experience i’ve been and workplaces where i had to bring a version of myself to work. So that i could, you know, excel within, maybe they’re parameters, but it wasn’t maybe my whole authentic excel unlike where i work now, where i feel like i can bring my whole donor-centric self and it’s something that’s really valued, and i’m able to excel in that and growing myself instead of growing into stumping that someone else wants me to be. But what is your whole self, my health? So, i mean, that is that is that i’d like to ask everybody such a such a layered right eye, a multifaceted so there’s just there’s so many layers to my whole selves like that’s really? Uh, parsing that out twenty five minutes. I could take the whole entire teo, but we’ll start with your woman. Yes, s o that’s. Great. Yes, i’m a woman. I don’t fires a woman identify as a black latina. Um, identify as in my workplace, this is important. I defy with someone who is single without children. S so there’s some things that, you know, come up. You know, i’m bilingual, you know, those of certain things that come up in my workplace, that i’m able to bring my whole self and that and i feel like those are factors that are used against to me, which i think in some environments it could be and has not just could nobody has. Okay, okay. Sabelo yes? How do you do? Well, let let’s, before we ask, before i asked how you define your i don’t define describe your whole self, but before that what’s your what’s your intro to this topic, why did you feel this was unnecessary session at ntc? I feel like in the nonprofit world there’s been a lot of conversation over the last few years about bringing your whole self toe work, and most of it has been led by cece hat white males and women on dh they are proposing practicing vulnerability and taking risks and not worrying about being judged or the implications of bringing your whole self to work, and they see it from a very narrow they’re like my ionic, which which it means something entirely different for a person of color means something entirely different for someone like me to bring my whole self toe work, and the consequences are often not, uh, positive, so you know there’s a lot of wing of choices. That are made about when and how to bring your whole self to work so that it’s actually supporting yourself and not putting yourself in dangerous situation. Okay, i guess we’re going talk some about creating an environment that enables, yes, someone to bring their whole cell exact okay, the way glamarys feels comfortable, who is your whole self? Sabelo well, again, as glamarys said that’s a complicated question, but i identify as trans queer, immigrant of color on dh i have a lot of identities, but most of which are hyre not the mainstream at the organization i work at, and so i’m often used to being in situations where i’m the on ly x or the on ly why or the only z and s so how does that feel? Uh, it feels isolating it feels difficult to contradict what the expectations are for a leader toe look like what the expectations are for a person who’s doing good work in the organization toe look like and the particular ways that i need to be supported rather than undermined for bringing my whole self toe my eyes water actually, raj, welcome. Thank you. How would you to find the need for this session, um, i, too, believe that a lot of the conversation that’s happening is off, and technology is important. Designs important. I make my living doing it. But i think that we often have to leave who we really are when we come into interactions with other people. And i think the ending result is products, environments, people just not not being as effective as they could be if we really tapped into so authentic selves who we are. And so i find that the more that i’m able to be my whole self work, it gives our client’s gives the rest of our team permission to be themselves, too, and i find working together with them ends up being a lot better and what we produce is it being a lot better, but i think sometimes we’re just to. Oriented on the on some expectation of what should all look like versus what it truly is and how it’s continuously evolving time for a break pursuant, they have a new site and a brand refresh and the top creatives they’re the two senior creatives that worked on this. Put together a podcast with tips and lesson learned lessons learned that’s, taylor shanklin and andy goldsmith at pursuant may share how they kept it user focused, plus their expertise doing this with hundreds of sites. It’s a combo with tips and strategies lessons learned you’ll find it at pursuant dot com slash launch. Now let’s, go back to our convo you feel if if there’s, if there are parts of your whole self that you have to withhold, then you’re withholding your best work. Yeah, maybe not consciously, probably not consciously, but if you can’t be yourself, you can’t give everything that you can to your clients. Your organization? Yeah, i think it really pulls back on our ability to create creative solutions. I think that this idea that there is a separation between work and life, it doesn’t make sense to me. Um, i’m the owner of my company. I’ve been doing that for a long time, and i do the work that i do and most people in the non-profit work do the work that they do because they love it, you know, the number of people that i’ve spoken to that have been no offense hoodwinked by there by their organizations because they believe in the mission, but they’re not being paid well or treated well, but they believe in the mission over and over again, and on top of that, they don’t get to be them, but they do it because they love it. So in one way, you could say that they’re being manipulated by the system to do this thing, and then at the same time, they’re not able to be themselves at the same time, but they’re only reason they’re there is because they love it. So i think distinguishing those two needs to go away, who’s your whole self. Yeah, well, i think it’s also complex the way that my wonderful colleagues here have mentioned, but one of the things that i talk about, a lot of different things, i’m a male out primary owner of a company, and so i’m also a male who’s in a position of power i’m my heritage is from india, and i’m a person of color. I’m on a very interesting journey around race because i’m not black, i’m not wait on dh that’s seems to be, you know, obviously a really big conversation that’s happening in america today and always has been for a long time, but i’m also formerly heroin addict, and so i told my story on npr about three years ago, and i was very public about it. I wasn’t anonymous about it, and i found a lot of freedom from doing that, not only you just just in general and it’s it’s opened up a lot for me by having to release holding that back, whether it be with clients or whether it be with my team or with my family or with the rest of my south asians culture. You know, just these things, there’s once you remove the shame or whatever, people might impose his shame for some choices that you make that aren’t mainstream. Yeah, hopefully is what people impose not not what you’re feeling, but but those air those are so intertwined because it’s about acceptance it’s about being loved and if we don’t have that, then you know, we don’t feel we don’t feel comfortable being ourselves briefly. What was the npr story about with regard to heroin addiction? Yeah, you know, they talk about this thing called the opioid epidemic, which i think is baloney, because people of color have been impacted by heroin for over forty or fifty years, and at the very least, at least in this country and now that it’s become showing up in more in a rural communities may be impacting more people that are white, it’s become this, quote unquote, epidemic. And so i really want to talk about how it was one of the hardest things that i’ve ever had to go through in my life. As i was doing the interview, i had the privilege of having my parents with me, and they heard things that i had experience that they never even knew was there, and so was a tremendous amount of healing between myself and my family, but your parents heard some things for the first time in front of a mike in front of a mike. It was all recorded. I have it, i can share with you, tony, if you yeah, okay, it was a seven that’s, a pretty authentic radio. It was seven and a half minutes, and it was picked up by national npr and played all over the place, and i got hundreds of people reaching out to me, especially of south asian background, being like, you know, how can we talk about this? Because i’m struggling with some of the same thing. If someone wants to listen to that, can they just google your name, and they are, they can, and the name of the interview is called heroin. Heroin addiction sucks. It totally does, just for the record, okay, guard. Sabelo who? Who are the people that can bring their whole selves to work without a fear of shame, of being downcast. Who what population is that that khun company will bring it’s whole self? I think, at least especially in the american context. But really globally we live in a system of white supremacy, and that is seen as the mainstream that is seen as the norm that is seen as, you know, white male, i presume, is what we’re talking about. White women too on dh and there’s, there’s there’s a sense of their huge blind spots. These folks have white folks has around bonem there’s just so much that they don’t even think about, you know, they don’t question because they’ve just been entitled to just be themselves and it’s ok to bring their, you know, tears in or it’s ok to bring there dahna, you know, decisions in without worrying about will people listen to you? Well, people respect you, they can delegate, they could do all these things without ever having questioned i want to challenge something that you feel like women could bring their their whole self, comfortably white women i’m not sure for me see for me race and gender are like central to my thinking, but race is the primary driver like it’s, the biggest elephant in the room in every workplace i’ve been a part of in the us and, you know, for me that overshadows what white women experience, which can be challenging, but like, for example, in non-profits including my own, there are tons of white women in leadership, and there have been so, you know, they do experience certain forms of oppression, but and that that might limit their ability to bring in, whether they’re, you know, a mother or whether you know, other other parts, but but there’s also, i think additional blind spots created because they feel like they’re, you know, put down by the white men, and so therefore they don’t have to analyze their own reiteration of those kinds of behaviors. Glamarys how do you feel about that? Women wait, women being able to bring their whole self? Yeah, i completely agree with the fellow on that on because i think white women with what i think has not been highlighted is that white women, they really do uphold white supremacy, right? I think that is the root of what we’re speaking of here and the fact that we’re constantly, you know, i feel like the narratives always like all the white man, the white men it’s, just like but if you look at this is the white people and white women are part of that, and i feel like even to my experience with non-profits like, you know, at the end of the day, yes, they have other parts of themselves that they have to bring into work, but they i feel like i have that that privileged to be able to do that in a way that people, people of color do not get to do that. So in that sense, i can’t i’m not willing to sort of, you know, like, i don’t know why women, no, like they also uphold white supremacy, and so we have to talk about that that dynamic in the workplace. How about the workplace? That’s? Why what? I want to go to creating a workplace that is inclusive, that doesn’t impose shame, fear, love, discrimination, recrimination, let’s start since we were down there with you, america, how do we what strategies can you share, too? Because we have a lot of listeners. Who are ceos? Executive director among our among our listeners. What do you want to say? I would say, you know, hyre black people and rolls of leadership hyre black women and rolls of leadership, i think, like, at the end of the day, like getting those people and to those rows of leadership is going to affect the, you know, dynamics that are happening at non-profits that are kind of like a monolith right now, right? Like it’s, you know, white on top, and then maybe, you know, as you trickle down on it would be, you know, more people of color, but that’s not the way like, if you’re really wanting to be inclusive, that’s not the way to get it to bilich oh, we met some sort of quota because we have enough, you know, workers of color and itjust like, but where are they within the company, right? What about the pushback that there aren’t enough applicants of color a senior leader for senior leadership position? So with that piece, i would go to the job description and you can see the, you know, racial undertones, even within that, right? Like what? What, like when when? You put it in there like when you put into job descriptions, maybe not, including, like, maybe experience, but really trying to highlight, like education. We already know they’re very like large disparities within, like, even educational requirements, and but someone might have the experience, you know, just from working to be, but be great person for this role, but because you have maybe this piece in here it’s like, oh, they have to have, you know, a master degree and this and that, you know, i mean, like, those kind of sort of pre requisites really end up excluding people from being even able to even apply track. S o i think some even like looking into that, i think when people are riding up, you know, they’re just just job description, what they’re looking for if they were true, like, if they really were to look at it and parse it out there looking for a white, you know, male, female, really to fit into these roles, they may not be doing it consciously, right? But they are doing it subconsciously and so that’s something that i’ve, you know, been able to see whenever i’m going to go. Up imply for roles i i think i may be a really great fit for this, but because of some of these markers that they have put in there, they’re not realizing that they’re really excluding frumpy people, you know, to apply so people of color, like they’re out there, and they’re ready to take on these roles and be really excellent in these roles. But it’s really the environ first of all, the environment of those non-profits do people even want apply there? Because it might be one of those things that rogers speaking to where is like, the mission seems amazing, but then you look at, like, the culture of it, you’re just like i’m not really even wanting to be a part of that writes that might also be contributing to why those organizations feel like there is in that pool of applicants, right? But people are out there that there’s no one can tell me that there’s not people of color who can come in and, you know, a part of these rolls but i think it’s a lot around the the oh, gosh, it’s word this morning napor martignetti yeah, the markers of it, you know, but okay, but isn’t education a reasonable requirement for see you, lucia? But if it’s a cfo it’s reasonable to expect a degree in finance, correct, i think, but i know i hear you on that piece, i just feel like what’s not being thought about is people’s experiences experience coming into these rolls, right? Like, if you have these, like defined markers of, like, you have to have this that’s in that, like when it comes, i think the educational metoo means something like a bachelor’s degree or further in finance or equivalent life experience, right? Exactly. I’m starting to see more of that happening, which i think is super important, and i think that is a better way of sort of approaching those sort of things whenever job descriptions are being put out there. But yes, i’m definitely speaking to that she has an employer. Um, i totally agree one thing that i’ve found is that i had no idea how much code was in the language that i was putting out in my job description, but i’m a person of color. And what else did you find besides education language, like professional or expertise or networks? Of people where i was putting out the job description to because if i kept on putting out to my two don’t people of color, i have networks, and aren’t they professional and missing even the word wife? I mean, there were those air more ground, even the word professional is code for a certain type of person that might dear to what the standards are, whatever professionally, i think i think that you have tio i think you have to start with the assumption that there is a qualified person of color for every role you’re hiring for and that you do not need to lower your standards in order to get a person of color in those roles. It’s just about changing the language, many most people get jobs through network through who they know. There are even their stats that black college graduates from the same schools get jobs at much lower rates than the white college graduates from those same schools. It’s clear that the disparities air there even with equivalent education, so you just have to re tune yourself. You have to reframe the job based on that assumption that, like, you’re not reaching the right, people that you want to bring in to actually get creative, innovative new thinking in your company and like different perspectives, different questions ask different projects prioritized because you’ll get different people than just those same old, same old people that you have. Another part about the issue was specifically with the cfo, which i think is a really good example the people that run our books at our company don’t have a degree in finance, they even work, and i’ve been writing a sustainable business for over nineteen years, and what i find is that people that often are very dogmatic about particular numbers, they’re not really understanding the missions. So when there’s a nuance to a particular decision that isn’t just about money but about impact, they’re not able to discern it in that way. So i think it’s more important, that they have well rounded experience are connected to the mission versus just having it the degree that indicates that they were educated by some ivy league university that says that they can do this thing, but it doesn’t mean that other blind spots are going. I’m guessing it’s, you would find it insufficient to just have a statement that says people of color re hyre regardless of treyz sexual orientation, uh, gender, etcetera, just have a disqualifier at the bottom of a job description. I’m guessing you would believe that that’s not sufficient. I don’t think the necessary that’s necessary, but not sufficient. It’s what? It’s a it’s, a it’s. A very basic. Okay, what is it? I didn’t. I don’t get your point about the word professional or networks because people of color, people who are trans i mean, they have their professional and they have networks. I’m what am i missing? Professionalism in america is usually about assimilation, assimilation to white supremacy, assimilation to an idea being american. If you have an act sent getting rid of it, if you have dreadlocks not wearing them to work, you know, there’s there’s a lot wrapped up in that word professional that perhaps a lot of people don’t think about white people don’t think about but all the people of color i know do think about the you know, the ways in which they conform or code switch to adapt to workplace ideas about professionalism. Good let’s go so it’s kind of pathetic als bringing your whole self toe work if we’re talking about a simulation. Yeah. Same. Or what do you mean? Well, if we’re all going to be the same, then what’s the point of us being individual human beings with their own personalities, experiences, characteristics, perspectives like, you know, one of the things that i do in washington, d c is i helped to create it an inclusive economy. And one of the things that we really try to push out as much as we can is big boxes. And because people want to live in communities where there are businesses that represent their own individual needs are owned by people within their community. Everybody going no offense and mcdonald’s or the target over and over again. And also no target has its own place in the world as faras economics go. But the point is, how do we create a unique environment that is representation of each of our beautiful, unique selves? Let’s go further than beyond the job description. What would you like to say? A little like some idea. Yeah. I mean, hiring is, of course, a really important prerequisite. But beyond hiring retention support, um, i have a very strong voice i have a really unique perspectives to bring in that would really help push the work forward creative solutions to some of the challenges my organization faces. If i’m not in an organization that can support me to say challenging things, if i’m not in a place where bob that leads to my promotion rather than my demotion, or my being tradition or marginalization, yeah, exactly like it really takes a lot of ongoing work to support people of color and marginalized folks in in a workplace and to really buildup and, you know, empire their leadership rather than undermining them. What form can that support tape? I understand in terms of encouraging the voice, encouraging a voice that’s not traditional typical but what other are there other things that employers could do to support to make that support explicit in the organization? What else do you like? My suggestion is one one is model as much as you can that it’s ok to bring your hosts off to work. And secondly, humility and talking as little as possible. It’s really there there’s so many beautiful voices that just aren’t heard on a regular basis. And if you could just sit and listen. What emerges to me? It fascinates me every single day. We have to spend another minute or so together see glamarys start, we started with you, we’re gonna we’re gonna book and you’re gonna be booking wrap up with you in a little less than a minute or so, you know, some encouragement and some motivation, okay? So that’s that’s the way to make a change to make change, to encourage the diversity that we’re talking about? Yeah, so again, for for within my work environment, we ended up sort of like creating our own way talk about this whole, like, sea at the table sort of thing, and so we just ended up making our own table, right? And so i think from there we have a fork work force development program, and we’re just were, you know, bringing people in from the community and giving him those skills, you know, that they’re not having the opportunity to get in other places, and our hope is that we’re just we’re going to be able to flood sort of in our field with eventjournal child held just flood the field with, you know, women of color, people of color who are going to be ready to go on to the leadership roles so that’s like a peace that we’re really that’s. How sort of were targeting that. So i really appreciate that approach. All right, that was glamarys azevedo she’s, a professional development specialists mamatoto village. And next to her in the middle is sabelo kayman north american digital campaign manager at three. Fifty dot org’s. And next to me is raja agarwal, president of provos provoc provoc provoc look provoc provoc provoc group provoke provoke. Thank you, roger. Good sport. This is an interview. Is sponsored by network for good. Easy to use donordigital and fund-raising software for non-profits. I wanna thank you so much for being with twenty martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc. Thank you so much to our panel. I need to take a break. Wittner. Cps. You know what cps do? Nine nineties and audits mostly, right? Although wagner does go beyond the numbers hear me say that it’s true started wagner, cpas dot com get comfortable in one dimension. Then go human-centered he coached whom? He’s been a guest. I know him. You know him? He’s been on multiple times. He’s. A good guy. No pressure is not like that. His number is. At wagner cps dot com, which is where you get started now. Time for tony steak too. Did you hear the one about the ninety six year old secretary who gave eight million dollars to two non-profits in her will? That’s? Not a joke. She spent her career at a law firm in new york city. It got it was very small when she started, it got very big. When she retired, she invested based on what her bosses were investing in. Because back when she started, secretaries would handle would do the investments. So she bought a little bit of the same things they were buying decades and decades ago left to charities. Ah, little over eight million dollars here in new york city. Very compelling story. Um, and i have an important takeaway from it about the way you treat your modest donors. She turns out she was never a donor, but the takeaway deals with treating your modest donors well. And to get that takeaway, watch my video it’s at tony martignetti dot com now it’s time for board change agents, and in order to do that, we have to bring in greg cohen returning greg cohen. Also multiple time guest he’s, associate director at cause effective the non-profit capacity building organization, he’s