Tag Archives: nonprofit culture

Nonprofit Radio for January 22, 2024: Team Engagement Tips

 

Kiersten HillTeam Engagement Tips

 The company Firespring uses unusual and fun strategies to engage their 185 employees, so everyone lives and celebrates the Firespring values—each day. We’re talking Firestarter meetings; Culture Club; Power of Three; and more. Kiersten Hill shares her employee experience to spark your thinking about team engagement.

 

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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with Hunt virus pulmonary syndrome if you had to be ratted out because you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, this week we have team engagement tips. The company Fire Spring uses unusual and fun strategies to engage their 185 employees. So everyone lives and celebrates the fire spring values each day. We’re talking firestarter meetings, culture, club, power of three and more. Kirsten Hill shares her employee experience to spark your thinking about team engagement. On Tony’s take two nonprofit radio. 1500 were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, vast flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is team engagement tips. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome for her first appearance, Kirsten Hill to nonprofit radio. She is the Director of nonprofit Solutions at Fire Spring. She had nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit management and fundraising. Before joining fire Spring, she made the move to Fire Spring with the goal to assist educate and equip nonprofits at a larger scale. Kirsten is on linkedin and the company is at Fires spring.com. Welcome, Kirsten. Hello. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. You always bring such, I don’t know, ebullience. Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you. And, uh, I witnessed that this morning which we’re gonna get to talk about. I joined a meeting this morning, but I know just every time we talk, you, you seem joyful. Thank you. I um it’s one of my gallop strengths is positivity. Uh And I think that’s just sort of my natural state most of the time. What is that Gallup strength? So, Gallup is uh the, the Gallup corporation who does, uh you know, polls and those sorts of things. They are also um a business and strengths success coaching organization. Um And you can go through and do an assessment and they tell you what your strengths are. And then the theory and philosophy is that if you lean into those strengths, you uh have better performance and achievement. So, uh one of my top five gallop strengths is positivity. So that’s probably, that’s probably it. I think you’re succeeding. Yes. Thank you. I can, I can validate the Gallup results. Bona fide poll, a poll of one. Yes, a clean one. All right. So we want to talk about the engagement tips for, for teams and you do some special things at Fire Spring. Uh, you acquainted me with them and I wanted to flush them out for our, for our listeners because I think they’re unusual. Uh, I think they show a certain commitment to the team and, and, uh, I want to shout them out. So, first of all, you got value, you got three very clear values. Yes. Um, you know, talk about the values, of course, what they are. But then you know, how do you, how do they help the team, you know, sort of unite? Yeah. Well, I think one of the reasons that I, so I had been a Fire Spring client for a number of years before I came to work here. Uh I had used all of the services that Fire Spring offers websites, the marketing and strategic things that we do. And so I was familiar with the company. Um But one of the things that has really become very clear to me as I have worked here as an employee is that we are very much a company that leads from its values. Uh and we live those values out and we have three primary values. The first is bring it every day, the next is have each other’s back. And the third value is give a shit. And uh we talk on a daily basis about how we are all living those values and we take time during every single meeting. Um that we have that we, we recognize those values and we call out and, and recognize and honor people who are living those values. And I think that’s a really unique approach um to, to, you know, not just having the values and putting them on the wall somewhere, but really, um you know, getting in there and, and diving in and living um through those values. Yeah. And I have firsthand experience for uh an example of this. You, you have these meetings, I don’t want to give it all away. I want you to share it but you have these daily meetings. And I just want to say that I think people listening until they hear more are thinking, oh my, they meet every day, every day, the company, the whole company meets every day. All right. So I was in today’s meeting, but I’m gonna hold off on my follow up questions and you know, my, my impressions of it, us with these, with these daily meetings that are not laborious and feared. Yes. So uh these meetings started in about 2010 is when they started holding them as a company. And uh they had, they wanted a way to kind of try and bring everybody together, get everybody on the same track and again, reinforce those company wide values. And so they did some research and they found that the 11 o’clock time period is the least productive time period during an employee’s day. Yeah. Yeah. And so somebody then said they liked the alliteration of having a meeting at 1111. And they said, well, if we’re having a meeting at 1111, let’s make it 11 minutes long. And that’s how the meeting that we call the fire starter was born. And so every day at 1111, the entire company comes together for an 11 minute stand up meeting and, uh, if you’re in the facility, if you’re in any of our buildings. So we have a headquarters office in Lincoln. We have an office in Lincoln. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. We’re in, we’re in Nebraska. You’re talking throughout the country now that, you know, Lincoln could be Lincoln, Kansas, I don’t know. Lincoln, New York. True, true. Yes. So we are based out of Nebraska. We have an office in uh our headquarters offices in Lincoln. We have an office in Omaha, Nebraska and then we have a small walk up print shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. And so every single person in those in those buildings who has the ability now, we do recognize this is a daily meeting, not everybody is going to be able to, you know, be there every single day. Um But for the most part, we, we encourage anybody but, you know, with that’s in the building to, to attend those meetings. If you work from home, you can hop on a Zoom link uh and, and, you know, sign in that way and everyone, uh, company wide takes part in the meetings. How many, how many employees we have about 100 and 70 uh, or actually, no, I take that back. It’s 100 and 85. I just verified that yesterday. So we have 100 and 85 employees. Yes. Sure. So when we come into Firestarter, there’s a handful of things that we do every single day, there’s always one employee who leads it. There’s a group of about six or seven of us who rotate the duty. Uh I typically, uh, we call them the fire chief because they’re leading the meeting of the fire starter and the chief, um kind of just runs through the agenda. Keeps everybody on track. So normally I chief on Tuesdays, but today I chief on a Thursday because I couldn’t, we, you know, swap things back and forth. So are we so ingrained in the culture that the down has become the verse? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we, yes, I, yes, I used the chief. I do. I will in the future. Yes, exactly. Who can chief for me today? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh today I had the pleasure of being the, the fire starter leader, the chief and we always go through the same agenda. So we start by welcoming everyone, then we move into um recognizing any guests or visitors. So we introduced you today as a, as a guest in our meeting and that the, whoever’s there just sort of normally waves and then, you know, smiles and we recognize that we have visitors with us and then we move into recognizing any birthdays or anniversaries. So if anyone in the company is celebrating a birthday or a work anniversary, uh we’ve got a lot of very long term employees. And so, uh as soon as you hit one year, then every year on your, the anniversary of your higher date, they recognize that you, how long you have been with the company. So we uh we recognize those and then after that, we move into our values, living portion of the meeting. And so uh you can uh as, as an employee of the company, you can recognize anyone else anywhere in the company for um the great work that, that they do and the work that really align with those core values, you know, it might be somebody who um helped you out and took a project uh from you or somebody who filled in for you at a meeting or uh somebody who really has gone above and beyond for a client. Uh And, and we recognize those kinds of efforts on a regular basis today. The it team got a couple of shout outs. They did. Yeah, we had a server, we had a server go down and Zoom and uh Jump Cloud were having problems yesterday. The it team was really hopping. And so lots of people recognizing the I TT the it team for what they were doing and the, it team recognizing one another for how collaborative the response was and how they all just really chipped in and got the work done. Uh So that’s a really good example uh of, of, you know, how we will really recognize one another. Uh Then uh we also do a few special things. So on Fridays, we give the F uh F as in Frank. Uh So on Fridays, we give the F and that is calling out somebody who really steps it up and, and somebody who just is consistently always living those fire spring values. Uh and the F passes from team to team uh within the company. So I can’t give the F if I, if I win the, uh or I, um I’m honored with the F, I can’t give it to anyone else on my team. I have to go outside my team. So we’re really encouraging um the groups to, to mingle together and to get to know one another. Uh And you can only get it once a year. Uh And, and then, you know, again, we just sort of pass that pass that around uh quarterly. There is, it’s bright gold, it’s, and it has a chain on it. If you’re, if you’re in one of the offices, you can actually wear the F and you can hang it at your desk or, or your cubicle. Uh And then if you get the F, you get a little gold F that you can put on a sticker that you can put on your laptop. So, as you’re walking through the building, you’ll see lots of people um who have their laptops open with F stickers on it. Uh So it’s, it’s, you know, a nice visual way to, to represent the F um And that’s kind of fun. On Wednesdays, we go through Gallup Strengths. So we’re a gallop, strengths based organization. Every employee knows what their top five strengths are. And on Wednesdays, we call out one of those strengths and we talk about how you work with people who have these strengths and what, how you might, you know, recognize how they like to work and how you can bring out the best in one another. What are, what are your other four besides positivity? So um strategic is one wu is another which stands for when others over. Uh I’m, I’m, I like to be out there. I get energy from being around other people and uh and engaging with folks over. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then uh positivity and um individualization. So I like to get to know each person individually. I like to know what makes each person tick and then deliver content and information and things that are specific to that person. Um And then the last one I think is communication I think is, is um is supposed to be able to recite. I should be able to, I should be able to, I get, I get, I get, I also have um I also have uh activator in, in like my top five or six and I can never remember which goes where. Um but activator means that I’m not real good at just sitting and letting things happen. I’m kind of always pushing and moving things forward. So um uh activator is in, is in there too. So, um and like I said, on Wednesdays, we, we go through those and talk about those and then on Tuesdays, we go through and review the, the goals for the previous week and uh address, you know how successful we were. Um because that’s the other thing then that we talk about and during every Tuesday meeting, we go through the values living and then we break up our goals by um division of, of the organization. So we have client solutions, um client fulfillment. Uh And, and we go through each of each of those and we say, you know, who has achieved what uh and in, in terms of meeting their goals for the week. And then on Tuesdays, we review how successful everybody was. So, yeah, and then at that, we, when we finish that, we talk about any risks or challenges that we have and then uh if there aren’t any of those or if there are, we talk about those and then if uh after that, we do what we call the cheer. So uh whoever it is that it has the cheer for the day and that also rotates through the company. Uh They come up with some sort of a clever story or anecdote or sometimes it’s this day in history. Um And then, and at the end, it’s usually a very short phrase that everyone says all together. Uh And that’s how you really signify that the meeting is over. Once you finish with the cheer, the meeting is over and everybody just goes their separate ways. It’s not like you’re having this long drawn out. Like nobody quite knows. Is it, is it over? Are we still going? Um After we finish the cheer, everybody goes their, their separate ways and, and all of that is done in 11 minutes. It took you about 12 minutes to explain it. I know. I know. Right. I probably should have cut you off. I should have cut you off a minute ago. You’re over time. You get, no, no, the meeting is really, it’s really impressive. Uh So you invited me to today’s like you said, uh I didn’t say a word. I just waved because I knew you were on a tight schedule. Um So the uh the people that are living the values who get shattered out, you enter them on a spreadsheet. There’s someone, there’s a recorder, it seems to be a, there’s a recorder, someone’s recording on a spreadsheet. Describe OK, who’s keeping track of the people and the teams that get shouted out and, and, and if you get shouted out twice, you get a star, you get shouted out three times, you get two stars so we can. Yeah, exactly. Will. And sometimes, uh, I mean, like the ultimate achieve at fire sp is to be a five star general. Um, so if you have five stars in the, in the week, then you’re a five star general. And that’s pretty unusual. Yeah, that’s just, it’s adorable. It’s fun. It’s easy to understand. All right. So five star General. So what, what happens with those names? You just keep them for the week. Yep. They keep, we keep them for the week. Um, and at the end of the day on Friday, they wipe that board, uh, they wipe the values part of the board clean. Um, and we start over on Monday with a, a clear board and we add those names as we go throughout the week. Uh, the, the goals actually turn over on Tuesdays, uh, because we, our, our goals start on Tuesday and end on Monday and that gives us a little bit of extra time, uh to, to try and get things accomplished if people wanna, you know, not very many people work on the weekends, but if they want to work out on it over the weekend or if they need a little extra time, it just seems to flow better to run uh, goals Tuesday through um Monday. Plus we, we have um some all teams, some other, all kinds of all team meetings that we do usually on Mondays. And so that’s when people set their goals for the week. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime, picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor boss account. No manual data, entry or errors. Make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to team engagement tips. Yeah. So moving to the uh the the gold side, you go through it very rapidly. Uh This is also set up on a on a board or I don’t know, spreadsheet, it’s the same spreadsheet, same sheet. Um It, it, it says the name of the team. And then there are the 33 categories that they’re being a accountable to. Basically it’s public accountability and they have goals for the week listed like some had, some teams had three, some teams had four goals and you go through how are you doing on your goals? Most of the people said all on something all on track, all on track on track. There was one team, I, I didn’t write them down so I’m not gonna, you know, embarrass them. One team said goal number three at risk and that one got a, that one got a negative next to it. It gets a red mark on it. Number three at risk. All right. Yep. So if you finish a goal, you would say like first goal complete. There were a couple of those, so there were one or two complete. Um, if you’re, if it’s just moving along then it’s on track and if it’s behind then it, it’s at risk. And, you know, there’s a variety of reasons that a goal could be at risk. It could be that maybe you had a meeting scheduled with this client and the client moved the meeting. Um, and so, you know, there, it’s, it’s not, we know that it’s very seldom. I, I mean, I don’t, maybe once or twice in the two plus years I’ve been there if we ever had 100% on our goals, you know, it’s, it’s, do you just, you also want to set goals that are, you know, a, a strive that you’re really working to achieve? Um, and so we don’t always hit 100% but we, it at least keeps all of us on track and it keeps all of us accountable to one another and it helps me to know. Gosh, I can’t bother the, you know, customer fulfillment team this week because I know they have a ton of stuff on their goal list. They’ve got a lot going on. So maybe I’ll hold this thing that I need, um, and give them some time to do that and, and, you know, rearrange what I need from them and, and when I need it. So it, it does help us to know what each other is working on and what the timing looks like. Yeah. Absolutely. And those are weekly goal. Yes, those are weekly goals that we review on a daily basis. Tuesday to Monday. You, you start them every, every Tuesday, every Tuesday review weekly progress on Mondays. Ok. Yeah, I, I love the accountability and it’s quick and nobody says, well, why is that one at risk? There’s no, there’s no chatter about why we’re doing great or why we’re not or why one is at risk or how, how good we were that we accomplished one goal. You just, you just report on track at risk or, or done. Exactly. And then they move on to the next team and boom, boom, boom. It’s very efficient. I mean, you gotta be because 11 minutes tell me does the tech cut you off? Doesn’t zoom, cut you off? Yeah. Zoom completely cuts you off. So, uh when I first started being the chief, I didn’t know that and we were running long one day and then all of a sudden just died and they were like, oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, it’ll cut you off if you go too long. So now, especially when we’ve got a day where people are really excited about, you know, recognizing other people and putting lots of people on the board. Then I know I have to go faster through the goals because you don’t want to get cut off. That’s, that’s bad. Ok. Ok. And, and today’s meeting, I think it was nine minutes, I believe. Yeah. The other thing that I love about it that I think we don’t often recognize enough is when I went down before the meeting started, I saw one of my coworkers and I said, oh, gosh, I need to grab you for just like two minutes as soon as the meeting is over to ask you a question. She was like, yeah, no problem. And that happens every day. So not only are you getting people together, you’re mixing different groups, you’re mixing, you know, people who work in different departments and divisions and have different tasks and goals. But it’s a, it’s a common place where you can meet up with one another. Uh, and then most people now will eat lunch about 1130 because by the time the 1111 is over, they go, you know, into the kitchen and warm up their lunch and then sit, sit down and have lunch and, um, it’s a really nice natural break and progression in the day that I think is just fantastic about building, um, camaraderie and, uh, and teamwork and connecting us to one another. Those are the Firestarter meetings the way to do daily meetings that people don’t dread. Yes. Absolutely. Uh, it’s super, it’s super fun. It’s one of my favorite. It’s one of my favorite things. I mean, I would have never thought that I would love a daily meeting, but