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Nonprofit Radio for May 22, 2023: Multigenerational Technology Teaching & Goals Aligned With Technology

 

Lauren HopkinsMultigenerational Technology Teaching

If you have folks spanning the generations working or volunteering for your nonprofit, you may have noticed they learn technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from Prepared To Impact, LLC.

 

 

Jett WindersGoals Aligned With Technology

Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny, new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jett Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it all.

These both continue our coverage of NTEN’s 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, #23NTC.

 

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[00:02:07.29] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. And this is number 641 which means we are just nine weeks away from the 650th show. 13th anniversary coming in July. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of dextrose gas tria if you upset my stomach with the idea that you missed this week’s show multigenerational technology teaching. If you have folks spanning the generations, working or volunteering for your non profit, you may have noticed they learned technology differently. Lauren Hopkins shares the strategies for teaching tech across the generations. She’s from prepared to impact LLC and goals aligned with technology. Step back from your technology decisions before you buy the shiny new apps. What are your goals for the tech? And how does the tech support your overall goals? Jet Winders from Heller Consulting helps you think through it. All these both continue our coverage of N tens 2023 nonprofit technology conference on Tony’s take to share, share. That’s fair. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is multigenerational technology teaching.

[00:02:29.17] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. The nonprofit technology conference we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation

[00:02:31.98] spk_0:
for nonprofits. With

[00:02:34.41] spk_1:
me. In this meeting is Lauren Hopkins. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC Lauren Hopkins. Welcome to

[00:02:46.00] spk_2:
Nonprofit radio. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Pleasure.

[00:02:53.09] spk_1:
I love your topic. We’re talking about teaching to technology skills in a multigenerational workplace on the baby boomer. You’re a millennial. I am and we will try to bring in a couple of other Jen’s as well. We don’t want to exclude Gen X and sometimes it does sometimes feel a little left out or

[00:03:09.88] spk_2:
they don’t think they feel left out. I don’t think so. As long as we provide the tools, I don’t think so. Okay.

[00:03:17.34] spk_1:
Um And Gen Z, of course. Yes, we’re not going any younger than that. Now.

[00:03:21.41] spk_2:
We do have the traditionalist um younger or I’m sorry, older than the baby boomers. And we discussed that in myself. Okay, traditionalists, traditionalists. Yes.

[00:03:33.10] spk_1:
Okay. Because I’m a young boomer at 61 where traditionalists, I

[00:03:38.33] spk_2:
believe the traditionalists if I recall about 78.

[00:03:57.48] spk_1:
Okay. Well, there still are some 78 year olds in the workplace, especially returning to returning to work, perhaps second career. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I don’t want to leave out and I don’t want anybody traditionalists. So uh just give us, give us like overview. Why did you, why do you feel we’re not doing as well as we could training across the generations?

[00:04:45.23] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, you know, so I really enjoy teaching technology skills. I started as a social worker and I started to um teach technology skills in various sectors. And so Department of Social Services, teaching software implementation. And then I went to Aflac teaching the same thing and in the nonprofit field, and I really feel as though we have individuals within, within the various generations that still have a lot to learn and depending on the learning styles, their learning needs are very different. And so the strategies that we use to teach the technology could vary based upon the generations.

[00:04:52.04] spk_1:
So when you say their learning needs you there starting in different places, starting

[00:04:56.47] spk_2:
in different places and their learning styles as well,

[00:04:59.84] spk_1:
comfort

[00:05:01.18] spk_2:
their comfort and um and the tools and strategies that we will use to reinforce some of that learning some of the activities and such may be different based upon the generation.

[00:05:15.15] spk_1:
One of your takeaways is learning how people value training differently, they value it differently. That was interesting what I’m not, I don’t think of valuing training. So I’m obviously not in the mainstream. So that’s why I’m talking to you because I need help. So how do people value it differently

[00:06:12.37] spk_2:
across the ages if you think about it? Um with some of the, with the baby boomers and we the traditional list, they genuinely want to learn. Um They just may need some, some help along the way where we think of millennials and the Gen Zs. It’s sort of as if um they’re just expecting for the information um to be provided to them. And so we just want to make sure that we’re providing the information that they need to be, to be successful. So it really, it depends on how the information is provided that their values may change.

[00:06:20.18] spk_1:
You have some techniques to talk about. Yes, for training across.

[00:06:26.30] spk_2:
Absolutely.

[00:06:28.01] spk_1:
Let’s, let’s dive in. Okay. Don’t sell short now. And nonprofit radio listeners don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t hold out okay. But what’s, what’s the technique? Which, which one, what should we start with?

[00:07:08.68] spk_2:
Let’s start off with the traditionalists. Okay. Yes. So with the traditionalist one, one thing that we do well with the traditionalists and the baby boomers, we want to make sure that we are providing step by step tools and strategies for them to be successful. So if you are training on some technology skills, make sure that you do have the step by steps with screenshots available and really encourage them to, to go ahead and print that out. So within the training, if your training is virtual or if it’s in person, they can follow along really well. Also, we want to make sure to the best of your ability if we do have someone of a younger generation that maybe we can partner them together with someone of the older generation and they can, they can assist in the learning process.

[00:07:31.30] spk_1:
Students.

[00:07:57.50] spk_2:
Yes. Yes, both are learning because we’re talking about a multigenerational workplace. Um And so, um and also with the baby boomers and the traditionalists, they both prefer to learn within a traditional in person classroom setting. But we know that that’s not always possible. And so we want to make sure that we are um making some accommodations to ensure that they are getting the information in the best way that they receive it the best way that we can. Okay.

[00:08:06.56] spk_1:
So in person is better for the older folks

[00:08:11.28] spk_2:
better and well, let me say preferred is preferred for them. Um Research shows

[00:08:19.45] spk_1:
preferred their prey, but it may not be

[00:08:21.23] spk_2:
possible. How do you, how do you like to learn? Do you prefer virtual as a baby? You say your baby? Right. So do you prefer to learn virtually or in person as far as if you’re learning new technology skills? Yeah,

[00:09:01.32] spk_1:
I have a two part answer to that first is I generally don’t like it when guests turn the tables and put me on the spot. That’s the first, that’s the first answer. But the second answer I will go along with you. Is, uh, no, I prefer, I’d much rather be in person. Yeah. I also prefer speaking to in person audiences. Um, I prefer in person into like this. I mean, I have to do most of them over Zoom because the guests are from all over the country and I live in North Carolina. But, um, are you in

[00:09:10.28] spk_2:
North Carolina? I am from, I’m from North Carolina originally. I now live in South Carolina. Where are you, where are you from? I’m from Hickory and then I went to undergrad in high point and I also lived in Wilmington’s.

[00:09:21.44] spk_1:
Okay of those three. I’m the closest to Wilmington’s. I live in Emerald Isle. You know, the little beach town about an hour and a half above Wilmington’s. Yes,

[00:09:30.36] spk_2:
I do love it. Small world. Where’s hickory hickory hickory? It is at the foothills and so it is about an hour from Charlotte and about an hour and a half from Asheville.

[00:09:44.83] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. Foothills. Alright. Alright. I’m originally from New Jersey. Okay. Okay, cool. And you’re in South

[00:09:49.70] spk_2:
Carolina? I do live in South Carolina now Columbia, South Carolina settled down there. So

[00:10:30.84] spk_1:
that’s the capital of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Don’t think I don’t know why. Yeah. Okay. So, um, yes, so I prefer in person, everything, audiences, learning interviews, um, meetings with, I do plan giving, consulting, fundraising. So I much prefer to meet donors in person, but a lot of times phone has to suffice. And for the older folks that I’m working with, they’re usually not interested in being on Zoom, they’ll do it for their grandchildren, but they’re not gonna do it for me, which is fine. So I pick up the phone, I got you. But I’d rather be in person whenever I can whenever I can.

[00:10:36.81] spk_2:
May I ask something? Then

[00:10:38.82] spk_1:
after my first answer to the last question you’re still gonna ask again?

[00:11:18.05] spk_2:
It’s not a question. It’s not a question. But as far as far as baby boomers and the traditionalist, I also recommend providing an option for them to call. That’s what reminded me uh providing them an option for them to call the, the training consultant, whoever’s doing the training in case they have questions. Um If there’s a phone available phone number, because oftentimes with technology, you know, we want them to email if they have questions or send a message. But with those two generations, they prefer to pick up the phone or if there’s an option to meet in person, not sure if that is possible. But um at least the phone option will be great better

[00:11:42.12] spk_1:
than email or text. Makes perfect sense. It’s what they grew up with. Exactly. And an email and text or what the other generations grew up with. Exactly. So follow up phone offer, phone, follow up anything else for dealing with Boomers, traditionalists? Not right now. Okay. What if maybe we’re gonna get to this. What? Yeah. Alright. So you are we gonna be talking about having multiple generations like in the same class? Yes, like you said, pair off somebody younger with somebody older. Okay.

[00:11:57.72] spk_2:
Okay. Yeah. So one of my suggestions is to um in your training plan, look at the learning styles of all these generations, figure out what is best or how each of them learn best and just implement various little nuggets that meet the needs of all of the generations. That is my suggestion instead

[00:12:16.66] spk_1:
of like what give me some sample nuggets.

[00:13:30.31] spk_2:
Sure. Yeah. And so for the, let’s start, let’s start at the top. So for the um for the traditionalist and for the baby boomers, like I said earlier, you may want to have a um a print out of the step by step guides for the Gen Xers. They love independent work. So for the activities to reinforce that learning, if you have some independent work that would be helpful um for the millennials, they also enjoy group work. And so after the session, if we have some group work, that would be great. And um we can reinforce their learning to by pairing them up with someone who’s a bit older and helping to strengthen both groups. And then for the Gen Z’s, they love videos, training videos. 3 to 6 minutes is the sweet spot videos of 3 to 6 minutes. Because remember this is the generation that goes to youtube for answers to almost anything. And so videos will be great. And so um if we can have trainings and then implement just little pieces that are catering to the various generations inside of the learning plan or the training plan, that would be ideal.

[00:13:37.53] spk_1:
Okay. So take a hybrid

[00:13:39.11] spk_2:
approach. Exactly. Touch

[00:13:45.58] spk_1:
everybody with what they need and this is all research based. We know Gen Z does much better. Exactly. Two

[00:14:01.32] spk_2:
six minute video. Yes. Yes. And for those who have attended the conference this year, the learning materials and my slides with the references are online. Okay, so they can pull that

[00:14:03.12] spk_1:
up, walking your talk. Alright. Yeah. Um what else other, other techniques across the generations? We got plenty of time

[00:14:22.38] spk_2:
together. Okay. So let’s go with the Gen Xers. They really enjoy being active and so their activities, if they can be active, that would the ideal um any type of gaming that would be great too. So um in their activities, if they can get up and move, if it’s in person or if it’s virtual, let’s set up a way that the activities can help them to just be active and implement what they are learning. That’s key.

[00:14:43.66] spk_1:
So active, meaning they get up out of their

[00:15:35.85] spk_2:
seats. Oh yeah, that’s good. Let me clarify, let me clarify. Yeah. So for active you could get out of your seat. But an activity. So what I like to do is say for instance, you have a, um, an activity plan for them to, let’s say I used to work at our local United Way, United Way of the Midlands in Columbia, South Carolina. And I taught the homeless management information system to about two huh 100 users. Right. And so what I like to do is after their New Year’s or trainings, I would email them a task sheet for them to complete their tasks. And once they finish that task sheet, go ahead and send me their work and I’ll look over it. So that is a way for them to be active. Now, depending on the resources that your agency have, you may have um some gaming um strategies or tools. My agencies did not have that. So we work with what we have. Um But that is a way just for them to be um to be actively doing something and to reinforce the learning that has taken place.

[00:16:40.97] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. It’s the online donation platform used by over 100,000 nonprofits in 96 countries. It’s no wonder it’s four times faster. Checkout, easy payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. How many potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to multigenerational technology teaching with Lauren Hopkins.

[00:16:48.01] spk_1:
What about Gen Z. Anything? Anything further further for Gen Z besides the video?

[00:17:05.26] spk_2:
Yeah, just for, for Gen Zs and for millennials, one thing to note is that they love learning management systems or LMS as most people. Um Well,

[00:17:06.23] spk_1:
I have Jargon Jail on non profit radio. So I’m glad you opened with learning management system. LMS would have to call you out. What the hell is an LMS?

[00:18:48.07] spk_2:
Um So the LMS for learning management system that have a feel of social media. All right. So if we have a discussion board, if we um have some sections that just feel like social media, that you can put together a poster or um share a tidbit or tip of the day that just feels like social media that would be helpful. Now, if your agency does not have those type of resources, that is okay. Another thing that is helpful, especially for the millennials is if there is a blog for um this generation really enjoyed blogs. And so if there’s a blog where you as a trainer can introduce some tips, so say for instance, every week or two, you do a tips Thursday or tips Tuesday or whatnot and introduce or post a tip for them to be utilizing the system. That would be, that would be great also. And another thing as well, remember remember that with these videos, we have to have somewhere to store them, right? And so one thing that I do a couple things that I suggest finding a mutual place where we can store the videos via your, the L M s or maybe it’s a site that is open where you can store those, those videos, a screen share videos that could be helpful as well. Um And also I’m not sure if it’s possible, but depending on your agency, if your company has a, a, a, a company, youtube, see if it’s possible where you can record the screen of some trainings, just making sure that it’s not any confidential information on the screen. But see if we can store it on there. And remember too that the videos should be between 3 to 6 minutes if that’s not possible. 20 minutes or less, but the sweet spot is 3 to 6 minutes.

[00:19:19.53] spk_1:
Yes. Um What kinds of you already had your session? I did. What kinds of, what kinds of questions were you

[00:20:21.73] spk_2:
getting? Yeah. So I got a couple questions. One question that we got was for the baby boomers and for the um traditionalists if they are in this um in the classroom and um we cannot implement in person trainings, how do we teach them? What’s the best way? And so one thing that I really enjoy doing, especially with training software is for those generations, I really like to do one on one training. I love to do one on one training. And so what I offer them is let’s meet one on one now in my um in my work experience, we always use teams. And so, and I’ve also um I use some others too, but mainly teams, but let’s go ahead and share your screen. And what I like for them to do also is for them to drive the training. So I don’t, I always prefer if the learners, no matter what the generation is, if the learners will share their screen and, and drive and I will teach them as they practice. Dr

[00:20:32.68] spk_1:
meaning what they decide what the topics

[00:21:54.58] spk_2:
are, training, training agenda. Yes, we have a training agenda. Exactly. So let’s say for instance, I am teaching um a staff member at a local shelter how to check a client into a bed using a particular software. What I’m going to do as the trainer, if this is their first day, I’m going to ask them to log into the system. Be it the live system or a training system somewhere? They can mess up in and practice or whatnot and share their screen. I’ll give them a login, share their screen and I will teach them. All right. This is where you go to enter in the client’s name. Okay, go ahead and do that. Alright. Next, we’re going to click on such and such. Okay, go ahead and do that. Um And so that’s what I mean by driving. So letting them um letting them navigate and, and play around and see what it feels like also I do enjoy and I do suggest rather having step by step guides like I’ve mentioned before. But if your agency does not have that or you don’t have time to create it or whatnot, because we do know that a lot of nonprofits, they have a smaller staff and such or, you know, smaller department. So that’s okay. Make sure you give your learners no matter what the generation time to write notes, um write notes during the trainings. And so make sure that, you know, you’re taking your time and and can write, allowing them to write some notes that that is a huge tip.

[00:22:06.64] spk_1:
Any other valuable questions you got? Oh,

[00:23:01.81] spk_2:
yeah, let’s see here. I did have a question about um oh, confidential information. Um Someone asked me a question about um confidential information and sharing, not sharing the confidential information. But what if it is a part of the new software? Let’s say that it is an electronic health health record that your agency is in implementing. And so one of my suggestions is to just ensure that the company that, you know, the company’s policies and what can be shared during training and what should be only shared, you know, in, in the real world. And so that, that is um that is huge. Someone said that oftentimes that is the question, should we be sharing this or whatnot? So that’s my suggestion that just look at your company’s policies as far as the training or if y’all don’t have that, um, go ahead and implement something, what should be shared during these trainings, what can be shared or if we need to go ahead and make up some dummy data

[00:23:09.39] spk_1:
beforehand, dummy database.

[00:23:12.76] spk_2:
Exactly. And then sometimes with some databases, um if there’s not a dummy database, maybe that we can make up some data in the live one and just delete it. It just depends

[00:23:25.57] spk_1:
or something. Exactly.

[00:23:29.61] spk_2:
Exactly. Yeah. So that’s part of the pre planning process.

[00:23:34.53] spk_1:
You were going to have folks practice designing strategies. Now, how did you, we can’t practice here but how did you set folks up to? It was

[00:24:37.91] spk_2:
great. Yeah. So what I went ahead and did, I created five different scenarios of agency that are implementing a training, a tech training. And so what we did is we went around the room and we split up the individuals and um they went ahead and I created a pre created objectives for the scenarios for the, for the training plan and they put in place some activities for them. And then also that could be um that could be used to teach the information and then a skills check activity. So how can we ensure that the learner has um understands the information? And so it went really well. And then after that, after um after the groups, we probably spent 15, 18 minutes or so and then the various groups went around and shared with the entire um and with the entire class, their ideas one or two minutes, but they gave us some um some fresh ideas that they have utilized in the past. And then, um as they, as they were working in the team, how they brainstormed then went really well. Now

[00:24:57.73] spk_1:
skills check. Sounds to me like a euphemism for test.

[00:25:26.15] spk_2:
Yeah. Well, it doesn’t have to be though. It does not have to be a quiz. It could be say that that task sheet that I was telling you about earlier, do this, do this and then once you finish these tasks, send me say the client number or the client I D and I will check it out. I’ll check it out before you get access to the life site. I really like to do that or it could be um just do this worksheet and go ahead and write down the responses oftentimes to with these skills checks. They don’t need to turn them into, you know, if you want them to and that could be an evaluation part or evaluation strategy for you as a trainer to make sure, okay, our folks really learning what they need to learn but sometimes it’s a way for them to just practice. Mm hmm.

[00:25:47.36] spk_1:
What did you learn in your session? You know?

[00:25:51.06] spk_2:
Yeah. That’s a good question.