provided coaching and training to the boards and staffs of hundreds of clients. His expertise includes converting resistant boards into competent and effective fundraisers and developing board. Meaders he’s at greg cause cause effective is at cause effective and cause effective dot or ge he’s in the studio. Welcome back, greg cohen. Thanks. Really happy to be here. That’s a pleasure. This was a bit of a last minute thing, but i’m glad it worked out so well, sure. Um, so board change agents okay? Or board members as change agents. Um, how can boardmember is be effective as change agents. So this starts with how to think about your board overall, i’m going to say ah and step into a room and executive directors and say, list your top three headaches and, you know, that board is going to show up one or two on that relationship has got a complaint about their board. So the first thing that i say to exact directors is, remember it’s, not about the people. This is something systemic boardmember zar, your chief volunteers and you want to reflect on are you creating an environment that brings the best out in each? Boardmember and they’ll say, well, they’re tired, they’ve never i didn’t recruit them to fundraise, but now i need it. So the first thing to think about is when i’m thinking about changing my board am i changing the rules of the game for the people who are in the room? That’s the first thing where i might have recruited them where fund-raising wasn’t a priority now it’s important to me because my organization’s grown and then as we bring in new people, we don’t want to bring people in to that tired, bored culture where they sink down to the lowest common denominator. So here’s my theme, which is you recruit people who are ready to help you change that culture, you talk about it explicitly in the recruitment process and then you bring them in such a way that they start to provide leadership from the get go ng there your ally for change? Why would they want to come to a board? That’s i’m going to call it dysfunctional. You don’t use that word, but i don’t know lackadaisical, underperforming under performing. That’s okay, right now, that sack less judgment that’s still judgment, but right says it sounds harsh. Okay, why would why would they want to come to a board that’s like that? And and be the firebrand and the troublemaker, right? Well, it all starts with mission, right? Like everything else like fund-raising why people volunteer, they care about the work. So when you go out and recruit, you have tohave a narrative of change. We’ve built our organization up, we had a group of dedicated founding board members who put in a lot of time in the beginning, they were volunteers when we didn’t have staff, but now we’ve grown, we have staff and we need a governing board that’s that’s paying attention to the high level issues and out there finding money for us, right? So we don’t have that now. We don’t have that now and very often, as we were crew there’s a really fear if we talk about the fund-raising requirements now, they’ll never join the board. So first is front and center, so the narrative has to be we’ve grown, we have exciting opportunities in front of us. We need a board that matches the and can help add capacity so we can realize all our potential. So what’s offgrid teo just what’s offered to those candidates is the chance to contribute to building the organization to the next level. Okay, so it does. It needs to be someone that loves this mission and that’s true for any board. Candid. Okay, well, well, yes, it ought to be right. Okay, i think sometimes any good, but i’ve seen i’ve seen recruitment just on expertise. We need a lawyer. Well, i know a popular i know a lawyer. Who’s got a good network and she’ll raise a lot of money. So let’s bring her in, but but she doesn’t know the organization, and that leads to disappointment. She’s ended up doing it as a favor to a friend or something like that. Okay, all right, so this they love the mission and you can make very plain to them the gap between where we need the board to be to make that mission excel and where we are right and you’re going to say that you’re going to be that you’re going to be the bridge. You’re going to walk into a room where you’re going to see behaviors that are different than the ones that you were trained in, if you’re coming in, say, through united way or or or another program, i’m bringing you in to be a partner to change that board culture through your excitement about the mission, and you’re fresh ideas, okay? And people are going to look at you. Well, they’re going to be prepared. We’re going to get that because this is the existing board members need to be prepared for when we cover that now. Yeah, because otherwise they’re gonna be daggers in the back of this, only their boardmember are people just going to sit and watch right off my board? Models are consensual and collaborative. It’s not the it’s, not dallas it’s, not the back room. I was there to change this to change person changed person the reporters and prepare the worst is that they pay no attention and they behave the way they did, eh? So what we need so first of all, i’m putting the executive director and whoever’s on the board who’s there, partner in the recruitment in an active role of really thinking about the process of change. So you know there’s a science of change management, we have to articulate a narrative that says we’re on a journey with this organization. The needs for the board’s involvement have changed. We honor what you’ve done, we hope that you will step up to those new needs, but we’re moving forward regardless because the mission in the organization calls for it. So that’s the context and then we need some people with new skills, new networksnew capabilities and ah, willingness to fundraise. We hope you will join us. This is to the existing board, but but if not, we’ll find another place for you advisory board honoree board many forms aboard heaven that you can put people on, but we’re going forward, and we’re going to bring in new folks who are ready for this. Now, we’ve gotta have some allies on the board. We’re going, we’re going, ah, validate this message when it comes from the ceo executive director, i mean, you need is not one ideally suit. This can’t be a surprise, right? I mean, you have good leadership. Ideally, the chair of the board would be idealware well, it’s often you have a very tired from here. That’s the that’s, the source of the trouble you’re tired, you need one or two people and see the need for the change. You know where the allies they don’t have to be officers. Ok, is your back channel before this? Before this change announcement you can and you crack on with transparency. But that’s another conversation. It doesn’t have to be back channel. But you do have to find people who say who actually are the voice in the boardroom of the need for change. It’s more effective if it comes from appear then from the staff. Even the executive director. Okay, better coming from them. I feel like this board is that this is the is this a new business? They raise their hand. I feel like this board is not. I am one of the m one of the one or two. Yeah, sees the trouble. Right? I feel like the new business. I’m raising my hand. I feel like this board is underperforming way. Don’t raise the money we were had, like forty or fifty or sixty percent giving every year among the board. We’re not bringing in our networks. Well, i don’t. I don’t see excitement. On the board about the mission, we’re not engaged with what’s happening on the ground by identifying some potential. Is this is this how it happens? And then? Well, so that that’s the observation is but we have so much that we could do for our clients in this era, we have a waiting list, our staff is performing greatly. How do we talk to each other about bringing the necessary resource is and providing the oversight and stewardship of this organization that’s ready for takeoff? And we need to examine ourselves to see, are we in a place to do that, or do we need to step aside and bring in new people now? Somebody other than the one or two right? I think we’re doing fine. I don’t i don’t see the troubles your eye, all the reports we get are that are the people are fed, are you? Our recipients are benefiting? We’re making impact in the community? Uh, i like the way the board meetings run the preparation for them. I don’t i don’t see these troubles that you’re that you’re kicking up. If if if if if all is well, then no reason to change. The border let’s presume, but there actually is going to be just fine with the resistance. Yeah, so the idea is that we’re having to create a sense of urgency in the boardroom that one of two things is the case, something that we value about our programs and our services will be lost if we don’t get more involved or something or more importantly, and we hope when there’s opportunity and a group is flourishing, things that we want to call into existence components of our strategic plan, expansion of services won’t happen until we step forward. As aboard the staff has exhausted its resource is now the board must play its full governance and fund-raising role, that condition of urgency must be present or it’s rational that people don’t change their behaviour. Ok, urgency, okay, um, let’s, go back to the coast and then it just to say there needs to be a narrative in the boardroom, you know, brought by the staff and those allies that makes it clear that there’s a need for change on an organizational basis. It’s not about the performance of individual boardmember no finger pointing, no blame. We’ve grown up the organizational. Curb the board needs to now catch up with where the organization is that’s a very common situation that the growth of the organization’s development moves faster than the boards and then the board needs to catch up, and some people have put in their service and they’re tired. They don’t want to step up or they need help. And that’s where bringing in some new folks in new energy, new talents, new networks as change agents really could make the difference. You can’tjust reform your existing complacent board without bringing some new element into it. Ok, ok, all right. But i want to address the resistance because right, everybody not going toe be subservient. Go on. All right, all right. So i feel like very articulate with that. Thank you. Alright, let’s, go back to these potential change hs. Now, um, how do we identify the skills that that we’re looking for? The personality? I mean, that’s got the personality is a bigger deal in recruiting these couple of change agents than it has been in recruiting our board for the past fifteen years. Right? So what we’re looking for, right? So first of all, i i said i don’t kick them my eyesight, the executive who’s, your hands, but not your feet, the executive director and those allied board members are are in a place of being the helping b the agents of change. This is an active strategic process, not a passive one, so the recruitment process is of the past may not work up front. You’re looking for people who have experience running and motivating teams. If fund-raising is important, then you want prior fund-raising experience and you want to talk about your goals so it starts with those doing the recruitment, being able to describe clearly what they’re looking for going beyond just we need a lawyer who cares about kids who’s willing to write a check that this is being more demanding and looking for the kind of people you’re bringing to the board table because you need them to drive change. All right? They got the motivational articulate. Yep, right? They’ve got to be pretty insightful to. They’ve got to be ableto handle the pushback not only in the public meeting, but you know, in their committees that they’re going to get assigned to in any back channel communication that might be from other boardmember zoho resistant there’s got to be able to manage yeah, i’m not sure i want to be the manager now. It’s nice if you find someone that’s a very high level skill, but they need to not need credit to be able to lead from behind and put their energy and heimans and they need to understand the background of the need for organizational change. So to understand the journey that we’re helping, they take the board on complete value back-up buy-in so that that’s what i don’t have to have served on the board before, but they have to be good listeners on dh and willing to work as allies. Let’s, take a break and ah, that is for tell us, tell us monium lee elementary school foundation receiving a monthly donation from tell us for the credit card processing of a company one of our parents owns likely the easiest donation source we’ve ever secured. End quote the elementary school that’s, the monthly pass of revenue i’ve been telling you about think of people who are close to your organization who owned businesses. You start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony tell us and go from there. Now, back to aboard change agents with greg cohen. Um, but greg has to sit tight while i do live. Listen, love and podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections. I’m sorry sam prompted me. Yes, the live listener love goes out. Where is it? Cut where’s it going to? Well, it goes to the universe, but specific places within within that that universe. Staten island, multiple new york, new york. Always count on that brooklyn, new york. Um all right, s o we got where’s, where’s, the bronx and queens. We don’t see them today. Alright, historia. We’ve got a story. A queens. Is there? Where’s, the bronx? Not checking in. Well, let’s. Not focus on the negative. Live love to the four boroughs that are with us. Queens, brooklyn, manhattan multiple and staten island. Also down to tampa, florida. A state kongers, new york. Lots of new yorkers love it. Um, hubert, north carolina live love to north carolina. You know, i love north carolina. We’ve got listener in iraq. Iraq is occasionally with us, but not too often live love to you out in shanghai seems to be our only china listeners. Shanghai ni hao, let’s, go to the u k we don’t know which country is masked. We don’t know the country all right. United kingdom, listener live listener love to you and ah, it covers it so far. All right, that’s, the live love and the podcast pleasantries on the heels of that has to come three over twelve thousand pushing thirteen thousand listeners weekly. That’s not a monthly number. That’s each week each episode very glad that you’re with us. Pleasantries to the podcast audience and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners. Also throughout the country. Affections to you. I’m very glad that you are listening. Analog. Never let that am fm die, it’s never it’s it’s not going to die. It may be declining. It’s never going to die. Media is too personal. You’re with us affections to you now for greg going. Thank you for being patient. Um, go show the gratitude, you know, all right, okay, let’s, go back to these people. Where do we find? Where do we? Okay, right. Thank you. Thank you. Big request i was school past screening past screening, right? Where do we find? Where do we find him? So typically people think, well, we only have the usual circle of people and they go out and i’m going to use a dating analogy, and so and people go out and right away they think about asking people to become board members after they meet them. But being a board members really the most rarefied form of ask it’s, easier to donate it’s. Easier to be a volunteer it’s. Easier to come to a gala it’s. Easier to be on a host for much time limited not a big ask way at the end of the spectrum for engagement with a non-profit is being a boardmember time, money, reputation, all those things right? So don’t rush into the process, our suggestion for a processes that if you can’t find candidates, think about people who are the well connected people with for people of a certain age. The best roller texas those big role in texas who know everybody in their industry they’d never be your boardmember may because they’re already overcommitted or they’re not quite right, but you go to them with that narrative of your organizations, growth and aspirational future and the kinds of people that you need in the board room to help you get there and you ask them, who does that make you think of in your circles? The more specific you are? We’re looking for a person of color who’s the sepia with a fortune five hundred company, or maybe has technology knowledge, the more likely people going to come to mind in their mental roller decks and give you a suggestion that you say, would you mind calling that person and opening the door for me to go meet with them? They’ll be happy to write. So now, instead of just going to people who are maybe maybe not board candidates, you’re using other people’s networks and using their ability to filter through their contacts to suggest prospects. One, two you’re getting in front of influential people with your aspirational story about where your organization is so it’s a cultivation event, even even if they don’t give you any names or they give you a few, you’ve created the opportunity in front of that person to bring them up to date and show yourself a strategic so that’s a key thing which is don’t rush into rushing to prospects and saying, would you become a boardmember think about some indirect ways and also then cultivate as you screen. Okay, excellent. And you’re doing this with people who know people who have exactly good networks. Good role, exactly right? Good, strong. You can even add ad hoc people to your nominating committee who aren’t board members to help for a limited period time in this process of identifying and screening people. But now these people are coming from your from those folks networks they don’t know you’re or go the way we just said they gotta love your mission ten minutes ago s so we got a quaint thes potential board members with the good work we’re doing and the much better work we could be doing and make them the bridge between those two, right? Exactly. So this is this is not going to be a six week process. No, this is where the best practice for board recruitment coming. Like we need a process. Teo, introduce people to our work. Have at least two interviews i would say with the e d and one with the boardmember i like three. I like to different board encounters, so people offer different judgments, and and the candidate gets to see the different people that be interacting with and then a third thing, which is essential, they have to go out and see the work. Now, when i say this to executive rector’s, first of all, they hold their head in the hands i need boardmember tomorrow. Yeah, well, that’s not realistic, right? The second thing is, if the person doesn’t have time to participate in this process, they’re not gonna have time to show up to board meetings and show up prepared and take a leadership role. So these air enforcing them to show their commitment exactly for you before you invite them? Yes. And they may in good will be excited about your work and the idea of being a boardmember but not really testing it against their reality. These are threshold measures that left both sides figure out. Is this really going to work now? I just heard this at one of the ntcdinosaur views we haven’t played this one. Yet we’re talking about hiring. There was someone who likes three, three, four interviews long hiring processes so that you’re that you’re making the candidate prove their commitment to your mission before you offer him a job there. You got long hiring process, you can’t show up for the fourth time, you know, we will find someone who can well, and that sounds crazy to some people t ask for that, but more often than not, i hear from people we recruited someone looked like a great person on paper, but then we’re disappointed they didn’t show or they didn’t bring them for their full selves to the table when they did show, and you would say, you have yourself to blame because you didn’t you didn’t adequately, uh, you know, they’re not getting their commitment and it’s like a job interview, but the power relationship is more equal. You want to carry out a transparent project process so that either side at some point can say, you know what? I’d like to be helpful, but not as a boardmember maybe i’ll serve on a committee on the host committee or a board committee without being a full member. Excellent. That’s a home run if you don’t let him on the board if they’re going to be end up being one, these disappointments very important i’m now seeing the time that’s required, and i don’t feel like i have that kind of time to be aborted. I’d like to help you some other what there’s, another component arches, you’re not wasting any of your time in the search sound. First of all, you’re going to have to go through a lot of candidates. Most people don’t have the time to be boardmember the best ones already committed. Yeah, right, but what we want is a process that says, i’m i love what i hear about your guy position i love what i see, i can’t be a boardmember and then you want to say, well, there is another way you could be involved. So the idea is you have a spectrum of involvement with boardmember ship at the end that the most demanding part, but you’re actually trying to get everybody you connect with who responds to your mission to be connected in some way. Donor-centric attendee volunteer, a member of a board committee without being on the board, there’s so many ways to engage those people, so you’re not losing that time because they didn’t become a boardmember you’ve added people who are supporters, but maybe not at that very demanding level of very boardmember all right, what do you say to that ceo like you saying ceo but executive director that says, i need boardmember is next week, what do you tell them? I need to raise the money for my kidscollege education next week, but it’s not gonna happen in a week things take to do it well and strategically, it takes time. If you start to do this on a systematic year round basis, you start to build the bench, you should have a regular process cubine ongoing process, al, you’re watching these people who are volunteers, and you’re treating them well and maybe in two thousand eighteen, they didn’t have the time to be a boardmember, but in two thousand nineteen, all of a sudden they discover this is one of the most important things in my civic life. I’m ready to step up so once you start the process, it’s really like farm team through teo being a boardmember it gets easier and easier. Because you’re feeding it it’s, not an ad hoc one shot think ongoing exactly be are going through your right, and as you revitalize your board, you’re placing this function in the governance slash nominating committee. So also it’s moving partially off the shoulders of the e d this should be in a well performing bored the revitalisation of the board process through bringing new people on it should be aboard function, driven by board members. How do we empower them? We just have a couple minutes left. How do we empower them once they’re on the board to hit the ground running as change agents? Great question, so they’re at their at their point, twenty minutes there at their point of maximum enthusiasm and then begin a one, right? So we actually say, work out a plan for engagement, right? So here here, the things that are coming up where we’re going to want to do fund-raising what are your ideas? Where can you be involved? Here are openings on committees, what most interests you were ready to make you committee chair or if you’re not ready, we have a boardmember who will mentor you so that within six months you could play a bigger role. So you’re actually reviewing all your needs with the person right up front and engaging them to commit up front rather than hang back a year, see how it goes, i’ll figure out my place. No, no, we want them engage from the gun. All right, actually, maximum, you mentioned mentor. You and i have been on you and i have talked about this before. Board he’s. Thirty seconds on the value of aboard, buddy. Absolutely essential. You know, particular someone’s. Never been on a board before they come in the room. There are all kinds of acronyms. There’s. An existing culture among that complacent board of friends and family or whatever it is you need. Someone who’s easing you in explaining what’s going on that’s a familiar face in the room when you walk in because you’ve met with them before. So aboard, buddy is an essential piece of that onboarding process. Very smart guy. We gotta leave it there. Greg cohen. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for sharing he’s at greg. Cause cause effective is at cause effective and cause effective dot org’s. Next week. Gene takagi returns with unrelated business. Income tax and fringe benefits for your employees under the new tax law. Do you know this? If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing to radio weinger cps, guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com bye tello’s, credit card and payment processing, your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Family roots in the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and i agree. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get in. 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Nonprofit Radio for January 6, 2017: 2017 Legal Tips & This Year’s Board Retreat