it’s one of my favorite parts about working there. It shows your positivity comes out about the fire star 1111 for 11 minutes. All right. What’s Culture Club? Yeah. So we also have uh a group. It’s a, it’s actually an elected committee within the organization that is focused on uh I it’s focused on employee engagement and that is their major goal is, is, you know, making sure that um that the employees are connected to one another. They also represent the employees to the leadership team. Um And they are the ones who plan all of our company, events and activities and festivities, parties, those sorts of things. Um And, you know, they really just help to keep morale up and keep employees engaged with one another. Um They are elected to that committee based on um which part of the company, which division of the company they serve in so that we have uh a representation from every team. Uh and they meet on I think a monthly basis and then they, you know, do little subcommittees and planning and those sorts of things. Um, and, and they’re all about maintaining and encouraging and engaging the company culture. Do they have a budget to work with? They do? Yeah, they do whatever it might be. Yes, they do. They have, they have a budget and, uh, you know, it’s things like, uh, in the summer they always do, they’ll do like a barbecue and sometimes they’ll have the snow cone machine come, uh, we, every year we invite anyone who’s ever worked at fire spring gets invited back for an alumni event. Um, and they organize the alumni event, they organize our holiday party, they organize trivia nights, they do or trivia days. Most, all of the events that they plan outside of like the holiday party. And, you know, some of those things, um, all, all of them are, most of them are during the day or, or at some point in time during the work hour, usually around like three o’clock or four o’clock in the afternoon. Um, and then, uh, sometimes, you know, the bigger parties and those sorts of things they’ll do, uh, on the, on the weekends or evenings and do people campaign to be the, uh, the culture club representative of their team. They do. So in the last competitive elections in the last election year, we just had the Iowa caucuses. So, elections are on my mind. Yes. Yes. Is there campaigning? So, yes. There is campaigning in the last few years, there has not been a lot of uh of competition over, but they’ve kind of been able to maneuver things. So there’s a few at large seats and those sorts of things. So anybody who uh has expressed an interest in the last few years has been able to participate. So, uh but uh this year, we did still have some campaign posters that went up around the building. And um you know, people were, were, you know, in the spirit of things in terms of campaigning, it was pretty fun. You have a lot of virtual employees. We do, we have in the stuff that, that culture club is planning. Yeah. So I, I wanted to, I actually went to, to our, our recruitment hr department and said, hey, tell me what the philosophy is on this because I wasn’t exactly sure. So they used to do a lot of hybrid events where they would, you know, they, they would have the trivia say at the headquarters office and then people could zoom in. And I thought it was really interesting because she said that what they found is that they actually had less engagement and less participation with hybrid. Then they did if it was just a completely virtual. So we have some activities that are in person and we have some activities that are virtual and they very seldom do hybrids if a team wants to make it hybrid and it’s an in-person event, you know, they might carry a coworker around on a laptop so that they’re kind of feel like they’re there in the, in the spirit of things. But otherwise it’s typically either a virtual event or an in person event. Um And, and that has been the main way that they try and really engage people is, is by hosting and being very intentional about having events that are virtual and then everybody is virtual. Everybody is on their computers to participate. So then nobody feels second class. I mean, that’s, that’s the problem. You know, how many virtual meetings I’ve been in. It’s just, it’s not the same. Uh You have to, you have to remind folks that you’re on the screen. You know, they’re all in 3d together and, and we’re all one D to lump together. You know, they don’t look at us. Uh you know, you have to make sure you speak up because it’s, there’s just not a lot of skill around engaging your one dimensional screen participants. So I just, I think it’s very simple and smart, just make everybody the same. We’re all one D and now we’re all equal. Exactly. Exactly. And they’ve had, I think, um, some, some very good results doing that. Uh The other thing is, I think once a year they, they invite a lot of the employees who do work remotely to come back. It’s usually around our, uh our all team meetings uh that we have or uh around the holiday party, something like that. They, they make sure that those folks get back um around that time of year. If they want to have that real, you know, quality in person experience, it’s time for Tony’s take two. Thanks a lot, Kate Nonprofit Radio 1500. 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And at Plan Giving accelerator.com, you can use the Code Nonprofit Radio 1500 nonprofit radio 1500 until January 31st and you will get the $1500 off the tuition. That is Tony take two. Ok. We hope that people take advantage of the discount we’ve got bookoo but loads more time. So let’s go back to team engagement tips with Kirsten Hill. Have you ever been a culture club representative? I have not. Uh you have to be there at least a year uh in order to, in order to be on culture club and after I hit, you get beat in an election, you got drugged. I did it. I’ve never, I’ve never um throwing my hat in the ring, so to speak, to be in culture club. I tend to travel a lot um during certain times of the year when I’m speaking at nonprofit conferences and so it doesn’t really lend itself um to, to, you know, filling that role as it needs to be. So I haven’t ever done it, but I love the people who do so. And you’re, you’re in the headquarters in Lincoln, right. Yeah, I, that’s, I go into the office about two or three times a week. Uh I work from home the rest of the time I’m home today because uh it started snowing again. 8.5 inches and, and more coming. So, congratulations. That’s the most I’ve heard. I’ve been on a bunch of meetings and webinars today. 8.5 is the most I’ve heard. Yeah. And it, that was over, you know, from like the first or the 25th, basically from Christmas, uh, until now and then it just started snowing again about an hour and a half ago. So just keeps coming. Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m in North Carolina. We don’t get a lot of snow. I’m jealous if we get, uh, if, if we have a forecast, the, the night before forecast of a half an inch schools are closed. Everything closes, close the school the next day because we don’t own any equipment. All the, I think all the snow equipment that the, well, all the stone equipment that the state of North Carolina owns both pieces. They’re, all, those two are, you know, they’re all stationed on I 95 which is nowhere near me. I’m two hours east of I 95 on the beach. So the towns don’t, we don’t have anything. The people don’t know how to drive. Oh, you know, I’m from New Jersey up near New York City, northern New Jersey. You know, there’s a skill to it and, and part of the skill is just being experienced doing it but there are people here. It’s risky. So, half an inch forecast the next day. Shut the schools. Oh, man, we, uh, it takes eight inches to close the schools here. It’s just been, yeah, it’s been crazy and then it’s like a minus 22 wind chill. Um, so it’s been, it’s been a brutal start to the year so far. But, uh hopefully, uh it’ll warm up soon and some of this will melt. But, yeah, tell us about fire Spring University. Yeah. So, fire Spring University is where we, it’s, it’s sort of the hub that connects us to a lot of things. Uh Fire Spring University houses are uh employee documentation. So, employee manuals if there are training manuals. So, for instance, if you need to fill out an expense report and you’ve never had to fill out an expense report before. Uh You can go to fire Spring University and there’s a module that you can take on expense reports. And it’s a training that walks you through all of the details. Um In addition to that, there’s a lot of um things in there, like an organizational chart, there is a map in there of where everyone’s offices and cubicles are in the building. So if you’re not, if you can’t remember, you know, where Tom Sits, you can go to the map and look at it and go, oh, that’s where he is and you know, exactly where to find him. Uh And then we uh we do some career pathing. Uh And there are um different uh they, they describe it, not like a ladder. So it’s not a, the, the career pathway is not necessarily a ladder that you go up and down. It’s more like a lattice or a web um where you can move within the company to try different things and different opportunities that fit within your skill set. Um And there is a lot of information in there about what other kinds of opportunities might be available in the company. Because once we go to the work to get great people um who want to keep them happy uh at their jobs and want to make sure they have the training and education that they need to do it and do it well. And if they’re not happy, then we would love to try them somewhere else in the company um to, to try and make it work uh as opposed to, you know, having them go somewhere else. Uh So there’s lots of, of opportunities to really explore what you’re interested in and find opportunities to still be a part of a great company without having to move on. This is all shared resources, shared tools, you know, I think this contributes to engagement, shared culture, right? I mean, the culture of the, as soon as you join and join the company, you’re, you’re introduced to fire Spring University. So you get a sense of what’s important, how they treat the employees and, and it’s, and everybody has the same experience. Yeah. And everybody has the same access as well. So it’s, it’s out there, you log in at any point in time and, and you know, if you ever have a question about something thing, uh our hr team is awesome but if you can’t catch them for one reason or another, you could probably log in to, to fire Spring University and find what you need. It’s also the storefront, uh, where you access the storefront for all of our, uh, company apparel and those sorts of things. So, um, we, we do, uh, and this is, it’s actually unusual. I don’t have a fire Spring t-shirt on today. Usually I have a fire spring t-shirt on. Um, but they, they do apparel orders. I think at least three times a year with the change of seasons. And, uh, you can go on and buy, you know, sweatshirts and t-shirts and ball caps and blankets and, you know, lunch boxes and all kinds of things that are branded for Fire Spring. They give us, uh, an employee discount on all of those and you can go on at any point in time and purchase those things and they, you know, just take the payment out of your next check and deliver the item that you want to your desk. It’s kind of cool. I joined you on a webinar that you did last week on annual reports. Annual reports. Basically. Yay or nay because you had a lot of reasons that you might not want to do an annual report because you had your fire Spring branded, uh, top on and, and then, and then I, I told you your nails matched the company logo color. It was, it was amazing. And they did. And that was completely unintentional. I didn’t even know it until you said it. Pierson. Really, really upping my game for 24. Wasn’t one of your five strengths. Um strate strategy, strategy, doing it unconsciously doing it. I don’t even know it gallop, validate those polls that they’re on to something. Now, you have something that you’re very public about uh personal. You’re an only child and then take it to the next level. Yeah, I’m an only child. I am married to an only child and we have an only child. So, if we get together for the holidays with my parents and my husband’s parents, there are seven of us big family gathering. Yeah. Exactly. You know, and, and it just, sometimes it seems so strange. I grew up with a lot of cousins and, and those sorts of things and, um, it, so it does seem a little weird that our family is just, it’s so small. But, yeah, it works for us. I always joke that I don’t, I don’t know what to do when you have more than one child. I’m certain it is much more complicated. But, uh, this, it works for us. We, we, uh, yeah, we all get each other. So I think adding a child more than doubles the complexity. Oh, and, and I, I’m, I’m the person who doesn’t have any Children but I, I hear from friends. I think it’s like exponential. It’s not just a doubling. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and then you, you know, if you have a spouse and you have two Children then you are in a man to man defense. If you get three kids and two parents, it’s, it’s zone, there’s like sports analogies and all kinds of things you have to figure out. II, I don’t know. I, I think if you just have one then they get whatever they want and you don’t have fights and nobody to argue with. It’s much easier. I wouldn’t know anything about the zones, you know, in baseball or anything. I’m not acquitted. I don’t know very much about sports at all. So, I don’t know the zone defense. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, uh, ways that you try and manage it and it’s certainly, it has to be more complicated. Like I say, we just have one, he gets to kind of do what he wants and activities wise, we don’t have to make, you know, big choices. And, um, yeah, nobody to fight with. That’s, that’s perfect. Did that draw you to your husband that you were both only Children? Was that an early, an early feature? You know, it really, it kind of was, it’s definitely something that we both have in common. Uh, and I think, you know, we kind of approached the world with that same viewpoint because we’ve always, you know, we negotiate things, I think differently than you do if you have, you know, big families and those sorts of things. And so, um, yeah, it was certainly something we had in common and, um, yeah, it makes our lives easier. Um, we always say, you know, our parents are, our parents are still young but as they, as they get older, um, there’s nobody to fight with, there’s nobody to argue with. They just have to, you know, we all have to work together to figure this out because there’s nobody else to do it. So, um yeah, it’s been uh it’s been kind of a fun um uh a fun thing that, that, you know, draws us all together and even our parents, you know, um get together and, and those sorts of things, you know, for holidays and that kind of stuff. So that’s, that’s been nice too. Last the engagement uh feature uh strategy that seems very smart at Fire Spring is uh the volunteering employee volunteering hours. Explain all that. Yeah. So uh Fire Spring is a certified B corporation which means that we are certified for public benefit. Uh When our leadership as an organization is making business decisions, they can take into account the impact of their decisions on the things that they care about that go beyond the bottom line. So if, um you know, if they could make a decision that would uh maybe save a little bit of money on ink, but it’s bad for the environment, then they can, they can choose the more environmentally conscious decision. Um And, and as part of that commitment to community, we have what we call the power of three. So we donate a minimum of 1% of our profits. The top line revenue gets donated to nonprofit organizations, 2% of our products get donated through in kind product and service donations. And the volunteering piece is 3% of our people. So full time employees at fires spring receive eight hours every single month. And I would say we’re, and we’re also expected to use those eight hours every single month to volunteer for the nonprofit and charitable organizations of our choice. So it equates to about 3% of our workforce and it really has just, it, it’s a culture thing. It’s just become a part of who we are. And so you might see someone post a message that says, you know, I’ll be out from 11 to, to 130 volunteering. Uh We’ve got a number of people that deliver meals on wheels because that’s a, that’s a really specific time period. And they, so once a week on, you know, whatever day of the week they go deliver their meals. Uh And so, you know, when you see that somebody is out volunteering, it’s not like you’re, you know, frustrated or mad or gosh, why aren’t they working? Because it’s part of who we are, we give back and there you can give back to any organization that you want So I have personally have a number of organizations that I work with. I, I volunteer a little bit at my church and I am on the Friends Council for make a wish and I’m on the um house court board for my uh college sorority and I am helping the legion baseball team. And anytime I’m doing those efforts, I can take time during my week and I can put in those, those hours and, and do the work that needs to be done and fire spring, uh, encourages it and appreciates when we are active parts of our community. And I think that is a huge piece of really developing the ethos of who we are as a company. That’s what these strategies are all about. Uh I love these. And you were the first B Corp in Nebraska. We were, yeah. Yeah, we were the first B Corp in Nebraska and there’s a points system that all B Corps receive, um, to, to say if you qualify as a B Corp or not. And our point system over the years, we’re in the top 10% of, um, the most impactful B Corp businesses across the country, across the whole country, across the whole country, not just in the state. Yeah. Top 10%. Yeah, exactly. Top 10%. Yeah. All right. Uh, so how does all this, you know, all this make you feel is it’s not, it doesn’t, it doesn’t certainly sound overwhelming. You sound uh, effusive about it. But how do you think it helps individual employees? How does it help you as an employee? Well, I think for me, you know, I, I, most of my career was spent in nonprofit management and so I’ve, I’ve run nonprofits. I’ve been a fundraising director. I’ve, I’ve been in that public, um, benefit sort of arena for years and I have tried at times leaving that and going to for profit and that never went well for me. Uh I, it just, it just didn’t match who I was and the things that I wanted and needed um in, in my work life. And so for me, this is really the perfect marriage um of, of for profit and still having that community impact and being a part of the community. And I see that reflected in the people that I work with. Um, you know, I think, I think we attract and develop a very like-minded community based, um you know, ethos and culture. And so for me that I think that is why I appreciate the values and the fire starter and the culture club and all of that is because uh it, it feels most like that, you know, public benefit uh nonprofit kind of, of environment. Um And they’ve been very intentional about doing that. And so for me, it’s just, it’s been a great, uh it’s, it’s just been a great place to land. Uh And if I’m, you know, not necessarily going to be working in a nonprofit. I’m still getting the opportunity to interact with so many different nonprofits. Um And then also to, you know, have that, that the company that I work for embraces and encourages uh that community participation. Thank you for sharing all this Kirsten. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. It’s been fun because I don’t, you know, people ask us all the time about what we do for services and, and that kind of stuff, which is I love talking about, but it’s also kind of fun to talk about who we are. Kirsten Hill, she is, she is Kirsten Hill, the, the positivity, the strategic. You’ll find her on linkedin. She’s very active there and the company is at Fires spring.com. Thank you again, Kirsten. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tony. Great being with you today. I appreciate it next week. Decolonizing wealth with Edgar Villanueva from the archive. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. I still have that alliteration. I can’t help it. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms or go ahead. Sorry. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 3, 2023: Brand Democracy & What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