[00:25:52.91] spk_1:
I finally 23 minutes in decent question comes out of this guy. I

[00:28:21.56] spk_2:
love it. No. Um So what did you take away? Yeah, my takeaway was that I really through that activity of the scenarios and then creating a training plan. I actually came, came away and walked away with some good ideas, um, that I could actually use in the workplace or share with others. And, yeah. So, um, let’s see here. Oh, one particular group they stated that they would have a hybrid training, so to meet the needs of all of the generations, they would introduce a hybrid training instead. So virtual for some and then in person for others um that’ll be really helpful. Also making sure that we have a step by step guides um available. That is really good. Um I did have if I could go back to the one question that you stated about um about the questions that some folks asked. So one thing that someone came up to me afterwards, they stated that they work for um they work for Salesforce and they train um the Salesforce Salesforce software with different agencies and because sales force can be so customizable, she was wanting to know what are some suggestions or what is a suggestion that you have for the step by step guide piece, especially for some of the older generations or even the video piece also because sometimes you don’t want to create too many videos because the screens may change because it is customizable. And so um and I did ask her, I said, okay, Well, do you have relationships with these individuals? And she said, yeah, so, so she’s not just going in one day and then just leaving. So over time, I did encourage her to just get to know the learners, um try to figure out what their needs are and to create a video for that agency specifically for that agency that may be helpful. And then as the software changes, she may need to um recreate a video, but hopefully that will last a little bit for, you know, once they’ve been, you know, customize their screens have been customized a bit, but that is one suggestion. She said that was very helpful. Um So, you know, she may not, she said she didn’t have time to do the step by step right now guides. So that’s okay. Um But let’s see if we could do some videos and because the video should be 3 to 6 minutes. She said that maybe, oh, maybe I could do some short videos depending on the topic and go ahead and create those and share them with the agency. All

[00:28:50.26] spk_1:
right, Lauren. Um You want to leave us with some uplifting thoughts about, you know, why it’s important to be all inclusive in your training.

[00:29:29.53] spk_2:
It really is. Well, thank you and thank you for the opportunity. So this subject matter is very close to my heart. I really enjoy training and especially those of the older generation. Um No offense but baby Boomers and the traditionalists. Yeah, they’re actually my favorite generation to teach. And I think oftentimes as we’re thinking about technology, we sometimes leave out um, Gen Xers, baby boomers and the traditionalists and we sort of forget about those learning needs. Now. Um I did not share this and you might not, you might know, but I actually have a doctorate in curriculum and instruction and,

[00:29:37.18] spk_1:
yeah,

[00:29:57.86] spk_2:
that’s okay. And so, um so training and learning is just very close to my heart. So just remember that no matter what the generation is, um just please keep in mind their learning needs and that if they’re in the classroom, they might be forced to be in the classroom depending on their jobs. But they all have various learning needs and they have um they have value at the agency and we need to equip them with the tools to be successful. We really do. And so um so it’s just been, it’s been very, very good, it’s been a good experience and I really hope that folks can take some of this information and use it at their workplaces and in their communities, at

[00:30:53.57] spk_1:
the very, very least rages consciousness. You need to be aware, sensitive to the different values, the different learning styles, learning needs of everybody who’s in your workplace. Not just the folks who are new to the organization or not just the folks who are of a certain age of a certain age, of course, So raising the very bad, I mean, you’re going way beyond just consciousness raising, you have a lot of very good ideas too. But greater consciousness is

[00:31:14.33] spk_2:
absolutely. And one other thing if you don’t mind, the you brought up a good point in saying beyond the new user training, the initial training, remember that just because the users of any generation has completed, the new user training does not mean that they don’t need on going training. So we want to remember that and make that a part of the overall training plan for ongoing training.

[00:31:21.49] spk_1:
Our staff, absolutely, internal professional development. People want to feel supported otherwise, quite quick. Yes.

[00:31:29.61] spk_2:
Yes, absolutely.

[00:31:35.61] spk_1:
I would like to put something on the record that I am a very young 61 born, born in 1962. So very among the youngest of all the baby Boomers is me on the record. I love it. Dr Lauren Hopkins, Dr Lauren Hopkins. Thank you very

[00:31:48.43] spk_2:
much. Thank you. I appreciate it, tony. Thanks for having me. My

[00:32:03.59] spk_1:
pleasure. She is social impact consultant at prepared to impact LLC. And thank you for being with me for our 20 our 2023 nonprofit technology conference coverage where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.

[00:33:23.25] spk_0:
Mhm. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Hello, who can you share non profit radio with? Maybe it’s among your friends, your colleagues who on your board should listen at least who on your board. Would you like to have? Listen, first step is you gotta share the show with them or who did you used to work with that you’re still willing to talk to. Could you by chance mention non profit radio on your linkedin or Twitter Mastodon? I’d be grateful if you tag me. I will certainly give you a shout out. And I thank you very much for thinking about who you could share non profit radio with and then sharing non profit radio. Thanks very much. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load. More time here is goals aligned with technology.

[00:33:54.88] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know what that is? You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference that is hosted by N 10 and that we are in Denver, Colorado. We are hosted by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. And from Heller with me now is Jet Winders, Director of Sales at Heller Consulting Jet. Welcome to non profit

[00:34:00.76] spk_3:
radio. Thank you for having me, tony. Pleasure.

[00:34:04.57] spk_1:
Absolutely. Your session topic is how to align your nonprofit’s goals with technology. That’s right. Why is this an important session? Why do we need this?

[00:34:24.12] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, for so many organizations and certainly for tech enthusiasts at a conference like this, sometimes we geek out on the and want to jump straight to what system or what tool are we going to use? And it’s really important to step back and think about what is the goal of using that tool. So what is your nonprofits goals to even start with and then align that with the technology? Because the technology is always advancing something the organization is trying to do,

[00:34:52.20] spk_1:
right? The technology is advancing, presumably your mission certainly is stable. Your goals are going to evolve to achieve achieving that mission. But we need to align these moving parts basically.

[00:34:57.38] spk_3:
That’s right. You know, non profits, they spend a lot of time building strategic plans and they’ll outline, you know, what those North Star goals are and then what those specific levers they’re gonna pull, you know, whether that’s increasing fundraising or awareness or patient outcomes. Those are the goals that the technology is driving towards the goal is never let’s adopt a new tool just for the sake of doing it.

[00:35:22.22] spk_1:
So I’m taking from your, from your learning objectives, identifying technology strategies and how those affect software solution. So what kind of technology strategies are we talking

[00:36:13.40] spk_3:
about? Yeah, you know, sometimes we talk about uh organizations, you know, approach to technology, how do they adopt it? What type of relationship do they want to have with it? So for some organizations that might mean we want to be the most innovative in the field were okay taking risks if it’s going to allow us to be a first mover or advanced something or show the sector something they haven’t done before while others might be, you know, we have to be conservative with our dollars. We want to do something that’s tried and true. We want to do what is proven in the space already. And so we want to do what our peers are doing. That’s a totally different relationship with how you might approach technology and the tools you might adopt. And, and that is just, you know, sort of a philosophy that different organizations adopt that can have an impact on what technology they ultimately select.

[00:36:26.61] spk_1:
Okay. Have you done your session

[00:36:28.41] spk_3:
yet? No, it’s to, it’s on Thursday. Okay.

[00:36:31.23] spk_1:
So walk us through, how are you going through it with your in your session? How are you approaching this?

[00:37:30.18] spk_3:
Yeah. So for first, what I like to get organizations to imagine is that changing technology is actually part of a broader operational change within the organization. And whenever you change technology, uh your business processes also have to change along with that. And your people also have to change whether that’s simply training to use the new tools or it could be new roles and responsibilities based on those tools. And so you want to put in contact context, a technology change with the broader impact that it’s going to have to try to make that change. The other way. I like to get organizations to think about it is that, you know, the technology is always advancing those broader goals within the organization. And so we want you to think through the impact that you’re trying to make first and always be. So starting with that impact messaging rather than, you know, again, getting into the nitty gritty of what tools we’re gonna change in systems we’re gonna change. We need to be centering the impact that it’s going to have at the organization for us to actually sell and make that plan for what we’re gonna adopt and what tools we’re gonna move forward. Okay. So

[00:37:58.19] spk_1:
yeah, centering the impact, right? Not centering the tools we’re not focusing on, not focusing on the tools. Um What is there a method of you? I think you have a method of um assessing different options, information systems options. You say what, what’s, what’s that assessment part

[00:39:15.54] spk_3:
about? Yeah, we take folks through a roadmap methodology that starts with, you know, real strategic discovery to understand what organizations are trying to accomplish. Uh you know, get those specific requirements of what do these tools need to do? It’s not about tool functionality. It’s about what do staff actually need to be able to accomplish in their day to day rolls and then from those types of requirements, build out what you need these systems to accomplish for you. So what role will those technology systems play within the organization? And then only then start to put specific names to what those tools are and that’s where you might actually go out to the vendors at the conference to start to fill in. You know, we need a tool that’s going to do this for our organization. Well, let’s find what tool that is. And you know, the way technology has changed over the years, there’s so many options out there. You know, whether you’re going to take an approach that’s based on a platform and build and customize it to meet all those requirements, or if you’re going to try to find more highly special tools and uh take on the sort of integration requirements of using, you know, tools from different vendors. So there’s not one size fits all anymore of, I just need a tool that does X. You really have to think through that broader approach and put the pieces together and make sure it’s all gonna add up to, you know, those, those goals and outcomes you described at the very beginning.

[00:40:14.31] spk_1:
What about the difference between the like sort of the all inclusive, like like a black box solution or Salesforce versus smaller apps that do different things like accounts payable or there’s an accounts payable vendor behind me. Um Behind us, we’re in the same boat behind us. Um or something else does. You know, it is a fundraising CRM is if you’re, if you’re trying to center the goals, there’s, there’s, there’s one, there’s a one, one size fits all system like that really makes sense. Yeah. Well, one can it, I’m, yeah, that’s such a neophyte question. I don’t know.

[00:41:11.54] spk_3:
It’s, it’s a great question because you are centering the goals and then you also want to look at your organization’s relationship with technology. So that is that example I I shared about whether you’re an innovator or you want to do best practices. You know, these are sort of guiding principles on what your relationship is with technology. Another example might be, um we want to build up our own internal capacity to manage tools and systems with a strong I T and operations department where another organization might say we’re first and foremost fundraisers and program managers, and we’re going to leverage experts outside of our organization to manage our technology. So that’s two totally different relationships with technology. So when you start to decide on your own guiding principles at the organization on what your relationship with technology will be that can then help you answer that question of whether it makes sense to use a platform where you’re going to be responsible for maintaining the integrations and maintaining the customization, or we’re gonna look to a single vendor who’s gonna provide multiple tools in the ecosystem because we’re going to use them as our experts and, and not keep that internal expertise.

[00:41:40.23] spk_1:
Is there a case study or story that you can share?

[00:42:06.58] spk_3:
Yeah, tomorrow, I’ll be highlighting, you know, three different examples of organizations that we worked with and, and took them through this process. And so you know, for one organization, uh they were really focusing on having tools that were easy for their users to use. They needed to look across the organization to a platform that could support five different departments within the organization. Um And they were prepared to take on managing that platform but didn’t want to build it all out from scratch. And so that organization chose salesforce as a solution that had built some of the purpose built mission tools that they needed on their platform already working with another organization on the

[00:42:42.44] spk_1:
salesforce. Absolutely. What kind of outcomes did they see that? You think they would not have, they would not have gained if they had done is the way it’s typically done or, you know, focused on focusing on the technology instead of their mission and goals.

[00:43:06.24] spk_3:
Yeah, I think the approach that they might have taken that I, in my opinion would have been a mistake would be to look at each of these departments in the organization individually. So they’d be looking at uh you know, their programs and uh mission support separately from fun raising separately from finance. They might have each submitted an RFP focused on what are the requirements for each of that department? And they might have chosen different systems based on in a vacuum, what looked best for that department and then none of it would work together and I T would never be able to support it. They never get any good analysis of how information is actually flowing within the organization?

[00:43:30.24] spk_1:
Alright, I kept you from another

[00:43:59.59] spk_3:
story. Well, yeah. Well, in uh in contrast, another organization really was looking at efficiency, you know, they were in that state of having different systems within each of the departments and their I T department recognized that they couldn’t support the different systems that had been chosen independently by different departments. And so they really focused on having a centralized I T structure that could manage and develop solutions on behalf of all of these different departments. They chose Microsoft as a platform because it was an extension of expertise that they already had already using Microsoft in some areas of the organization and then building on that. So they have a core competency now as an organization on Microsoft and are able to hire for those roles and maintain solutions across the organization that are sharing from that platform.

[00:44:49.16] spk_1:
If you’re centering your goals, there’s a lot of organizational introspection that’s got to happen first. So are you, are you looking to your strategic plan? I guess if, if you’ve got one that’s current, I mean, how does this, how does this exercise take place before you start talking about technology

[00:44:49.81] spk_3:
solutions? That’s right. You know, when and where

[00:44:52.24] spk_1:
also it’s c suite conversations. Is it down at the user level? You know, so please wear also. Yeah,

[00:45:30.76] spk_3:
absolutely. You know, when we start working with clients, it’s amazing how much work has usually already been put into defining those types of broader organizational, you know, goals, you know what those strategic plans are, those are often already, you know, their year three of a 10 year strategic plan and they may or may not be on track to achieve some of those lofty goals that got put out there. So, you know, technology is really downstream to support those goals. And we’re often, you know, when we’re working with somebody in operations or an I T kind of forcing them to dig up that, that document and, and confirm like this is still the path the organization is, is on, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish so that we can put our recommendations in context of what the whole organization is doing.

[00:45:52.09] spk_1:
Okay. Um And you had a third story.

[00:46:31.72] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, you know, I I shared uh an example of a Salesforce platform and Microsoft platform. We worked with another organization that actually left Salesforce, um really recognized that managing that platform was too much for the organization. They did not want to keep the in house staff to manage that. Uh They wanted to focus on fundraising, but, you know, didn’t really have the internal capacity to, you know, select apps or integrate with, you know, other online tools. And so they actually went to a purpose built solution, they went to virtuous that happened to have a lot of, you know, features and functionality out of the box for them with an easy on boarding process and a lot less ongoing maintenance and cost for them in the long run. And so, uh, there’s no, you know, perfect solution for everybody out there. It’s really about aligning what you need, you know, to work with and the tool and, and finding what’s going to be the right fit for you.

[00:46:57.27] spk_1:
You have some recommendations about evaluating different uh solutions that you might have, you might identify. Okay, they fit your, your, your stated goals. How do we make the, make the decision?

[00:47:28.65] spk_3:
Yeah. Well, one thing I discourage folks from doing is focusing on the old demo with organizations. You know, when we talk with folks, that’s almost the first things that they go to, you know, they wanna see demos of a bunch of different products and the demos only offer a limited insight into some of the usability, you know, how user friendly something might be. Uh people are flying through the

[00:47:33.69] spk_1:
screen, they could never replicate it, you could never replicate it five minutes after it was shown to you.

[00:48:15.84] spk_3:
That’s right. It doesn’t give you the full perspective. And so, you know, what we really encourage folks to think through, you know, once you’ve done that sort of identifying your goals, understanding what types of tools might be appropriate based on how you want to approach and use technology, then, you know, actually identify systems and platforms that could meet those goals. Sometimes there’s only one or maybe sometimes there’s one or two with big contrasts between them. You can actually do a lot more groundwork and understanding whether those are going to be a fit for you or not before you actually see the product, seeing the product is just that kind of final confirmation to see how it works and get a little more familiar. So how do you do

[00:48:22.87] spk_1:
this groundwork in your evaluation? How do you, yeah, what do you do before the

[00:49:07.82] spk_3:
demo? Yeah. So from, from your discovery effort and developing the requirements, the critical step is prioritizing those requirements against the goal. So you know, when you ask people what they need or what they want to be able to do, you’ll hear tons and tons of different things. And so the real critical period is prioritization of what is going to be mission critical for that fundraising strategy. That’s gonna get you double fundraising in three years or what’s that critical requirement? That’s gonna allow you to analyze whether, you know, multiple, you know, whether one of your program participants is actually participating in three programs so that you can actually see, see that rather than it being siloed data in separate program databases. So prioritizing what’s critical for you allows you to then look at different technology approaches and systems and narrow them down before you ever get to the demos. What

[00:49:24.98] spk_1:
else do you have planned for your audience tomorrow that we haven’t talked about yet.

[00:49:59.80] spk_3:
Yeah. You know, the last exercise I’ll talk folks through um is one way to, to map out your systems in sort of a pre work to any technology selection is to track what data is coming in to the organization where that data is stored, how it’s being used by different individuals and what other data folks would want and need. You know, sometimes a mistake that we see organizations make is they just think all data is good. We want to capture as much of it as possible, but that’s actually not the case. You really want to understand what data you’re already getting and where it is, but also what data you need to make critical decisions and who needs to use it. And when, because having that kind of map of where your data is, how you’re going to use it and what you need is really a lens that we can use to look at these technology systems of whether it’s going to support that or not.

[00:50:25.97] spk_1:
Okay. Anything else planned for tomorrow? I don’t know what you’re holding out on nonprofit radio listeners. I think we’re

[00:50:33.15] spk_3:
gonna talk about tomorrow. I think you’ve got the highlights for sure.

[00:50:47.12] spk_1:
Okay. Okay. These Jet Winders, Director of Sales the hell are consulting, which is our 23 N T C sponsor technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Jet. Thank you

[00:50:52.14] spk_3:
very much. Thank you, Tony Blair. My

[00:50:54.11] spk_1:
pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C 2023 nonprofit technology conference

[00:51:38.77] spk_0:
next week, equitable project management and make time for professional development. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Check out donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff.

[00:51:41.05] spk_1:
The shows social media is by Susan Chavez

[00:51:43.71] spk_0:
Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by

[00:51:49.46] spk_1:
Scott Stein. Thank you for that

[00:52:00.34] spk_0:
affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for January 30, 2023: Spend Wisely As You Buy

 

Kumar KannanSpend Wisely As You Buy

Let’s talk procurement. Odds are you can save big if you shop smartly. Consolidation. Group Purchasing Organizations. Negotiating. Payment terms. Warranty terms. These will all save you money. Kumar Kannan, from Procural LLC, educates us.