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

Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2016: Volunteer Giving & Wounded Warrior and Overhead

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Greg Cohen: Volunteer Giving

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When is it OK to ask volunteers to donate? How do you get started? What about objections? Greg Cohen is senior associate at Cause Effective and he knows the ropes.

 

 

Gene Takagi: Wounded Warrior and Overhead

Gene Takagi

There is such a thing as bad press and Wounded Warrior is the latest example. They’re under withering criticism for excessive and lavish spending. Gene Takagi returns to explain good overhead versus bad overhead and how to avoid trouble. He’s our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group.


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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, chris john’s from burton, michigan he called maria semple are doi n of dirt cheap and free prospect research ideas. You know her well to tell her that her suggestion to use your local library has been helping him because she says that she has that advice often has been helping him a lot to raise money for a dog park playground, movies in the park and other projects. So chris john’s following maria’s advice. Very smart man. Congratulations on being non-profit radios listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer focal segmental glomerulosclerosis if you wasted my time to say you missed today’s show volunteered e-giving when is it okay to ask volunteers to donate? How do you get started? What about objections? Greg cohen is senior associate at cause effective, and he knows the ropes and wounded warrior and overhead. There is such a thing as bad press and wounded warriors, the latest example, they’re under withering criticism for excessive and lavish spending. Jean takagi returns to explain good overhead versus bad overhead and how to avoid this kind of trouble. He’s our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group on tony’s take two youtube we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay amglobal donation feature. Crowdster dot com welcome and greg cohen back to the show. He’s senior associate itcause effective he’s worked in and consulted for hundreds of non-profits cause effective is the non-profit itself, that is, counsel to non-profits over more than thirty years, they’ve helped over five thousand organizations. They’re at cause effective dot or ge and at cause effective. Welcome back, greg cohen. Thanks really happy to be here. Pleasure. I love cause effective. Tell us more than i was just able to say what the programmes are all about. How you’re helping non-profits i love your work. Sure. Thanks so much. S o we work with me with non-profits in the new york city region. And we are though it’s called in the business a capacity build there. So we teach a man to fish or woman, and we focus on three areas relationship based fund-raising, which is mostly fund-raising from individuals and institutions where there’s a single gate keeper making the donation decision like a family foundation or ah ah, privately held business, strengthening boards for both their governance and stewardship for ditigal thank you for tonight boardmember is confident and effective fundraisers. Everybody needs that in the third area is the strategic use of special events, so not event management, but the bigger questions of what events are right for our strategic objectives and the audiences we can reach what’s a realistic budget, but for revenue and what we’re going to spend and what should be the objectives for our events. Your colleague susan gabriel has been on talking about events and strategic use of anniversaries and events. Yeah, i refer you when when someone comes to me and says, you know, how do we get to the next level? I think of cause effective? Actually, i haven’t. I haven’t been thinking of you only for the new york area. I don’t know if i’ve been making referrals from throughout the country, but you will talk. To anyone but tend to build coaching relationships, which are promoted through face to face contact, so we tend to keep in the new york city area. Um all right, so we’re talking about volunteered e-giving why are volunteers potential good potential donors? So, uh, after staff who knows your program better than those who are coming in and participating in providing your services but your volunteers so if we think about the basis for wanting to contribute to an organization, of course they’re many forms. Ah, yeah, of resource is that you can contribute one of the most valuable, of course his time. Thes air folks who are already your donors, they’re giving you time, not yet money, and we ought to be treating them as donorsearch exactly talk a lot more about that. We’re gonna get there exactly, but they’ve already shown a deep commitment to your work. They haven’t understanding it’s logical that out of the context of what they know about your work, that you could make a strong case for them providing monetary support as well. And it’s well documented that volunteers are among the most ready to make a monetary contribution on top of time. Ok, now i notice you say you say valentine, you almost say valentine’s, there was volunteers where you from, what part of country? From i’m from connecticut. I don’t know why i’m hearing, right? Yeah, it sounds like a look. Volunteers right now now made yourself kind of guy. I’m sorry. No it’s. Okay, but it’s essential that all that you’re going to volunteer, valentine and i should say that, um, i’m drawing upon more than my cause effective experience and talking about this prior to cause effective. I was executive director of the youth development group based in a public high school, and i had a stable of over one hundred volunteer tutors. Ah, so i interacted with a large number of very committed volunteers overtime. So most of my ideas actually have grown from that experience because they became very generous financial contributors as well as givers of their time. Our volunteers are seeing the need every time they’re they’re they’re working with our our staff for our program beneficiaries. I mean, they see the needs day in, day out. They name you know, it’s. Too bad. This is too bad they don’t have morgan is more. Money to do this because we could be doing this so much better. I mean, they’re living their living it exactly, although often, and this happened in my own organization where i had boardmember sze, who started as volunteer tutors and then became board members. They were very hesitant for us to ask for money because they felt it was intruding on the generosity that was already being shown by people giving their yeah, that’s, where i want to go next, actually overcoming these objections, but i think, you know, if you’re careful not to minimize the volunteering right on dh, just recommending the e-giving but let’s, talk about overcoming these objections. Boardmember tze mei say, oh, no, no, you know, they’re giving enough, you know, which is kind of contradictory because five thousand dollars donorsearch e-giving enough, but they could be giving ten or fifty we don’t know until we ask, right? But so overcoming objections, right? Well, so the first thing is to make sure that you’ve got the basics, as you say, of treating your volunteers in a steaming them well for what they’re already giving, so you wouldn’t want to jump into asking for money if you aren’t already treating the donation of time as something of great value, and and you want us to do this? Not just at the time were asking for a monetary gift from day one on so in walks in and says i’d like to give you my time. I would like to treat it as if they took out the check book and said, i’d liketo make a donation you have to treat, in fact, it’s harder these days for people to give time than write a check. I had so many donors who said i’m sorry, all i can do is give you money. I wish i could i’m in and give some time like and they actually envy the volunteers, so it starts with a steaming volunteers for what they’re already giving. If you haven’t done that, then don’t move on, okay, asking for donations and so let’s let’s spend ah, little time on that. How can we buildup that that culture within our organization, that volunteers are donors are communications? You know? How could we be doing this right? So one way is to make sure that volunteers have a holistic view of your organization and understand how you operate, so it starts right when you orient volunteers when they come in. Of course, you’re oriented to the specific work that they’re doing in the case of two djing with students and exams they face. But you also want to explain here’s the context in which the organization operates ah here’s, where we get our funding, these air, the different programs that pays for there’s, a big role for donations to help cover it so that they have a mental model that it operates. That was particularly important for my organization because people, when they first came in, assume that we were part of the department of education and that we were one hundred there are funded by state government indeed, we had a million dollars of funding all private, so when they heard oh, my goodness, you raise a million dollars privately all of a sudden there they were attuned to thinking about what role could they play in helping bring in that money? We’re raising awareness of the importance of individual giving exact to our to our revenue right before we’re asking were telling stories argast orientation, this is about the organization, all right? He’s got to go away for a break, okay, we come back, greg and i going to keep talking about volunteered giving 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 t i g e n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna xero welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Greg cohen and i talking about volunteer e-giving okay, so we’re starting this process at orientation and training of board members, and we’re making this ah, clear to them that individual giving is important from the beginning. That’s right? Okay, okay, if we’ve laid the groundwork, um, we have some other ideas, like communications, like sending send your your volunteers, your donor communications. Exactly. So some of the rules that apply to donors again, you’re treating that time as a donation. So you’re profiling volunteers. You’re helping communicate to them the connection between their work and the outcomes for the beneficiaries of their tutoring and generally including volunteers as valued members of the community. So already before you’ve asked him there feeling very connected to the mission and to the other people who are doing the same work. Okay, now we have boardmember zoho are going to object and say, this is it’s, not appropriate. Volunteers are doing enough. How do we overcome? And maybe not only board members? I’m picking on bouchard’s. But how do we overcome these objections? Wherever they come from? So it caused effective we love to answer questions by actually asking them of the people who are going to be affected. So one of the most defective things is talk to some volunteers who say yes, i’d be open to contributing or who may already be contributing on their own initiative. Have them come in and talk to the board members, have the board members have the chance to ask them, what does it feel like when you asked, do you take offense, what’s the nature of an ass that feels comfortable and respond to their legitimate concerns about being too pushy with people who are already giving and let them hear it from the horse’s mouth? I think that would be my my primary oppress, ok, that’s. Very simple. Yes invite volunteers to the board members or to have a conversation with the board members or there or wherever it is that subjecting right? Interestingly, for the board members who put up resistance. In my case, we’re very generous donors themselves, but they weren’t ah, recognizing that there were other, maybe less affluent volunteers who would be as happy to give us their do you see much objection among the volunteer managers? Or directors, you know, are on staff, is that does that come up? It doesn’t usually because they know the volunteers best, and they recognize the generous spirit of the volunteers. And also, if a volunteer says, how come you you don’t have this, you know, study guides or whatever, then the answer is, we can’t afford it. They hear from the volunteers will let me help their interest, and we had some incredibly generous offers from volunteers even before we’re soliciting buy-in laptops for their students and in other ways, making material available to there, to the students they were working with and and other tutors and not surprising. I mean, they’re already committed, like you say they’re giving something so precious their time, and they see the need and they would like the need to be minimized or eliminated, right? So they fill the gap exactly so thie other thing is that many volunteers for us came through corporate programs and the culture of those corporate volunteer programs. Ah, encourage them both to give time and it’s. There are incentives for them to give money often a matching grant from the corporation if you’re a volunteer in an organization you give money will match it in a larger proportion than no. What for? For just a normal that donation donation by not volunteer and there’s even broken mohr of incentive if you’re on the board of an organisation for some corporations. All right, so if we’ve we’ve laid the groundwork, we have the right culture. We’ve overcome our objections. How should we get started? So i think one of the most effective ways for soliciting donations from anyone is to encourage up here of the types of people you want to donate to be your solicitor. So i would form a little asking group of people who are volunteers who are already e-giving and work with them to say, would you appeal to other volunteers to use the most powerful words? And fund-raising would you join me in supporting this organization as a fellow volunteer? So that would be a first step, which is to gather some folks around me who are already committed in that way to both give time and money. Alright suppose we just have maybe half a dozen volunteers from small organization. You know, if we recruit yes, a committee that’s half the volunteers. I mean, i guess we could do two or three on the committee latto recruit the other flavour for if you have six volunteers, i would still try to recruit one to be really ask her the other five, okay, at least in partnership with me, not alone, necessarily, but because, in fact, if you don’t get stumped by these questions, overviewing you’ve seen it all. This is not okay. We’re going into actually our thirty fifth year. So we’re at about five thousand organs at your web sites that they always pushing thirty five. All right, all right, all right. Um that’s great. I mean, that’s. Why, that’s? Why i refer refer people to you. Um okay, so we have a little volunteer committee do some training for that, the way we would sure help everybody has to learn to ask it’s not a natural thing. So some training. And then the other thing to think about is what are we explaining? We need the money for and as you pointed out, if we can connect it to providing resource, is that a line with the work they’re doing? Is volunteers it’s going to make a natural connection between the synapse in the heads of the volunteers. You don’t necessarily have to do that, because most individual donors will make a gift and trust this staff to put the money where it’s most needed. But if there are clear needs within the realm of volunteering that you can meet that’s, a powerful connection toe offer to broker between the money they donate and strengthening the program that they were here, it seems like a grand slam. Okay, okay. Uh, let’s, um, let’s see about knowing, you know, getting to know your volunteers mean, you have ah, bigger organization would have a volunteer director, i guess, but you’re lucky enough. Yeah, ok, but if not maybe it’s the executive directorate or, you know, maybe the director development, right? You want to i mean, this is a relationship fund-raising if we’re asking peer-to-peer ass right, you want to know the people you’re talking to exactly and in fact, that’s one of the precursors toe asking, which is do i know my volunteers why they’re volunteering, what their life stories are, what their interests are, and if you haven’t created enough of a relationship for them to exit to be known in front of you and seen, you’re probably not ready to ask. So building that personal relationship between that someone on the staff and the volunteers is another important step before asking. Okay? And again, you know, parallel, tow your monetary donors, you get to know them before you ask, right? This is a colt cultivation process, right? So we’re doing something parallel. We’re just