 

Claire Taylor Hansen & Jennifer Daw Holloway: Brand Democracy

Continuing our coverage of the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand, so it’s collectively owned. The why’s, what’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hansen of Big Duck, and Jennifer Daw Holloway with Ipas.

 

 

 

 

John Coogan & J. Michael Fisher: What To Avoid When Selecting Your Next CRM

John Coogan of CharityEngine and J. Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation, pose the key questions to answer internally before you go shopping, reveal must-have functionality, and share insider secrets, all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23NTC coverage.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:31.23] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of acute flaccid myelitis if you made me nervous because you missed this week’s show,

[00:01:48.87] spk_1:
Brand Democracy. Continuing our coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference, a conversation about letting go and democratizing your brand. So it’s collectively owned the wise. What’s and how’s are explained by Claire Taylor Hanson of Big Duck and Jennifer Doll Holloway with I Pass and what to avoid when selecting your next CRM, John Coogan of Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher at the Army Historical Foundation posed the key questions to answer internally before you go. Shopping, reveal must have functionality and share insider secrets all to help you avoid the common pitfalls of CRM system purchases. This is also part of our 23 and TC coverage on Tony’s take two. I’m available. 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 Brand democracy.

[00:02:43.62] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC. You know what that is. You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference and that we are at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. And you also know that we are sponsored here at 23 NTC by Heller consulting technology strategy and implement it for nonprofits what you don’t know now, but you are about to is that my guests right now are Claire Taylor Hanson, who is creative director at Big Duck and Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I pass, Claire and Jim. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to have you both. Your session is coming up. This is a good preparation on brand democracy. Um So I’m going to say Claire as the agency representative of the agency, client relationship, representing Big Duck agency. What is brand democracy?

[00:03:41.27] spk_2:
Sure. Well, first Big Duck, we think of brand as the impressions that you’re forming in your, in your audiences, the impressions that your nonprofit creates out in the world. And so when we think about brand democracy, we’re shifting our orientation to the history of branding, which is about single ownership. It’s about signaling value. It’s about tightly controlling the impressions that you’re making. It’s about regulating who’s communicating on behalf of the brand. And you’re switching, you’re thinking you’re thinking to instead being about collective ownership of the brand. And so you’re equipping your community of supporters to communicate on behalf of the brand and to really be the brand and inhabit the brand. So it’s really about sharing power and sharing the power of brand in a way that’s aligned more with many nonprofits these days that are thinking more about how can we share and distribute power and how we can communicate and build a brand. That’s more representative of who we are as a non profit and a mission led organization

[00:04:10.33] spk_0:
and Jen as the agent as the nonprofit representative. This all sounds very scary like it’s anarchy that we’re gonna lose control. The brand is going to be diluted. People aren’t going to use the right colors. There’s Farrah trumpeter trumpeter offstage. Hello, how are you? Good to see you. I love the purple highlight too. From Big Duck in Brooklyn in Brooklyn

[00:04:14.42] spk_2:
were now distributed across the country and beyond office in Brooklyn. No, we don’t. We’re now fully distributed, distributed.

[00:04:31.13] spk_0:
All right, used to be a Brooklyn based. Um So Jen, now I’m concerned the colors are gonna be right. People are gonna write, I pass with my period, period, period, period going to dilute the name, the brand, everything is gonna be anarchy and everything that we have invested in our brand is going to be lost. Why is that not true? If we democratize

[00:05:22.34] spk_3:
our brand, it is totally not true. And like Claire said, um we’re uh an ingo. So we’re fairly large, we’re working about 18 countries. Um We have offices in 18 countries. We work in about 30 countries around the world. So brand democracy for us is really important because we’re our core values are justice equity, right? So good. Um We are an organization that is working to expand abortion and contraception access around the world. We are working toward global reproductive. Your work is cut

[00:05:31.31] spk_0:
out for you in the United States for about the past 12 months

[00:06:26.18] spk_3:
or so. It’s true right now. Today news happening. Yes. So um brand democracy for us is really important because we are actually our structure is changing. So we’re we’re not when we will no longer be a kind of a hub and spoke organization with power centered in the United States. We are shifting it, pushing it out, decision make, authority, shared leadership to the places that are closest to our work and closest to the people we aim to serve. So brand democracy allows more engagement. It’s about representing the brand in a way that is best for the communities that you’re serving and that you are part of. So and it’s about trusting our teams to know what is best for the community and their context.

[00:06:27.90] spk_0:
Alright. Um Can you go further and allay the fears of your fellow directors of Directors of Communications may be ceos that everything we’ve invested in the brand is now going to be torn asunder.

[00:06:44.05] spk_3:
Oh, no, no, no. I how can we trust,

[00:06:47.31] spk_0:
you’re not community to do the brand, the justice that we want them to. Well,

[00:07:08.54] spk_3:
I think because in brand democracy, when you’re thinking about the brand, your refreshing it or you’re doing a kind of brand, check up what you’re doing is engaging your community in defining and refining the brand so that you’re kind of living it. You, you understand the brand, the brand represents your core values, represents your mission and vision. So those are common threads throughout our country offices around the world. The mission, the mission and the vision are the same the way that the colors that you might use. They may vary a little bit. It’s okay. It’s okay.

[00:07:31.05] spk_0:
Okay. Maybe a couple of weeks of decimals off. I

[00:07:43.33] spk_3:
mean, the logo is set, but you can use it in different ways. You can use it with a tag line, you can use it without a tag line, but it’s still the local.

[00:09:01.53] spk_2:
Can I build on that? Well, I think we were talking about last night, Jen um at our happy hour moment about really questioning like what’s at risk, you know, and, and, and exploring also frankly, we’re exploring like what this could look like and what the limits are. So a brand is important so that you have brand recognition and so that you’re signaling, you’re building on the reputation of the entity. But if your, if your primary motivation as an organization is really to get folks invested and feel it like it’s rooted authentically in the organization. Well, maybe there’s a greater risk in having folks feel that there’s sort of a top down or western imposition of what a brand or quality looks like. Maybe that’s a bigger risk for you organizationally than having a color, a slight color shift. And so also it’s about having lots of education. So I pass does all this amazing work having webinars having downloadable tools. So things that are truly important for brand recognition, like your logo and like your vision in your mission, ideally, you are building in tons of education around those parts of the brand. But then also leaving room for if you’re in a in a South America where a color has a very different meaning than it does in America. Well, then if that color really resonates allowing folks to enfold that color within the brand and use that brand and have a little bit more, not a little bit more, a lot more regional autonomy with what I pass looks and sounds and feels like in the context in which they operate.

[00:09:43.09] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. What do we, you know, something just occurred to me. I have to have to get something off my mind. I talked to my wife production assistant for a second. You Susan because we’re we are live tweeting that you’re with us. But Susan needs the names of of these two guests in the spreadsheet. Does she know them because, because they got added last minute. Okay, thank you. Okay. Now, now, now you have my complete attention, you give me 30 seconds,

[00:09:46.79] spk_2:
you’re going to ask

[00:09:49.66] spk_3:
you a question.

[00:09:52.30] spk_2:
Like

[00:10:19.45] spk_0:
what, what is this? We’re starting, we’re starting to talk about what this looks like. But I have a very neophyte question because I’ve been studying this for about 11 minutes and you’ve been working on this for months and your presentation is coming up years and your presentation is coming up. What are we allowing folks to do? What are we allowing the community to do? What does this democracy look like? Well,

[00:10:20.58] spk_3:
it looks like a little, a lot of what Claire said in that you are able to represent. I pass in the way that is best for your context. So it

[00:11:02.92] spk_0:
means I want to tweet about how do I as a um newly empowered brand owner, co owner of the bypass brand treat the brand or tweet tweet differently now than I did for the other nonprofit where it’s a top down model. But I wanted to shout out that nonprofit too because I still love that one. Even though I’m not a co owner in their brand. How does my tweet look different for? I pass that it does for the more traditional brand, traditionally branded non profit. I think that’s a pretty eloquent question. I must say.

[00:12:13.32] spk_3:
I don’t know if my answer will be half, but I’m gonna try but I think two things that I pass we have various Twitter handles, right? So if you’re I pass Nepal, you have, you may have your own Twitter handle, you may have all your own social media handles. You may have a website that I pass Nepal, I pass in the US doing tweeting. So I think the thing is that you’re again bound by your values. So are you talking about reproductive freedom and reproductive justice? Are you thinking expansively and inclusively about who is impacted by abortion? Right? Are you, is that coming through in what you’re saying, whatever channel you might be tweeting in French, you might be tweeting in Spanish from from I pass. But I think it’s the personality and the mission and the core values that are coming through in whatever medium you’re speaking in or writing centered

[00:12:17.49] spk_0:
centered around the

[00:12:18.25] spk_3:
value. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:12:20.37] spk_2:
Can I build on

[00:12:21.32] spk_0:
that Claire? Go ahead because I have a question for you. But yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:09.88] spk_2:
I think also we worked really hard with Jen and by we, I mean Big Deck and by then, I mean, I passed two, we also just develop this brand. So it’s a new brand and so we worked really hard when we created that fundamental over, you know, that overarching layer of their logo and the main color to make them have community input from all of the different countries to make sure that folks could get on board with those aspects and those elements. So I think a big shift now is in your analogy of the nonprofit that was before and the nonprofit was after before, I felt it could have felt like, okay, we’ve got this logo that’s a kind of one size fits all. And it has to work for literally every country across the world where every country across the world didn’t help, pick the logo or to find the logo. Now you’ve got a logo where everyone literally did help figure it out. So it feels a sense of ownership and there’s flexibility built in and encouragement built in to say like okay. So this is the base layer. This is the fundamental thread that is consistent through all and now adapt as it makes sense for you. So it’s it’s sort of working with a set of tools that were designed for this purpose and with the with the flexibility and the spectrum of flexibility kind of built in and communicated and reinforced for folks.