 

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We’re the #1 Podcast for Nonprofits, With 13,000+ Weekly Listeners

Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:01:50.34] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’ve come down with Treacle. Oh my itis if you strangled me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, spend wisely as you buy, let’s talk procurement odds are you can save big if you shop smartly consolidation group purchasing organizations negotiating payment terms, warranty terms these will all save you money Kumar cannon from procuring LLC educates us on tony steak too. I’m grateful. It’s a big pleasure to welcome Kumar con into non profit radio he is principal of procuring LLC. He has 30 years of global leadership experience in sourcing and procurement. He spent 16 years at Owens corning where he managed an annual spend of $900 million in categories such as I. T. Marketing HR and finance Kumar also led IT sourcing at American Airlines for eight years. The company is at procure all services dot com and he’s taken in K A N N A N at procuring services dot com Kumar Welcome to nonprofit radio

[00:01:53.21] spk_1:
thank you, Tony, very happy to be here.

[00:02:24.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure to have you. So let’s talk procurement. Uh you’ve you’ve you’ve spent a lot of money over 30 years but I see it’s it’s your job to spend other people’s money wisely wisely. Right carefully thoughtfully. All right, so what do you think? Generally because we have plenty of time together high level what do you think nonprofits could be smarter about buying wise

[00:03:54.60] spk_1:
I think I’ll speak generally to that tony Um, companies tend to not place in my view as much focus on sourcing and procuring smartly as they could. Often it’s an afterthought I think in many companies and, and nonprofits included in that their core business is their focus. And so this almost becomes an afterthought. But if you step back, Um, in nonprofits, 25-30% of their revenues is spent on buying things and services in manufacturing type of companies that can go up to 60%. So if you’re looking at a 500 million or a billion or a $5 billion dollar organization, that is a huge amount of money. Um, so it just makes a lot of sense to approach this in a structured fashion with the right talent, the right skill sets and right experience so that you’re making sure that you are not spending more than your shirt and that you’re not leaving money on the table because every dollar saved in procurement goes to the bottom line to either return to your shareholders or to use it in your projects and, and programs. All

[00:04:39.03] spk_0:
Right now, our folks are most likely not at the billion dollar spend level or even billion dollar annual revenue level. Uh, you know, we have lots of folks who have annual revenues, annual budgets. Let’s talk about annual budgets in the low to mid-6 figures. So, but your point of course, well taken, you know, they’re still spending money on buying. You said 25-30%. Um They’re still buying things, they gotta buy things, least things they are terms associated with all these purchases and and we could uh we could be doing a little savvy er and and as you say of course putting money to the adding money to the bottom line. So the first thing I want to talk about is something dear to me because professional fundraising relationships, you know, people don’t think of this in terms of buying, you know, I need, I need a case of paper, I’m gonna run to the staples or I’m just gonna click and you click and buy and I’ll have it in a couple of days.

[00:04:58.13] spk_1:
Uh talk

[00:04:59.90] spk_0:
to me about relationships with, with your your vendors, how, how this is beneficial, how to build them up, why not just buy it as you need it, help us out with relationships.

[00:06:36.45] spk_1:
Sure. And that’s that’s a really great you know, starting point on sourcing and procurement because it’s one of the things that even a lot of mature social organizations don’t necessarily focus on and I think having strong relationships adds a lot of value. Um The now you’ve got to be a little careful obviously about spreading yourself thin, so you want to identify who are the key suppliers with whom you want to invest that time and effort to build a relationship. These are typically suppliers that are providing either services or commodities that are core to what you are producing or delivering to other people to your customers, right? And managing those relationships is is not different than frankly managing good relationships even within your company. So when you run into supply chain constraints, when you run into, you know, inflationary markets, you can depend on your supplier because of your relationship to be able to put you on the top of their list versus a purely transactional sort of relationship. So when you look at your entire supplier landscape, what I generally recommend doing is identify that go with that 80 20 rule and identify maybe your top 10, 15, 20 depending on how many, how many suppliers you have any supply base as your strategic or constraint kind of suppliers

[00:07:04.00] spk_0:
and for a lot for a lot of our listeners that maybe just five, you know that maybe there maybe 10 vendors overall and they can identify three or five where they’re spending, You know, I guess you’re spending 80% of your money on with 20% of your vendors, right?

[00:07:51.22] spk_1:
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And you want to build a relationship with them, recognize that the supplier, sailors guides have a great visibility into your organization right there there to sell you stuff, right? But they’re also bringing their expertise and knowledge in the products and services they’re selling to you. So by having a good relationship, I like to say you’re kind of creating a disproportionate mindshare from the supplier, because you can use the suppliers, you can leverage suppliers expertise to create value for your end customers. And that’s an area that, that many many companies do not take advantage of. And I’m a big proponent of building strong supplier relationships because they bring a lot to the table, right? I may not have to invest in expertise. I could depend on the supplier to bring that to the table.

[00:09:19.34] spk_0:
Let’s, let’s make this concrete with an example. Let’s take a let’s take a soup kitchen in a, in a food bank. So food is their primary expense. Maybe aside from labor, we’re putting, we’re putting labor costs aside. I’m sure they have a lot of volunteers in this hypothetical organization, but you know, labor may still be, but in terms of what they’re procuring from the outside, let’s say it’s, you know, it’s, it’s food, there’s grocery items produce, which they have spoilage issues. Um, and let’s say they have some, uh, they might have some trucks to maybe pick up food. They might have relationships with some, some supermarkets, some restaurants that they pick up food on, you know, probably daily basis. So maybe gas, gas insurance on the trucks, maintenance on the trucks, you know, those may, So let’s say food, gas, maintenance, those are there in this organization. There’s are there three top vendors with food being the predominant one, the number one, what, what can I expect from my my grocery and and produce and dairy suppliers that vendors that they can, they can help me with.

[00:09:53.30] spk_1:
Sure. Sure. So if you think about food, uh think about a situation where your fragment of your food purchase amongst a lot of different suppliers, right? And you’re approaching it transactional e then you are exposed to kind of whatever the pricing is. If the food is, if that particular sort of food is available with that supplier, he or she is gonna decide who they want to sell it to, right versus if you have a relationship and you’ve consolidated this bank one, consolidating the spend leads to lower prices because now you have volumes whatever that volume, maybe maybe $100,000 right? Versus splitting it between 10 suppliers and spending 10,000 with each and then not known.

[00:11:06.48] spk_0:
So even if even if some of the items that we buy frequently are more expensive with with one vendor, it’s still better. I’m not saying they’re expensive on their most expensive on everything, but you know, it’s maybe some key items, you know, maybe bread is more expensive from them than somewhere else, but their dairy is lower and and and we overall they just seem like a better company or like maybe they’re more reliable or something. It’s better to consolidate and pay a little extra for the what I say for the bread but have a relationship versus bread being transactional from the baker down the street and the but the dairy comes from the farm of and and the produce is coming from uh from the U. S. Supply or you know whatever these big companies are. So it’s better, that’s what you’re saying. It’s better to consolidate even on some of the items you’re spending

[00:11:26.71] spk_1:
more exactly in total. You’ll be spending less and to you will be a bigger customer for that supplier when you call they’re going to pay attention to you right? And if you are connected well enough with them, they may be able to tell you, hey look this stuff is going to go up in price two weeks from now. We suggest you place the order right now the timing of the order can have right

[00:11:32.70] spk_0:
not right. They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna inform all their customers.

[00:11:36.78] spk_1:
They

[00:11:37.18] spk_0:
may have 1000 customers. They’re not going to inform all their customers. Their prices may go up in a couple of weeks

[00:11:42.30] spk_1:
or

[00:11:47.16] spk_0:
they’ve got something else coming. You know, they see a shortage coming in something that you buy often they’re not gonna be able to write, they’re gonna do that with the folks, they have relationship with who are their their better customers, they’re bigger customers

[00:11:58.91] spk_1:
right? And they may show up in time when you when you actually need something urgently they may actually go out of their way to deliver that to you quicker faster, cheaper.

[00:12:03.22] spk_0:
Yes you get you get favor right? You’ll get favors. Okay,

[00:12:06.98] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:12:23.72] spk_0:
relationships and so should we, you know, like should we try to have meetings, you know, instead of doing this all online ordering and face? Well, you’re not going to build a relationship through online clicking and shipping, but instead of just phone, uh or you know, probably phone with most vendors. Should we, should we have meetings? I mean get meet face to face. Well, you know, when, when you’re in town, please come by things like that.

[00:13:17.82] spk_1:
Sure. I mean, you can, you can get as sophisticated as you want or you can keep it simple but absolutely having that face to face, meeting that connection with your supplier helps a lot because always putting a name and a face together, meeting with them that forms a bond, you know, and people ultimately want to work with people, right? If I’m just a phone call or I’m a website, who cares? Right. Why would, why would you go out of the way to interact with me if you don’t know me at all? However, if you and I meet for coffee every now and then we could discuss business then that’s the objective, Right? I could be talking to you in those meetings about how my, I’ve spent with you, What are the kinds of things I’m buying and you may come back and say, hey look here are some alternative commodities that are coming down the road that might be better suited for your needs. They may be priced less. So you get an insight into things that otherwise would not be available if you treat it as just a transactional purchase.

[00:14:00.90] spk_0:
And again this is you know this is your top, your top spend vendors now, this is not every vendor, this is your top three maybe or so something like that, where you see your spending the bulk of your money. Alright, the relationships and you know what you just said, we could have been talking about fundraising, we could just as easily been talking about fundraising relationships, what you just said in the last minute or so. Um Alright, relationships. So that leads to and you know we were talking about consolidating, consolidating around the vendors that

[00:14:09.30] spk_1:
are that

[00:14:10.51] spk_0:
are I guess. Well how do you, I suppose we are, let me ask you this suppose we are pretty fractured in our in our buying of food, how do we pick which vendor to consolidate around?

[00:15:48.57] spk_1:
I think first you want to get a view into watch your supplier landscape. So who are you buying things from and how much are you buying and what are you buying? Right. And let’s say you talk about you pick a particular category and typically we categorize these categories for each of the different types of spend that big categories. Right? So food gas, maybe within food, you may have categories like you know there could be meat, there could be a vegetable, there could be something else, Right? Just depends on how large your operation is and how you want to categorize that there isn’t a straight answer for that, but you have to figure out what’s appropriate for you. So you build that category and then look at who are the suppliers in that space. Typically, if you have never done a competitive bid before, we generally recommend go out and put out an RFP, which is like a request for proposal to say, look Mr MS supplier, this is the kind of product we want to buy, right? These are the specification, these are the deliveries that we need and this is what we think we’re going to be spending overall from a quantity perspective annually, we’d like you to bid on this. So you get bids from different suppliers, look at the bed, see what, what kind of suppliers this is. Call them and talk to them and pick one and contract with them on an annual basis,

[00:16:14.60] spk_0:
listeners, I just lost my internet, so tomorrow and I got cut off and so now you hear that my sound is not anywhere near as good as it was with my nice studio mic because now I’m on my phone, maybe our Kitchen and food bank could do an informal RFP like, you know, we we project spending $50,000 on and you know, uh you know over this, you know, like so much per month or you know, maybe we could do this in an email that is not as formal as a, as a full RFP.

[00:17:39.91] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely tony I mean, I, you know, I I don’t want people to be scared off by, you know, these jargon type of things like R, F, P S and R F Q and all, they can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Right. I mean just think about it. Just me, if you were to go to buy a car, you probably go to three dealerships and ask for quote, what you’re basically doing is an RFP you have in your mind, what kind of car you want, what specifications and you go and look for it, right, that’s exactly what an RFP is. But the only thing I suggest is just think about what it is you’re buying and to what, what are the characteristics that are important to you, right. How much you’re spending, maybe an idea of how that spend, you know, happens over the year. What are the kind of products you’re buying, What are the minimum requirements for those products? And I wanted to be absolutely, you know, one day old or I can live with a week old product, what does the deliveries need to be? You know, I need it yesterday or I can give you a week’s notice all those things, factor into the pricing that you receive. So if you sit and think about what exactly it is you want to buy and how you want to structure your spend. That’s an RFP, you could do it in one page or you can do it in 100 pages.

[00:18:15.89] spk_0:
Okay. Okay cool and that that car buying analogy is perfect. So you’re you’re right as you’re shopping around the three different dealerships, there’s your RFP. Okay. Very so long as consolidation you have, there’s something, well there’s something called group purchasing organizations or G. P. O. S. How can we, can we find these or do we create them ourselves or what what what what flesh this out for us?

[00:20:40.77] spk_1:
Okay so the G. P. O. S. Have been around for you know several decades. Uh They really started in the medical industry so small hospitals and clinics and all decided they didn’t have enough spend individually. So they like to get together and and combine their spend so then they have more power to negotiate and then go and talk to these big medical providers and put contracts in place with them. So GPS started in that space, they’ve expanded now into other areas like for example restaurant food supplies. There are several G. P. O. S. That cater to individual small restaurants. So if you started a restaurant you would go to one of these G. P. O. S. And sign up and become a member with them. Um early on in the early days they used to charge you a membership free. Now I believe many of them do not, right? And then you have access to their contracts and the prices they have negotiated now what you miss and that is you don’t have a direct one on one relationship necessarily with the supplier. However you have the choice, you have the ability to kind of take advantage of the G. P. O. S. Pricing and contractor. So for a lot of your spend again, if you apply the 80 20 rule as as a nonprofit you may say look 2080% of my spenders with these 10 suppliers and I want to have uh you know, direct relationships with them because they are extremely important to my uh to my services. However, the other 20% of the standard with like 500 suppliers, I would rather go to a GPO and just kind of pick up the best prices that they can offer. Right? So there are some G. P. O. S. Now, I believe the medical G. P. O. S are also expanding into non medical areas. Right? And then there are some G. P. O. S that cater only to, you know, the broader manufacturing and other service type of organizations. So nonprofits can certainly go and sign up for them. You can check them out on the website. I don’t want to necessarily endorse one or the other on the show because a lot of them have good services, they bring good capabilities to the table. They actually will help you consolidate your spend and actually analyze your spend to see how you’re doing, how, how you’re doing your spend and whether opportunities like to maybe make some changes in the way you buy things so you can, you can kind of rely on their expertise as well to take a look at your spend pie and see what’s the best way to structure it.

[00:23:50.55] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I am grateful, very grateful to the many people and companies and nonprofit agencies that are helping me to promote planned giving accelerator for the next class starting in March, lots of webinars and podcasts uh guest spots and I’m grateful and I have to shout them out, gotta gotta recognize them. They are sherry, Kwame, Taylor Lawrence paige known, I wish he’s pronounced his name pinon but he doesn’t Julia. Campbell non profit solutions, hurdle Callahan, nexus marketing brian saber at asking matters. We are for good podcast NATO National Association of Y M. C. A Development Officers A F P Long island new york chapter J Frost and Responsive non profit podcast. I’m thankful to all these folks for hosting me giving me an opportunity to meet their audiences, give them value of course, talking about planned giving and then have a chance to explain plan giving accelerator. If you are interested in plan giving accelerator, it’s all at planned giving accelerator dot com help you launch your planned giving That is Tony’s take two And I’m sorry about the sound issues this week. The delays and it’s slowed down and dragged out. It sounds like somebody’s stepping on my tongue. But thank you for listening through it. This week. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time. I love the book. Ooh, you gotta for spend wisely as you buy with Kumar cannon and maybe if we cannot find a GPO around what we’re procuring, uh, maybe we can partner with another. It could be anything, it could be a non non profit or could be a company in the, could be a company in your community or that you have a relationship with doesn’t have to be another nonprofit that you know, that they’re buying the same, the same, uh, goods that you’re buying the same food you’re buying. Maybe you can partner with them and, and negotiate, which we’re gonna get to negotiate better terms with a, with a common vendor when there’s, you’re, you’re buying more together than you are separately.

[00:24:06.09] spk_1:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, I would, I would also add to that and say, you know, think about your big donors, your big donors are probably sitting on some boards or some other companies that, you know, you’re going to them for donations. Why not go to them and say, Hey, look, you’re sitting on the board of Del. Why don’t you get me some good computers, you know, at a cheaper price or something like that. Right? I think you can access your your donor base to for that.

[00:24:56.81] spk_0:
Yeah. Very good. I’ll bet I’ll bet for board members people are hopefully they’re savvy and they’re they’re thinking that way but good, good, good to say it explicitly. Um And you know, in our this hypothetical food food banks and soup kitchen that I set up. Uh you know, one of the one of the things they were buying was insurance. So I just want to make the point that this this does not apply only to tangible goods but services to you. You can have you you should have relationships with your insurers.

[00:25:07.05] spk_1:
You

[00:25:07.78] spk_0:
can create your own GPO around insurance buying.

[00:25:11.67] spk_1:
Right?

[00:25:12.31] spk_0:
And this all applies to services as well as goods.

[00:25:25.57] spk_1:
Yes. I mean I think the point you make tuning on kind of uh several maybe, you know, nonprofits kind of coming together uh and maybe hiring even an advisory firm to help consolidate their spin. So you can even create an informal gpu you don’t need to put a formal GPO structural place and you can take advantage of consolidating your spin.

[00:25:42.88] spk_0:
Yes. All

[00:25:43.79] spk_1:
right.

[00:25:47.41] spk_0:
So let’s talk about negotiating and and you know, we’re gonna lump together I think

[00:25:50.08] spk_1:
uh

[00:25:51.46] spk_0:
you know, well

[00:25:52.52] spk_1:
you

[00:25:53.24] spk_0:
pricing and and payment terms and warranty terms these all these all fit together I think under negotiating. Um But let’s talk about just being comfortable

[00:26:05.45] spk_1:
you

[00:26:05.64] spk_0:
know getting comfortable talking about terms with

[00:26:09.87] spk_1:
the

[00:26:10.98] spk_0:
cos you’re spending money with

[00:27:15.89] spk_1:
right? Um And you know a lot of us are just not comfortable asking like you know and we tend to take the price is given right Especially if it’s a commodity type of item. You know who goes to negotiate Kroger or whole foods or wherever you do your grocery shopping right? But if you spend a significant amount of money I would say ask. And that’s one of the biggest things that holds people back. We just don’t ask just going and asking and saying look you know I’m willing to put this much of spend through your organization. What can you do for me? And you’ll be surprised at the benefits you get just by asking that question. At worst they’re gonna say no we can’t do it. But the chances are they will give you something of value. Um So I think it’s getting over that initial hurdle of asking. And uh if you do that you know you can probably get a whole lot of additional value. Whether it’s in in in in in the ability to return things if you don’t like it if you buy access whether it’s getting lower pricing whether it’s them storing stuff for you free of cost and delivering it when you need it. So you can get a lot of value just by asking.