working with volunteers, and another thing that comes from getting to know someone is from a technical point of view. You can assess how large your ask i should be. So i’ll give an example of a long time volunteer who i was in a conversation with who told me that he had lost his daughter tragically early in her life, and he had been with us for a long time and ah, i was able to say, peter, would you? I knew he was interested in kids being able to go on to college. That was one of hiss. Ah, personal motivations for tutoring. I said, would you be interested in creating a little scholarship fund to memorialize your daughter? And indeed, he he created that fund and annually funded it, but it came from me understanding he was retired. He was pretty well to do. Then when he told me that story, i was able to connect something he was very interested in to an important personal fact, which is is the memory of his daughter. And in a way, i think he connected his work with those young people with with her life. Yeah, yeah. Was she roughly the age of of the time? Wand, don’t you don’t ok, ok, the other the other natural thing to connect, to which we saw a lot of which is volunteers tend to associate ah good part of their identity with their volunteering, and so it’s known in their families that they are connected there going i’m telling their friends today is my day at the center is actually talking about the kids, the people at the soup kitchen, they’re coming back and sharing those stories and it’s because it’s part of who they are as people, so a very natural thing is to suggest to people, you know, to the couple that has everything, uh, if an occasion comes up, when people want to give you a gift, you could suggest making a gift in honor of the anniversary, the birthday to the non-profit in place of buying a present and that very volunteers, i love that idea, and i had a whole siri’s of people who gave regularly to honor the work of volunteers, including, actually i was in this public school. There were two teachers who were lived together for a long time and then decided to tie the knot after twenty five years of living together. Of course they didn’t need any toasters or blenders? So they said to all the guests, please make a contribution to the school’s. Non-profit and not only did people make gifts at the time of the wedding, but because we were good at communicating what we were doing, even though the bulk of the guests came from minnesota, where both the couple had grown up. Some of continued to be significant donors years afterwards, because now they felt a connection to the organization through our communications with them. Brilliant. I mean, that’s, that’s, another grand slam. You guys are good. You know what you’re doing? Something that you were just you said it’s just a couple minutes ago rings true. I was just having dinner with my mom and dad and, um my dad had just met an organization that he got connected to. That is, they don’t have shelters for young, young single moms, but they have day programs and referrals and counseling and education programs. And andi came, you know, he came home motivated by about this and my mother and he goes to the kitchen. My mother whispers under breath. There goes another day nobody’s boasting alright, has even started. He brought a donation of ah, gifts in-kind he had bicycles for the for their children and things like that. Um, but, yeah, you know, he’s boasting already has he really gotten started? But people like to talk about their volunteer time, right? And come father’s day there’s a chance for you to honor his service by making a gift in his honor to that organization. Thank you very much. Let’s. Not get carried away. I’ll get your good work. You’re too good. Now five, fifty four years old. I’m living at home, but it’s only temporary that’s. Only temporary. I’m in transition. Please. I’m in transition. Sabat. Okay, well, i guess we’ve talked about well, when we started every really covered, like when is the right time to ask? You gotta know them very well, right on they they have to be well embedded as a volunteer, so they have to have spent some time with you and built that sense of affiliation. Um, and then i think any time after you see, people are comfortable and in the routine and understand your work and you’ve oriented them and you know their story a little bit it’s appropriate to ask and then every organization has its own rhythm of program. So schools june graduation time. Ah, organizations that work with young mothers. Mothers day, of course, the holiday season for programs that work with underprivileged families. Those air kind of natural times to be asking are carrying out simple appeals to volunteers to participate. Do you find that volunteers become sustaining, you know, regular committed donors arm? Or just ah, one time when as and no and absolutely committed donors and and even if their schedules change and they and no longer volunteers? If they started a regular pattern of giving you money annually, they’re likely to continue mohr than other donors. Wow! After volunteers, as in cool, cool. Um, let’s. See, what about? We kind of covered, you know, who’s. Best to ask about how much? How much should you be? Right? Well, so that’s ah, that’s that’s always a tough question for any kind of fund-raising so partly its by talking to people sing are they generous with other causes? Find out a little bit about their other terrible involvement. You’re going toe in time. Learn more about the socioeconomic status of your volunteers through conversations and then you bring some of the same rules of judging how much to ask, but i’d say for the first gift, the most important thing is that they become a donor rather than the amount so it’s, just two to get that person to becoming donors of both time and money. In the first instance, i wouldn’t worry much about the size of the gift. And then over time, you can work on increasing the size of the gift. Then, of course, we love for the average doner to become a monthly sustainers because that’s going to last longer, and they tend to give maura’s an ad average gift than people give once. Here arika, um, let’s, talk a little more about treating your volunteers as donors. Um, you know, we talked a little about communications events. I mean, they should be invited as donors are let’s. Talk more about that. Uh, sure. So my philosophy is time should be treated in the same way. Money is, as i say, if in most of our lives it’s a more precious commodity than money. It’s hard to give time for things. So i would definitely include volunteers in all the activities that you include for financial donors, you indeed can have volunteers who are helping you run those events, for instance, and one way actually, it can work in reverse, which is if you have donors, one way to increase their affiliation with your group is to invite them to volunteer. S o there’s very good, some back and forth in that. Yeah, yeah, cool. Um, would you ah, if you have a aa, an expensive annual gala or some kind of an event, would you offer a reduced price for your volunteers? We’re getting carried away. Well, i’m going to go. Yes, and now i’m going to channel my colleague susan and say, if your primary objective for the event is raising money, then you don’t want to discount too many seats. Ah, but if i start with the objective, i want to celebrate my volunteers work that i’m going to create an event specifically to celebrate the volunteers so oh, and not worry about how much money i’m raising. If my primary objective is make those volunteers feel good there’s going to be some overlap because some of your volunteers, they’re going to become significant donors and you can move into those events that have fund-raising as their primary objective, but i’d be careful about crossing the tooth objectives of raising a lot of money and celebrating, yeah, ok on this would be susan’s more, but have have a cultivation event for earth a celebration for years. For your volunteers, you must be having volunteermatch condition events if you could bring in volunteers can’t save all your events just for those who are expensive tickets. What about volunteers at at board meetings that we, you know, we mentioned having them talk about their experience in giving to overcome that objection, but but just, you know, as a way for board members to relate to the what’s going on in the program areas, having volunteers, come talk to the board, i think it’s a great idea if you’ve got a significant volunteer program it’s a way of the board understanding the dynamic of that program and to check in on it the other important thing i mentioned some of my best boardmember tze had started as valentin ears and then became board members so it’s another aspect of the volunteer pool, which is it becomes ah farm team for discovering people who have skills and talents who ah, our perspective boardmember zoho all right, we just have about a minute and a half left tell me what you love about the work you do show him a nosy person and every non-profit represents a distinct subcultures, so i don’t feel so bad about asking where you’re frightened. No, not at all on dh with every client, they have wonderful missions and it’s fascinating to see who they’ve grouped around them and then personally satisfying to give them the tools to further that mission and see them grow and become more sustainable. You wantto give a shout out to an organization that you’re working with now comes to mind, or even if you don’t want to say the name just some. So i’m going filling here to ah wonderful organization called i challenge myself that challenges high school kids who maybe never rode a bicycle, too, participate in a health and fitness program and write a hundred miles by the time they they finish school in the spring, i challenged myself excellent, we should be challenging ourselves. Great life lesson, greg cohen, senior associate at cause effective there at cause effective dot or ge and at caused effective. Thanks so much, greg. My pleasure school. Thank you for sharing. Ah, wounded warrior and overhead with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant you have a problem, you have a pain point, you need to raise more money. Pursuing is your solution one of your solutions? They have online tools like velocity for managing fund-raising ah, another tool is prospector to find your donors who are upgrade ready that five thousand dollar donors that could be giving ten thousand or that five hundred, dollar donors who could be giving fifteen hundred all helping you raise more money. They are data driven technology enabled. You hear me say that and that’s their tagline what i find interesting is they’re they’re smart technologies using your data, it’s analyzing and organizing your data to make you smarter and better at fund-raising you’re going, you’ll raise more money. I can’t make it any simpler pursuant dot com and also crowdster with their new one of a kind apple pay mobile donation feature, so they’re lengthy people can pay through ah, through their their their iphone increases mobile donations again. You raise more money there, they build campaign sites because it’s crowdfunding, crowdfunding sight so they build the campaign sites that you used? They’re simple for your donors, they are savvy on the back end, so your administration is not difficult. Easy for donors to navigate. Easier for you to navigate and they are crowdster dot com now, tony steak too. Have you checked out non-profit radio on youtube? My channel israel? Tony martignetti some clown stole my name before i could claim it on youtube fraudster, in fact, trust me, if a dude, if you want to steal my identity, go ahead, it’ll get you absolutely nowhere. I mean, i have my social security number on my credit card numbers on my website. Go ahead, help yourself have at it my date of birth it’s on my lincoln. Good luck, i have a credit score it’s not negative. It’s imaginary ivan imaginary number of credit score! It doesn’t exist, so you want to steal my identity on youtube? Go ahead, real tony martignetti i’ve got over two hundred videos from conference interviews, i’ve got some tv appearances and some stand up comedy bits are also there, so my stand up comedy gigs lots of interviews with lots of smart. Guests from the many conferences have been at the past five years. The link to youtube is that tony martignetti dot com. And while you’re there, you can pick up my social security number. That’s tony’s take two. Jean takagi he’s back. I love when he’s back he’s, managing editor of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he is at gi tak gt a k jean takaaki. How you doing out there in san francisco? I’m doing great. How are you, tony? Terrifically. Well, you sound you sound brighton loud and wait. Sam’s turning it down till time down. Sam, he sounds great. Sound good. You’re calling from the same phone you always call from? I think so, it’s. Just a funny in san francisco. And we’re all waiting for the super bowl this week. Oh, yes, yes. Super bowl weekend. Oh, yes. Is that the one with the, uh, with the three point shots from the from the outer rim? Is that is that football i have? Well, we got the warriors here do that. We’re going to enjoy them, too. Okay. I’m crossing over in my sports. All right, let’s. See? Okay, we you got the warriors got wounded. Warrior, the wounded warrior project gene is is not in the news for good reasons. And i’m gonna i’m gonna venture that most listeners are well aware, but why don’t you just acquaint us with some of the bad press? They’re getting around some of their spending? Sure. Well, it started last week, and cbs news and the new york times both ran some articles that were highly critical of wounded warrior project and most importantly, on how wounded warrior project spent its money. So the wounded warriors project for just in case for people who don’t know is a very prominent veterans organization whose mission is toe honor and empower wounded warriors. They’re pretty big. The total revenues are three hundred forty two million for for the last year they reported on the nine, ninety, which ended fiscal year september thirty two thousand fourteen, three hundred forty two million dollar organization, big organization. But the what, you know, the most critical, i guess. Aspects of the spending that were alleged by both cbs and the new york times is based dahna charities ratings organization that said that wounded warrior project spent sixty percent of its total expenses on programs which kind of infers an overhead ratio of about forty percent. And that didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Yes, and the press continued, cbs had aranha siri’s. The new york times jumped on, um, rating agencies jumped in a little bit. Yes. So it’s, it’s, it’s gotten unattractive? Um, we’re not goingto dissect wounded warriors spending and and nine, ninety and their balance sheet because that’s not fair and it’s it’s not appropriate, but i did want to use it as sort of a leading to another discussion that we’ve say another because we’ve talked about this before, but it was a couple of years ago, um, to be exact, it was september sixth of twenty thirteen, so i think it is bears repeating and then review good overhead vs versus bad overhead and i think i want to start with just you need to be aware of perception. Yeah, that’s so true, tony. And just before we leave wounded warriors project, let me say that while charity are charity, ratings organizations might have said that there was a sixty percent program kind of ratio program service expenditure ratio wounded warrior provoc project says that figure is really eighty one percent. So let me just add that there’s a dispute over how how you characterize income and that comes to perception. Tony on dh what one of the documents that you mentioned the form nine ninety, which is the annual information return to the irs on dh you’ve had a show on this before it’s, a really important document because it really tells the public, because it’s a public document, uh, about what the organization has been doing all year, and when you put in numbers and descriptions of your activities in that document, the public is going to read it for what it is on dh if you don’t explain some of the nuances behind it and just using wounded warrior project as an example in this time they, you know, wrote in that they had twenty, six hundred twenty six million dollars in expenditures and conferences and meetings, but without explaining that any further that just leaves it opened. Teo misinterpretation, perhaps misinterpretation. The conferences and meetings were really to benefit the veterans and the beneficiaries of the organization rather than to reflect. You know what some people might think, which would be, like kind of staff training and staff parties on dh sort of morale boosting events and that’s, you know, there’s a huge difference between those things and, uh, not anticipating that can really be problematic for organizations. And they could end up