[00:14:30.17] spk_1:
It’s time for a break donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice for 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. It’s powerful enough to double donations and simple enough to be used by everyone. Black girls code increased donations by 400% upward. Scholars increase donations by 270%. Maya’s hope saw a 100% increase in donors. The donor box donation form is four times faster, checkout, no setup fees, no monthly fees. No contract and 50,000 or go all over the world donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to brand democracy.

[00:15:27.60] spk_3:
Well, I know we have a lot to say, brand, brand democracy and, and like, like Claire was saying this flexibility. So our teams in different countries know their audience is better than, I mean, that’s you know about not being this kind of hub in the United States. I can’t tweet something that is meant for uh you know, let’s say people in a health system in, you know, Kenya, for example, or, you know, for advocates working on law change in Mexico. So it, that allows you to again have the flexibility to know your audience, know your community, you know, talk directly to them, which is kind of comms 101, right? Know your audience.

[00:15:28.39] spk_0:
Yeah, and, and give them the freedom to speak to their audience who they know better than you do.

[00:15:36.46] spk_2:
But I would generally push back on the anarchy thing because I don’t think that is not here

[00:16:11.90] spk_0:
on this podcast. I gotta make sure. So we’re talking about an international NGO. I pass what if we’re a local uh local state? I mean, you know, small, small town, whatever uh um agency is there, is there value in democratizing our brand? And um is there, is there,

[00:17:04.72] spk_2:
well, I think if your organization is, is really interested in sharing power and uh and um kind of authentically routing your brand in your community, then for sure. Yes. And then I pass, it was an amazing opportunity for us because it was the most obvious and clear, you know, of course, when you’re dealing with international Autonomous, you know, culturally sensitive work, this is a great solution. But now it’s interesting to use some of the thinking that we worked on and developed in this project and to think about how does this, how does this look for a for a regional nonprofit that’s got a small staff, like, what does this look like? And I think some of the ideas about, okay, well, let’s deeply listen to stakeholders that maybe we didn’t historically listen to when we develop the brand, how do we um pressure test the brand during brand development and see what folks are thinking about? How do we train the community and the staff, how do we maybe open up some parts like maybe there’s a toolkit that we can offer for folks. So I think there’s aspects of it and elements of it that for mission aligned for organizations where it makes sense for them and that are interested in these ideas would definitely uh we’re incorporating into our projects right now that are very different than interesting. It

[00:17:33.88] spk_0:
sounds like an example that folks may be more familiar with would be like giving Tuesday, right? I mean, don’t they don’t they have tools, they do have tools and resources and you know, take the logo, use the brand completely decentralized. Folks might be more, be more familiar with um than, than, than I pass. Okay,

[00:17:56.29] spk_2:
you’re right, probably in the world of campaigns like now this is bring into brand, which maybe feels a bit riskier, but this is a common strategy for campaign work because you’re trying to recruit and advocate. And so this is interesting, it’s like taking some of the same ideas and approaches that have been used for campaigns and thinking about does some of that make sense for brand as

[00:18:18.89] spk_0:
well? Where do you think if someone some non profit wanted to explore this, does it need to be part of a rebranding exercise? Because you said there’s a new brand for I pass or I mean, can their existing brand be democratized? I

[00:18:43.80] spk_3:
do want to say it is, it is a, it’s fresh and dynamic and new and everything, but we’re still I pass our mission didn’t change. So the way that we’re working is changing, so we called it kind of a super brand refresh. Right. Right. So maybe a better description

[00:18:47.75] spk_0:
and refresh and rebrand. But still,

[00:18:50.27] spk_3:
I mean, it was, it was verging on rebrand, but we’re still, we’re still I passed. So it was a big deal. I don’t mean to minimize that.

[00:19:06.73] spk_2:
No, but it’s true. I think this is really like a shift in thinking and then actually when you look at the actual brand assets and tools. It’s not that, you know, it’s not a shocking change. It’s just thinking about how you share and distribute and you know, communicate the brand in different ways.

[00:19:13.77] spk_0:
Let’s talk a little about brand ambassadors. How do you, how do you identify these folks? Maybe it’s easier, maybe easier for I pass than, than for the typical US nonprofit that is not international. But uh go ahead explain Jen brand ambassadors.

[00:20:54.05] spk_3:
We kind of you anyone who really sort of has an external facing role, right? If you, you may be talking to the media that maybe that’s different, you might be talking to donors, you might be talking to partners. You’re still an ambassador for I pass for the brand, right? And we have some ways that we’re in in on my communications team at the network level that we’re really trying to build the platform and create the support Claire mentioned tool kits, that sort of thing. So what we view our role is is to to help our brand ambassadors be the be as effective as effective as they can be. So it’s you’re speaking to community members, it’s your, you know, your speaking, you’re giving a speech at a conference or you’re doing a presentation representing I pass on our work that’s ambassadorship. I don’t know that we necessarily always pick them. I think they surface. And I think that anyone in an organization who again is talking with people outside with their community members should be able to represent the brand. And if they have the right tools and, and they’re, you know, they understand the mission which everyone of my passes clearly is committed to our mission. They can be a good brand. That

[00:20:57.14] spk_0:
wasn’t a good question. How do you pick them? Because that top down model, you’re anointed.

[00:21:03.98] spk_3:
Exactly.

[00:21:18.52] spk_0:
So I just made the sign of the cross and giving my giving up my religious background that no longer applies. You’re anointed the canonized, not a process of canonization. That’s what I was looking for, right? They emerge, they want to have lunch and talk to some of their friends about I pass or they want to do an online campaign and give up their birthday, you know, whatever

[00:21:31.64] spk_3:
exactly a donor who feels strongly about why they support ipads, they’re an ambassador

[00:21:36.77] spk_0:
empowered, they’re supported, they just emerge, they’re not, they’re not, they’re not canonized.

[00:22:07.47] spk_2:
And I think the idea of a brand ambassador, that’s not a new concept, you know, in the nonprofit world, like we’ve been incorporating that role in our trainings for a long time. But really, it’s um I think it’s acknowledging and creating tools and resources and approaching the this community of folks in a deeper way. So you’re, you’re saying you’re acknowledging that especially in the nonprofit world where maybe you don’t have infinite dollars to, you know, work on marketing. You know, instead you’re saying you’re capitalizing on the power of your community and you’re saying okay, I’m gonna, we have all these folks that care about us and our communicating on behalf of us. And so rather than trying like control the message or, you know, only have designated spokespeople, let’s kind of release a little bit more and kind of embrace that and capitalize, capitalize the wrong word. But, you know, really lean into the power of our community.

[00:22:31.95] spk_0:
I like the word exploit. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not a pejorative exploit. The you’re taking advantage. Yes, you’re exploiting. I mean, we exploit resources but not to the not to the detriment of the resources. I don’t think leverages, I’m tired of leveraging. I just, I got

[00:22:50.63] spk_2:
I

[00:23:44.69] spk_0:
amplify, okay. I grew up just using things now. I have to leverage them. Um It sounds, it sounds like more work. Um Like I learned in fifth grade, like simple machines as a fulcrum and a power, you know, it sounds too, sounds, it sounds like too much energy expansion. Um Okay, I could see, you know, I’m trying to apply this more generally. I see how it fits perfectly with an international NGO you’re 18 different countries, right? Okay. Um But for, for the more typical listener, I mean, you could be like approaching this but maybe not a full on, you know, um democratization, but empowering your ambassadors letting ambassadors emerge, let let people use your brand for an event or, or uh something they want to do. You know, a peer to peer camp or something, right? I mean, so like, you know, but you have a toolkit for them, there’s some Google, Google Google Docs or something shared resources where you can grab our logo here, grab some of our key talking points there.

[00:23:57.95] spk_3:
Right. Right.

[00:24:53.73] spk_2:
And then also there’s so that’s the brand assets, but there’s also kind of brand feedback, we like to think of brands as like living and evolving things. So, you know, if you reach out to your community for feedback on your brands and to kind of include them on how is it performing in the world, are there ways we could shift or adapt? So then you’re really through how you walk and talk and every through signaling to folks that, hey, this is yours to like this is, this is our communities brand. How do you get that feedback? I’m Google Surveys. You could have listening sessions, you can offer free gift certificates to have folks show up and kind of share their feedback on some questions and hear how folks are responding to statements like your mission statement, your vision statement showed them some recent materials, you know, and also just full acknowledgement. Were we are as an agency really like thinking about this wrestling with this kind of playing around with different ideas. Like this is kind of a new uh framework and way of thinking about branding for us to like as recently as you know, five or 10 years ago, my goal in life was to make the brand as consistent and as, and shut down, you know, anything that could potentially erode the brand as

[00:25:08.59] spk_0:
possible. Yeah.

[00:25:45.41] spk_2:
And, and now I’m questioning that I question, I’m not, not, I’m in some ways, I’m just, you know, wrestling with like, well, what if your primary motivation is instead to, you know, to embody the brand in, in your entire community? how do you get people engaged and passionate about what you’re doing? How important is it really if your hex value is consistent across, I mean, and it isn’t, I’m a designer, it’s very important that your website appear correctly across certain ways and that you have accessible colors. So it’s just thinking about at every touch point, you know, questioning the way things have been done, you know, is there a different way approach that could be taken that would be more in service to the mission and thinking about being maybe a little bit less um tightly controlled about some things that have historically been very locked down.

[00:26:20.37] spk_0:
That’s cool. Alright, Jen, I’m gonna leave you with the last uh last um encouraging words of encouragement, words of empowerment around loosening up, loosening up, maybe not, you know, approaching full on the way the way I pass is able to and really suited for as you both, you both agreed. But um empowering are the rest of the folks around loosening up the their, their

[00:27:20.83] spk_3:
brand, I think it serves many purposes, right? If you’re loosening up in the sense that you are actually practicing or leaning into brand democracy, you are empowering your staff, your community, like Claire said to speak to represent the brand and you’re not um you know, it was this top down calms or marketing controlled the brand in the past and it in a smaller organization, you don’t have a lot of comms and marketing people, right? So you really need more brand ambassadors. You need people to be sort of living what the brand means, be able to represent it and to sort of share those core values. And I think, you know, any size organization, your supporters or your community want to feel a part of something. And this is another way to help do that.

[00:27:42.64] spk_0:
That’s Jennifer dot Holloway, Director of Communications at I Pass and also with me is Claire Taylor Hanson, creative Director at Big Duck, Gen Claire Claire Jen. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Glad it’s worked out. Thank you. Thank you, my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NT see where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits.

[00:28:07.55] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate.

[00:28:58.22] spk_0:
Are you planning a conference or maybe some other training for later this year or in 2020 for I’m available if planned giving can fit into whatever it is you’ve got coming up training wise, then I’d be grateful if you would give me the opportunity to be a part of your program. I’m typically talking about launching planned giving at small and midsize nonprofits. That’s my target audience. So, if that’s your audience for whatever you’ve got coming up again, I’d be grateful if you’d, uh, give me the opportunity, I’d love to talk to you about it. You could use the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com or just email me tony at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:29:10.19] spk_1:
That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time here is what to avoid when selecting your next CRM.

[00:29:38.33] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference. We’re in Denver, Colorado and we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now, our John Coogan, who is vice president of client services at Charity Engine and J Michael Fisher, who is vice president of Development at the Army Historical Foundation. John Mike. Welcome to non profit radio. Thanks for

[00:29:55.39] spk_4:
having us. Thank you.

[00:29:58.40] spk_0:
Pleasure, pleasure to have you both. Your session topic is five pitfalls to avoid when selecting a CRM system. John, let’s start with you just high level. Why is this an important topic?

[00:30:48.95] spk_4:
Well, for me, it’s an important topic prior to Charity Engine. I was with, with non profits for about 15 years. And in each of my 43 of my four nonprofits had to migrate from one system to another for various reasons. And in each case, it was very difficult for me because I went in blind not knowing which questions to ask. And you know, I ran into a lot of implementation delays and you know, misunderstanding of the product. So we wanted to put together a quick session to help people who are shopping around for CRM. Ask the right questions, understand the perspectives, understand who to get in involved from an executive buy in within the organization. Um You know, you know, insists on things like transparency, understand data and the migration process. So they’re walking in with the right, I guess overall perspective. So that the buying process is a lot easier and the implementation process and and going live is even that much easier as well. Mike,

[00:31:10.08] spk_0:
is this something that Army Historical Foundation has been through

[00:31:14.23] spk_5:
and actually going through it right now?

[00:31:15.80] spk_0:
Is this a client vendor, client consultant relationship?

[00:31:19.52] spk_5:
Currently,

[00:31:21.34] spk_4:
he’s been a client of ours with two other nonprofits. He’s moved on to a new one that’s not yet a client.

[00:31:29.22] spk_0:
And so you’re going through a CRM selection now at the foundation,

[00:32:07.31] spk_5:
it was already done before my time and there’s been some implementation issues if you would. And you know, after I was talking to Charity Engine, you know, I was just telling them some of the things we’re going through, like, would you share that people would like to know because you’ve done it two times before and you’ll probably do it again in your career. And I said, of course, because the only way you can really help others is showing what you’ve learned. You know, it is free advice, you get a full refund and, you know, that’s one of those things. But it’s, uh, yeah, I’d like to share that information just because you do a lot digging as a nonprofit executive. You know, there’s no book, there’s no manual and you and I’ve done a lot of digging and I have some ideas of what I think is good and happy to share that and

[00:32:19.21] spk_0:
some sounds like some lessons learned as well. Yes.