[00:27:41.86] spk_0:
Excellent okay so yes don’t don’t be afraid like you said, you’re gonna be no worse off,

[00:27:48.58] spk_1:
yep. All

[00:27:50.87] spk_0:
right, so you just brought up some excellent terms, you know, people are not going to think of this. I don’t know, maybe maybe listeners are brighter than their lackluster host things like returns, return terms, storage,

[00:28:06.55] spk_1:
you know,

[00:28:37.24] spk_0:
we’re short on, we’re short on freezer space, you know, can you store for for 10 days we will pay for it. But can you hold it? I mean that those are I mean that’s a simple thing for uh A grocery or you know, a meat uh vendor to provide. I mean they probably have 10,000 square feet of storage space. So carve out a little bit for our for our side of beef for you know, for our whatever’s alright, alright, returns storage, okay. Uh let’s talk more, you know, pricing payment uh warranty warranty terms, help us understand what’s what we could be benefiting

[00:30:04.31] spk_1:
from. Sure payment terms, that’s a that’s a great you know, item of value that that you know, a good solid sourcing can open up and and frankly it’s It’s not that difficult to get better payment terms. A lot of people don’t just don’t actually see value when there is real value on there. The sense of think about this if you were paying for what you buy immediately versus paying in 60 days or 90 days. There’s real value in keeping that money for another 60 or 90 days, maybe you’re borrowing something from the bank. Right? Maybe your cash flow is, is not quite, you know, uniform and there are peaks and valleys. This helps you build up your working capital. And again in these cases I find that a lot of people are, don’t even think about going and asking the supplier to give them 60 day payment terms. Right? If you’re flush with cash, different story, you couldn’t care less. Maybe the cost of money to use zero, you just pay up. But even then I would say ask if you’re going to pay immediately, ask for a discount, Right? vs paying in 30 or 60 or 90 days.

[00:30:07.12] spk_0:
Yes, brilliant. Right. Right. Yeah. I think I’m certainly not thinking of when you talk about payment terms, I’m thinking of price, give us a discount but payment over time. Give us 60 days, 90 days and if we’re gonna pay immediately, give us give us a deeper discount. Yes.

[00:30:25.71] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. So you have

[00:30:27.96] spk_0:
like, you know,

[00:30:45.59] spk_1:
2%, for example, the terms like uh, 2% 30 net 60, which basically means, Hey, if I pay you within 30 days, I’ll take a reduction of 2% in the, in the price. Otherwise I’ll pay you in 60 days. You know, you can structure a lot of different kinds of payment terms. Keep it simple again, let’s not complicate it too much. Um, just say you’ll take a discount if you pay upfront. Otherwise you want that 60 payment terms. So you pay them after 60 days.

[00:31:07.56] spk_0:
Okay? You sound like a real insider would say uh 2% 30 net 60. All right, come on. You’re dealing with a savvy buyer here. Let’s, let’s talk about, let’s start.

[00:31:13.65] spk_1:
Let’s,

[00:31:14.46] spk_0:
Let’s talk about 2% 30 net 60. Come

[00:31:16.81] spk_1:
on. This

[00:31:18.77] spk_0:
is where we should be starting. Alright, alright. I’m an inside buyer now. Alright. Anything else about price or payment terms? Anything else in that in those categories?

[00:32:28.52] spk_1:
Yeah, I also recommend think about you may think you’ve negotiated the price and everybody goes back happy and then on the invoice show that you’ve got three additional items that it do it right. It could be um delivering, afraid they could be afraid of charge. Hey, fuel prices gone up. My transporter is now charging me a fuel surcharge. So I’m going to get it from you. So look for some of these hidden things and discuss it up front. That’s why having a good contract in place, health, You know, you want to be very clear what you’re finally gonna pay for that product. They’ll put handling child this child and that child and suddenly looked at your phone bill, you know, like 15 items they’ve added to it and who knows where that money goes and it ends up being 20% of your of your actual what you thought you were gonna pay and adds another 20% of it. Um So so being very clear about what are these additional items or making sure that your price reflects what you’re actually gonna pay. Plus maybe a sales tax. So make sure you know who’s gonna, you know who’s gonna, who’s gonna pay for the freight. Are there any handling charges um for

[00:32:49.23] spk_0:
for nonprofits or even their their sales tax exempt?

[00:32:53.46] spk_1:
Yes.

[00:32:54.85] spk_0:
So I mean that’s really not even something to negotiate. That’s just that’s just state law. You give them your I. R. S. Tax determination letter and they should not be charging you sales tax. So, but you know, you’re mentioning lots of other terms beyond beyond your sales tax. Just making the point that sales tax is just that’s a given.

[00:33:14.90] spk_1:
All

[00:33:21.77] spk_0:
right. These are excellent. Come are great insights, great insights. Um uh warranty, let’s talk about warranty terms,

[00:35:27.37] spk_1:
sure warranties, you know, very from product to product. Sometimes. Often the suppliers will will say, hey this is our standard warranty, right? You know, you buy a piece of software, they’ll say, you know, 90 day warranty, which means the 90 days you can return the product, But there’s a lot more that goes into this, right? So you would want to understand now in the case of things like software products, you know, people may say, you know, 90 days you can return the product, but we will give you a replacement. Like product, we’re not gonna refund your money, right? You need to understand that. That’s what is gonna happen right? If you want your money back, you’ve got to be very clear that the warranty is money back and then you have to be very clear about understanding what qualifies as a warranty, right? Is the product the fact that you open it and then realize it doesn’t work for you. They will typically water into their specifications. If your specifications are different from their specifications then guess what you’re stuck. It doesn’t meet your specifications. So again, it goes back to kind of that whole RFP kind of question. Think about what it is you want to buy and what’s important to you, right? And you can negotiate warranty terms. If you’re able to consolidate and have a large enough spend, if you walk in and say, hey I just want this For you know $100. They’re probably not gonna negotiate warranty with you and you don’t want to spend your time doing that either. But if you’re gonna spend $100,000, you probably want to want to negotiate good warranty terms and understand when warranty kicks in and if warranty kicks in, what’s the remedy, right? Do you want your money back? You want them to replace it with another product and if they replace it with another product, you want to make sure that that product works. So think about warranty as something that gives you protection um that what you are wanting to buy is actually delivered to you.

[00:35:34.76] spk_0:
Awesome, awesome. What else? I don’t want to let you go

[00:35:38.78] spk_1:
yet. What

[00:35:40.09] spk_0:
what else can we talk about buying wise that that I haven’t asked you about,

[00:36:50.94] spk_1:
I think when you talk about, I like to, I like to say strategic sourcing and within that I’d like to talk about again, we talked about supplier relationships and management, supplier relationships with more than just meeting people and getting to know that it’s understanding how they’re actually performing in your environment, which means kind of having the data to understand your spend. You know if they were delayed, if they were late deliveries, if they were spoiled goods, having that data to have a really robust conversation with your supplier and to make sure that that they performed to what you expect them to perform and if they don’t there could be penalties. So managing your suppliers performance can be a, can require a little bit of effort but it tells the supplier that you are serious about how they perform for it. So

[00:36:55.30] spk_0:
just by just by opening the conversation you’re you’re letting them know that you have standards that you expect them to meet.

[00:37:49.90] spk_1:
Yes, yes. And tracking those standards. So having data um the other thing that’s valuable now is using technology. So really the underpinnings of all these other strategic sourcing and you know, supply management, the underpinnings are really three things people process and technology, right? Having the people who have the skills to do this kind of work, having processes that are repeatable and not just ad hoc so that everybody knows how this process works and frankly having good technology and today there’s a lot of technology available that can at least automate and make life easier for the people who are doing this kind of work right. There are simple subscription software that can help you do your sourcing much more efficiently, that can make your organization look a lot more professional when you’re going to suppliers and that can help that can provide the data for you to analyze and look at what your spend looks like. A lot of cases. I find people don’t even know what that actually looks like,

[00:38:14.66] spk_0:
what this the technology. Uh are there any platforms that you can name that? Not necessarily endorse,

[00:38:23.16] spk_1:
but

[00:38:24.03] spk_0:
I’m not sure folks are familiar

[00:38:26.03] spk_1:
with

[00:38:30.11] spk_0:
procurement software applications.

[00:39:11.08] spk_1:
I would, there are, there are lots and lots of, you know, sourcing software available. tony What I recommend is just google for Gartner’s Magic quadrant. Gardner is is as you know, you know, this advisory firm consulting firm that does a lot of work in in in the technology space and they they publish a magic quadrant where they identify the top dozen 15 supplier technology suppliers and a whole plethora of different spaces and out of that you can actually pick and and and drill in and see, you know who those suppliers are, what are their strengths, What are their weaknesses. And then you can decide which three you want to talk to. So I would say start with that Gartner magic quadrant in the space in which you’re interested in uh in the technology that you’re interested in.

[00:39:48.38] spk_0:
Okay. The Magic Gartner’s magic quadrant. Alright. Um Alright leave us leave us with something else. This is incredible. You know, I don’t think people are thinking about this at all. I know sophisticated strategic sourcing which I almost put you in jargon jail for. But you were you flush you flushed it out so I didn’t feel you deserve to be sentenced to jargon jail.

[00:39:59.43] spk_1:
Uh

[00:40:22.93] spk_0:
You’re you’re you’re you’re you’re helping us. So we we we take these things in the cooperation we have a cooperation agreement. You’re kind of we flipped you we picked your brain uh We flipped you to a cooperating witness. So no no sentence. What else? Anything else? Anything else you can leave us with around the relationships or the consolidating or being

[00:40:26.90] spk_1:
strategic.

[00:40:28.54] spk_0:
All this negotiation that we talked about. What else can you leave us with?

[00:40:36.32] spk_1:
Um The thing that the one thing that I leave you with a couple of things that I would leave leave your

[00:40:43.19] spk_0:
is

[00:42:18.74] spk_1:
um focus on sourcing. Uh make sure that you’re actually paying attention to it because a lot of money could throw out the door and you don’t even know it number two. Uh as I mentioned earlier just to recap, look at sourcing as these, as strategic and as supplier management. Two big buckets. Strategic is what you buy, how you buy it from whom you buy. Supplier management is about once you’ve decided your supplier and you’re you, you know what you’re buying that the supplier performs the way you want them to perform. And the underpinnings of these are the kind of talent you have, the kind of processes you have and the kind of technologies you use. Think about this landscape and make sure that you have the talent available to focus on each of these areas. You don’t have to boil the ocean right pick on a couple of them consolidation to drive value negotiations. There are lots of great negotiation training courses available, develop your talent, you know, give them the skills tools and abilities to do the job more effectively for you. And I think at the end of the day you will find that it adds a lot of value. It streamlines your processes and you don’t have to run around with your hair on fire because of emergencies. Now those will happen. But you’ll be better positioned to manage them and having good relationships with your suppliers will again make it much easier for you to manage those ups and downs and emergencies that are bound to show up.

[00:42:49.99] spk_0:
Mark Cannon, He’s Kay Cannon, K K A N N A N at Procuring services dot com. The company is at procuring services dot com camara. Thank you very much for sharing all this expertise.

[00:43:04.82] spk_1:
Thank you for having me tony for the real pleasure.

[00:43:32.16] spk_0:
Thank you. Next week. Eric Sapperstein returns by popular demand. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyer Hawk shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by Scott’s tony Thank you for that information. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

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[00:00:02.84] spk_2:
Hello

[00:01:43.74] spk_1:
and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of tinnitus if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show. Strategic plan done now pay for it. It’s a common challenge. The strategic plan is ambitious, but there’s not enough revenue to fund all the future excitement. Sherry, Kwame Taylor returns to get to the root problems that are holding your nonprofit back from full revenue potential. She’s Ceo of KWAme Taylor LLC. I’m Tony’s take to holiday time off. We’re sponsored by turn to communications. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o What a pleasure to welcome Sherri Kwame Taylor back to nonprofit radio She’s Ceo of KWAme Taylor LLC. She works with nonprofit ceos and boards are struggling to secure the unrestricted revenue needed to fulfill the dreams in their strategic plans. Sure. He helps them reimagine their entire approach to revenue generation and reveals how they can break free from the limitations of traditional fundraising. Our consulting practice is at KWAme taylor dot com Sherry. Welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:01:46.14] spk_0:
tony How are you? I’m well, good. Thanks for having Yeah, Thanks for having me. I was excited to see this pop up on my calendar today.

[00:01:54.80] spk_1:
You weren’t planning for

[00:01:56.77] spk_0:
it for a week. I mean, yeah. As I worked all weekend long for my, for my content. Yes.

[00:02:01.75] spk_1:
You’ve been struggling at it, not struggling but you’ve been working on for weeks. Right?

[00:02:05.64] spk_0:
Yes, I’m so nervous.

[00:02:21.44] spk_1:
All right. So, so I outlined the problem in the introduction. But before we get to those root problems shouldn’t funding be a part of the strategic plan? So that the plan and its financing are considered together and not separately, ideally.

[00:03:27.14] spk_0:
You’re speaking my language already tony Yeah, it really should. But the problem is so many organizations come to me with a strategic plan that has all these amazing ideas, amazing next steps, you know, growing their programs and mission. But the strategic initiative kind of says we need more money or more major gifts or we should do more of these things. And so it actually, I find that it’s addressing more of the symptoms of an organization’s, who’s funding has maybe plateaus or maybe they just kind of raised the same amount of money every year. But oftentimes the funding problem and more times than not, it’s actually fixed at the root. And so yes, it should be included in there. And yes, it always is. But so often, uh, you know, I have a client now who, who’s brought me their strategic plan, it’s like we had this big growth, uh, initiative and like we just aren’t hitting it. And so the how do we do that is usually missing in the strategic plan.

[00:03:59.54] spk_1:
Okay, so all right. So if it’s addressed, it’s addressed little superficially. We’re not, we’re not we’re not getting to the root cause it’s kind of glossed over, we’ll increase our fundraising. Well, maybe maybe they identify a couple of initiatives, but you’re saying right, they’re not getting to the root problem. And so they’ve got this wonderful plan and a lot of excitement around it for the next 3-5 years but they’re not hitting their revenue targets, that they need to realize the true excitement of the, of the, of the outcomes.

[00:05:43.14] spk_0:
Absolutely. And so it’s a lot of, you know, more and more corporate sponsorships, more grants, more events, more appeals. Some of those are good things like don’t hear me say they aren’t, but we have to remember also, typically the board or leadership whose having a great amount of input in the strategic plan. They’re usually expert to something else. You know, they aren’t strategic fundraisers. Um, so, so they’re doing their absolute best. So sometimes we have to get the voice of outsiders. I know you would agree with me to come in and say, actually that’s not how that problem gets fixed. And so I so it’s a this is really, you know, the strategic plan, which is what we’re talking about today is is one part of it. And the kind of the cousin comment I would say coming to me and it’s really ties to this is um, you know, we have this budget, we want to grow the budget, but we’re always in the red were never raising enough. And so there’s this disconnect that, you know, frankly, I study and watched so closely in my practice and I’ve just really been able to see quickly, you know, what is the sticking point? Why is your funding platt Toad? Why is it another year in the red? And so we’re going to talk about these, these symptoms versus root cause because, uh, you know, my strongest clients these last few years have been the ones who said We’re kind of not going back to doing what we were doing pre 2020. We’re actually going to push ahead and, and, and do things differently. Run our businesses differently, solve the problem at the root so that we actually can have greater impact, which, gosh, I’m so thankful they’re doing that because there’s never been a time we’ve needed them more.

[00:06:20.94] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s always right. It’s always, it’s always the truth. I mean, it’s always the case. You know, always the case, especially with the pandemic, but beyond the pandemic, nonprofits take on causes and missions and goals that, that individuals can’t do that. Government isn’t suited for that. The corporate sector isn’t going to take on. In fact, a lot of times the corporate sector is antithetical to the, to the goals. Um, but non profits, you know, our, our, that sector is ideally suited for work of all different types and, and raising money to do it, but they’re not raising sufficient money. Um, so essentially, you know, you’re saying, you know, you can’t keep doing the same things and expect different outcomes.

[00:06:37.16] spk_0:
Yeah, I guess that’s

[00:06:40.04] spk_1:
it. I can get real problems.

[00:08:22.14] spk_0:
Yeah, I think that’s a great way to phrase that it’s, you know, in some of these symptoms of, of perhaps we’ve been kind of trying to do the same thing or, or trying to do more unless, right. Um, you know, a lot of these symptoms are our cash flows too tight because maybe our strategy is, yeah, we need more money, but it’s too restricted. Or maybe then if we’re not bringing in enough restrictive cash, were unable to grow the reserve, were unable to grand grow our endowment. Um, you know, the other thing we’re gonna talk a little bit about today is that never being able to justify overhead spend, Right? Like if I hear that, it’s like, I know fundraising situation that we need to fix so I want here, here’s what I’ll tell you. I asked on a weapon or I think it was last mid last week, I started with a question and frankly it probably sounded like a bit of a silly question on the webinar and what I asked was, do you need more money, does your nonprofit need more money now? I knew the answer to that, right? But typically it’s like, yeah, we need more money. That’s what our strategic plan says, but rarely does an organization just need more money. They need flexible money. They need unrestricted money to accomplish the things the initiatives that growth in their strategic plan. You’ve got to have money for overhead. And I find that that’s why a lot of times we can never fund the strategic plan is stated because we aren’t fundraising for unrestricted cash from a single source says you’re makers, meaning I can pick up the phone and talk to chris he crested sherry from, you know, and and those gifts are not from people who truly understand the need and actually want to give to every year. And that’s a very specific types of type of fundraising. We’ll unpack that today. But, but so often I’m finding that we’re not doing the fundraising things that are actually attracting those donors.

[00:09:02.04] spk_1:
All right. So let’s get to some of these root root problems. What, what, what, what can we talk about? What you just mentioned? We’re not attracting the right donors. You know, you’re concerned about attracting the right people. Talking to them about the right things about the true needs for overhead for endowment for growth. I should ask you where do you want to start with these root causes?