spending tons of money on crisis management and dealing with all of the perceptions and misperceptions later on. Yeah, it feels like the wounded warrior project nine ninety was not artfully completed on the show you’re alluding to i don’t have the date of it, but the guest was named eat. Oh, tsh tomb. So if you go to tony martignetti dot com and you search his name, which is why i g t yeah, you’ll find the shows that he was on hey was on. And then i replayed it once, and the subject was your nine. Ninety as a marketing document. And indeed, you know, if if they spent twenty six million dollars of wounded warrior on conferences, but ah, big part of that was a big, big part of that was scholarships for for for the beneficiaries, the wounded. Service people, then that the nine ninety would’ve been a perfect place to say that and, you know, maybe they maybe they shouldn’t have put it in that category. You know, we could argue about whether that’s appropriate to put that number in that line on that line item anyway, but but, you know, you could explain things basically using your nine, ninety as a marketing document because it’s so pervasive, it’s, it’s, it’s, so easy to get it should be on your own site. And it’s it’s definitely a guide star and the i r s and state attorneys general sites. And, yes, it has a lot of uses. And that’s, the first place charity ratings organizations and journalists who are writing investigative pieces about charity’s often run for something bad that’s the first place they go on. So when organizations reviewed in nine, ninety and i’m probably reiterating what your former guests, it said, but when the review is, you have to think not only of it is a marketing tool for good purposes, but also for defensive marketing, because if it’s misinterpreted or leads to easy, miss miss perceptions of what the organization is doing with their money that’s totally avoidable by explaining it further. Yeah, and then you have a goodwill problem in a public relations crisis and that’s what wounded warrior project is mired in right now? And i’m glad. It’s, you know, it was very timely because it’s all just broke last week. Um all right, you know, so we could refer back to them if if if you think that’s valuable but let’s, let’s talk about some of the categories of good overhead. And i know one that you believe in is education for board and employees. Yeah, i think that’s a really important one. You know, you and you want invest in education for a few reasons, but the first one is to make sure the organization is run effectively and efficiently, not just on the administrative side but on the programmatic side as well. So you want dahna sufficiently informed boardmember executive staff and volunteers who can deliver programs in the best way possible for their intended beneficiaries. And if you want to be innovative, if you want to just sort of raised the bar to providing services in a better way, you’ve got to invest in that and you got to make sure your staff is prepared on well educated and sufficiently equipped to deliver those services. So investing in education, i’m just a very strong proponent of that and that so that’s professional development like conferences and, you know, travel and meals and things like that could have been aboard retreat mean there’s value in that? Yeah, absolutely there is, and they can be misused some of those things and, you know, again how you frame that in your nine, ninety or on your web outside about what you’re investing in when you when you make certain expenditures, is really important to say you’re investing in your team so you could deliver the best programs possible to the most people possible in the most effective way possible, looking for innovative ways to do things better. That’s what you have to say, all right? And now lets you know i’m going to get into splitting hairs a little bit, but, you know, if you have the wherewithal toe, have your onboarding treat or your staff retreat at a at a nice place, i mean, there’s, nothing wrong with being, you know and like, ah, hilton hotel or a western or you know, is there, but but maybe you don’t need to go to ritz carlton. Yeah, i think that’s a good point and that’s kind of like whether you’re goingto pay for everybody to travel in first class, business class or coach and it may depend in part on what type of organization you are. So if you’re an anti poverty organization, it’s a little bit sometimes problematic if you’re if you’re celebrating kind of an event at a five star hotel, although if it’s really based on, you know, training on doing things better, there could be an exception to that. So it really depends upon again what purposes you have for putting it in tow kind of that luxury category if you are with with, you know, veterans organizations where there’s always not enough resources to provide tio some of our most who we say, our some of our most valued citizens of our country and you know, but we don’t always act that way in terms of providing services that there’s some sensitivity there a ce toe how how luxurious their lavish your stack retreats or board retreats or your travel expenses should be yeah, yeah, you know, but sort of on the other side or, you know, it’s really related it’s, um, you know, smaller organizations, teo can’t be as effective as, you know, ah, wounded warrior project type organization with with the three hundred forty two million dollars that they raise the last year that we know, you know, even i don’t know it feels like even if it’s only sixty percent, which does seem low, but even if it’s only sixty percent of sixty percent of such a large number, you know, a smaller organization with a half a million dollar budget if they’re spending ninety percent on program who i’m having a hard time gene, i mean, who’s doing more for vets? Yeah, i mean, let’s talk about fund-raising good overhead they think that’s near endeared tio what you do as well. And, you know, i think there’s their legitimate issues there, and i think, you know, investing and fund-raising is really important, but i think there are limits as well. So, you know, the question might be, is it worth spending or investing? I should say ten cents to make an extra dollar, and i think most of us would just say you know, yeah, of course it would be, then there’s a question about whether it would be worth investing ninety cents to make an extra dollars. So you only netting ten, ten cents for for programs there on dh on dh, then that’s, maybe more questionable. Now there, times when you’re just starting a brand new fund-raising program and in the first year where it maybe that’s what it takes to develop this new structure because you want to do it properly, you want to do it legally. You want to make sure everybody’s up to speed and doing it, and it takes time to develop these relationships and donor engagement. So maybe you’re one ninety, ninety percent fund-raising expenses. Okay, but year after year, i think most of us would be upset by that number. So how you invest in fund-raising? Depends on what type of organization ur depends on what stage you are in with that fund-raising campaign or solicitation early stages you got invest more later stages. Is it’s more mature? You don’t expect that high high ratio again. So is it’s it’s nuanced? For sure? What do you think, tony? Yeah, i think we ought to. Take a break, but we’re going. I’m not going to ignore your question, but i agree with you. Let’s, go away and jean, i’ll come back. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest 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, not non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. It’s time for live listener love did you think i forgot? Perish the thought live listener love going out cozza dero, california! Chicago, illinois st louis, missouri! Maplewood, new jersey. I’m hanging out in new jersey these days. New bern, north carolina. I’ll be hanging out more there. Ah, not too far. Mag adore ohio live listener love let’s stay in the u s new york, new york cool! Thank you, new york and philadelphia p a i love it, let’s! Go abroad! Mexico city, mexico live listener love, locate al uh, good afternoon, bonem bonem start is tokyo is with us and kyoto. Konnichi wa iran is with us. I love we can’t see your city, iran, but we know you’re there live listener loved to iran, italy, pesaro labbate lots of live listeners today and there’s more to it. We got o sole and young son in south korea on your haserot thank you, jeanne, for that indulgence. Oh, wait, i’m sorry, jean. I’ve got to do podcast pleasantries. How could i forget? Perish the thought over ten thousand listeners podcast, whatever time, whatever place, whatever device pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country am and fm stations squeezing non-profit radio into their weekly timetable whenever it is affections out to the am and fm affiliate listeners. Thank you, jean it’s. Important tio recognize our our listener donors? Uh, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for that indulgence. Okay, so you asked me a question. What do i think about this? Um, yeah, i agree. I think it’s very fact sensitive. And i go back to if you’re if you think you might have trouble, explain it on your nine. Ninety, i guess. That’s that’s the best i can do. Yeah. Or your website, but definitely give us some context that we just don’t openly criticize it. Yeah, yeah, on dh. We don’t. Right, because if you don’t, if you don’t explain it, then people will have to draw their own conclusions. Witness what’s happening at wounded warrior. Okay. Let’s, let’s. Ah, delve into another good overhead area that you’ve got for us. What else you like? Sure. Well, i like paying employees a decent wage. That obviously hot topic these days. And, you know, even if that might be higher than the market forces dictates. So you know if it’s above minimum wage and those employees might be hired, you know, for minimum wage anyway, well, maybe that’s not the right thing to do especially, you know, depending upon the type of organization you are, maybe just paying a livable wage is really important and consistent with your mission and very important in terms of recruitment and retention. So in the long run, when we talk about wages and determining what a reasonable wages under those circumstances, you’ve got to be mission focused as well, and not just martignetti just let market forces determine where you set your wages, and if you are concerned about executive compensation, gene and i, jean, you and i have talked about this. You can you could search for executive compensation at tony martignetti dot com. We can also pick my social security number. Is there? Um, good luck with it and and you’ll find where jean and i talked about the executive calm because there’s all kinds of there’s, a there’s, a rebuttable presumption and things you can do to make sure that your executive comp is fair and appropriate. Raging yeah, absolutely. And maybe one one. No two wounded warriors. Well, when you’re talking about executive comp position of a huge, massive sized organization, you can’t equate that teo executive compensation in a tiny organization, so there has to be some reasonable understanding of that, and we have to educate everybody about that as well. Yeah, yeah, i saw the wounded warrior ceo is paid roughly half a million dollars a year. I think that maybe that was twenty fourteen. And to me, that doesn’t seem bad. I mean, he’s managing a five hundred person, three hundred forty million dollars a year organization. But but there have to be things in place too, too, that the board has done to justify that salary compensation for the ceo. And jean and i covered those on that show. You could search for executive compensation. Um, i like technology, gene, technology, infrastructure. Do you have to keep up and you do maybe not wood like the latest iphones for all your staff. But you have to, you know, be aware that old technology khun lied to inefficiencies on the lack of innovation and in a new technology, could allow for more effective and efficient ways to deliver services and engage in advocacy measure. Impact we talk a lot about measuring impact now, but you know, some some old forms of doing things that don’t lead easily to being ableto monitor those things without an extensive amount of paperwork and old system. So i mean new technologies you fund-raising and communicating with donors and engaging supporters and finding new donors, staying up with technology and investing in technology is very, very important. And as you invest in technology and get more data data protection, that is also going to be important, and you don’t want to invest in one without the other, okay, um, there’s another category that ah, i want to talk about building engagement and collaboration among employees, volunteers. Boardmember yeah, i think that’s also really important again for recruitment and retention. That’s important mint internally for collaborations outside, i think so many non-profits get told, you know you’ve got to collaborate more because that will help us, you know, gaugin and get collective impact that’s a hot button term that’s that’s been used over the last couple years, and collaboration really isn’t port knowing what your allies and competitors, if you will in the market are doing and the best way. To do that is to invest in that because those things don’t just bubble up by chance and what they really need investment. So it’s like any relationship, tony, i guess, uh, you know, when two people want to develop a relationship with each other, it’s not just sort of overnight, and you don’t invest anything in helping each other and listening to each other, you’ve got to put time and resource is into it and that’s very true for organizations that are wishing to collaborate on dh i think in terms of, you know, engagement with employees, i think the quality of your work place, you know, you want to have people, you know, they don’t want the desks don’t have to all be donated. And, you know, you should have a nice workplace professional that people come to day in and day out. Yeah, and i think that’s the education and training actually it’s helpful as well for creating job satisfaction and again, recruitment and retention are affected by that, and that ultimately effects on how well you deliver services so that’s all tied together. So when we talk about overhead and you’ve had shows on the overhead myth as well i’m just a strong proponent that overhead is a very, very bad way to assess whether an organization is doing well or not. You alluded to that earlier this program as well. There there are better ways that teo assessing organization and while overhead ratio is may be an important factor. The most important factors impact like you said, so if an organization like wounded warriors project is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars helping veterans, even though its program ratio might not be as high as some people like that impact may be important and not easily replaceable. But doing gino, we just have a minute left and actually forbade overhead. I’m going to refer listeners if you want to get the categories of bad overhead. Gene and i talked about that on the september six twenty thirteen show i’m selecting toe just deal with good overhead, and we just have about another like thirty seconds or so genes. Can you say a little about risk management in about thirty seconds? Sure. So i think i’ll summarize it by saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Are the old saying that our parents, our grandparents, had told us and that’s what risk management is all about it on the board level, it’s creating policies and on the management level, it may be implementing and enforcing policies because it’s no good, i have a policy and with you enforce it. So make sure you’ve got directions, rules and guidelines for your staff and your volunteers and anybody that’s, that’s, you know, helping you further your mission. Jean takagi, managing editor, managing attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group you’ll find him on twitter at g tak gt a k thank you so much, gene. Thanks, sonny. Wonderful to talk with pleasure. Thank you. Next week. Do you know the-whiny-donor on twitter she’s at the-whiny-donor and she’s. Going to be with me. Plus, amy sample ward returns. She returns willingly. No whining by amy if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? And i’m still not sure about that. For twenty sixteen. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay mobile donation feature. Crowdster dot com. Our creative producers, claire miree off sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by dina russell, and our music is by scott stein. Thank you for that affirmation, scotty. 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 and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of nasco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for September 26, 2014: Critical Development Committee & Creative Commons 101