[00:32:34.59] spk_4:
One of the big things is 10 years, 15 years ago when I was shopping for my first CRM, there were not a lot of options out there and nowadays there’s just so much noise, there’s so many different levels of CRM, you know, smaller, bigger all in one very specifically focused CRM. If you Google non profit CRM, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with the options. And I think that’s a big problem, especially for smaller nonprofits that neither have the time nor, nor maybe the sophistication with technology to wait to kind of wade through all of those, all the noise and really kind of come up with a product or a list of products that would make sense for them. So we want to help out with

[00:33:01.88] spk_0:
that John, let’s stay with you. You, you alluded to questions, questions, I think between the two of you, oh it’s five pitfalls to avoid, but you have a bunch of questions to ask. One of the pitfalls is not asking

[00:34:09.93] spk_4:
the right questions. It’s not, not being prepared, not being prepared for your. And so asking the right questions and understanding your current environment and who’s going to be using the system and what they needed for having the right people at the table when interviewing a potential partner in a CRM, because you need to represent everybody in the organization, you need to make sure this product is going to effectively give all those people what they need to do their job on a day to day basis. So if you’re coming in and you’re listening to a sales pitch and every, every sales pitch is gonna be similar, we’ve got these great features and great functionality. We do all these great things and we’re going to double or triple your fundraising in the year. But at the end of the day, you want to move past that you want to is this product the right product for me in terms of everyday use. Um my ability to understand it, my ability to leverage it in the right way, my ability to grow with it. And so you move past the sales and start getting into talking to people like me that run client services and actually install the product and get it going. Um So, so you can ask those deeper questions and really answers. Let’s

[00:34:13.92] spk_0:
drill down. So what are some questions that should be asked? What stage are we now? Were, are we evaluating choices at

[00:34:33.08] spk_4:
the stage we’re at now? I think, I think a lot of people in the room are probably, hey, we need to get out of what we’re in right now because either we need to grow or we don’t get what we need out of this or it’s too expensive. So there, there kind of just searching around. So you’re at the pre RFP

[00:34:35.98] spk_0:
stage. So you’re asking these questions internally. Yeah, you’re not asking them of the

[00:34:40.10] spk_4:
vendors. No, not yet. So and then, and then when you get the questions internally answered, then you can shop around and we’d off. Okay. So let’s

[00:34:48.13] spk_0:
get. So what are some of these internal questions?

[00:34:56.41] spk_4:
So for me, one of the, one of the biggest questions that, that I want people to ask is, is, you know, how is your customer support? And you know, do you, do you have a customer support team that’s gonna stay with us as partners?

[00:35:01.80] spk_0:
Well, that’s the question you’re asking the vendors.

[00:35:03.21] spk_4:
Yeah. Yeah. But internally the question has to be, what kind of support do I need?

[00:35:07.57] spk_0:
What do we

[00:35:21.74] spk_4:
have internally? So do I need, do I need support with like reporting. Do I need support with running queries or building building different cuts of data so that I can do segment, segment and emails and things like that. Let’s write that one.

[00:35:24.57] spk_0:
You gotta have

[00:35:38.89] spk_4:
segmented. Yes, you got a lot of segmented data. But I think, you know, if you don’t know what you need, if you don’t know what questions you need to answer for yourself internally, then how can you even expect to ask the right questions of the vendor? And I think that’s the big thing. So planning, sitting down planning, okay, what do we need? What are the questions we need to ask? What are the questions we need to answer for ourselves? So we can go out and look at products and eliminate those we know are not correct just based on our own needs. What else should we

[00:35:52.87] spk_0:
be doing? Introspectively look

[00:36:18.68] spk_4:
at your data? I mean, I think, I think one of the biggest things that trips nonprofits when they’re migrating is not understanding their, their data and where they sit right now, whether they’ve got a single database or multiple databases, are they using spreadsheets? What information is important? Are you managing duplicates the right way? Because what happens when you migrate first order of business is get your data into the new platform in the right way. So you can build everything on top of it and nine times out of 10, if you’re not understanding your data and keeping it clean and doing the things you need to do to prepare yourself to move in a new platform. You’re gonna end up adding a ton of overhead to the implementation timeline itself. And that’s a big deal,

[00:36:32.71] spk_0:
Mike in your experience. Now, I know currently you’re you and you joined the foundation after this stage. But in your previous two times, do you feel like what was your experience around the internal questions being asked? I

[00:37:25.08] spk_5:
think one of the hardest parts at this stage for the non profit of this putting the deal together is you actually have to go back in, make the new piece different than the old database. So a lot of times people sit around the table and they’ll re cobble this thing together and then you look at it like this is exactly what we already have and then you have to logically think, well, that’s if we’re really just gonna build the same thing, right? Have, then why putting lipstick on a pig and send it down the road? And the reality is technology changes so quickly now that, you know, even if you redid your database five or 10 years ago, there’s a lot of different pieces. You don’t have a lot of pieces, you could just jettison aside. And so I think that’s one of the biggest pieces at this point is don’t just remake your same database. That’s, that’s a big mistake that a lot of people

[00:38:29.31] spk_4:
make. Yeah. Again, when you get back to the questions, you know, if you’re asking yourself the right questions, then you’re, you’re understanding why you’re even looking to begin with. So, so we’ve seen some clients come in that end up expecting the same thing out of our product because they didn’t ask certain questions and they are basically trying to replace what they have for price alone. I think if you, if you’re shopping for price, you still need to understand what you’re getting into and you need to be able to think outside the box. What you know, I have an opportunity now to change my database infrastructure in my crm. What are things that I don’t like about my current environment? You know, what, what can I leverage out of the product to make my life easier to make us more efficient so that we can raise more money and do more things for our recipients. I don’t think a lot of nonprofits will sit back and think about that if they’re only shopping for price, you know, and I think that’s an important one. So, okay.

[00:38:32.13] spk_0:
Okay. Anything else about the planning stage before we move on to some must have anything else? Uh I think

[00:38:56.93] spk_5:
we touched on briefly and invite all of your, your interested parties who, who can give input, who can uh test early and they can see previews so they buy in it, calms the waters of this event because to a lot of people. This is a huge event. And if you, if you include the stakeholders early, it’s not as big of a

[00:39:00.88] spk_0:
deal. Who are some of those stakeholders that you see sometimes maybe this goes to lessons learned, but stakeholders get forgotten.

[00:39:21.51] spk_5:
It could be, it could be major gifts, the database based managers, customer service reps, uh the back end guys, if you would that, that are doing the actual data augmentation and you know, so it’s just a, it’s a wide variety, but it

[00:39:48.74] spk_4:
can also be the board member of the board member that is looking at the bottom line and getting the report on a quarterly basis, you know, they need to understand the product as well. Um And they didn’t understand why, you know, you’re moving into that product or they’re not gonna support it going forward. So I think at all levels, if you’re not having everybody at every level that’s gonna be leveraging the product or affected by the product, you’re basically doing yourself a disservice. Um and ultimately potentially creating downstream problems internally about the about the system, even if it’s perfect and,

[00:39:55.60] spk_0:
and including the board helps for some buying. Absolutely. Get that upper level management buy in.

[00:40:03.75] spk_4:
Yeah. So when you need to expand or you want to do certain things with the product that may cause, you know, cost a little bit more, whether it’s a new integration that was built into the product or new functionality that they want to leverage if the boards bought into it, it’s an easier process to adopt that, that new functionality.

[00:40:19.17] spk_0:
You have some must have functionalities that you think. You think every nonprofit

[00:41:09.59] spk_4:
needs. For me, the biggest one is a single database. Like I have lived through running non profit, smaller nonprofits where we’ve had distributed data. And there’s a lot of issues that go with that. Not the least of which is, you’ve got a contact record or a donor or a prospect that’s living in more than one data source, which can lead to uh siloed outreach. So you may have a major donor if this happened to me where we had a donor that wrote a check for $5000 for, you know, major gift end of your giving. And a week later got a solicitation in the mail for $25 and he called and said, what’s going on, don’t you know me? You know, why, why am I hearing from these people as well? I just gave you $5000 and so it could creates problems. So a single source of data for me is critical and that, and I think everything needs to be built from that.

[00:41:12.51] spk_0:
That’s, that’s not standard. I mean, that just seems like there’s a lot of,

[00:41:48.07] spk_4:
well, what happens is this, you know, you’ve got CRM nowadays um that may not have had certain components of technology, like, let’s say, advocacy or events. And so instead of building it, they’ve acquired another organization or integrated. And so what they’ve done is they’ve created siloed databases and I don’t know, I can’t speak to any one particular organization, but what ends up happening is you got duplicate records, you’ve got data that’s inconsistent across the organization. It just becomes a frustrating thing, especially for I was an executive director for a couple of nonprofits. It’s just frustrating because your reporting is not accurate, especially to the board. You know, you’re not, you’re not able to accurately represent the revenue or the donor’s activity. In some cases, you’re not acknowledging correct.

[00:42:06.56] spk_0:
You don’t even know what is accurate. Yourself don’t even know because you’ve got inconsistent data across more than one database.

[00:42:21.82] spk_4:
And what’s funny is now in my role on the for profit side as charity engine, overseeing professional services. We’re seeing that come in because we have to bring all that data in and map it into our environment. And as we’re doing that these, these nonprofits are discovering, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize this one donor who was our monthly donor giving, you know, $15 a month also attended these events because there was a bucket ID database somewhere that, that they weren’t, they weren’t looking at something as simple as that could be. It could, it could really hurt an organization’s ability to raise money and build relationships.

[00:42:43.09] spk_0:
Mike, do you have a must have,

[00:43:07.90] spk_5:
I agree with that. The data points to their missed. So you could be Anthony and my one list, tony and the other two different emails and we could be talking to you two different ways and you’re, you’re going a little mad like, what are these people doing? They talked to me this way one day and then they talked to me this way another and, and that’s where I think there’s a lot of mistakes are being made when they, there’s too many systems and when you can consolidate them, they eventually they won’t catch everything 100% but it’ll be 99% much better. Other

[00:43:17.84] spk_0:
must have, must have

[00:43:32.95] spk_4:
functionalities. I mean, you need the standard stuff. I mean, I think, you know, the CRM needs to be integrated with email marketing. You need, you need good solid reporting, the ability to build advanced reports and customized reports. Um You know, I believe a great must have is open a pis into the nonprofit

[00:43:40.10] spk_0:
nonprofit radio. We’re not here so well.

[00:44:05.26] spk_4:
So it’s simple. Yeah, open api so for me, so to explain it in layman’s terms, um Charity engine offers, you know, let’s say a dozen different inherent functionality within our system. If somebody comes and says, hey, I’m using this other thing that does this thing that you guys will never do because it’s something separate from, from your, your core roadmap. Um But we want to integrate and we want to store the information in your database. So that we have that single source. Still, we have two way integration. So we can, they can bring data in through that other application no different than a user entering it through our user interface and they can pull data back out. So in that way, no matter what happens outside of our environment, we still have the most updated data.

[00:44:29.90] spk_0:
So open, meaning not only the the providers that carry the engine has contracted with other sources,

[00:44:34.13] spk_4:
exactly not

[00:44:34.83] spk_0:
open source. But

[00:44:36.65] spk_4:
yeah. So, so charity Engine, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got A P I is that we built that are very specific like Wealth Engine and Quickbooks and double the donation as part of ours. That’s here this week and double

[00:44:48.03] spk_0:
donation, Adam wegner and

[00:44:54.54] spk_4:
so on the show, it is a great organization. The immigration is easy, we tapped into their and built it so that, you know, when a donor gives one of one of our nonprofits, they get a prompt essentially to double the donation, which is great.

[00:45:02.58] spk_0:
Double the donation is referring to corporate corporate corporate matching, whether your company has a matching gift. That’s what double donation is all about.

[00:45:19.37] spk_4:
Yeah. And so we’ve got integrations that we build into the product based on other A pis and I’m here shopping for partners that we want to build more integration with. But then for those that podcast, podcast production partner. Yeah, let’s do it. Can you can you build, can you build some API calls into our system. I don’t even know what

[00:45:27.37] spk_0:
they are, but I would be happy to produce podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. You

[00:45:31.37] spk_4:
know, we can do that.

[00:45:34.42] spk_0:
So open A P I so I, we can bring in me as the, as the, as, as the user organization can bring in other, other vendors. Our

[00:45:41.32] spk_4:
primary goal, we want to preserve the single database. We want to give everybody the opportunity to bring data into.

[00:45:52.89] spk_0:
Um anything else must have functionality? Okay. Just wanna make sure we cover it. I don’t want to hold that on non profit.

[00:45:55.57] spk_4:
No, no, no, we’re good. Have you done this session yet? I’m not. No, no, we did the session already had some good follow up this session. I was like, no, we’re in the middle.

[00:46:24.37] spk_0:
You really don’t hold hold. Tony-martignetti in very high esteem guy doesn’t even know where he is from moment to moment. Okay. Um You, I’m taking this from your takeaways or learning objectives, whatever industry insider secrets to help you shop smarter. That’s a good

[00:47:46.28] spk_4:
move past the sales team. Like hear the pitch, insists on talking to the head of customer service, insists on talking to somebody in the professional services team. Ask deeper questions because the sales, the sales team will be well equipped to talk about features, functionality pricing, that sort of thing. But when they, when they’re ask deeper questions, oftentimes they don’t know the answer and they’re gonna go internally questions like what like, you know, like some of the things like tell me more about the integration API and how it works. You know, is there a library that you can provide to us or you know, do you have a query tool that allows for, you know, uh sub queries and querying across the database? You know, there’s things that the sales team, there’s things underneath each of the features that someone’s going to dig deeper into. There gonna be a tech guy or somebody that wants to ask a better question. And so I as, as the head of client services often get on the sales calls and I’m, I make myself available deliberately for these prospects because I need to know what they’re asking too. And I wanna understand at the end of the day, it’s a relationship in both directions. You know, we don’t want a client that doesn’t fit with us because they’ll get frustrated and they’ll go away at some point and they definitely don’t want a CRM that doesn’t fit with them because, you know, the money is limited and these processes are, are difficult to, to migrate. So, you know, we open ourselves up to if you want to talk to our head of customer support, Destino, more about how we support our slas. Yeah, you’re

[00:47:52.40] spk_0:
welcome. I don’t know what the

[00:48:08.13] spk_4:
service level agreements. So if you open up a critical ticket, how quickly do we do we respond to you, how quickly do we, do we resolve it? There’s SLS based on levels of criticality and impact of the business and that sort of thing. I as a, as a person shopping for a CRM, want to talk to all those people because these are the people that I’m living

[00:48:20.35] spk_0:
with, the ones who are fulfilling the sl A, I’m going to come back to industry insider secrets, but I want to go to Mike for some lessons, learned some things. You, well, lessons learned. What, what’s in your past? That first you can help people

[00:49:35.08] spk_5:
with when you’re shopping. If you would for this type of group, don’t find a vendor, find a partner. And that’s really, it sounds a little cliche but find somebody that will go in deeper with you just like John was saying, you know, uh I end up doing a lot of hands on stuff like I’m sending an email for the end of the year. It’s in, you know, the end of December, I’m the only one in the office or doing it at home. And I run into a snag. I can actually call somebody and not like, hey, we’ll get back to you January 1st, you know, the third. After all the stuff, all the emails that need to be sent out to make the end of your push. You know, even though you test things, I retest right before I send them again. And if I get a snag it gives me a chance to, to get everything done. So, when you find a partner, they’ll, they’ll be there for you no matter what. They’re not just waiting for your check in the mail. And, uh really the other part that I find is find a group that is creating innovation, not chasing innovation. And so, you know, you can find like these bigger groups that are called like a Frankenstein uh back end where they’re just bolting on. Hey, we, here’s the next best idea. We, we bought a smaller group bolted on, you know, like a big bolt on Frankenstein’s neck and here it is, and they don’t always work together. But if you’re creating innovation, you’re finding ways that, hey, this is the next big idea and we partnered with someone or we made it ourselves and it really works. And

[00:49:55.06] spk_0:
how could you tell if a vendor is creating versus chasing innovation?