[00:10:15.84] spk_0:
Let’s start here. I’m going to address that once. Third, because here’s the thing. We always start with the fundraising issues, right? But that’s that’s actually like step three or four over here. So the biggest thing I want to talk about one of the most fun things, I guess I should say that I love talking about is this concept and frankly tony I wish I coined the phrase, but I didn’t, but it’s irrational frugality. I love that phrase, you know, I suffer from it rational frugality. And, and what I mean by that is, um, we have to start being comfortable if we’re gonna solve frankly some of the world’s and nations and states and communities most pressing issues we have to really ask ourselves, are we making $1,000 decisions and expecting giant results? Or are we making $10,000 decisions? $100,000 decisions? And so it costs money to raise money. We need to be spending more on overhead so that we can put more gasoline in the engine to raise more money for programs. And so often I see the handcuffs on organizations when we’re trying to make these big growth initiatives, but we haven’t taken the time to actually look at what does the spend need to be for us to actually reach those initiatives.

[00:10:29.84] spk_1:
Well, let’s let’s let’s let’s dispel the myth that overhead is bad because you’re talking about overhead, like investing in people you want to do more. Absolutely want to do more fundraising. You might very well need more fundraisers. Absolutely. That’s salary and benefits and other forms of compensation. So let’s get rid of this concern that overhead is bad,

[00:12:16.74] spk_0:
right? And so I hear you, you know, I kind of sometimes make these statements like, I’m not talking about scarcity anymore. We’re beyond that, you know, are sectors beyond that. But I gotta tell you it’s, it’s kind of playing out. I think in a different version or a greater version and this is what, you know, all size organizations. Uh, I think we’re seeing part of that in this great resignation. I know we could have a whole whole discussion today about that. But um, the, if you saw my actually, if you saw my screen right now on my computer, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an ORC chart looking five years out and it’s saying what is the spend we have to make, you know, parole to actually be raising the money. That’s in your strategic plan. What is the true math? And so it’s so often you’re so right comes in the, in the package of I’m expecting my one development director to be all, all of revenue, all of marketing, all of communications. Oh, and because you also do, you know, social media and so so often, I mean, I’m gonna be really frank here. So often the reason our strategic plans are not being funded or not, we’re not able to fund them is because that person is wearing, you know, the hats of four staff people. And so I know it feels like an investment. I know that spend feels scary, but when you run the numbers and then you have the right person on the bus. You make so much more money if you have to be comfortable with spending and investing in your organization to actually make those leaps and bounds that you want to.

[00:12:25.24] spk_1:
Alright, right person on the bus. You’re talking about the ceo are you talking about donors?

[00:13:44.04] spk_0:
Uh, in that context, I was talking about staff members, I was talking about, um, you know, oftentimes what we find and this is also why I love, you know, the sector that we work in. Maybe it’s a program person who, you know, was really great with the foundations when they were coming in. So now they found themselves over on the fundraising side and they’re awesome. It foundation grant request proposals, reporting maybe they’re good at planning an event, you know, good at telling the story of those that are impacted. But oftentimes they don’t have matric gift experience. They don’t know how to sit across the table with an investment level donor and lead them to an ASC secure their best gift. And so it’s the spend on the staff tony But I’d also say this great resignation, you know, buzz, we’re all talking about is also that, um, it’s the skills to equip the staff to do the things that actually attract the overhead monies that attract the flexible funding that attract unrestricted gifts that allow you to put gas in the engine. So there’s a disconnect on the skill set so often of who’s on the bus and, the types of fundraising an organization needs to be doing.

[00:15:29.04] spk_1:
All right. So, you know, we need to be honest with ourselves. Our boards are donors about what, what are true need is fund this ambitious strategic plan. And we’re deceiving ourselves if we’re thinking that the person that’s doing the, the marketing communications can now take on fundraising when we have, when we have an increased revenue plan because of the strategic plan. It’s just not, it’s not fair to the person. It’s not fair to the organization. It’s not fair to the cause that you’re, that you’re working toward your just not being honest with any of those things or any of those, any of those entities, people or, or the, or the cause itself, it’s time for a break. Turned to communications content creation. Do you need something written for you? Have you been thinking about a project that is gonna take hours? You just haven’t gotten to it. But it’s going to be valuable when it gets done. Turn to can help you. Like, I’m thinking white papers, research, case studies, They can write that stuff for you. They can learn about what it is you want to say, get to understand your work, your mission, even your values and incorporate that into the piece or the series that they do for you. So if you’ve got this big backburner project has been on your to do list and it involves writing turn to, can help you turn to communications because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o

[00:16:01.54] spk_0:
the second underlying root cause which you’ve so so nicely led me right into um, frankly would be this budget element, right? Like, uh, like you said, we have to be honest with ourselves of what the true need is and and not, well, let’s, let’s just budget and squeak by neck If we make more money, it’s gonna be great. But we actually need to have a plan of how would you fully finance your organization?

[00:16:02.67] spk_1:
Right. What does full financing look

[00:16:04.27] spk_0:
like? What it actually

[00:16:27.64] spk_1:
doesn’t look like? You know, a five or 8% increase in fundraising from, from the previous year that you could reasonably expect that one person to get. You know, it probably looks like something much much larger than that, which that one person just isn’t capable of doing so take off the shackles. Stop being, stop deceiving yourself and all those other entities that I named and the cause itself and and right. All

[00:16:32.03] spk_0:
right. Look, I love that you’re up on on my soapbox with you Tony to the funding. Well, because

[00:16:37.81] spk_1:
it’s deception. You know, you’re you’re you’re lying to yourself and and everybody else was important around you and to the cause that you’re that you’re working time self

[00:18:53.14] spk_0:
can I say something about this budgeting thing. I can’t because I love talking budgeting, which always surprises people when it’s like wait, I thought she was the fundraising person Like I am, but we gotta, that’s over here until you’re honest with yourself and you’ve actually created a true need space budget Not this week by right where you can sit down with someone and say, can I share with you? What are $3.6 million dollars need? Looks like this year. Honestly, even though maybe the board approved is a 3.4, but you know, you need a little bit more in reserve and you know, cash flow is tight. And you know, you know, you, you have some growth initiatives coming down the pipeline until you can honestly sit and say and explain to them. I’m talking top of the pyramid, right? The top, top level donors until you can explain to them what the true need is then and only then can your team, your fundraising team actually put a plan in place to hit that 3.6 in my, in my example. So so often people come to me, I mean I’d say more than not with their budgets. I always ask for the profit loss statement and it will say, well, yeah, we have a $5 million need In the income on that same budget will say 4.2. I don’t, I don’t know how we’re going to do it. Right. So you we have to have the plan to fully finance to fully balance The expense and the revenue. And I find that we spend 90% of our time and I’m going to talk on board a little bit here too. We’re spending 90% of our time approving the expenses and nit picking all the stamps and that we couldn’t ever do that. You know, our percentages scary, scary, scary. We’re not spending enough time on literally understanding what we need to be doing month by month. That actually reaches that number and then all of us leadership staff board aligning every hour. We do spend fundraising on those activities that gets you off the spin cycle that gets you onto the things that you need to start doing. So you can start securing more unrestricted cash and invest as flexibly as you need to into your strategic plan.

[00:19:06.44] spk_1:
Investment level. Yeah.

[00:19:08.32] spk_0:
Investment level.

[00:19:19.54] spk_1:
Let’s talk about another root issue, which is you, you, you just started to scratch at it not having investment level conversations with donors. Yeah, let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s just shout out what is one of those conversations look like? Who are we talking to?

[00:22:59.44] spk_0:
Sure, sure. So, you know, this is all about, I suppose the easiest way to say this is, this is about donor segmentation, right? And, and we’re busy. You know, we just said, we’re wearing, you know, 62 hats when we shouldn’t be. But so often I find that we are still approaching donors as a one size fits all. You know, the, my, my methodology, you’ve heard me say this many times tony when you had me on a number of different opportunities to to chat with you, I want everybody giving their best gift to the organization and I want them giving that gift every year. And so if $25 is that person’s best gift, that is remarkable and amazing and I want to serve them as such. But if someone’s giving you $25 and you see their name, you know, on an annual report or you’ve done some sleuth Google searching, it’s like, Oh my gosh, they’re giving $25,000 down the road. Well, we have some work to do. And so, so much of my work is helping teams understand what that investment level conversation looks like. And so I find so many people avoiding it because they’re so worried are we going to do it wrong? Um, you know, I don’t want to be that pushy salesperson, right? I don’t want to be begging or B B that used car salesman. But here’s the thing, you have to be able to sit down and share your plans, your strategic plan. You have to be able to share how you’re going to achieve those initiatives. And most of all you have to be able to articulate the financial need the organization has and way too often the development staff, maybe they don’t have access to it. Or perhaps they don’t understand it. They are not privy to All the numbers, we just walked through. And so I want my fundraisers if somebody has the ability to write 25 500K. I want them sitting down. Of course we’re telling stories. Of course we’re doing all the traditional, you know, helping them understand the crisis, all those things. But the one thing that major donors are dying to hear is about that, what I asked earlier, do you need the money? So I want you sitting down saying, can I share with you our our $3.6 million dollars need this year. Can you share with you? How we’re growing? But I share with you how we’re funded. Uh you know, I can share with you what your gift has done in the last few years and to sit at that table and know the answers to the financial questions that we really, really, really hope that they don’t ask in that meeting. What am I asking? Because those questions are actually indicators of what’s going to keep them from giving their best gift to your mission. And so when I see investment level conversation, I want one on one. You know, that looks like a lot like zoom still these days. Right? I want exclusive information. I want stakeholder language because why? These are people who have also probably business owners and entrepreneurs in the community. These are people who have also had to sit down and ask for investments. They had to sit down and answer the tough questions. So sit down and have that businessperson to businessperson conversation with them so that they really understand what a gift to your mission can do. And so often we default to, well let’s just send them the appeal. Let’s have the event. And I gotta tell you they’re not giving their best gift in those reaction, all types of ways.

[00:23:02.64] spk_1:
Let’s talk a little about a little bit of a tangent or something you just

[00:23:05.68] spk_0:
mentioned. Love a tangent.

[00:23:15.74] spk_1:
Uh, peer to peer soliciting. So maybe this doesn’t, this may not. This is a tangent from the root issues. We’ll get back to the root issues, but you want fundraisers to be talking to the, to their donors as peers say, say, say more about what we shouldn’t be doing and what we

[00:25:14.94] spk_0:
should. Yeah. This, this concept was taught to me by, by my coach and she, she had heard it from a Deborah Tannin who’s a researcher. And so it’s really this concept of um, knowing that the best version of yourself showing up in that donor meeting, it’s just you, you know what I mean by that is not some version of you who thinks they need to show up slick and I’m the fundraising sherry, not that person. It’s just, it’s just you. So when I say peer to peer mindset, I’m doing this on, on equal playing grounds here. Um, it’s really staying in that like, you know, tony Like when we have a conversation like, hey Tony, how’s it going? How’s your weekend really staying in that zone? Um, of course you’re being professional about it, but not turning into the, like I’ve got to get through all my stuff and I’ve got to get them to understand why they should give us the money. And you know, kind of, it almost turns into that, that pushy feeling, right? And that comes out of our mouth. The flip side of that is that, oh gosh, I don’t want to, I don’t know. I think it’s been too soon. I don’t want to appear like I’m begging. And so then our tone turns to, well, I don’t know if you could do it or I don’t know if you would do it. But I wondered if none of those tones that you heard give that donor confidence, you know exactly what you’re gonna do with that gift. And you can’t wait to come back and tell them how their gift has impacted lives and you are offering an amazing opportunity to them today. And so when we stay in this more neutral zone, uh, and I try to do with my own business too, right? Um, that’s when we build the best relationships and that’s when we have trusted relationships and we actually deeply know our donors, We haven’t forced it. That’s when you’re going to secure the best gifts for your organization’s because there’s a deep, deep relationship that’s been built. But too often tony we get in the way of that in our mindset and our, you know, all these, all these crazy things that come to play and in sales and fundraising often get get in the way. So there’s tons of mindset work.

[00:26:05.04] spk_1:
Alright, good. Thank you for that. I wanted I want to focus to understand what you’re thinking is there because there is there’s too much humility and uh huh um, confidence. So all right, let’s go. All right. So let’s go back to our, our root issues. So like we talked about, you know, being honest in investment level, growth planning, being invested. Being honest about what that looks like having these investment level conversations with your, your major donors. What’s another root issue to our failure to be able to fund our strategic

[00:27:03.84] spk_0:
plan, Good time. Right onto that. So then it’s that financing plan and I’ve alluded to this. But what I really mean by that is is everybody on the team aligning their hours with dollars. Right? And so I don’t, I don’t want to miss that because that is a huge part of what I do, helping organizations see what they need to stop doing So they can start doing more strategic fundraising. So in that, what do I mean by that? Well, um, in my, in my world, uh, I want your top 30 donors yielding between 50 and 75% of your overall revenue. And I want those gifts to be unrestricted, that’s where we’re pointing the compass compass. And so our time and our budget must be aligned with that on there, on the expense side, on the revenue side. Okay. And so therefore when,

[00:27:12.74] spk_1:
but I love even when you define what our goal is. Okay, so top 30 donors Funding 50-70% of annual revenue on an unrestricted basis,

[00:27:18.10] spk_0:
50-75%. And I,

[00:27:20.35] spk_1:
Oh yeah, you’re good, you’re good 70%. So now we’ve got something to focus on. So now you’re gonna help us align our time with that goal,

[00:27:52.94] spk_0:
right? And that number feels really scary for some people. You know, it’s like, wait, we don’t we don’t have those people, we don’t have major donors. But it’s equally, it’s equally a math equation as opposed to a random mindset I should say because then we say, well we need to be then spending our time on attracting those donors tony A lot of people come to me and say, how do I find major donors? How do I find people who would, who would give us larger

[00:27:59.73] spk_1:
gifts?

[00:30:26.14] spk_0:
I’m of the school of Are you doing the things that attract them? Are you having strategic level conversations with others who are among those donors? And saying this is what I’m looking for. We’re looking for people who are interested in this who have a passion for this and really are wanting to invest to changing X, Y and Z. Are you attracting donors? This shift from like finding to attract as it has been a game changer for a lot of my clients who, um, you know, there’s a lot of times that donors don’t understand you need the money. This is crazy because you’re like, well, we’re nonprofit. Who doesn’t understand we don’t need the money. But so often how we’re talking keeps donors from understanding we need the money. Right? And it might be, um, you know, it might be, oh gosh, I saw you. Uh, you know, wow, I’m on the Today Show or I saw that you got this giant, uh, you know, gift, I saw the press release or, or, um, it looks like you’re killing it over there, right? Because because maybe they’re seeing the results of maybe a government contract or, um, you know, all sorts of different things, but that’s why we have to be sitting and presenting the true need, um, and kind of making up that difference. But what I bring up the pyramid in the top 30 concept because so often when we, when we say, okay, Well this is our year strategic plans in place. We’re ready to grow. We default to a lot of the activities there in the bottom part of that pyramid, that bottom 25 percent. And again, I’ve been accused of saying like, you don’t like events and appeals and grant proposals. That’s not the truth. I love those things. But I don’t want them taking 100% of your team’s time? And I also don’t want them taking the board’s time. If your board member, if anyone is hearing this and has written a thing down, this is your thing to write down your, if your board member can give you one hour a month outside of the meetings on something, fashion it better be activities that are attracting the donors and the top part of the pyramid versus the bottom part. Right? Because we’ve got one hour of their time that’s extremely valuable information or it’s an asset to the organization. So we have to make sure we’re doing the things, um, that are leading our investment level donors to a deep understanding of our need. Then we got to ask him for the money. Sit and ask him for the money.

[00:31:13.84] spk_1:
I like this distinction finding versus attracting donors because finding sounds like you’re gonna walk up, you’re gonna stumble on them. Like I might find a beautiful shell on the, on the beach. I’ll find one. Uh, but, but what, what are you doing to attract these folks so that you don’t just stumble on them a couple of year, but you’re, you’re bringing them to the, to the organization. What more a little more about what the board can be doing in finding versus attracting or having these investment level conversations. Maybe some of the board members are the folks you’re having the conversations with aside from, aside from The board members who might be among your top 30 donors? What more can the board be doing to help with finding versus attracting and having these conversations with the right folks

[00:34:08.04] spk_0:
tony I kind of dialed up this conversation of, of roots and symptoms when I was preparing for a board training actually because who better on the team can have an influence on the organization’s comfort level with investing with spending with, with budgeting, uh, with fiduciary responsibility, who better than the board. Right? And so we have to, we have to make sure that they understand what the path is to the money and what the spend is to the money. And so so often I say, you know, I’ll ask the client or if we start working together, I’ll say, what’s the board’s involvement in budgeting as well. They, you kind of get it and approve it. And you know, I, I do reports every month, but that really means they’re looking at the expense and they actually don’t know how they will fully finance the organization, you know, hit a balanced budget or plus plus your reserve. You know, I always want to be cushioned with the reserve. They don’t know how we would fully finance organization and be, do not know what the team should be doing. And if they don’t know if the team should be doing, They don’t know what they should be doing. And so I want the board to deeply deeply understand that you just don’t need more money, but you need flexible money and then what are the things the board members should be doing that actually attracts those donors. And so often, I mean, you know, as you can imagine every, every board training I head into, it’s like don’t make me ask for money. So don’t make me, don’t make me sit and ask for money. I gotta tell you, I rarely have board members asked for money rarely for me. Board members. It’s introducing its networking. It’s educating, it’s connecting. It’s being open to saying, hey, I have been serving on the board of this amazing organization. They’re doing these, you know, before school literacy programs in our community. Are you ever interested in hearing about that? I mean, I’ve been astounded what that looks like. The bds. A rockstar. Could, could we set up a 15 minute coffee one of these mornings? You see, I stayed peer to peer right there. Do you see how it was? It’s not a script. Um, I would rather have all my board members doing that and then letting the equipped team lead that donor and serve that donor create a great donor experience for them. You know, of course the board member is going to be popping in maybe in thanking or popping in when, um, you know, there’s an opportunity to, to really cultivate, but, but we have to make sure that the board members are not spending all of our time on transactional fundraising events, appeals send me the name. Can you post this on facebook? I don’t want my board touching facebook like they can if they want, but I want them doing strategic activities that align their hours with dollars.