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Greg Cohen: Critical Development Committee

Greg Cohen

Greg Cohen is senior associate at Cause Effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organization. What does a high performing committee do and how can you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring.

 

 

 

Carly Leinheiser: Creative Commons 101

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Carly Leinheiser explains what Creative Commons is and how valuable it can be if you need video, images or pubs or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s an attorney at Perlman+Perlman. (Recorded at NTC 2014, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.)

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with red know cora did itis if i saw that you missed today’s show critical development committee greg cohen is senior associate at cause effective. He wants you to understand how important your development committee is to your board and your organisation. What is the high performing committee do? And how do you support them? Plus tips on recruiting and mentoring and creative commons one oh one carly leinheiser explains what creative commons is and how valuable it khun b if you need video images or publications or want to release your own to raise awareness. She’s, an attorney at perlman and pearlman we talked at ntcdinosaur fourteen the non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two, get off a less is back and a very special, a less show next week. Responsive by generosity siri’s you know them. They host multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that greg cohen is in the studio with me. He is a senior associate at cause effective since two. Thousand six he has provided training and coaching on fund-raising and governance to the boards and staffs of hundreds of non-profits for over thirty years, he’s worked to the wide range of non-profits greg cohen, welcome to studio very glad to be here. We had your colleague susan gabriel on about three weeks ago or so, and i am so in love with what cause defectives work does and how smart you all are on when she introduced me to you, i said, yes, this is definitely an important topic development committee. Please just remind us what cause effective does it’s a non-profits were non-profit ourselves, we’ve been around for over thirty years and where a capacity building group with a focus on helping other non-profits build communities of supporters with a particular emphasis on individual donors. We help them strengthen their boards both for governance and stewardship functions, as well as to make boardmember sze confident and effective fundraisers, aki function and the third area is to advise groups on the strategic use of special events. So not event management, but more the big picture of if we’re going to do something special this year, how do we make? Sure, it aligns with our capacity in our long term organisational objectives, and we don’t steer off the cliff running an event that doesn’t really fit who we are and who our audiences are and that’s related, the third part is related to what susan and i talked about using anniversaries exact effectively, basically when i would say that in a nutshell, it helps you get to the next level for small organizations that are struggling, particularly with fund-raising but also governance? Well, they may not really know that they have governance issues. Um, i think cause effective is a very good place for these organizations again, so it’s, particularly about diversifying funding when we’re talking about fund-raising for groups that have been very dependent on government or foundation, a few sources to diversify into individual donors and don’t know quite what the first steps are in aa strengthening, i think everything every organization feels its board could get to the next level so very much helping boards figure out how to be better planners and stewards of their organization. How does cause effective charge for its work? So about half our clients have a third party like united way. Or a foundation like new york women’s foundation who have funded us to work with them to strengthen them in a particular area. And about half come in having found a source of funding, either unrest, districted or a boardmember someone who feels the topic is important and helps fund our work with them. We also do a lot of work for free through partners like the foundation center and the non-profit coordinating committee, where we offer workshops, i do a lot speaking at the foundation center, i’ve never done non-profit coordinating committee, maybe you can get me in there. I don’t i’m on the board, so you are i’m talking e expected to get me, but i have done a lot of the foundation’s enter through the years on either planned e-giving or charity registration. They have an open house in november foundation center i’m speaking on plant giving a great that open house our development committee? Yes. Why is well, let’s start with why it’s important that we get to whether everybody needs one? Why is your function so important on the board as a committee? So i’m going to get a little high concept for a minute. And talk about the sociology of philanthropy and one of the key principles is that people are motivated to give and respond to their peers people who are like them in a socioeconomic way, perhaps, but i’m sure staff people listening are familiar with the fact that after a while, because they are always speaking to their boards about every possible topic, they’re urging them to fundraise becomes part of the wallpaper just become something that becomes routine. So how do we break through that to encourage and support boardmember sze to fundraise in ways that they can really here and the development committee, which is made up of their peer board members, is a key way for board members to talk to board members as a team about how we’re going to approach fund-raising for this organization, it sounds like even a small board six people should have ah, development committee absolutely so even if it’s a committee of two, although i would work to grow the board and grow that committee that’s important because the other thing is every critical function of a non-profit needs somebody who owns it. So if ah, a lot of organizations think, well the whole board should be fund-raising that’s absolutely true, the function of the development committee is to be the little wheel that turns the big wheel board fund-raising not to be the people who the rest of the board has delegated to go out and raise the money that the port thinks it should be raising, but rather it’s, the people who leave the meeting thinking about how do we move the board forward towards some fund-raising goals in between those meetings, just the way the staff does. A lot of times, i think boards delegate the fund-raising to the staff person, and they see maybe hiring their first director of development as the panacea, the cure all that’s right now, we can relax now we don’t have worry about fund-raising cause we have a director, we hired a director development so it’s his or her job. So this is why that peer-to-peer concept is so important because if we can visualize around every boardmember their facebook and lengthen networks, they’re connected to dozens, if not hundreds of people, but the staff would never have access to those folks were it not for board members willingness to be in front. Of those folk shin’s share their passion for the mission of the organization. So and typically, staff members don’t come in with the multiple of networks that aboard represents. So we say aboard is the vanguard of individual fund-raising and they have to be willing to reach out themselves to connect with other people and that can’t be delegated to staff, even if that the director of development does have networks, they’re not the networks that you, khun that person can bring to the organization their networks of other professional fundraisers, friends and family. But but it’s it’s not appropriate for this staff person to be asking their friends and family just be supporting argast that they work for well, we like staff people teo fund-raising actually, but it’s limited to their network. And if you have six, eight, ten boardmember sze sitting around the table who might offer access to hundreds more people, you’re leaving that resource untapped if you only rely on the staff to do that individual relationship building within their circles. Okay, then what is the relationship between the board development committee and either the director of development or even let’s? Consider a smaller shop that don’t even have a director development where it’s, the executive director. Sure. Well, let me start, actually, with the functions of the development committee, then it’s easier to understand. Taking taking over. All right now, i just think it’s a little. All right, well, okay. You know, i’ll say that it’s in a way the staff leads from behind. So they’re the ones who are the professionals who are thinking of, in a sophisticated way about where the organization could go for fund-raising collecting the information on what’s effective and but what they’re doing is they’re guiding the board leadership into howto have the conversation about fund-raising and supporting their fellow board members, kind of from behind, right? Okay, so so they they may in fact be either masterminding or thinking in conjunction with the head of the development committee or the board chair how we’re going to move this group, but they’re they’re letting the board voices lead the conversation around the table instead of it being their voices thie other thing is there plenty of tools that board members need? They need elevator speeches. They need talking points. They need help thinking out cultivation events to bring their friends in aa lot of different activities and events that are going to need the support of staff, the most valuable thing the boardmember brings is the ability to get someone to respond to their phone call or their appeal. Excellent. Ok, i just wanted to lay out, yeah, i didn’t want to get into detail, okay, don’t upset you, okay, we’re gonna go because right after this break was going to take right now, we’re definitely going to get into what does this committee do? Great. And then we can talk more in detail about the the staff functions to support that in detail. Sure, i just want to lay out the general landscape relationship. Thank you very much for indulging me. All right, we’ll go out for a couple minutes. When you come back, greg and i are going to keep talking about your critical development committee. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. I think. Cubine this’s, the cook said about wear hosting part of my french new york city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia. From paris to keep back. French is a common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it common desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their story, join us, part of my french new york city. Every monday from one to two p, m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Greg let’s, let’s, move right into this. Now, what does this important development committee do? Right? So i said, it’s, the little wheel that turns the big wheel aboard fund-raising so what are the functions of that cock? First thing is, it helps the board have a conversation about what are its goals for fund-raising as a subset of the goals of the overall organization, sometimes an organization says, okay, we want to raise fifty thousand dollars from individual donations this year through a combination of our event staff driven fund-raising inboard fund-raising and that goal sits there. However, the the board itself doesn’t have its own thermometer for its own activities, and commonly there’ll be a board meeting and every will say, you know, we have the big anniversary gala coming up. I know everybody’s going to go out and sell tickets and sponsorships, right? And everybody agrees at that moment, there’s a good feeling in the room, and then they go back to their regular lives and expect, as in the past executive director and the board chair going to pull the rabbit out of the hat so what we want to do is set goals for the board specifics, both for events and overall so of that fifty thousand what’s our board promised to the organization that we’re going to do let’s say we’re going to twenty thousand of it minimum, and we’re going to have a stretch goal a thirty five toward the fifty that way, the exact director knows one they can write that number into the budget and actually spend on it rather than live in suspense until the end of the year to see are the boardmember is actually able to come through and two, it gives a rallying point throughout the year for that board development committee toe work with the other boardmember sze to say, hey, we’re up to fifteen, you know, with this spring reception, we could get toward twenty five of our goal who you thinking of bringing and how much do you think they’d be able to do? So, you know, they say what gets measured gets done and setting goals for board specific fund-raising and having knows that gold monitored, but and supported by members of the board itself is a strong way to actually tow actualize those girls. What happens if the development committee brings these goals to the larger board and there isn’t support for them, so it has to be consensus, right? You can’t the ah, one of the most important characteristics of non-profit is it’s, not a command and control culture, it’s by consensus and, of course, what’s. Most important is that you bring in the board members who have the most ability in terms of your financial goals. But if you have a board with varied economic impact in a diverse board, then you also want goals that have to do with capacity. How many new people worry bringing into the organization? How many new donors without regard to the size of their gifts, how many people are we asking and those air goals that every boardmember can embrace without regard to? Hey, i don’t know anyone of high net worth and your point earlier was that these this is peer-to-peer so its board members in the development committee bringing these goals eggs, activities exactly to their fellow board members versus the staff, and it voids the awkwardness of saying, hey, reach a bigger goal that goes for my salary. Right, you can see where that might not be a most comfortable conversation foran executive director not to set a goal, but to exhort boardmember is that’s kind of hard when it when it’s partly your livelihood that’s at stake, so that’s goal setting the second thing is i mentioned is monitoring toward the goals. The third thing is supporting board members, so checking in and saying, how’s it going? What are you hearing when you’re out talking with your friends about the work or your colleagues at work? Are there additional tools that you need? What kind of events would help you bring in the folks that you think might be most interested in your circle in our work? So they’re they’re getting the chance to ask the board members how’s this process going rather than again? Exhorting people have him leave the room and be on their own teo to meet their individual fund-raising goals there’s the idea that they’re backing them up, and in fact, we advocate a buddy system where each member the development committee takes a few people on the board if you have a board that’s large enough who are not on the development. Committee and works with them over the course of the year in partnership to help them reach their goals. All right, we’re gonna have some more time talking about the buddy system of that. Because it’s ah, it brings back to my boy scout data on ah, we had troops whims. You have a swim in the water front now on the waterfront of been inspected. That’s a part of the truth from you had a buddy system and everybody had to be near their buddy swimming. And these are body checks. So we’re going aboard united now checks and hopefully they’re not drowning in the water. The board members, they’re i’ve taken that foreign so away. Other things that the committee does but let’s sze check in which this support role is this, i guess it’s not on ly at board meetings, but but we can be particularly between the time right took in board meetings is when we’re together. We have ah good feeling of working as a group and being aligned. The hard part is when we go back to the rest of our lives, family and work and our board responsibilities tend to fade in the face of the immediacy of those other things having development committee people checking in with board members in those periods between board meetings is a way to keep that present in their lives. All right, so that’s the monitoring and support role that’s that’s, right of the committee that’s right and listening, you know, there’s such a key thing in all fund-raising but hearing how’s it going for this difficulty thing of asking for money and and and finding out what’s, easy, what’s, hard, and and also because each development committee person is talking to a few people, they start to see what the commonalities are, you know, something’s missing from our pitch, i’m hearing that from several people. What about dealing with the recalcitrant board members so kind of in a version of everybody bring in stories, but sure, if you want to tell me so in a version of the buddy system, one one great system is to take boardmember sze who are experienced and confident and match them up, whether they’re on the development committee or not matched them up with newer boardmember czar or board members who are more reluctant to ask and have them go. Out together, for instance, on and ask so that the lesser experienced person had has a chance to see how it’s done and participate first. So great great example a peer-to-peer support there thie other area that often happens is chaillou i think i’d liketo have host a house party to get some of my friends, but i’m not sure enough people will turn up, and i wouldn’t want the embarrassment of having an empty room. Well, is there another boardmember thatyou could pair up and co host together, for instance? Excellent. Okay, and we’re going to talk about the recruiting, but but just it’s coming to my now the ah fund-raising expectations e-giving of board members at the recruitment stage can we just can we talk about that confession? How explicit should we be? Should it be in writing? Not in writing? How do we have this conversation about fund-raising expectations at recruitment? Great questions so that that’s really the next evolution of board fund-raising goal setting, which is ok overall, is aboard. We’re going to set some goals and then the next step is to say, what does each person think over the course of the year, they khun do toward those various goals. Can they host an event? Will they show up at other events? How many new people do they think they can bring into the fold? How many people do they think they can ask for money and at what levels? And, of course, for their own giving what? What between events and an annual gift? Do they think they’ll give and that’s important? Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road and being able to match the aspirations of a goal with what’s actually likely toe happen over the course of the year, and it let’s board members reflect on what they can, what there actually able to do? Dahna what’s easy and then what becomes a stretch? And if you add up, if you get people to write down on ah pledged pledge form pledge is probably the wrong word, but a projection form of what they can do, and you add that up, you see two people’s own projections of what they do get anywhere close to what we’re projecting as a goal overall, and if it’s too far apart than either you have to lower your goal or ask people. To redouble their efforts. All right, but still sticking with the recruitment stage. Yes, we putting all this, these expectations in writing for the boardmember the the potential boardmember boardmember including yeah, ideally, yes, because particularly if you’re trying to recruit people who are experienced and fund-raising the more organized and clear you are about what’s expected the more comfort that they’re going to feel in joining your board. You know, they say you want something done, ask a busy person. Yes, the worst thing you could do is say you’re so great and experienced wolf will find lots of roles for you. I think busy people run from vagueness. If you say we are looking to recruit five sponsors from fortune five hundred companies, you work for such a company and you have a network. It is our hope that you will help us, particularly the sponsorship area. Then the person can evaluate. Can i step into that role? And can i meet those expectations or not? Versus so often we recruits on because we have unspoken sense of what their connections will bring spoken and and then it turns out either the person’s already committed those connections to another cause or they’re not a confident fundraiser and the last thing they’re going to do is turn around, use their business relationships for the charity. Okay, okay. Let’s, let’s. Go back, tio the functions of the of the development committee beyond the goal setting and monitoring. And so there’s ah, one really critical one, which is to celebrate success. And that doesn’t mean just when the check arrives. But when that person who was a recalcitrant, ask her, ask their first person whether they get a yes or a no, we want to say, i want to acknowledge tony for stepping forward and actually sending out that appeal that we might then want to be the step pick somebody else. Okay, okay. I don’t want the recalcitrant. Okay. Ah, so we’re doing this in public at the board meeting at the board neo-sage celebration is the best way tio provide positive feedback for somebody’s step so that’s another aspect of that pure culture, which is we all have an equivalency of effort. And when we when we step forward to do that and show her on the bus ah, the rest of us acknowledge it and celebrated and in all forms you notice? I wasn’t talking about the amount of money i’m really talking about nufer fund-raising activities, right? And what other one of their activities should we be should be celebrating the first ask the first ask turning out ah, above and beyond kind of number of people to an event taking a leadership role by hosting an event or at the event itself, doing a great job with follow-up and saying thank you to donors on behalf of the organization and the board there’s so many activities that don’t involve asking that any boardmember can undertake, and then we want to say, great job, you know, both to reward that person and also to give the message to the other people around the table, you have the chance to step in the limelight as well. That’s cool the celebration. I haven’t heard that you mentioned the board members thanking i love that. I have heard that suggestion that at a board meeting or a special event, i’m a special evening, a bunch of board members around a table, and they’re just thanking donors for having made recent gift so i love a one to one thank so encouraging board members to make a phone call, maybe to someone that they haven’t met, you don’t know me. My name is greg on the border cause effective and, ah, i’m calling to thank you for your support and ah, and then you wantto what’s that person thinking there’s an ask buried here and then you have the boardmember say, i just have one question for you, and they think here’s, where the shoe drops, why did you choose to support our cause? And then they’re going to hear a bunch of extraordinary reasons that come from the heart of that donor it’s reinforcing to the boardmember oh, you know, we’re not out there with our tin cup. People are giving because of a connection to our mission and when’s the last time you got a thank you call from a board member of a charity you donate to never happens. So even the smallest organization that’s their comparative advantage against channel thirteen. Yes, they can thank every single one of their donors personally, right? Logistically, do you like to do those where? It’s a bunch of board members in a room together, and they’re they’re encouraging each other? They’re making individual falls or you rather have people do it from their home or their office depends on the size of the charity, you know, university’s love those call a thon. Alumni call it on things. Thank you. Call. Thank you. Write well for whatever i think it’s hard enough to get a board together for its general deliberations so i wouldn’t complicate matters. Ah, and let people also let people make those calls on their own schedule. So you’re giving them a list of dahna people little information about them? Ah, script that’s one of the forms of support staff can provide so that until someone gets their sea legs in these calls, they know what to say after a few it’s going to go easy and yeah, and you’re gonna hear terrific, heartwarming stories about why this is it right? So that, yes, your point that reinforces for the boardmember there are people all of us and it says now now now there is a step toward their getting confidence to be askanase themselves. Excellent that’s a great one. Okay, this celebration and the thank you’s. What else is there more this committee can be doing to turn the bigger wheel. Well, do you want to touch on recruitment? Not yet. It felt more that the committee khun do other functions. Those air, those air, the main function. Okay, can we talk about staff support? I have time to go short. The agenda with you. You’re you’re the board meeting with an agenda. I’d rather talk about a staff support for all these activities for yes. And then we’ll come to recruitment and mentoring. Right? Our buddy staff support. So ah, this could be the executive director without who doesn’t have a director of development supporting this a ll this committee work that’s correct. It’s always the exact director who has some involvement. Even with the development director. Just the way you observed the board can’t relax when they hyre their first development director. To manage all this. The staff can’t relax just because the board’s formed the development committee and there’s a good, vital conversation about board fund-raising taking place. They’ve got to be providing those tools. And that support because boardmember don’t have the time toe manage the infrastructure of fundrasing that’s still falls to the staff, including very importantly, if this is working, having a system for tracking all the contacts, all the people and the contacts that are made with those folks over time. So there’s a good record of the relationship that’s important staff function yes entering into r r fund-raising database are exactly our cr m database that’s, right? The contacts that are made calls that i made the right back we get, and then something very basic when so in response to a board appeal, so let the boardmember know that it happened so that they can say thank you and avoid the embarrassment of running into the person who is waiting to be thanked and the boardmember doesn’t realize the person made a gift, right? So keeping the board members up to date on what’s happening in terms of their contacts and overall for that monitoring function is really critical. All right, so the running of these reports, right for right? For the for the board, right? And it’s it’s, partly the staff celebrating with the board to say, hey, your donor came back this year with an even bigger gift when you give me a call and say thanks that’s. Great, yes called. All right, um, i have to talk. Ah, i’d like to talk about ah, an organization sponsors non-profit radio generosity siri’s and i don’t know do doo ahh and your strategic use of events, teo do runs and walks ever ever figure in so some of our groups do do walks, we don’t get involved in any of the you’re not planning on you know, but but we’ll ask the question, you know, do you have a broad enough constituency base to have confidence that you’ll recruit enough people to make a walk or run successful? You know, you need zack, i need a word pretty well established network, and you need people who are willing to be the cheerleaders to bring people together in that, for instance, for organizations that can’t generate hundreds of unity’s hundreds. If you’re gonna have your own stand alone event for organization that can’t do that generosity, siri’s generosity, siri’s dot com their sponsor and they host multi charity five k runs and walks i am seed one of theirs last november, little chilly day. But it’s still great fun. There were about a dozen charities they had about no two hundred or so to fifty runners. Among these dozen charities, one hundred thirty, one hundred forty thousand dollars was raised, and it was great fun. And none of the charities could generate enough support. Enough participants on their own. But collectively through generosity siri’s they had this great event and generosity. Siri’s does all the all the back end work of licensing. We were in what’s the huge park in brooklyn that take part. We’re provoc piece of problem back park. They got the licence to get the port a johns to get the amplification and the big start the starting gate way in the finished gateway. And, um, it’s all done. Very smart, great. And its collective that’s. Quite if you would like tio. See if it makes sense for you to be a charity partner of generosity. Siri’s do what i do. You know, i like to talk to people. Pick up the phone. Devlin is the ceo and he’s at seven. One eight five o six. Nine, triple seven if you prefer generosity siri’s dot com a l s i’m keeping this video on the top of my sight tony martignetti dot com for a third week because i want people to get off a less is back let’s give them a chance to see how they’re going to manage this enormous growth. And next week we’re going to hear directly from the ceo and president of l s she’s going to be my guest. Barbara newhouse, we’ll hear first hand how they plan to manage this enormous spike in donors and dollars. The show next week is going to be a google plus hang out on air. We’re doing it from the chronicle of philanthropy offices in washington that’s where l s is that’s where the chronicle it obviously and that’s where i’ll be, because i’d like to be face to face with with barbara new house so you will join the google plus hang out on air at tony martignetti dot com that’s the place to view. We are definitely taking questions for barbara throughout the hour if you know how hang out on air works, you just type in your questions if you don’t, we’ll explain at the beginning, so very exciting show. Next week and very different format you come here to, well, not don’t come here, come to tony martignetti dot com and that’s, where you’ll watch the hang out on air with a less is president and ceo barbara newhouse, and that is tony take two for friday, twenty sixth of september thirty eighth show of this year thank you, greg, for indulging me little pleasure. Um, let’s, let’s, talk about let’s continue the staff support training. I’m glad you brought it up. Of course that’s one of krauz defectives great loves as something we provide, which is so few people come to a board with either fund-raising experience or a positive fund-raising experience, right? We’re lucky if we can recruit someone who’s been a great fundraiser for their alumni association or another non-profit but most often we’re recruiting people who are willing and interested, but i haven’t had the chance to fund-raising a systematic way before and of course, like everything else that we need to master in our lives, we need some training and information so staff arranging for training to make boardmember more confident is a great idea and cause effective could be the real happy that makes you happy to be a provider of such training latto onboarding persuasive years of experience, i could see you moving and motivating boardmember toe task that they’re not comfortable with at the beginning of your of your so i’d say it’s a little bit like arthur murray’s dance studio, we paint the steps on the floor, we get people toe awkwardly, try those steps and it gets more and more fluid until they discover you know what? I really like this so let’s, move them. Tio recruiting yes, talk some about recruiting to the development committee, so we have our board who were responding specifically for this committee, so i always take the extreme position not often embraced by every board. Every new member of the board should be placed on the development committee, plus one other committee. So i like to give the message right, it’s just a place to start. Absolutely because one people are at their highest point of enthusiasm, usually when they’re joining aboard two they don’t know better, right? If the culture of the board is a few people carry all the weight for fund-raising we don’t want them to sink to the lowest. Common denominator after going to a few meetings, so let’s grab them while they’re hot and put him on that development committee and then if you’re organized enough maybe to serve on one other committee as well, so that would be my preferred position. But i would say, of course, anyone who’s got prior experience ought to be recruited because they can help with the planning function and be creative about how the board can be fund-raising but really, what it really is a question of there’s someone have to desire to give it a try, and if you’re providing the tools and the training than anyone who’s willing ought to be added to that committee and bring in that new energy, can they also be mentors? Now they’re new board members? Can they be mentor? They’ve got what has the Numbers and actually 1 of the great ways to turn around the culture of a board that has gotten a little stagnant on fund-raising or has never stepped up is to bring in some fresh blood who are able to say when i did it over here, this is what worked and really help revitalize that culture i’ve even seen that work with some organizations that have young professional boards or junior boards where the enthusiasm of those young folks actually ah, crosses over and helps the established board embrace some goals with greater energy infecting them. They’re like their youthful energy that’s, right and vigor that’s right? Who do we look forward to lead our development committee? That’s a great question, so good question forty minutes, that’s a pretty good now they’re evolving right chair the development committee. You want someone who’s, a good cheerleader who relates well to other board members can communicate well, they don’t have to be the most generous giver on the board or necessarily the greatest getter. In fact, you probably don’t necessarily want the wealthiest person on your board to behead development committee because other people will look and say, well, they have the resource is of course they do. It seems effortless. You don’t identify with the right, right? So you want someone who’s really out there showing their commitment to the organization, but both by e-giving stretch gift themselves and out there asking widely in their circles durney ideally, that person would have prior experience, but it’s really the effort? They’re willing to put in that counts the most in their willingness to be a role model, because and this is true for all bored fund-raising if you’re not a giver yourself, it’s very hard to ask others to do something you’re not doing beyond that. I think it’s great to get experienced people for that mentoring and butting up, they can help with the training. They can help build the confidence. So you do want a cadre of people who are comfortable around the fund-raising conversation and who are well regarded by other board members so that they can induce them to join that conversation. Let’s, have a body check? Yes, the buddy system could we say more about how the development committee is mentoring and buddying with shirts? Are what’s the idea that you’re providing focus on fund-raising gear around and you have somebody on the development committee who really comes to understand what’s going on in the mind of their fellow boardmember who their networks are can be a thought partner and how to reach them. I can understand where their fears or inhibitions are and helped develop ways of overcoming them also hears what do you need to be successful? Would you like practice in making the elevator speech? Would you like to be paired with someone who’s going out, making an athlete, see how it works? Do you want a staff person to join you? And you’re asking because you’re not confident that you could answer detailed question about the organization’s program so that someone who can check in and ah, that the boardmember can reveal themselves to without exposing the fact that they might feel like to write about a topic and facing the professional staff, that might be an important aspect. We have just a minute left, okay, i really would like to hear what it is that you love about the work that you’re doing with boards. Well, you know, we say that boards are the most important volunteers of any organization, so we work with so many fantastic organizations and missions and boards are the place where you see people who, despite busy lives, step forward to make these organizations successful, make incredible sacrifices are incredibly generous with their time and expertise. So it’s fantastic to be in a room with people who are thes chief cheerleaders as volunteers around the widest range of causes it’s very noble calling great going senior associate at cause effective on twitter, they are at cause effective, and greg on twitter is greg causevox greg cause you want to follow him. Greg, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks so much. Now the interview that i did at ntcdinosaur profit technology conference on ah, creative commons one o one with carly leinheiser welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference and t c twenty fourteen we’re at the marriott wardman park hotel in washington, d c with me is carly leinheiser she’s, an associate at perlman and pearlman that’s, a law firm in new york city. And her workshop topic is share use remix an introduction to creative commons. Carly welcome. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Thanks, it’s. Great to be here. Thanks. And thank you for taking time on a pretty busy conference day. What is creative commons that i think a lot of people have heard of and not so familiar with? Sure. So creative commons is itself a non-profit they were founded in two thousand won with a mission of making the basically making content. On the internet accessible, so they developed a suite of licenses, which are basic copyright licenses that allow creators, artists, authors to distribute work under one of these licenses, and that signals to anyone who might find their work that it’s freely available for use subject to certain different restrictions. So this is quite a service, really it’s a certain unorganised ation serving non-profits and making content available, right? I mean, they’re serving not only non-profits but sort of ah, the larger idea of basically the commons there, they’re making a easier to put more works into not exactly the public domain because they’re still under copyright but making more works freely available for anyone to use. So the idea is that right now, the way copyright works is any time that somebody creates a work it’s automatically subject to copyright, you don’t have to register it. You don’t have to put a notice on it if you’ve created a work it’s copyrighted on dso that’s what is known as the all rights reserved model and that’s what happens automatically so if you are an artist and you get benefit from distributing your photos online and having other people take them and incorporate them into their works. It’s hard to do that because somebody would have to seek you out and get individual written permission from you in order to do that. Otherwise they’d be infringing your copyrights. But most people’s experiences it’s incredibly easy to find content online that you can just, you know, screen. Grab our download and creative commons brings the law in line with that experience that it’s fine it’s easy to find content online, it’s easy to incorporate it into new works. And so by with using these licenses, it makes it easy for people to know they have permission from the artist to do that. Do we need to know a little bit the basics of intellectual property law before we go to into too much detail? Well, i think that that sort of covers it so i could say copyright well, i could talk a little bit about it. Copyright is ah, is basically a bundle of rights that anybody who creates a creative work gets in their in their work. So you have a set of exclusive rights that you’re the only one that you khun the only one who can exercise those rights with respect to your work and um and then you can also assigned those rights or licenses rights out to other people. So you have the right to use the work to distribute it, to make copies, to make derivative works or a new work based on the original work, so that something like a translation or collage would be a derivative work and to license that out to other people. So what you’re doing with the creative commons licenses, you have your bundle of rights and you’re saying anybody can use my work. Anyone has access to my work. Andi anyone can exercise those same rights as long as with all creative commons licenses, you have to give attribution or credit s o you link back to the original work and then there’s certain other restrictions that are in some of the different licenses. Okay, on dh. Some of those different restrictions is get a little too technical. Know that’s that’s, sort of the heart of creative commons there’s. Six basic licenses. So all of them, including attribution requirements. So say i post a photo online and i license it under a creative commons attribution. License that means anybody who came across my photograph could take it, download it, use it, put it into a new work. All they have to do is give me attribution. So that means maybe linking back to my web page just putting my name on it. And i i would normally specify how i want to be attributed. So some of the other restrictions are share alike. Which means that i would license my photo under a creative commons attribution share alike license meaning anyone could take my photo, download it, use it, make a new work with it. But if they did that and distributed that new york new work, they’d have to release it under the same license. On this is a concept called the copy left and the ideas that i’ve created a work that someone else is used. And then now their work is also in the commons for anyone to use s o, for example, wikipedia’s content is licensed under c c it’s, cc by essays are creative commons attribution share alike license so anyone can use the content on wikipedia and incorporated into a new work. But then they have to also license it in the same way, so grows the body of work. Exactly. They’re two other restrictions. One is no derivatives, meaning you can download my work. You can share it or distribute it, but you can’t change it in any way, so i’m not allowed to make a new work based on it. So you’ll see this sometimes with some sort of reports that in the case of non-profits, maybe report that you’ve published on a particular policy issue, and you want that shared as widely as possible. But you don’t want people sort of taking accepts. Reinardy. Or, you know, photos, or maybe personal histories, things that, like you want shared sort of intact on dh. The last restriction is a noncommercial restriction, so that means anybody could use the work as long as what they do with it is for a non commercial purposes. Ok, thank you, little detail. But details, i think, are interesting. I think they are. You think they are. I think they are all right. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. I’m christine cronin, president of n y charities dot orc. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. How do we how doesn’t know provoc about using creative commons? What do we need to do right xero assumes we create something. I understand we have a bundle of automatic rights, but we’re talking about now making it available under creative commons license. Sure. So if you want teo well, i guess i’ll start with how do you find works that you could better license? Okay? Because they think that’s a lot more people have experienced with searching on flicker, for example. So if you’re looking for save photographs to put on your website or incorporate into a brochure and you want to find a photo that’s, all you have to do is give attribution to the person who made it. You can go on. Flicker flicker has a search feature and also the creative commons website itself has a search feature where you can go in and specify what you want to do with the work, whether it’s going to be for commercial or non commercial purposes. O r all you want, you want the least restrictive license and you put in your search terms and it pops up. So when i was putting together my talk, i wanted to find pictures of cute cats because that’s, what people like to look at on a saturday morning esso i search for cute cats license under creative commons license and found a whole bunch as far as really seeing your work under creative commons license if you’re distributing it online, creative comments has a licensed chooser on their website, so you don’t even have to really know the technical restrictions you go in and you say, i want people to give me attribution. I want to allow derivative works or not if i allowed derivative works, i want them to be released center share, like license or not, and i’m ok or not with the commercial uses, and then creative commons tells you which license you’ve picked on degenerates thiss html code that you can embed on your site, which then makes your work searchable by license. Okay, you become part of the search results and and it generates a little button you can put on the work, so you’ll see in a lot of like footers of websites thiss you know this pages published under creative commons license in which one? Okay, now the search function sounds pretty. Easy finding finding going back to finding content. Pretty simple. Yeah, it’s really simple the the only risk is you want to make sure that that thing’s air correctly tagged so but it is really pretty intuitive and you khun search you can search flicker you khun search through google images i think that there are more and more search engines that are supporting a search by license, so it is really easy to use and in terms of releasing your own content, any restrictions on what that content is? Well, i mean, it’s basically anything that’s subject to copyright so you wouldn’t you use a creative commons license with se your trademark or something that was protected by patent law, not copyright law. It also doesn’t deal with model writes in photographs, so if you have a photograph that includes an image of a person, creative commons doesn’t really deal with that person’s right of publicity or protections that they get for being in the photograph. So there was actually a litigation over this issue where a company used a photograph that included an image of a person, and the photographer had released the image under creative commons license. But never secured the model rights s o the person in the image sued the company and ask them to stop using it. Okay, are there other other cases that air don’t necessarily mean litigation case? Maybe client examples? You know that air that interesting, that and somewhat, you know, instructive. Yeah, so, no, i don’t have any specific client examples. They do have some examples i found in researching for my talk. One of my favorites actually is the brooklyn museum, which is i live in brooklyn, so i have a lot of pride for the brooklyn museum. They do really interesting things with their they’ve done two very interesting things. One is that a lot of their collection, they made their collection searchable by license. So much of their collection is very old and in the public domain, so you can now search their collection online and see what’s in the public domain and use those images if you want, and i actually incorporated a few of their images into my presentation and where stuffs not out of copyright but they on the right, innit? They’ve released it under creative commons license so you can use some of the works in their collection, another interesting thing that they did was in connection with the show they did a few years ago, go called who shot rock n roll, which was a series of portrait it’s and photographs relating to rock n roll. They did a remix contest, so they had chris stein and believes his name from blondie put together a bunch of tracks that he released under a creative commons license. And then anybody could download those tracks, remix them, upload them and those tracks would again be really center creative commons license. And they picked a winner, and they’re all available on their website. Um, it’s really interesting. So it was this great way to engage with their community and sort of further their mission of, like, getting culture out to the public on really engaged people while completely avoiding the issue of having to get signed releases and have people wave their their rights or sign rights toe in their tracks that they made to the brooklyn museum. They were just available to use, which i think is a really interesting example of what you could do. So photo contest anything like that video as well, video yeah, absolutely. I think on a new tube, isn’t there? Ah, little pull down window, whether you want to use a have a standard creative commons license to your video yeah, i wouldn’t be surprised i’m not positive, but i think that sounds right. Ok, i think they have a three or maybe four licensing options, and one of them, i think, is standard creative commons license. Yeah, and actually, when i was uploading my slides, teo the ntc, they asked whether i wanted to release my slides under creative commons license or not, so they’re they’re on top of it. Excellent. Well, you know, i don’t know what teo asked specifically, but what more do you want to share that we haven’t talked about? Let’s see, i think i mean, one of the things that i think is most interesting for me is they think a lot of non-profits have have sort of limited experience using creative commons in looking for photos and things like that on flicker, but i think that there are a lot of great examples of non-profits really saying they’re content under creative commons license, so not only so the brooklyn museum is a good one, but and wikipedia is another one. There’s, another organization called teach aids that creative commons features it’s a case study on their site. They big, they make sort of educational health materials that are really sandorkraut of commons license so anybody can download materials from their sight, redistribute them on, and i think for non-profits that have any kind of educational mission thie idea that you could create these materials and then just release them out into the world and they would be freely shared and no one had to worry about, like, violating your copyright if they wanted to download a report or, you know, i know your rights pamphlet or health materials, those kind of things i think are really great uses for creative commons, particularly for non-profits that have a mission based on education, where you’re not worried about so much selling individual copies of your materials, but that the more you get the word out about your organization by distributing materials, you’ll get your name out donordigital here about you, and you don’t have to worry about the transaction costs of negotiating, you know? Oh, okay, that person could buy a copy to do this or that. So i think it’s one of the more interesting things, all right, i hope listeners will pay attention to a creative commons both in terms of their own you’re your own work and and searching for others as well. Sounds like it, sze i’ve learned a lot more about the community then thin. I knew. Thank you very much, carly. Yeah. Thank you for the pleasure. Carly leinheiser is associate perlman and roman. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fourteen. Thanks so much for being with us. My thanks to everybody at the non-profit technology network and ten next week. Barbara newhouse ellis is president and ceo for the hour joined the hangout on air at tony martignetti dot com regular time one p m eastern. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com it’s, the store it’s, the center of universe you’re seeing this so all things emanate from there generosity siri’s and their charity support team that helps you in your fund-raising think about them for multi charity five k runs and walks generosity siri’s dot com seven one eight, five or six. Nine, triple seven our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. Shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. I didn’t even think that shooting the ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. E-giving dahna cubine come. Join us for the thirteenth annual vigil for international peace and ecology on sunday, september twenty one. From nine a, m to six p, m celebration of live music and dance performances spoke a word human-centered line art installations in a world peace flag ceremony that celebrates the united nations international day of peace. That’s sunday, september twenty one from nine a, m to six p, m central park numbered band shell by the bethesda fountain. For more information or volunteer, go to www. Dot vigil number four. International peace dot borg that’s, the number four in the earl, or call to want to chip in to five, four, three two to want to triple. Two, five, four, three two we’ll see you there. Heimans you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking. Hyre