[00:50:26.84] spk_5:
What would I do a lot of homework? So, uh the short story is, you know, John, 15 years ago, did this thing with wounded warrior project. I was at a group called American Veterans, Amvets and I sat down and I’m like, who was making the most money in this market, wounded warrior project. So I went and I did as much research on them as I could. I didn’t know him at the time. He had just started doing this other thing with Charity Engine. And I was like, if they’re doing it. I should be doing it. So I called them out of the blue and they were just really getting going charity Engine. Like, how’d you find us? And you’re like our fifth client? And we’re not even, like, set up to do this yet. I’m like, we’re only 20 minutes away. I want to see you next week and they’re like, holy cow, you know. So they showed up at our office and, and that’s how our relationship started, but it was just really digging in kind of the way you find major donors is the way you find partners, you go out and you really do the research and dig it up.

[00:51:43.08] spk_4:
Yeah, I think if I can add, I thought, you know, if you’re building, if your crm that’s, that’s building things inherently, you’re thinking through all this stuff. So, you know, a good example is Chat GPT and AI it’s all the bits, all the buzz. Now, you know, if you’re gonna just slap on a component that says, okay. Now I’ve got a, I because they want to check off a box where, you know, uh charity Engine over the years for me, a wounded warrior project built AI into, into the product itself to be more predictive about, you know, things like, uh fraud and, you know, who’s, who’s accessing forms, um you know, from a boat or a hacker. And so what we’ve already got in the product that’s been inherent for a decade is artificial intelligence to respond to certain things so that we can protect the non profit. So I think, you know, if, if a CRM vendor is growing based on acquisition and slapping things together, they’re probably less innovative and more reactive. And I think that’s the for me that’s kind of the litmus test.

[00:51:55.42] spk_0:
Another lesson learned, Mike,

[00:51:58.64] spk_5:
that’s really the big, the big pieces, find innovation, you know, and don’t chase it.

[00:52:04.67] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. I’m coming back to you John for the insider tips insider

[00:52:25.03] spk_4:
secrets, insider secrets. Uh back to help you shop smarter. I mean, I think the biggest one is move, move downstream past sales. But I also, I also think for me, the biggest thing is is do your homework internally before you start doing your homework externally um understand your own team, understand what you need to understand what people are using, understand what people are complaining about, understand how many different components you’ve got in your environment today. Because if you start shopping before you even have those answers, you’re doing something wrong, you’re gonna, you’re basically not you not, you don’t even know what you’re looking for at that point. So start internally, spend a lot of good time, you know, really understanding your current environment and people’s mentality about your current environment before you get out there and start looking around,

[00:52:56.14] spk_0:
what are some of the questions you got in the in the session? Um

[00:53:23.80] spk_4:
Well, so we we ran to the end and people walked up with questions afterwards and I think the biggest question was related to shopping around, like, you know, where do you start? And it was, it was a couple of smaller nonprofits asking, you know, we don’t know, technology, like, where do I go? Do I search Google? You know, and, and if I do, what are the key words that I’m looking for? And I said, you know, obviously, you know, if you’re starting there, I’d say take a step back and really ask yourself your questions first and then it’s gonna drive how you search. So yeah, Google is gonna be a great source for a lot of people, referrals are good as well, but most people are gonna go to the web, every CRM is doing their search engine optimization and they’re, they’re getting their rankings and everyone’s putting up their marketing messaging. But at the beginning, you need to know specifically what you need before you start searching for anything. Otherwise it’s, it’s misaligned

[00:53:58.04] spk_0:
questions. Exactly, Mike, you want to give us parting thoughts on no pitfalls to avoid a little. Well, just some uh parting encouragement for doing it the right way. Of

[00:55:53.56] spk_5:
course, uh like John said, do your homework. That’s really, you’re, you’re responsible for yourself in the nonprofit world because they hire you to do one job and then you end up having five or 10 or 20. And, you know, it’s really hard to kind of slow things down and really look. But, but call your friends, hey, what, what’s, what are you using? That’s good. Ask, ask for referrals and, uh, and really just go out and see who’s, who’s doing things together with clients more or less than just, hey, I just add a new client. So it’s that partner piece is, to me is the biggest on everything that I do is if you’re not, I don’t, I don’t want a vendor. I don’t, I don’t want a pay for play even though it does kind of break down to that a little bit. I want someone that if there’s a problem, they’re going to help me come through it and, and John, uh, you know, he, he alluded to uh, some things, uh, I don’t even know he, that we had, he knew I had this in our past, but we had a thing where we bought a bad list and a bad list. So it was at another nonprofit before my time and it was integrated by and, and a vendor if you would, that was, uh, that we were getting rid of, but they had integrated like 100,000 emails and it just uh sent off a lot of alarms and Charity Engine and they said stop and we see that you’re not, you’re not getting the response rates. And, uh, you know, you got a little, I hate to use this word honeypot and I don’t want you to put me in jail. But, you know, it’s like all these pieces where they were not great email addresses, they were going to bed, you know, dead ends and so forth and they stopped us from really going down a slippery slope and we had to parse out. Yeah. And it really, it saved us a lot of time and money in the long run and if they would have just let it ride and we were just like another number on their list, it would have cost us money and in terms of donations and fixing. So those are the things I look for.

[00:56:42.80] spk_0:
All right, that’s J Michael Fisher. He’s Vice president of Development at Army Historical Foundation and also with John Coogan, vice president of Client services at Charity Engine, John and Mike. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for sharing my pleasure and thank you for being with tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference in Denver, Colorado, where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with me

[00:56:59.27] spk_1:
next week. 10 fundraising boosts on a budget and personalized fundraising at scale. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:57:02.73] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:57:33.16] spk_1:
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. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your announcer, Kate martignetti. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:57:49.85] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 10, 2023: The High Growth Nonprofit

 

Matt ScottThe High Growth Nonprofit

Matt Scott returns to talk us through his new book, “The High Growth Nonprofit.” He urges you to shed the 5% growth mindset and plan for exponential growth with your rapid growth plan. Matt is CEO of CauseMic.

 

 

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[00:01:19.31] 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. And oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of gero morph. Um Is um if you made me lose my mind because you missed this week’s show The high growth non profit Matt Scott returns to talk us through his new book, the high growth non profit he urges you to shed the 5% growth mindset and planned for exponential growth with your rapid growth plan. Matt is CEO of Cosmic On Tony’s take 2:23 NTC shows coming. 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 the high growth non profit It’s my pleasure

[00:01:54.73] spk_1:
to welcome back, Matt Scott to non profit radio He is CEO and co founder of Cosmic A Portland Oregon based consultancy, helping nonprofits leverage best in class for profit methods to grow their organizations before cosmic. He was a fundraising leader on the inside of numerous young and fast nonprofits One of which he helped take from $275,000 to $51 million dollars in seven years. We’ll be talking about that one. He’s the author of the book, The

[00:01:56.66] spk_0:
High Growth non profit Proven steps

[00:02:14.23] spk_1:
to quickly double your revenue and drive impact. The company is at cosmic dot com and Matt’s book is at cosmic dot com slash book. Matt Scott. Welcome back to the nonprofit radio

[00:02:17.02] spk_2:
Thank you for having me saw this on the calendar and was feeling pretty stoked about

[00:02:21.16] spk_1:
it. Thank you. Oh, you just look five minutes ago like you haven’t been anticipating it for the past month.

[00:02:26.62] spk_2:
I absolutely looked last night and was okay.

[00:02:30.26] spk_1:
Alright. I’ll accept 12 hours of excitement is, is terrific. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations on the book, the high growth, non profit

[00:02:42.82] spk_2:
Thank you. Yeah, I think uh if any of your, if any of your listeners have ever have ever written a book, they will probably relate. It took me twice as long as I thought it would to

[00:02:54.74] spk_1:
write. Yes, I’ve heard that numerous times. Right. All right. But it’s done. Congratulations.

[00:03:00.58] spk_2:
Thank you.

[00:03:04.07] spk_1:
Let’s talk with, with a 30,000 ft view. You, you reference different uh degrees of views in the book and one of them is 30,000 ft. What, what’s a high growth? Non profit

[00:03:42.37] spk_2:
I think a high growth, non profit is an organization that is looking to go beyond incremental growth. Um, an organization that’s looking to double their revenue and impact Over the next 2-3 years. Um and it’s an organization. Yeah, that’s that’s willing to take bold calculated risk and also follow some some process and systems to get there. Um Yeah, it’s an organization ready to invest in growth.

[00:04:06.79] spk_1:
Okay. That’s audacious doubling in 2-3 years, growth revenue and impact. Alright, so one of the early chapters makes it clear that if we’re gonna achieve high growth, we need to outgrow Our 5% mindset. Yeah, help us through.

[00:04:17.67] spk_2:
Yeah, this is, this is my favorite exercise or tip or uh out you know, just learning from the book um because it’s worked time and time again. Big small, it scales at every size organization. It’s quite simple. It’s most organizations especially fundraisers are guilty of this. They set these really low revenue targets and then they like to wildly exceed them. Um At least that’s what I do know that was a frontline fundraiser um but

[00:04:39.75] spk_1:
really classic uh under under over, perform under

[00:05:52.32] spk_2:
undersell over. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So outgoing the 5% growth mindset is this idea that most organizations look to grow, say 5 10 15% you know, and the reality is you don’t actually have to do anything differently in order to grow that incremental growth. You just have to do what you’re currently doing and do it a little bit better. And so what we encourage folks to do is to kind of gather around a whiteboard with their team and say, answer this question, what if we had no choice but to double our revenue with half the resources over the next three years, what would we do? And it’s awesome because in a resource constrained environment, you’re forced to uh get creative innovation comes to life and you’re forced to ruthlessly prioritize. And that’s usually how you can begin to set a path towards exponential growth. Um And we’ve, we’ve seen this, we’ve seen this work at lots of clients and I think it’s something that uh that is an easy thing for a leader to do.

[00:06:01.45] spk_1:
And in addition to having an audacious growth goal mindset, you need to have a plan for achieving audacious goals, which is what to me, this is what the book is all about. It’s not enough to just be audacious in goal setting. We need to have a method of getting there that’s going to be different than what we’ve been doing.

[00:06:20.66] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I, I could, I could say I would like to be £50 lighter by my birthday. But if I don’t actually have any plan to, you know, to replace, uh to, to drink green tea and eat more vegetables, I probably am not going to get there.

[00:06:42.53] spk_1:
I love the idea of exponential exponential growth. Let’s talk about the North Star and why don’t you talk about the North Star? What’s our North Star?

[00:07:04.73] spk_2:
Yeah, I think what’s, what comes to mind for me is, is unlike a mission statement, a North Star is sort of this, this guiding light for your organization. It’s more about the why. Um And you know, the analogy kind of comes to mind like as you’re a kid and you’re exploring and you know, or any explorer really. And the thought is that this North Star can kind of take you in a certain direction, It can always guide you and point you there. And it’s something that when I was at Team Rubicon nonprofit that, that, that re purposes the skills of military veterans to, to assist folks who have been affected by disaster. Um

[00:07:26.80] spk_1:
That’s the organization that you grew referred to in your bio.

[00:07:31.76] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I was a part of, uh, I was a part of our rapid growth there and in fundraising and, uh, there was a lot of people involved in that but, but the organization was ran by, um, this guy named Jake Wood, a former marine. Uh, if there’s any marines listening, I apologize. There’s no such thing as a former marine, a marine, I should say.

[00:07:53.23] spk_1:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:39.45] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I hope I still make his Christmas card list, um, for making that error. But, yeah, Jake pounded the North Star in our head to be the best disaster relief organization in the world. And we were really encouraged to take these bold calculated risk and it was, it was that guiding star to say, hey, when we’re, when we’re at a decision point, when we’re trying to figure out what to do, look to that North star and say, is this going to get us closer there? Is it gonna guide us towards that direction? And I think it’s important for an organization or a leader to set the organization’s North Star and to communicate that frequently. So, you know, that cosmic, we were laser focused on helping uh fully fund every nonprofit organization. Um That’s a pretty big bold audacious thing. It’s like being the best disaster response or in the world. And throughout the journey to get there, you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna have all these decision points and it helps you, I think filter through them.