[00:37:07.93] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two holiday time off. Colin Powell died on October 18 and I saw on twitter someone I follow Glenn Kirshner, I was telling a story about what Colin Powell said to his employees at the state department when he was newly inaugurated because Glenn Kirshner used to repeat this to his team. So the story is that general Powell said If I come to your office at 6:30 PM and you are not at your desk I will consider you to be a wise person. Indeed. So thank you Glenn Kirshner, what’s Colin Powell saying he’s talking about work life balance. He doesn’t want folks in the office late all the more so holidays are coming up, take time, take time. I’m sure you’re gonna be with with folks right? But take time for yourself. Also take that holiday time to be with others and for yourself. Please don’t, don’t feel like I got to work that friday after. Thanksgiving how much is not going to get done if I don’t, if I don’t work that day, nobody’s gonna know two weeks later, it’s not going to matter. So please take take adequate time off. We’ve been under a lot of stress challenges For the past 18, 20 months, take time, please take time and, and nonprofit radio I’m going to do my part. No podcasts. You know, I don’t do shows between christmas and New Year’s. So plenty of time for holiday time off. Don’t even listen to podcasts. If they’re related to work at least you won’t have to listen to nonprofit radio I’m doing that much. I feel like I’m walking the walk however you do it. Please do it. Take sufficient time off around these holidays. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for strategic plan done now pay for it. When you say this, this alignment, does that mean? So if if we want 50-75% of our revenue to come from those top 30 donors, does that mean we should be spending 50 to 75% of the ceo Time on cultivating and soliciting these top 30 donors. Is that, is that the alignment you’re talking

[00:38:22.42] spk_0:
about? Somebody has to Tony. And I find that because the grant application, the event, the holiday appeal, those all have deadlines. We got to get the newsletter at the first month. Those all have deadlines. So I find that those way more than not take precedence over. You know, I really should be making, you know, doing some moves, management management on my top 30, top 50, top 100 donors. So if you’re not staffed accordingly, that time always gets pushed down. Right? Well, I’ll get to that tomorrow. I’ll get to it. And so it’s, it’s a discipline. I, you know, I always say if I, if I sold t shirts that say fundraising is discipline, it’s who is waking up in the morning and saying, what, what donors am I touching today? How am I serving them? Not in a slimy way. How are we getting? How we, how we educating them? How are we connecting them to the heart of our mission? How am I answering their questions for your men and major level donors? That is not accomplished through newsletter blasts through appeals through an annual report. They get in the mail through events.

[00:38:26.02] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s the one on 1.

[00:38:27.22] spk_0:
It’s the one on one. Yeah. And we’re avoiding that.

[00:39:06.62] spk_1:
I see that. I see that short shrift so often in planned giving because all those things you mentioned have they either have deadlines. If, if it’s, if it’s anything related to grants, uh, not only in terms of applying, but then reporting back when grants are successfully received and then, but, but everything else has a shorter, a shorter time span. You know, we gotta get the annual gifts in the fourth quarter. All right. So that we got, we got to get these, the major giving has to be, we gotta get these major gift conversations done. Everything is a is a quicker, a quicker, more, more imminent, more urgent need or deadline than planned giving you always get short

[00:39:14.59] spk_0:
shrift here. That to

[00:39:46.32] spk_1:
analogous to what you’re saying about having these donors, the strategic donor conversations. It’s easy to put them off because they’re not deadline oriented. Oh, I got, I got, you know, if you, if you want to be, if you wanna be a little cynical about it, I’ve got the excuse of this grant, this, this grant report to do by thursday. Well, alright, today’s monday. There’s my next four days putting that report together and then next, next Tuesday I’ve got, uh, an event. So we got to do the last minute planning for that Tuesday event, you know, and it’s that constant, you call it the spin cycle. I’m using your own,

[00:39:48.82] spk_0:
you can use it, take it

[00:40:05.91] spk_1:
around that constant spin cycle. It was like, uh, deadline oriented activities and you’re not doing the strategic longer term. But that’s where you want 53 quarters of percent after three quarters of a percent of, uh, half to three quarters of your revenue to come from.

[00:42:31.20] spk_0:
Yeah. And that, that totally, and that’s the stuff that takes time. It takes way longer than I wanted to. I’m the first to admit that. But when we’re looking out and going, why don’t I ever have the money? Well, we did it, we did another three year strategic plan. We’ll see if we have the money for this one too, that you have to make that fundamental shift in your model and your, in your mindset and your approach to revenue generation. Um this, I will tell you when I was on your radio show, Gosh, time is so weird right now. I couldn’t even tell you when it was last time. Um, but uh, you know, he wasn’t a client at the time, but when my, my, you know, one of my favorite clients, Jonathan heard me on your show and contacted me and, and I remember him saying, you know, I really am concerned our donors are not giving their best gifts. Like I said that on your show and what it really came down to was, you know, he had a great team who was great at what we talked about. Like these transactional approach is that they were, you know, most of their giving was coming from events from appeals from corporate sponsorships, from event from grant proposals, but their individual giving was really stagnant and you know, we all know that’s where the unrestricted investment level gifts are going to come from. And so could he have, you know, ramped up the events and appeals I suppose he could have, but he didn’t, he fixed the underlying root cause he’s fixed the financing, he’s aligned his whole team to the money. They are their high performing revenue generators And they’ve grown by seven figures here in the last 18 months because they shifted, you know, I talked about that single source decision maker. They shifted individuals from the, we’re having an event to actually segmenting and figuring out who do we need to sit with? Who doesn’t understand how we’re funded, Who doesn’t understand our need family foundations. Um, corporate sponsors, Oh my gosh. Uh, you know, his corporate sponsors who used to come and be $50,000 gala sponsors. He shifted those into $100,000, unrestricted gifts because he started having investment level conversations with them. He took the transaction out of it. He had the financing plan. He could, he could very clearly articulate the organization’s plan to spend money to make more money. So he’s become, yeah,

[00:42:39.20] spk_1:
we’ll see what he’s become and then,

[00:42:52.80] spk_0:
yeah, he’s become a master at these investment level conversations and you know what donors say, wow, nobody else ever talks like this to me. Thank you. I never, I never understand this.

[00:43:59.80] spk_1:
You give a terrific example of converting something transactional, a $50,000 corporate sponsorship to, uh, to a gala or something into a gift twice that that becomes unrestricted. We don’t have to put it toward the audiovisual budget at the gala. Now it’s unrestricted and it’s, and it’s double because he’s having different kinds of, he’s not having a transactional conversation with the ceo of that company anymore. Having an investment level conversation. How do we overcome the fear of having these honest conversations. It’s a lot easier to say our annual gala is coming up? You did $50,000 last year because you know, even I’ll even make it a little more ambitious. Could you do $65,000 this year? That’s a lot easier conversation to have than here’s what our plan is. Here’s what our need is over the next three years. How do you see yourself fitting in or maybe even more strategic? You know, I see you fitting in here. How do you overcome the fear of having these more, more down to earth, more honest investment level conversations that the transactional that everybody is very comfortable with?

[00:46:02.18] spk_0:
I hear you, I think it’s kind of a simple answer though. You gotta know your numbers because we’re going to think you’re going to be fearful of that conversation if you don’t know what you’re selling. Okay, right? Like you’ve got to know, you know, this is why my hands are in spreadsheets all day long and looking at what that looks like. You got to be able to sit down and tell a donor what their investment is going to do over the next few years. You’ve got to move into knowing your numbers in a greater way what that impact makes. And again, I’m not saying don’t share stories and the crisis and the problem in your model. I’m not saying don’t show that, but too often I’m seeing people avoid that and yes, I agree with you, Tony. It’s a lot easier even if I was a board member, it’s like, oh, when’s the event coming back? Because like that’s way easier for me to fill a table. I’m gonna be a little friend care. You’re letting your board off the hook. Their job is a balanced budget and helping you co pilot that to a balanced budget. And so we have to just be starting at the top of the pyramid. Starting in the mindset of, it looks different to attract those donors. And so we must be giving different presentations I guess. I’ll say we must be having different conversations. And so whatever they value, it’s very different from your $25 a month. You know, with that donor values. So you need to be serving what they value. And so that means you need to be able to fundraiser ceo board member, Sit down with them and answer the tough questions. Answing Why your program%ages, 90%. And so why you’ve invested, you know, 20% and fundraising in the last three years. Why did you do it? And so why your revenue maybe went down for a year, answer the tough questions. Be honest, be transparent. They will value you and that they will be attracted to that because I’m telling you nobody else does it.

[00:46:28.68] spk_1:
You mentioned a couple of times the benefit of having a a strategic fund or an endowment. Um, let’s let’s just shut out. I mean I, you know, I, you know how I feel about it because I do plan to giving fundraising. But let’s let’s flush out the value of that long term sort of investment fund that lets you take some risks from time to time.

[00:46:51.48] spk_0:
Yeah. So I think we’re probably talking about two things, but I think we can we can weave them together. You know, when I say reserve off the cuff, I really mean, um, you know, unrestricted cash in the bank that you have full access to,

[00:46:55.68] spk_1:
you know, operating

[00:47:18.38] spk_0:
Reserve, totally. And so I can’t, you know, I have multiple $10 million dollar organizations come to me who struggled doing payroll because there’s not enough unrestricted cash and reserve. And so I want to make sure that we are, we know it, that needs to be too. And and if you have that much, if you have, you know, a year’s worth of money in the bank, sit and tell the donor why you do own it, don’t be afraid. You know, that sort of thing, you know,

[00:47:22.42] spk_1:
be ashamed

[00:47:23.29] spk_0:
of. That’s something right.

[00:47:25.09] spk_1:
Because when the next pandemic comes, or the next economic crisis comes, or the next bad year in fundraising comes or the next whatever comes. You know, we’re prepared. And and mr mr or MS donor, you probably do the exact same thing for your business

[00:47:38.98] spk_0:
totally. You

[00:47:39.18] spk_1:
don’t have trouble making payroll for your business each week. Do

[00:47:41.80] spk_0:
you have to have just have that conversation

[00:47:44.57] spk_1:
problem here either.

[00:49:48.57] spk_0:
Yeah, totally. So, so that’s that’s part of that. Half the businessperson to businessperson conversation, you know, and if you’re afraid, if you go into that meeting and you’re afraid they’re going to bring that up, well then you bring it up, put that elephant out on the table because because I’m always listening for what, what questions are in their mind is going to keep them from giving their best gift, you know. Now on the, on the plan giving sight tony you know, you’re my go to expert on this. But you know, I reach out when I have questions and everything. Um, but what a wonderful opportunity for you to present or to offer your longtime donors your, you know, talk to your donors to be able to be making a lifelong legacy in the community, in the state, in the, you know, what, wherever people are serving. And so you’ve taught me this, you’ve taught me that when people have given gifts by will or when they have committed to that, um, that their affinity to the organization is strengthened when they see themselves as a greater stakeholder and partner with you and actually their annual fund giving increases. And so what a wonderful opportunity to show somebody that their impact can have even greater results on the mission through your organization than a plan giving scenario. And so I totally agree with you. I told you recently, you know, I’ve never had more people ask me about planned giving, which is really interesting. That’s not my expertise. That’s yours. But I think people are thinking you no longer term. But I’m also seeing the desire to be in deeper relationship with our donors. And it’s not an uncomfortable conversation when we do know our donors so intimately. And we’re in that period of a relationship where it’s very easy to bring up that topic. And so I just see all the annual fund, You’re, you’re kind of your general ops reserve and your plan giving all of those working together in such strength. Um, but you’ve got to lead the donor to the understanding on all three of those

[00:49:57.57] spk_1:
and having those investment level conversations with, Right? Uh, including with your plan giving potential donors. Right? So I didn’t mean for you to repeat back stuff that you and I have talked about.

[00:50:09.59] spk_0:
You know, I love it. But

[00:50:16.36] spk_1:
what I want you to, uh, I want to make explicit that planned giving is a part of the types of investment level conversations you want folks to have

[00:50:44.66] spk_0:
absolutely their daughters. Absolutely. I would just say like if you’re wondering like, should I be sharing that with donors? I mean, I’m not saying open up the back back into the kitchen and sort of the grease pants, but usually the answer is yes, right? Like everything is on your 9 90. Like at a minimum, you should be able to articulate the route Elements of that in a donor facing away, not, not, not by just emailing the 990, but you know, at, at a minimum, that should be those. That should be the conversations that we’re having.

[00:51:24.96] spk_1:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. You wanna, I hope you will share a story, share a story of uh, I guess a client story that, you know, maybe Jonathan’s or someone else’s. But you know, they, you saw the symptoms, they weren’t addressing root problems. They had a strategic plan with terrific excitement and ambition. They didn’t have the money to fund it. And then with, with some coaching, they were able to realize what, what they, what they really needed.

[00:51:47.06] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. So I have a client who um have been working with them actually for for quite a few years and they’re on a great revenue trajectory. Um, but you know, it was kind of one of those things where they did continue to struggle to always get ahead. Um, you know, and the other kind of whammy, Uh, what would that be called double we I mean, I should say um, was that they had actually lost a large funder. Um they had lost somebody who was contributing almost 20% of their budget. And I actually actually was no fault of their own. It was kind of a weird silly deal. And it was actually an international funder.

[00:52:26.15] spk_1:
Just just let me let me make a parenthetical. That’s another reason to have that strategic or that reserve fund because donors may depart, large donors may, you may do something to upset them, they may die. They may find other interests. They, you know, so that’s yet another reason that can happen institutionally. It can also happen to individual donors. Another have that reserve fund. We talked about a few minutes

[00:55:46.44] spk_0:
ago, reserve Fund and you know, back to my little pyramid. I’ve been talking about, you know, in that top 30 you know, I don’t want those top 10 donors to be more than, you know, 25 40% of your revenue. So in their case, yikes right. That that was so, you know, yes, you can imagine for a couple of years that that stung and, and and it really came, you know, and so they came to me and we’re really struggling to make that up right in small gifts or in mid level gifts, major gifts. Uh, and I remember the lead fundraiser saying to me, um, you know, this is not like I didn’t go to school for this. I kind of, I know enough to be dangerous, but I, I kind of don’t know what, I don’t know. And so he really did feel, which a lot of people come to me feeling that we have great relationships. We have an amazing mission. Um we know our mission is worthy of being supported, but like, I think I’m leaving money on the table because I simply don’t know how to lead that donor to their best gift. And so like we’ve talked about today, you know, instead of saying, well, you know, let’s let’s make our golf outing this or let’s make our, let’s add the appeals, let’s, you know, do all the things that are important, but they’re not going to get, you know, for example, this organization on that stronger trajectory. And um, and really to the point where they are doing what they had outlined in their strategic plan. So long story short, that’s what we did. We put a realistic budget in place that they can articulate the true financial need. And it wasn’t, well, we’d love to, you know, make that money back because we still want to serve those Children in this case. Um, you know, it was like, here’s our plan to do it. Here’s how you fit into this plan. Um, and then we put their, their financing plan in place. What do they need to stop doing? What do they need to start to me? How would we truly balance back to that, that number we were hitting and how would we grow beyond that. Um, and then how do we actually start leading donors who maybe we’re giving, you know, a monthly gift or a one off gift or a, you know, very generously at a golf outing, but we knew those weren’t their best gifts. How do we start leading them through these conversations. And so the specific client I’m speaking to tray. He’s an amazing relational guy. He’s a great relationship builder. And so, but donors literally responded so immediately of, oh my gosh, we, we didn’t know you needed this. We had no idea this was the need of the organization. Um, and sure does he have solicitation tools now and you know, some prompts that really lead him through that conversation. Yeah, that’s part of it. Um, but he’s got multi six figure gifts as a result, organization is out of the red back in the black because now he doesn’t have to guess anymore. He actually knows the exact steps to fund the organization annually and then to lead those donors to give their best gift annually. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a dual combo. Um, but I see people make the shift all the time, But it starts with investing in change and being open to it.

[00:55:56.44] spk_1:
That’s awesome. Sherry. We’re gonna leave it right there investing in change. Having these investment level conversations planning be ambitious. You know, don’t be, uh, I don’t want to wrap up. I want you to wrap up, but don’t be humble because

[00:56:02.20] spk_0:
I like, I like the ambitious that, that’s my, my motto. Let’s let’s do this.

[00:56:49.03] spk_1:
That’s where we’ll leave it right there. Thank you very much want Taylor Ceo of KWAme. Taylor LLC at Kwame Taylor dot com again, Sherry. Thanks so much for sharing. To appreciate it. My pleasure Next week. Bitcoin and the future of fundraising with the co authors of that book and Connolly and Jason shim if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff

[00:57:06.33] spk_2:
shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95

[00:57:22.43] spk_1:
1%. Go out and be great. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Nonprofit Radio for March 9, 2018: Risk Management & Your Disaster Recovery Plan

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Buy-in 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 break out with cering go sista noma, if you made me sweat with the idea that you missed today’s show risk management, not all risk is bad, says ted village. We’ll walk you through why you should care about the good and bad and how to get going with your risk inventory he’s ceo of risk-alternatives and your disaster recovery plan one bad risk is you’re going to put ignore it at your own peril. What belongs in your d our plan darva arika is from lift that originally aired on may fifth twenty fifteen i’ll take two charity registration and plan giving podcasts responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio and by weinger cps guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dot, m a slash tony tell us it’s my pleasure to welcome ted village. He is ceo of risk-alternatives llc, providing risk management and process improvement. Solutions for non-profits and start ups he used to practice law and has served on the boards of numerous organizations. Ted has written about risk management and process improvement in stanford social innovation review, where you can also hear this show. Corporate responsibility magazine. This show is not on corporate sponsors. What magazine and risk management magazine were also not there. He’s at t bilich and the company is at risk. Hyphen alternatives dot com welcome to non-profit radio. Ted. Tony it’s. Great to be here. I hope you’re doing well. Thank you. I am. And how are you? I have to ask. I’m doing great. Thanks. I’m glad. Everybody’s. Good today. All right. Um all right. You’ve been in some magazines that non-profits are most likely not reading responsability magazine. Corpse. Sorry. Corporate responsibility magazine risk management magazine. I’m sure you’re not unfamiliar with this risk management sounds boring. Why either boring or scary? Alright. And if this was not on some affiliate stations, i might use stronger language. I might put it. Put an adjective on before the word for before the word boring. Oh, my god. Why should we be paying attention to this? You know you. Hit on one of the most important issues that i face, which is when people think about risk management, they think about either the fact that it’s one more obligation for them or that they don’t wanna lift up rocks because they’re afraid of what what’s under them and and, you know, what i say to people time and time again is that risk management is a critical part of your business because especially if you’re a non-profit you are dealing with more risks than almost any other organization you could possibly think of, you know, think of the non-profit business model, toni it’s, your taking money from strangers in order to deal with intractable problems. And if you do your job really well, your business should go out of business that’s a risky model, so it really pays to pay attention to risk management, and we could get into sort of what that means if you’d like, yeah, we’re going to, um you do say that not all risk is bad. That’s exactly right? Flush it out. Yeah. Yeah, sure. You know, one of the one of the issues in risk management is what do you mean by rich? And risk matt necessarily mean bad things risk. So i always tell people, when you’re talking about risk talking about uncertainty management, you could have bad risk that could go go, go wrong, and we call those threats. He could also have good rick, you know, opportunities either opportunities for improvement of your current processes or opportunities in the sense of new initiatives, and all of that is within the framework of a good risk management process. Okay, so i like the idea of we don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s. Just it’s something we don’t know, right? So it does not. Of course, it does not have to be bad. It could be fantastic, right? Okay, absolutely. You know, it could be that that that there is a new donor who is waiting to not give you money if you expand your programs in a new direction, but simply wants to give you money to do mohr of what you’re doing now. And you believe that this is important for non-profit sustainability? Oh, gosh, yes, if you don’t, if you don’t have a risk management process, tony, then let’s say, you’re thinking about having a strategic plan or you have a strategic plan, how can you possibly have confidence that that strategic plan is going to accomplish its its objective if you don’t have a really strong awareness of what your current capabilities are, including what the threats and opportunities are that face your organization? So there’s this thing out there called a swot tte or swat analysis? Um s w o t the o’s opportunities in the tear threats i forget with the what do you what’s the s and the w its strength and weak she’s. So weak threat. Thank you. All right. Yeah. And and people use that sometime during strategic planning process. Okay, so this is s so we’re calling altum positive risks or good risks. That that’s the opportunity. That’s, right? Those are opportunities there. Potential opportunities? Ok. Yes, exactly. And one of the things that i talk to people about when when they talk about a swat analysis, is that swat analysis tends to be a static once every couple of years, activity done during strategic planning. One way to think about risk took that slot and alan and you operationalized it so that you were as a matter of routine, looking at your strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats. That’s one way to think about a risk management structure is it’s taking the swat process and making it something that is ongoing over time. I think it should be swope i think it’s a long hour, i know not to quibble, but i think it’s, of course, equivalent, but i think it’s a long oh, i think so long, so might be, but i don’t think that negates anything that you just said, i don’t know listeners thinking that all right, so so an ongoing process. Now you you have this cool article. Stanford social innovation review called a call for non-profit risk management, you make very clear in that, and we have about a minute before first break make very clear that that this is not really appropriate for start ups. If you start up basically, your your argument is you can cover this most of your problems or potential risks with insurance. But so when when should we start doing formalized risk analysis? You know, a good signal for that, tony and briefly before break good signal is when you start doing, when you start having regular audit, um, that usually happens when a non-profit is going into growth phase, and at that point, it’s useful to start having a risk management process because after all, you’re becoming a grown up organization. Okay, so when you start when you start having going through an audit process with your right when you and then that usually in love that you know, depending on the state seven hundred fifty thousand dollars to a million dollars of annual revenue, okay, let’s, take our first break pursuant, their newest paper demystifying the donor journey. You need to be intentional, deliberate about stuart in your donors, we’re talking about being delivered today, assessing risk. You also need to be deliberate about stewarding your donors so you don’t lose them. Pursue it will help you create and fine tune your donorsearch stewardship plan. Keep your donors with you so you don’t have to replace them each year. Demystifying the donor journey it’s at tony dot m a slash pursuant, radio let’s, go back to ted village and let’s continue our talk about risk management thiss ongoing assessment process so all right, so we know when we should begin. Um, what shall we begin with? Is it? Is it the risk inventory? That’s exactly right, tony the first step still, this good risk management process is too take stock of where you are now because you can’t start prioritizing if you don’t have awareness of what your current threats and opportunities are so there’s a process risk-alternatives hq inventory it’s simply a structured exercise that you take your staff through to help them identify threats and opportunities not just within operations, but operations and finance that i t and a talent management and development and all those different functions within the non-profit and it usually takes about, you know, two or three hours of work total for your staff to do something like this spread out over a couple of weeks, and at the end of it, you have a really good idea of the threats and opportunities you currently face, really only two to three hours for each put threespot actually not that hard of a process in fact, your listeners could go to our website, risk-alternatives risk-alternatives dot com and download a little report that shows you how to do it on your own when we do it as a facilitated manner. It takes about an hour to train people about risk management, and then they go off on their own and each person takes about forty minutes to use an online tool toe identify these threats and opportunity. So it’s really not a long involved process. I love the online resource. Thank you for that. So again, risk hyphen alternatives dot com let’s say i want to flush this risk inventory a little bit. So who should be involved in this process? First of all? Well, when when we advise customers to do it, we always say you should have your c sweet team. I’m assuming that that you have a small, that this is a fairly small organization were small. There were small to midsize non-profits here, however you think one point five, two million dollars to five million dollars in revenues, you probably have a ceo cfo, a head of development in in some form or another, and probably someone in charge of programs. You would want to have those people, but we also also always advised get one person who’s simply a staff member right on the front line and have them do it along with the senior team because they’re no thing that that the senior staff don’t have any id dea is going on. Yeah, i know that there. That could be very eye opening on ly one person, though, from from down in the trenches. Well, on in your initial risk inventory, tony wanna balance thoroughness with efficiency. And so with this initial inventory, i think it’s good to have one person from the trenches. But this is mostly going to be a bottom down identification process. His first run through the idea behind it, though, is that risk management is not a one and done thing. You do an inventory, you prioritize, you respond to those you assess and improve, and then you do another inventory and so on and so forth. And as as you grow this within your organization, you would want to make sure that mohr and more people are involved in that risk identification process. All right, so i see we’ve got an interpretive process. Let’s, go back to our initial one now. All right, so we’ve got this were basically creating a committee, that’s going to meet a couple of times, you said over, like two or three weeks. We’re creating a committee. A risk risk assessment committee is not going to scare people like we think committee, right? Okay, that sounds like when, when, when people below the c suite start hearing there’s, a risk assessment committee being formed. That sounds like they’re going to firings, coming, eyes firing or they know about. They know about the seven deadly plagues that are ten deadly plagues, depending on which version bible you read. There’s, locusts and blood and darkness coming on dh, what else we got flies really was that part of the buy-in frogs, frogs that was the effort, the other fellow. So this sounds a little scary to me if i’m not on the committee, no that’s exactly right, which is why one of the things that we advise the senior staff to do when they decide to go through this sort of exercise is to send in all staff e mail out saying, you know, we’re doing this process so that we can dip our toe in the in the waters of risk management. It’s not a matter of something to worry about. In fact, the idea over time is to get everyone in the organization involved in this process, okay? So yeah, and we’re actually trying to do is reduce worry by identifying what’s out there that we don’t know. So we’re identifying are known unknowns. What about our unknown unknowns? Can we get to them? They’re always going to be things that are unknowable, you know, there’s, a wonderful book by, uh, well, it’s called the black swan. Have you read it, tony? You know, i think i saw a movie called black swan, but i don’t i don’t think it’s very different now a very different from what i’m talking about, okay, this book is about how, no matter how well you might try to predict the future, there are always going to be significant jolt of one sort or another that you can’t possibly predict beforehand. And so you know, i again, i always tell people, risk management is not a crystal ball. The better analogy is risk management is a flashlight in the dark, it allows you to see things you might not otherwise see. It makes the path a little safer because you can see some of the things that that might be bad along the way and some of the things that might be good, that can help you, but it also gives you a healthy sense of maybe we shouldn’t be running too fast, because if we run too fast, we’re not going to see the things that could trip let’s. Let’s, go back to our to our initial committee now. So so how do we ah wei, is that there’s a risk assessment committee? Yeah. Can we call that? Okay, managing committee, risk inventory shoretz are risking our r i c were first our first rick. So way get the group together. What do we do? How do we get the process started? If we don’t, we don’t have the luxury of the of a professional facilitator, right? Well, if i were doing it and i didn’t want to bring my company or some other company and it’s, what i would do is i would cheat in the following way, i would go get that that report that that we have on our website and i would download that and it says, ah, this is how you do it. These air, the various different functions that you want to look at, and it lists eleven different functions of the organization, and it says what you ought to do is you hot auto, have each team member within each function, identify three things that could go wrong, and one thing that could go right in the near future either because it’s a new process that we could adopt, or a new initiative or a process that we could tweak in some way. So each one of the people goes off and does and and they identify three threats and one opportunity in each function of the organization. Okay, then they do it, but they do it, tony, even if it’s not their function oh, you’re going all right. Well, let’s, take one step at a time. First of all, just just name a couple of the functions. You know, talent management. Okay. Hiring, developing and if necessary, firing people that’s one funky reputation management, you know, how do you influence what? What people think about your organization. Um, fernand is another function. How do you account for the money that flows through the the organization? Just give us one. Give us one more. We don’t want to eleven. Because because there are available on the title is the big ones. You know, how do you use elektronik technology in order to enhance the services you provide? Why’re we waited three, three potential bad and one potential. Good. Why can’t we be? Do equalize it out two and two. You could do it that way. I’ve found just over time that people are going to be very, very, um, free with identifying things that could go wrong. People have lots of worries, especially during an initial risk inventory. They like to dump a lot of stuff out on on the table it the reason why we emphasize identifying at least one opportunity is that we want them to be balanced in their presentation to some extent. Nevertheless, it always is that people are going to identify more threats than opportunities, and so we’ve set it up as a rubric of three to one to at least get the one in each because really not balance it’s tze, twenty five percent good and seventy five percent bad, but but you see, people are thinking mohr negatively, people thinking more about the bad risks that’s, right? And and also when when you know, when we reconvene after after having people look at those things out on their own. One thing that that happens is that the team the committee that you’ve developed is going to find that they identified it ah lot of the same risk, so you might get a list of one hundred risks, but really it’s going to end up with about sixty sixty to seventy risks and and a lot of those things that they identify as bad things aren’t going to stand up to the light of day one person might be worried, but another person has a full explanation, and so it will simply go away. You’ll end up with about forty or fifty for challenge either positive challenges or negative challenges, and and at the end of that process, i can almost guarantee that someone who does this will be aware of two or three things that are low hanging fruit, that they can pick very rapidly in order to help their organization thrives. Now, are we allowed to come back to the committee then with mohr than the four that you challenged us with? And then the committee and the committee flushes them out to get down to this forty or fifty? Is that the way it works? Yes, if someone wants to identify more than three threats and one opportunity, i would never say, no, you can’t, but but on the other hand, you don’t want someone, for instance, to focus so much on this that they become, you know, all engrossed in in their potential worries rather than doing their job. So you wanted to be somewhat manageable, all right? We’re in the details of this, which is where i want to be. So so our first meeting is introductory. And then we give some homework second meeting you’re coming back in a week or maybe give him ten days. All right, maybe it’s a it was a long weekend in there, so e-giving e-giving ten days you’re coming back with your your analysis of threats and opportunities with the understanding that we’re going to narrow, we as a committee are going to narrow it down to three, three and one for each functional area, okay? No, no, no, that that i think i misled you on that one. Well, you’re going to narrow it down to a certain number of risks. It may be that there are that that the committee ends up saying, yeah, there really are seventeen risks in the development function. And they all are really rich. Each person would have identified only three. But, you know, maybe maybe it ended up that that you had ah, fifteen at least, um, legitimate risks threats that were identified, that is, you don’t limit it artificially as far as the total number of risk that could be identified within a function. Okay, i think you did mislead me, but that’s all right? You know, character. So listeners going go back, listen to what ted originally set the record will now pass that’s, right? I think it’ll show that i’m correct, but, um, so all right, so and you had also said that people can identify threats and opportunities outside their their own functional area, so a cfo can comment on it, and i can’t comment on hr and talent development, et cetera. Okay, um, that’s our second meeting, what happens after that? Now, we’ve now we’ve got our core of forty to fifty yeah, you’ve got your core of forty to fifty. The next step in that in the process would be to prioritize along those risks, because if you have forty two, fifty two, sixty risks and you think they’re all equally important, well, you’re just going to be frozen in inaction. So the next step is to use whatever tool you wish to use to prioritize those risks down to the most important ones that your organization face. And when i’m advising r our clients, i say the simpler the better, as far as prioritization, use a simple, you know, ah, point system, where each person on the team gets a certain number of points and they can allocate those points, however they wish among the fifty or sixty rhys so that if you want to push him all of your chips on toe one risk because you think that’s really important and should be really high priority for the organization, you could do that. Um, and and by doing that, you end up with your top ten or fifteen risk that got the most points and those become your first prioritized punch list of high value items that your organization should focus on during the coming period of time. You could do this like a poker game. You could all be you could buy everybody a stack of chips and okay, number one, we’re going to go through all forty or fifty. Number one who wants to throw is number one throwing your chips. But when you have a chip on that one that you exactly right, good bet judiciously, because when you’re out of chips, then you’re silent. There’s no taking chips back. Alright, right? Yeah. And? And what is happening is that people will take different different approaches to deciding what you know what their priority risks are and and the reason why. I say it needs to be a simple process is that deciding priority really is a judgment call? It has something to do with how dangerous or how good is this opportunity of its opportunity? How, how, how big is the risk if it comes about, how likely is it to come about? And if it comes about, how much lead time are we going to get before it manifest? Seldman now, you know, if you’re a multi billion dollar corporation, you khun create huge financial models to make those sorts of decision, but for the average non-profit you have to rely on people’s considered judgment, and so having a simple prioritization process where people are told, you know, consider those three factors and then put your chips the way they should. It ends up being a pretty powerful system for identifying the core risk organization and say those three three factors again, yes, it is it’s, the magnitude of the risk if it comes about the likelihood of the risk coming about and how much lead time you’re going tohave once the risk manifests itself before the full impact hit, okay, that third one could be it could be a day or so? I mean, that could be short term and they could on the end. And that might mean that you would get several rank that risk hyre because you don’t get that much lead. On the other hand, if you’re talking about a legislative change, you might have not in front. Okay? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So you’re aware, of course, weighing the factors, it might be low, like a low, low, low probability, but xero lead time and great magnitude you’re going to rank that thing. Hyre okay. All right, all right. So now we’ve got our ten. We’ve got our top ten. Yeah. Now, do we continue in just the committee and dealing with these? Or do we start to open it up in, like, meeting three or four guard to open it up? Ok, start opening up when you, when you boil that tend the risks down to your poor wrist, then you start opening it up to the rest of your staff by bringing those the list of those risks to your staff meetings and talking about those with your staff asking, ah, you know, for for their reactions tow those risks. Signing those. Risks, too. Particular people tto be dealt with a signing check in dates for when when you’re going to check back, you know that that list of core risks, which is second big tool that risk managers use, they call it a risk register. But that prioritized list becomes the operational judge document that you share with your staff in all staff meetings and and other staff meetings. You also share that up to your board of directors because those are the core risk that the organisation face and the board may want to weigh in on some of those risks. Excellent. Ted. We’re gonna leave it there. That’s a perfect place to ah overviewing on dh, of course, there’s get you could get thie get the format at risk. Hyphen alternatives dot com. You could follow ted at t bilich b i l i c h ted village. Thank you so much for sharing. Uh, tony was great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on my pleasure. We need to take a break. Wittner, cps, anek cerp from the latest testimonial quote, they’re accessible. They care about their clients. End quote, can you say that about your accounting and audit firm? This is another way that wagner goes beyond the numbers remember all the guides and the templates you heard me rattle on about, but they’re valuable. So it’s rattling and it’s valuable rattle. Yes, it was very it was a high tone rattle, good tone, so there’s that but then there’s also they’re accessible. They care let’s make it personal. Talk to eat. Which tomb he’s. The guy you want to talk to? Check out wagner, cpas, dot com he’s a very good guy. Now time for tony’s take two two people have me on their podcasts, it’s their lives joe correct, and i talked about charity registration. Now, first of all, i have to apologize to joe correct, who i’ve always called joe garrick, including what he was on the show. Why he didn’t correct me, i guess. It’s too polite. I don’t know. I think i take notes. Well, as long as they’re not from my wife, i think i’m open so i would. Appreciate it, but joe correct did not. So i have to correct, correct and eso yes, joe, correct, and i did charity registration and i did, launching a planned e-giving program with heather yan tao. Those are my two tricks to trick pony that’s what i know, plan giving and charity registration heimans lots of people say they feel passionate, passionate about their their work you need i love you. The twitter bios air are actually pretty interesting there’s a lot of passion out there, they’re passionate about whatever they do. I don’t know, i like it. I like playing giving i like charity registration let’s just leave it at that let’s not get carried away about passion. Um, so those are the two things i talked about. So the plan the plan giving with heather watching apollo program? Not surprisingly, i talked about charitable bequests that is the place to begin your plan giving program, as you know, and it could be the place to stop. If you’re a smaller, maybe even midsize shop, you don’t want to invest in more and more like infrastructure and further expertise or something it’s not necessary, you can have a very respectable program with charitable bequests start and stop there so you’ll hear that message. And then, of course, we’re going to more detail about starting a plan giving program against marketing tips that i shared with heather et cetera and for charity registration that was the one with job. Correct? Um, you know, the biggest hook with that is your donate. Now button, if you have a donate now button on your website, you’re accepting gifts on your site. That thing is a solicitation in lots of states the day that it goes live, and it doesn’t matter whether anybody in montana ever clicks on it. I don’t know if montana is one states you gotta register is like ten or twelve states where you don’t but let’s just don’t don’t fight the hypothetical, um, it’s it’s a solicitation in a lot of states, the moment it goes live because people in those states can see it so that’s a big hook you donate now button and just generally, of course, charity registration. You need to be registered in each state where you solicit donations, and joe and i went into some of the generalities about registration because it’s a morass. But there are some generalizations you could draw about what the states require in terms of timing and forms and fees, things like that when you get into the weeds of charity registration, then that’s where it’s it’s a morass because every state has its own let’s be polite and say video sync christie’s that they’re their own personalities that must emerge through the charity registration channel so you can’t make a lot of you can’t go into a lot of detail and, you know, like a forty minute podcast, but there are generalizations you can draw, and so we talk about exemptions also exemptions or key, you know, once you find a state that you need to register in because, you know you’re soliciting in that state, the first thing you want to do is look at the exemptions in that state. What do those look like? Because you might very well be exempt. Then, of course, drill down to the details of exemptions and that’s where the morass comes in is in a state where you apply for the exemption or the state, and you have to be approved for the exemption. Or is it a state where? You could just walk away, throw up your hands and go to the next state because you just deem yourself exempt, right? So joe, correct, and i talked about the exemption, of course, too, because, you know, you could save a lot of time if you find that you are exempt. All right. So carrie restoration job, correct planned e-giving beginning of launching a plant e-giving program that’s with heather, you, lando and i’ve got links to those two podcasts, of course, there’s. My video. I have to have my own personality and nuances. So my video, with the links to the those two podcasts where i was a guest, is that tony martignetti dot com live. 