[00:09:07.47] spk_1:
I like that. The book is filled with examples of basically you, you’re walking your walk, you use a lot of examples from, from cosmic,

[00:10:22.84] spk_2:
yeah, from cosmic, from clients like um honestly, the book is filled with, with just as many lessons that were learned from trying something and it not working. But one of our cultural principles is success is not final and another one is the future belongs to the curious. And I think the combination of those two things are what, what allows an organization to try, try new approaches. But then when something works well to examine it, to look at it, understand why it worked or why it didn’t work and what’s still missing about it and to refine it. And so I try to share examples from our experience um because I’m so goal oriented and sometimes I share with, with Bobby, someone was like my thought partner, my operational partner here at Cosmic, just, just the other day I shared with her was like, gosh, you know, uh I was like, I wish we were growing faster. And she said, Matt, we more than doubled, you know, last year ourselves. And we helped 22 clients double at the same time. Like, let’s take a breath and like, look at what, what worked and what didn’t and what we accomplished. And I think that, that, that, that’s what I tried to include in the book was the stories from those lessons learned. And I hope, I hope it comes through.

[00:10:30.12] spk_1:
It does, it does true to your uh walking your talk. I said you, I said you walk your walk, you walk your talk. True to walking your talk. Uh your North Star. One of them is to fully fund every nonprofit, you know, you do know there’s about a million and a half of them, right?

[00:10:52.72] spk_2:
Yeah, there’s, there’s far too many probably to realistically reach. And I gotta be honest, like we’ve refined that over the years to be those that align with our values. Like I actually, I hope that there’s certain organizations that don’t have access to my book and don’t actually put to use these practices

[00:11:27.25] spk_1:
but you’re scaling back scaling down a little bit. Alright. That’s that’s perfectly reasonable with the universe of a million and a half or more but true to your North Star, you are giving this book away books just go to cosmic dot com slash book and give a name and an address and you’ll ship the book for free.

[00:11:33.51] spk_2:
Yeah,

[00:11:35.22] spk_1:
I’m not gonna ask why you’re doing that because it’s your it’s your North Star. That’s why.

[00:12:11.19] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. I think um yeah, we give away free strategy calls to and I’m gonna be honest, like a lot of the calls are folks that aren’t necessarily in the right mindset or in the right place to benefit from the approach that we take. But we still want to help them. So we’ve developed a free curriculum. Like we’ve, you know, I just wanted to capture some of the lessons that I’ve learned and so many, I’ve gotten so much free advice over the years, um that I’m so grateful for that. We wanted to put some of those thoughts down on paper and, and share those with books and um yeah, just help people, help people grow and scale and it’s the easiest way to, to distribute our knowledge out there.

[00:12:59.59] spk_1:
You have a chapter on and all your chapters are short this quick. This is a, it’s a quick read but valuable and I mean, it has to be valuable. You get it for free. So it has just infanticidal value and then you have, if it’s just infanticidal value, then you have a positive R O I because cosmic is paying for the shipping. So culture. So one of your, one of the many chapters, culture, culture is the glue. How do we I think folks probably understand why that’s important but how do we create the culture that we want?

[00:16:51.67] spk_2:
Yeah. So um I kind of already shared with you two of our cultural principles that cosmic, right? And I can still remember and recite all seven cultural principles at Team Rubicon. But I’ve also worked at two other places in my career where I actually cannot recite even one of the cultural principles because they were a poster on a wall, right? So when I think about cultural principles, they need to be what guides your team in the absence of your presence. So, just a few years ago when it was myself and Bobby and one full time person here at cosmic uh Franny who still works with us. Um I remember gathering her and saying, sharing with her. There’s gonna be a time when we’re not in the room, you’re gonna be alone in the room and we’re going to make a decision about how we need to move forward. People are going to question that decision and we won’t be there to answer it. And I need you to look to these cultural principles, to guide you and to provide them with context as to why this decision is made. Um so that we can all be aligned and so that we can all move forward together. So I think when you know, to address your question, I think of two parts, one is like, what is the importance, the critical part is that you have, that your team has something that they can fall back on to filter through their actions, their ideas, to understand your decisions, all those things in the absence of your presence, it’s really important how to get there. Um It’s as basic as sitting down and writing down, like, think about yourself. Think about your top performing people on your team, the best people you’ve ever worked with. If you’re just building your team from scratch, what are the characteristics of those folks? What is it that they have in common? Where is their overlap and start to write those things down? Don’t go with these lofty like integrity and things like that’s kind of baseline. I hope that wherever it is that you’re working, right? But go with like what is uniquely you and then you can actually refine them and that’s how we come up with fun stuff like at Team Rubicon. Uh One of my favorite cultural principles was uh your mother is a donor. So when we think about how we’re going to reinvest the money that is given to Team Rubicon to serve folks affected by disaster, think about it as if your mother gave us that money. And that was a really cool right way to frame that up. And so at cosmic, we’ve, we’ve got fun ones to write like sleeves up at Team Rubicon was gets it done. So the you can start to put a fun spin on it and then how you move it into action. Um I found is you repeat it all the time and you call it out all the time. Um Are you familiar with strength Finder, tony It’s, it’s a, it’s a gallop kind of generated thing where you fill out this survey of millions of people filled it out and it kind of identifies what are your top five strengths of all these different strengths, right? And a lot of folks use strength finder, but they’d go to a half day session and then they never talk about it again. And the same is true about cultural principles. They take a day a week, a month to define these cultural principles. They’re passive, they’re on a poster and they’re not ever talked about. And so you have to like when you see sleeves up, when you see success is not final, whatever yours are, you have to call attention to call it out and say, hey Franny, that was amazing. You know, that was a success is not final moment for you. This is thank you. You know, this is what works about it. I think that’s what I would say about cultural principles is define them but, but revisit them often. Um that’s how you’re gonna be able to fully leverage them.

[00:16:58.18] spk_1:
What guides your team in the absence of your presence? I love that.

[00:18:00.50] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box, the online donation platform. How many potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop the drop and break that cycle with donor boxes. Ultimate donation form, add it to your website in minutes. There’s no coding required. When you stop the drop, the potential donors become donors four times faster, checkout and more convenient ways to give from leading payment processors. There’s no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract required. You’ll be joining over 40,000 U.S. nonprofits donor box helping you help others donor box.org. Now back to the high growth, non profit Say a little more

[00:18:01.24] spk_1:
about yours. Success is not final. What does that mean to cosmic?

[00:19:25.63] spk_2:
Yeah, to cosmic. It means um we actually do, I learned again, I learned this kind of thing at Team Rubicon. We did this thing called an after action report which is sort of came out of the military culture where we would evaluate, hey, we just responded to hurricane Harvey. What worked? What didn’t, what was missing? What was confusing, right? Um And so what we do here at cosmic and is we actually evaluate like, like literally we did a retrospective on writing this book. Um You know, I think it was a success. I can’t wait to come out with a second volume, but I’m like, okay, what are all the things that need to be, that need fixing? You know, that could be better about how we approach this? Um And there was a ton of them and then how taking the lessons that we learned about the, the editing process, like the outlining process, um the boiling it down to two, like you said, I mean, it was written in a way for to be, to be, you know, kind of digested on a domestic flight. But we, we try to put like the key lessons up front. Well, that actually came out of another project that we worked on where the audience of, of our curriculum said, you know, the just like the lesson learned upfront was really helpful. So it’s taking that success from one thing and applying it to what worked well this time. And also looking back and saying, what didn’t work, what did not go well about that fundraising campaign that we just ran? What, what didn’t go well about that digital transformation that we just did and how do we address that for the next go around so that we can improve upon how we deliver, you know, services to clients and impact to the world.

[00:19:59.77] spk_1:
As you said, each chapter has to takeaways upfront right under the title of the chapter, there’s two shaded boxes that are going to tell you what that chapter is all about.

[00:20:09.22] spk_2:
Yeah, you can skip the chapter if you, if you’re really short on time or not intrigued by what it says or no,

[00:20:53.24] spk_1:
you should, I think you make this point if one doesn’t appeal to you that you should read it all the more to find out what it is that you’re missing about the takeaway that, uh, that you’re not getting, you know, what, what it is you don’t understand about the takeaway that, that makes it, uh, interesting to you. So, read a couple of pages and, and come away enlightened. Yeah. Um, you talk something about, well, actually let’s get a little deeper in your, in your own life that this team Rubicon sounds like it was, I don’t know, transformational for you, you know, so grounding you, you took away a lot from your time at Team Rubicon.

[00:21:15.16] spk_2:
I sure did. Uh the, the opportunity, you know, for, for your more established leaders who are listening to this uh 22 year old Matt was given way too much responsibility.

[00:21:17.65] spk_1:
Military that, that comes, that comes right from your founder. Jake. Military does that 18 year olds are given incredible responsibility right out of right out of high school.

[00:24:28.53] spk_2:
Exactly. If you give people clear direction, commander’s intent, um, as Jake would call it, uh, and, and, and, and, and a sense of connection with one another, a sense of codependency with one another. Um Then, you know, even if you fail, if you’re failing forward, you’re gonna do. Okay. Right. So, uh for me at Team Rubicon, all of the places that I’ve worked, I’ve, you know, have taught me a lot. Um but I learned about, I think the 30,000 ft at team Rubicon, the power of having a really strong uh direction that we’re headed at the horizon level and then how to operationalize it is really critical. So, um I was given the opportunity to, to buy, given the opportunity, I mean, there was a problem and, and someone let me, let me just tackle it right? Um To, to lead 2.5 digital transformations in my seven years, but I had never done that before. Um And so learning a lot from that are developing a mass market fundraising program, building out a fundraising team, um you know, partnering with marketing, all of these different things that uh that were so, so important to who I am today and how I lead today and how I help others lead is because of the lessons that I learned. And I’m gonna be honest, a lot of stuff did not work um at all. And so I’ll share an example that maybe will resonate with folks like one of the things we do and I talk about it in the book is that the strategic planning process is completely broken. At most organizations, right. It takes 3 to 6 months. It cost over $200,000 in staff time and consulting. And usually it, it ends up with this 50 page strategic planning document that nobody reads and is completely in actionable. And a team Rubicon, what we would do is we would actually develop strategic plans every six months. We were putting new ones out there and we would look back and laugh at where we thought we would be. Sometimes we, we thought we were like going to the moon and actually we ended up at Mars or sometimes we overshot, sometimes we fell way short. But the plan was like a good place to deviate from. It was, it was, it was something to guide us, but it was not a desk, a destination, the planning process, you know, um what’s it? Uh I’m gonna mess up which general this was. But one of these famous generals talks about how plan is useless, but the act of planning is really, is really what is really useful because it brings people together and gives people a common understanding. And so a team Rubicon like we would fail all the time at our strategic plans. But, but we were always had a bias for action over a bias for documentation. We always had a bias for getting things done. And um yeah, I’m very grateful for the time that I had there because I don’t think I would be able to support so many organizations today if it weren’t for the opportunity to fail early, um, and succeed early, you know,

[00:24:43.08] spk_1:
G S D getting it done, right. You talk like you were in the military, like operationalized commander’s intent, you know, you, you sound like you were a para marine yourself.

[00:25:01.56] spk_2:
Oh, gosh, I have three, I have three brothers who served in the military. Uh, but I did not have any military jargon or discipline whatsoever before going to team Rubicon. So it’s 100% byproduct of my as my time as a gray shirt and it has nothing to do with uh with uh my level of service stops at the nonprofit sector at Fortune.

[00:25:22.42] spk_1:
Alright. And great shirts of course. Were the team Rubicon volunteers? Right. Exactly. Where the great shirts. Yeah. Alright. So let’s explore a little more of the strategic plan. You, you spend a couple of chapters on it, having an adaptable strategic plan and why don’t, why don’t you bring in another organization? The talk about the uh SFP the Salon to Family Project.

[00:25:47.39] spk_2:
They’re

[00:25:48.32] spk_1:
adaptable strategic plan.

[00:29:48.15] spk_2:
Yeah. So what I what I favor is is action over over documentation, right? But documentation is important. So capturing your strategy on a single page, it’s like what are we trying to achieve? What are the key, how are we going to do that? What are the key strategies on how we’re gonna do that? Right. So Salon to Family project. When they first started working with us, they actually pair marginalized Children or women rather so just women who were largely ignored in the community with orphan Children. And they create what they call these forever fan families where they are not just a temporary placement for orphans, but rather a wraparound care service. A long term commitment of family goes well beyond, you know, a kid graduating from high school, say right, you can still call your parents well into life and then you care for one another. Um And so when they were thinking about how to grow and they really needed to grow, we started to identify, okay, well, if we were going to double revenue, how would we go about doing that? What are the key areas we’re going to focus on? So we capture that in a strategic plan and then you essentially look at okay. One of them was going to be, we’re going to really lean into peer to peer fundraising because that was there was an opportunity there for them. And another area was cause marketing and really thinking about how to leverage corporate marketing dollars instead of corporate philanthropic dollars. Most nonprofits go after donations, but those are very limited versus marketing dollars are kind of infinitely scalable. So those were just two of the strategies that made sense. Then we developed all these tactical things. Like if we’re going to focus on fundraisers, we need to have little things like we need a good peer to peer fundraising platform. But more importantly, like, let’s think about donor segmentation or, or supporter segmentation donors, volunteers, fundraisers, advocates within the fundraisers. Like, are these people network mobilizes? Can they get a lot of people to attend the event and donate on their behalf? Um Sharing a ton of context. But my point is that there were all these little ideas like we need to coach people who are passionate about Salaam to but who are not professional fundraisers on how to ask people for money. So a fundraising coaching series made it in there so big ideas, little ideas, they all get added in and we scored those based on impact. How much impact would they have on our ability to double revenue against that key strategy, how with cost, you know, time and money, like a fundraising platform cost money, it takes time and money to draft an email series and build out an engagement flow, right? And so by doing this more action oriented strategic planning process, what we did was we started to develop, uh we were clear on direction and we were clear on how we were gonna get there and we really thought about what should be done first. And um and as a result, the organization was able to, you know, leverage all kinds of cool stuff, a Travelocity grant to film to build brand awareness. Like we built a really big peer to peer program, but also kind of what I was sharing about team Rubicon and cosmic is like our identity shift over time. And what to uh to Marissa the executive director’s credit. She saw an opportunity and actually the connection between family, the forever family in the faith based community in, in the US, the donor base. And that there was a strong connection there that they were, they weren’t really maximizing or taking advantage of because they weren’t directly connecting the two. So that’s that a plan is a good place to deviate from that I was talking about is as you move through the process of growing, you need to success is not final stop and evaluate what’s working, what’s not what’s missing. And she found that opportunity and leaned into it with these frameworks and they’ve been very successful. They’ve, they’ve grown up, they’ve doubled more than more than once. Um So, yeah, just a little bit more about, about Salam to and how they leverage that growth strategy.