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Thanks to your station for carrying us affiliate affections that’s the liveliest or love the podcast pleasantries and the affiliate affections. Now let’s, go to darby, barca and your disaster recovery plan. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc twenty fifteen the non-profit technology conference were in day two. We’re in austin, texas, at the convention center and my guest is dar vivir ca she’s vice president of technology for lift a lefty and her workshop topic is avoiding disaster a practical guide for backup systems and disaster recovery planning. Dar welcome, thank you very much. Good to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you this day two we’re highlighting one swag item at ntc per for interview and, uh, i have a double chip biscotti from ah sputnik moment the hashtag is hashtag is sputnik smiles and i’m told that the glasses go with the biscotti, so this is essential. This is this interview’s swag moment. Thank you very much. Sputnik smiles and it goes into the goes into the swag collection. There it is. Okay, door. Um, we need to know some ah, little basic turn. Well, you know what? Before we even get into why is disaster recovery and the related and included back-up so i don’t know if it’s just for gotten ignored, not done well, what inspired the session is a organization i used to work for. We were required by auditors to do a disaster recovery plans. So when it came time for the annual audit, i got out the current disaster recovery plan and went all right, i’m going to go ahead and update this and when i discovered when i read the plan was there were servers, there were eight years old gone for the last eight years server and reading the planet was very clear that what the previous person had done was simply change the date and update the plan for auditors. And as i thought about it and talk to other people, i found that that actually happens a lot people it’s d r is sort of that thing they don’t have time for because no one ever thinks it’ll happen to them, so you push it off and you push it off, and you either just download the template, you know, a template off the internet, and you slap a date on it and basically fill it out just for the auditors. But a lot of organizations never actually think through their disaster recovery, they don’t get into the details, they don’t worry about it, and then when a disaster actually happens to them, they’re sort of stuck. You don’t have a plan that i don’t have a functioning crush on, they’ve never tried it out, so that was what inspired the session and as we dug into it. We we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view because disaster it cover, you know, there’s an entire industry, the deals with technology, disaster recovery. You can spend days on this topic, and obviously we didn’t have days. We had a ninety minute session, so we tried to give the thirty thousand foot view of the practical items you need to pay attention to if you’re not confident in your organisation’s d our plan, if you don’t have a d our plan or if you do and you really don’t, you know, you think it really needs an overhaul that sort of the top ten of items of what you should really be looking at when you’re dealing with disaster recovering backups. And we tried to give some several practical examples myself and the other speaker and andrew, who could not make it this morning of disasters we’ve had to deal with as well as other well known ones. Yeah, okay, do we need some basic language? Miree before we get into the d r disaster recovery topic short jr is one of them. Disaster recovers, often referred to his d r it’s often spoken about in terms of business continuity or bc, which is sort of the larger plan for the entire organisation should’ve disaster strike there’s the others very d are specific things such as our poet recovery point objective that we could talk about your rto, which is recovery time objective there’s very specific language like that for disasters. It’s usually just revert to de ours. So whenever we say d arts disaster recovery okay, we’ll see if we get into those eyes and i could explain to ms wick. Okay, um, all right? So clearly we should have a disaster recovery written, just recovery plan. Even if we’re an organization that small enough that doesn’t have an annual audit, we still should have something in place. Yes. Okay. What belongs in our day? Our plan top ten things. You need a contact list for your team. So if you have a top ten of the d r i do of what should your plan d our plan? You know, it could be anything from a five page outline that just covers the basics. And in in our sessions slides, which i’ve posted in the ntc library gives it some good resource is for doing andy. Our plan, or it could be a, you know, a huge hundred page document, it covers absolutely every aspect of business continuity or something in between it’s going very by organization, and the reality is, if you’re a small organisation with a small team, you might only be able to do the five page outline but that’s better than nothing that’s better than no d our plan or a d r plan that realistically hasn’t been updated in the last ten years, but i would say, you know, the top ten you really should have in your day. Our plan is number one, a contact list for your team members. What is the contact for your team, folks, your business continuity folks, if you normally would get that out of your email and you’re in a disastrous situation, you know you can’t get to your email or, you know, like we’re ever going through, and i want listeners to know that she’s doing this without notes, i it seems very confident that she’s got the hopefully i’ve ever altum in-kind get seven out of seven or eight ten will be ecstatic, but so continue. Oh, but i want to say yeah, as we’re going through, consider two organizations that may not have someone devoted to it. Correct, that is, our listeners are small and midsize non-profits right? They very, very well just all be outsourced or it falls on the executive director’s desk. Excellent point. Would you cover that in the session? So t finish at the top ten contactless three team members contact list for your vendors, a call tree and some sort of communications. How do you tell your organization in your members that you’ve had a disaster? Either your servers have gone down your parts of burst and your communications air underwater? How do you do that? What is your network look like? So? Network diagram process outline how you’re actually going to do your disaster recovery a timeline? How long do you expect these activities to take before you? Khun b live again, a list of systems and applications that you’re going to recover if you’re a large enough or gore, you can afford a hot site what’s called a hot or warm site where you can immediately switch over two other equipment. You know information about that, you’d need that to start your recovery and then also information about your backups. You know, who’s got your back ups? What system are you using? How do you, you know? Get those back. So those air sort of like the top ten things or d our plan should have. Alright, let’s dive intothe process. Ok a bit, because that intrigues me. And hopefully listeners. I think so. I think i have a fare beat on what’s. Interesting. I hope i do. Um, yeah. What? How do we start to think about what our dear process should be? First, you have to think about what all could be a disaster for your organization. A lot of people think about things, you know, earthquakes, hurricane, sandy, hurricane katrina. But it could also be water pipes bursting in your building. That is one of the most common thing. If your server is not properly protected, which a lot aren’t a lot of stuck in closets. Ah, dripping pipe water. We call those water events and that seems to be the most common thing departments encounter is leaking pipes in the building or some sort of a flooding situation. But it could also be an elektronik. Disasters such i’ve worked at an organization that underwent what’s called a ddos attack, which is a distributed denial of service. It took out our entire web presence because malicious hacker hacker went after that’s where there’s millions of right the network and they just flood your network seconds you’re overloaded and yeah, and that’s a disaster situations. So one, why would they attack like that? Why wasn’t non-profit attack malicious? The cp dot organ are attacked out with avon marchenese travon martin decision. Folks attacked our our petition site way. We were able to get it back online, but for a couple of hours. Yeah, we were off line. And that could be considered a disaster situation. For sure. Yeah. How do you help us think through what potential disasters are not even identify them all i think about what could affect your or what you wear. You vulnerable? Some of the things we talked about in the session and we’ll think about it. How would you get back online if the’s various things happen to you are your are your services sort of in the cloud? Do you have servers on site and start there when thinking about your process is what would you have to recover if these various scenarios affected you or with these various scenarios. Scenarios affect you if your website is completely outsourced to a vendor that has de dos protection. Okay, that’s, not a scenario you have to worry about so kind of analyze it and every organs going to be different. You know, if you live on the west coast, you’re probably concerned more about earthquakes than other regions. So it’s it’s going to vary for each organization, what sort of disaster you’re going to be worried about? And then you start getting down into the practical nuts and bolts in terms of who are your disaster recovery people, who’s your team, if you’re really small lorry, that might just be you or as you mentioned before, if you’re using outsourced, manage service provider and your vendors responsible for that, make sure your vendor has a d our plan for you. Ah lot of folks just assume your vendors taking care of that, but when it comes right down to it, do they actually have d our experience? Can they recover your items? Actually sit down and have that conversation? Because so many of the small org’s as you pointed out, do youse outsourced thes days and there’s there’s a lot of manage service providers that specialize in non-profit, but you need to have that conversation. Don’t wait till you’re under a disaster scenario to discover that groups they don’t actually have that experience have that conversation ahead of time. What else belongs in our process? Outline in your process latto outline if you’ve got a another site either a cold, a warmer, hot site or if your stuff is based in the cloud, where would you recover to the hot side is some place you go to drink cold water or hot? Sure, a cold site would be where you’ve got another location let’s say you have a dozen servers at your location, and in the case of, you know, your building being inaccessible or underwater. A cold site would be where you’ve got another location you could go to, but you don’t really have any equipment stage there, but it is another location you can begin operations out if that’s a cold sight there’s nothing ready to go, but you’ve got a sight a warm site would be where you sort of have a skeletal equipment there it’s far less capacity than you’re currently at, but you’ve got something there it’s not live, but you got stuff ready to go that you can restore to and get going. And a hot site is where you can flip over immediately. Your live replicating to somewhere else, it’s ready to go? It might not be full capacity, so it might not have, you know, full blown data line size that you’re used to might not have your full range of service, but it is live and you could switch over near instantaneously. That’s a hot site, ok, eso you’d want that in your process, and you’re going to want to think about what are you restoring and that’s where we get into the backups? What comes first and that’s, where you start getting into terms such as recovery point, objective and recovery time objective those air to very common d our terms recovery time is how far back are you recovering, too? And what does that mean for each system? So if it’s your donorsearch system that’s probably fairly critical, you want a recent restore of that? If it’s a system that doesn’t change very much, maybe a week ago restores okay for that and sorry that’s recovery point objective recovery time objective is how long does it take you to get back online after a disaster? You know, ifyou’ve got to download your data from an external source. Has anyone thought about how long that’s going to take you to get the data back? Is it going to take you fifteen hours or three days? So it’s in a lot of folks don’t think about that ahead of time, they just go oh, you know, we’ll we’ll pull it back down if we have a disaster, but they don’t think about instead of their nice normal data communications, they’re going to be on a tiny d s l line trying to pull down one hundred fifty gigs of information and it’s going to take a week to get it back down. I have to say you’re very good about explaining terms and thank you, proper radio. We have jargon jail? Yes, we try not teo transcend. You haven’t transgressed cause your immediate about explaining exactly what recovery point river and recovery time objectives are. It could be very confusing, you know, if you don’t understand the terms in tech, you can be confusing what folks are talking about, and that was one of the the focus is of our station session is making it less confusing and being very practical, practical about what you can or cannot do. And if folks go and look at our slides, they’ll see on several of the items we did a good, better best, and we tried to talk about that all throughout the session because we realized again for a small ork or, you know, even a large order that just doesn’t have the resources to devote to it. You might not be able to do best practice, but you could at least try a good practice that would be better than nothing. And then so we do a good, better best for each each type of thing like what does a good d our plan look like? Versace best day our plan and at least try and get to that good, because at least you’ll have something and it could be a continuum where you try and improve it along the way. But you’ve got to start somewhere it’s better than just ignoring it, which is what happens. At a lot of places. Got to take a break. Tell us credit card and payment processing. You know these people check out the video at tony dot m a slash tony tello’s that will start to explain to you the long tail of revenue that you can earn from. Tell us when you get companies to look att tello’s. Let tell us look at their processing fees. Then they switch to tell us you get fifty percent of the revenue forever. Tony dahna slash tony. Tell us now back to your disaster recovery plan with dar do we need to prioritize what what’s mission critical. And, yes, we can work with out for a time. Yes. How do we determine that? Definitely. We talk about that in terms of its not just a knight each decision either because we may think that the emails the most critical thing out there, but development may see the donor system as the most critical out there program might think that the case management system is the most critical out there. So you finance wants their account. They want their accounting system up. Obviously you’ve got to have an order in which you bring these things up. You’re probably not gonna have enough staff for bandwith or, you know, equipment to bring everything back online, so there needs to be and hopefully your executive team would be involved in deciding for the organization what is most critical in what order are you going to bring those things up? And that needs to be part of your d r plan? Because otherwise, if you’re in a disaster scenario, you’re not going to know where to start and there’s going to be a lot of disagreement of who starts where so you guys need to decide on the order, okay, we still have a few minutes left, but what more can we say about d r and related back-up that’s not going to wait till i’m back up because i think we could do a little bit in terms of d r i would say the key points on backups are check them because a lot of time, yes, monthly or quarterly, at least is anyone looking at your back-up back-up work-life one of the scenarios that we talked about that actually happened to my co speaker, andrew, was that their server room flooded and it hit their razor’s edge server, which is their entire c, m, s, c r, e, m and donorsearch system, and they thought it was backing up, but no one had actually check the backups in the last two months, and it was on, and it was not s o in terms of back-up just typical, you know, pay attention to the maintenance. What do you backing up? Has anyone checked it? And again, if you’re using a manage service provider, make sure if they’re responsible for for looking at your backups of managing them, make sure they’re doing that, you know, double check and make sure that they understand that your backups are critical and they can’t just ignore the alerts about your backups. You know, you don’t want to be in the unpleasant situation of three of our servers just got flooded. We need the data and discover nobody was backing it up. It ain’t exactly okay. All right. Anything else? You wanna leave people about back-up before we go to the broader diar? No, i think that’s. Good for those were the highlights for it. All right. So back to the disaster recovery. What more can we say about that. There are going to be a lot of watches if you’re in a large d our situation and so one of things we stress is one getting down into the details of your d our plan before disaster hits, you see, if you’ve never thought about how you’re actually going to do the restores air, actually, how you’re going to be rebuild those servers, you need two ahead of time. A lot of folks never practice have a fire drill. I hate fire drill, but and you don’t have a live fire drills in this case, it might be a live fire drill. You don’t want to have that, so you should make some effort to practice, even if it’s just something small, you know, trying to restore one server. I mentioned in this session that i was put in a situation years ago at johns hopkins university, where we were required to have verification of live tr practice. So i was put in a room that had a table, a telephone, a server, and we were carrying two laptops, and we couldn’t come out of the room, and so we had completely restored our domain. We had a set. Of backups on the thumb drive and added the second laptop to that domain improve that we had restored the domain, and an independent person that was not connected to our department was monitoring to make sure we had done it and we had to prove it, and that was an eye opening experience is as experienced as i was doing that i’d never done it live, and it took me three tries to do it so that’s, right? Encourage folks to really try and practice this stuff ahead of time and get down into the you know, the weeds on there on their d our planet on also to think about it. You weren’t fired because way, john no, no, no. I actually like too much john soft. No, we did complete it within the time frame, but we were a little startled when we discovered that we thought we knew how to do it first time out. And we kept making little mistakes. There were two of us and they’re doing it. And we were surprised ourselves that we thought, oh, of course we know this. This is not a problem, but no, we were making little mistakes. Because we didn’t have the documentation down, a specific is it needed to be, and so that was a very eye opening experience. There’s a couple of their d r gotchas we talked about, which is crossed, people don’t think about the cost ahead of time. How much is going to cost to get you that data? Back in the instance of my co presenter who had the damaged drives, they weren’t expecting a near ten thousand dollars cost to recover those drives, but that’s what happened when they didn’t have the backups? They had to take those hard drives to a data recovery place, and the price tag was nearly ten thousand dollars. Dealing with insurance is another big one that people don’t think about having to account for all of the equipment that was lost, and dealing with that insurance morass often gets dumped on the auntie department in a small organization. There’s not, you know, a legal department that’s going to deal with that it’s going to be you so to, you know, kind of talk to your insurance provider ahead of time and see what all you have to deal with in a disaster situation, so you don’t get an unpleasant surprise if you’re ever, in one a cz well, on the insurance topic, just are you covered? Exactly what what, exactly, is your equipment covered, and what do you have to do with that? In terms of accounting for it, if you suffer a disaster and you know the gooch is, we get so a couple of minutes, if if oh, about conscious. Trying to think about somebody we don’t hold back on provoc video, i think some of the other ones that we covered in their thick wit mint again to the cost, how much is it going to cost you? Two gets new equipment and did you account for that when you were doing your d our plan and a time to recover? A lot of folks don’t understand how long it may take them to do a recovery and also deciding what is important and what is not important, not just in terms of what should be restored in what order, but in terms of practical things, do you really need to restore your domain? Er, or could you just start over from scratch if your domain only contains maybe fifty accounts and doesn’t have any associated servers faster for you to just start over and just recreate the domain immediately? Especially if a lot of your emails in office three, sixty five or google maps, you could reconnect it very quickly. So, you know, thinking about more practical gotsch is like that that you should think about have time, you know, obviously it’s that’s the best practice to think? Of all these details, and he realized folks may not be able to, so we provided someone sheets and some samples of them of just quick, yes or no questions and thinking this through and things to think about and where will we that is not notice provoc radio has a professional sound i don’t know about ntcdinosaur ten, but that was a way over there. They’re on their own. They can come to us for expertise if they if they need to. But, uh uh, now i messed myself up because i ask you about something. What were you just talking about? How much? How long will actually take you to recover things? And whether or not you should practically skipped recovering something because it might be faster to rebuild it. Okay, i have a follow up to that my smart ass humor, maybe lose it. All right, so why did you leave us with one take away? Dror back-up the session was a little bit misnamed because technically, you’re not going to avoid a disaster you really can’t in many cases, you’re not gonna avoid the flood. You’re not going to avoid the earthquake if you’re in that. Region so you need to plan on how to deal with it. So it’s more like avoiding avoiding your d are becoming the disaster because you’re not going to avoid the disaster itself, so you might as well plan for it. Outstanding. Thank you very much. Door. Thank you much. Darby america vice president of technology for lift. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fifteen. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Next week date your donor’s returns with jonah helper. 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 pursuant radio wagner c p a’s guiding you beyond the numbers regular cps dot com and tell us credit card and payment processing your passive revenue stream tony dot m a slash tony tell us our creative producers claire meyerhoff family boots is the line producer show social media is by sirs and chavez and this great music is by scott stein with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the odd. They’re ninety five percent go out and be great. Kayman you’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. Nothing. Cubine are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down. Hi, i’m nor ing. Sometimes the potentiality tune in every tuesday line to ten eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Beyond potential live life your way on talk radio dot n y c. Me, are you feeling unhappy with your body, shape or size? Ever feel out of control with food? 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