[00:30:03.61] spk_1:
Explain about the one page strategic plan, the O P S P, talk about this in the book too.

[00:30:53.97] spk_2:
Yeah, this is, this is like my favorite uh my favorite thing um because it aligns everybody and it’s the simplicity. It’s hard to get down into a single page, right? But, but essentially at the very top, it’s what are we trying to achieve? Okay, let’s say we’re trying to double our revenue. How are we gonna do that? I talked about that already. What are the key strategies? Um okay, then who should we be targeting? Uh like who should be going after? Let’s say one of your key strategies is to, to take an audience led approach, right? So one of our clients is Surfrider. Well, who they’re going after is mass market, major donors, uh you know, certain corporate partners, etcetera. And then what motivates them? Well, they have four programmatic pillars. So that’s really like, what are we talking about? What do they do? They,

[00:31:02.76] spk_1:
what do they do?

[00:32:35.42] spk_2:
Surf rider is a group of a collection of chapters. There’s over 80 across the the country. And what they do is they work collaboratively to put forth legislation to protect beach access, to protect clean water, to reduce plastic pollution and to reverse the impacts of climate change. And why people support surfrider are different. Somebody who’s interested in plastic pollution might not be interested in beach access. Um So what we, what we want to capture on that page is who are we going after? What, what’s the core message? What are the, what are the major drumbeats? What are the times when everybody? So World Water Day super important for them. Um Some of them are planned and some of them are unplanned. So the rainfall that we just experienced in California really damaged coastal communities, but that was an unplanned drumbeat. So the ability to look at this one page strategic plan and say, should we respond to this disaster? Does it align with our, our strategy towards doubling revenue? Um It gives people a filter who are execute Urz and who are operational ist and leaders to look at and, and glance at and say, yeah, we need to lean into this opportunity and it means that we’re gonna have to stop doing these other things um temporarily or otherwise to get there. So, uh yeah, that’s a little bit about what’s captured in the one page strategic plan. It’s sort of the, what are we trying to do and how are we going to do it? And who are we targeting? And where should we focus our efforts?

[00:33:45.99] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two A week before the 2023 non profit technology conference. And already we’ve got a dozen interviews booked. Who I’ll be talking to conference presenters about. Oh, like data driven storytelling with Julia Campbell, inclusive culture on your board. Oh, using your voice to lead quiet, quitting. Perhaps personalized fundraising at scale. You might see these and lots of other shows are coming up in the months ahead. If you are at the nonprofit technology conference swing by booth for 24, I’ll be there talking to all these future smart guests along with heller consulting our 23 NTC sponsor. Thank you again. Team Heller for sponsoring. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo Koo, but loads more time for the high growth non profit with Matt Scott.

[00:33:55.02] spk_1:
You talk about intentional discoveries,

[00:33:58.21] spk_0:
these sort of internal

[00:33:59.86] spk_1:
interviews that are, that are valuable, explain what that’s all about.

[00:35:50.48] spk_2:
Yeah, for this, I’ll use an example when we were working with Mercy Corps, uh non profit large established organization. Uh They provide humanitarian services across the world in over 100 countries and some of the most difficult places and their fundraising and marketing team is about 65 people. So big department within that, they got lots of senior leaders and we were helping their, their fourth C D M O and four years get the team aligned. So she was relatively new in the seat. And so what we encourage is to do stakeholder interviews with each person. In, in her case, she had within the department, there was about 12 directors just in the department, senior leaders for her. Um and it was about interviewing each of them and figuring out, hey, what’s working, what’s not, what’s confusing, what’s missing, you see that kind of common theme and gathering all this input from your team on the regular revisiting it with them once a year is really effective because it allows you as a leader to do the stakeholder interviews, even though you already work there, you already know who those people are and what they face. Well, chances are by just slowing down, taking a pause and actually having a conversation with your team. You know, if you’re, if you’re truly doubling. If, if you, when you, when you grow revenue by 25%, of your systems will break, that’s been our experience. So by pausing and slowing down and doing interviews with the various stakeholders on your team and understanding what’s working, what’s not, what’s missing, what’s confusing. You can begin to prioritize where your clarity needs to, where you need to provide more clarity where things need to be re prioritized, where, where you need to address problems that are popping up, that are new problems that you weren’t expecting because you just moved to a different phase of growth.

[00:36:12.43] spk_1:
That that’s a whole nother good topic because if you’re experiencing this rapid growth or you’re, you’re in the midst, yeah, you’re in the midst of it. Prioritization is key.

[00:38:06.72] spk_2:
Mhm Yeah. And that’s actually you talked about what is something else I want to talk about in the book. It’s uh something we found really useful is um is Larry Griner is a, is a researcher who years ago, uh you know, wrote an article in HBR about the evolutions and revolutions of organizational growth, growth. And how as you move through the stages of growth, the inevitable crisis, crisis is that come up as you move, the pain that you’re going to experience the solutions that you put in place to address that phase of growth is inevitably going to lead to crisis in the next phase of growth. And so we used to pass out the original article and it was very much written from a for profit lens. But yeah, sorry Harvard Business Review. Yeah. And uh we just received so much positive feedback from, from clients that were taking through our rapid growth program, which is this transformational process um that were like we need to rewrite this for nonprofit specific audience because there’s some uniqueness to that, like it’s particularly resource constrained, you know. So we did that. And it’s one of the chapters in the book, I talk about like the various phases of growth and the five different ones and how as you move through them, you’re gonna inevitably come up with new challenges. But that’s how I think those, those two questions for the two topics we just talked about come together. It’s like by doing those interviews, re checking in with your team frequently as you move through the phases, you’re going to be able to um see more clearly from their lens from their vantage point when things are breaking. And when the solutions that you put in place, when you are moving from an entrepreneurial environment to one where you have decisive leadership is inevitably going to lead towards like a sense of I need autonomy. I’m being told what to do too much, you know. So you have to check in with your team regularly as you move through the phases of growth.

[00:38:18.85] spk_1:
That’s like you had a lot of autonomy at Rubicon.

[00:39:32.20] spk_2:
We, we did until I didn’t. And so it’s funny because Jake is a friend of mine still. And one day we were talking about, you know, we were both sharing with each other. How long do you think you’re gonna stay? Um And uh for me, it was, became so clear, I was like my identity, I am a builder and a doer. I am not a maintainer. And so as soon as my job becomes more and more narrow and it becomes more when to maintain state status as opposed to like what we’ve just gone through for the last seven years. That’s gonna be the moment when I when it’s time for me to uh yeah, to move into the gray shirt as a volunteer as opposed to a staff member role. Um And so yeah, I think that’s that, that was my own experience in my own journey and in evaluating when it was time for, for me to, to kind of move on. But I was given a lot of autonomy and then it started to get rained in, you know, um because it had to, we started have department budgets and processes and, and I was like, yeah, this is necessary and this is not for me. Yeah,

[00:39:43.60] spk_1:
let’s talk a little about hiring, you say higher when it hurts but, but you need to have a couple of things in place before you before you do something that sounds reckless. So what, what, what’s, what’s higher when it hurts.

[00:40:26.97] spk_2:
Yeah, this is some advice that I was given by, uh, now the chief operating officer at a major Humane society, but came from a consulting background when he and I were talking about me building this consulting practice and I thought about it was like, gosh, that is so on point. Even when I’m at a nonprofit, right, you always feel like you want to put more bodies in place, right? Like if we only had more people, we could achieve more. Um And we were talking about it from a, a cash flow perspective. Don’t go hog crazy on hiring too many folks because you don’t wanna have to lay people off if, if you, you know, if it’s a temporary need, you need to evaluate when, when you need to hire. So I’ll share this because I think it’s so valuable for, for folks who’ve made it this far into the, into the podcast episode,

[00:40:41.42] spk_1:
but nonprofit radio listeners are not dropping off. Okay. Good,

[00:40:46.11] spk_2:
good with

[00:40:47.23] spk_1:
us till the end. I’m sure of it. Especially talking about, about high growth.

[00:44:29.39] spk_2:
Okay. So yeah, help us be the best, best selling book in the free book category by making it this far. Um So World Bicycle Relief, I, I share this story. This is one of our clients and uh and they there you really unique because they’re not just a nonprofit, but they’re also a social impact business. So they ask for financial donations, but they also sell a Buffalo bicycle to communities in countries across across the world. And they do this to help provide education and access to health care and jobs. Um And let’s just take in, in certain parts of Africa, like the terrain and the infrastructure in Kenya is really different than that of Colombia, but they operate in both places. And so their marketing team is stretched really thin because they’re not just serving the donor audience, but they’re also trying to serve the various social impact audiences in different countries and produce materials that will help those social businesses and entrepreneurs that they’ve set up in country to sell these bicycles to service these bicycles. And so they’re stretched really thin, right? And naturally you just want to go to, I need a higher. But what we did first with them is we gather their marketing team and we said we want to show you how to think like an internal agency, how to think like a marketing firm internally within your organization. So this tip is something that I think nobody, most nonprofits don’t even think about, don’t say nobody but I haven’t come across any yet. So one of the things we do at at cosmic and this is common practice in any agency or consultancy is you think about your time as billable and non billable and billable time is essentially time that we spend building to clients but as an internal agency, it’s things like writing coffee, uh building out workflows, um merging contact records, whatever all these different things. Non billable time is not bad time. It’s things like professional development, it’s things like paid time off, it’s admin time going to staff meetings, getting a line, things like that. And so what we told we we shared is like you need to actually evaluate where all of the time is being spent as an internal stakeholder and determine your billable time divided by your total time gives you what’s called a utilization ratio. And so at cosmic, you know, our team of 16 Served 28 clients last year. And we have, we have currently over 65 work streams going on that are across all these different clients. And how in the world does that few of people do that much work? And the reality is we are very meticulous about understanding how much time it takes to do. Uh If we get asked to create an annual report or build a landing page or build a workflow, we need to understand how much time it takes for the project manager, the content strategist, copyright of the designer, right? And so we taught this to world Bicycle Relief’s marketing team to actually keep track of your time and to set targets for billable versus non billable. And what they found was where they were spending time and where they weren’t spending time. And then when they got request from the major gift officer for a one off, uh, you know, uh, one pager, they were able to evaluate how much time that was going to take and the impact that it was going to have and they could then prioritize their work through their backlog in a way that they had never thought to do before. So that’s an example of like going back to higher when it hurts. Chances are it hurts right? You’re stretched, then there’s more to do than time to do it before hiring, stop and take stock of where you’re actually spending time and what can go and what needs to stay. And only when it really is like your team is running hot and consistently running hot. And if you look ahead and you’re saying, gosh, we’re having to turn down high impact work because we don’t have the capacity to do it. That’s when you should hire. But you don’t really know that unless you’re actually keeping track of your time,

[00:45:02.59] spk_1:
did you think of something that you want to talk about? That? We haven’t yet.

[00:45:07.27] spk_2:
Yeah, something else I would like to share. Uh

[00:45:10.25] spk_1:
Alright, success. The only author I can, the only author I can remember who doesn’t know what he doesn’t have more to share their overwhelmed because there’s so much value in the book you don’t know what to choose from.

[00:45:49.76] spk_2:
Oh, that’s, that’s kind I, yes. Well, I, I will share, I’m very grateful to, to be on, on your show again. And the work that you’re doing to support the community, I think we’re aligned there. You know, you’re giving away this podcast constantly for free. And I know how much work it is to produce content. So I uh I appreciate you having us on and I really hope that people find this book to be useful. And I guess I would share, please provide feedback because success is not final. And if there’s elements in the book that you’re like, that didn’t land or we wanted more of this, um That’s the only way we know, right? Like what episodes you should, you should make a nonprofit radio or, or what chapters should make it into the next book.

[00:46:30.92] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. Challenge. The listener’s, you’re getting it for free, so give feedback. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to end yet though. There’s a couple of things that we still want to talk about. We um you talk about a rapid growth plan and there are three parts of it. We’ve talked about the first two, we talked about the one page strategic plan. Uh You talked about your, the project backlog, right? Which becomes these, these ideas to execute the one page strategic plan. That’s your does your projects and impact versus as you, as you described, just reminding folks impact versus resources that need to be allocated to that.

[00:48:09.36] spk_2:
Yep. And then the third, the third part the third part is, well, a plan is great and prioritization is great, but we have to measure how effective this thing is, right? So we develop a simple KPI tracker, key performance indicator tracker to measure the success of the plan. And so I’ll just use an example what might show up on a KPI tracker. So let’s say, let’s say you’re your donor base is aging and your file strength, your retention rate is good, but folks are getting older and so you need to acquire more new donors, right? Um Okay, how are you going to do that? Let’s say you turn towards maths market fundraising audience to get there. Uh There’s two things you need to do. One, you need to think about your plan giving approach and two you need to think about because that’s where the strength of your file is and to you got to acquire new supporters. So what KPI S matter? Well, we find with online giving that it comes down to website traffic conversion rate and average gift amount. If you can get more people to your website and more of those people give and they give more money, then you’re gonna raise a lot more money online right? Then when you think about, okay, well, what’s that retention rate look like? How many of our supporters are moving from one time to monthly? Um What’s that upgrade look like? And retention rate looks like? Um So those are all these KPI. So for when you go back to the one Patriot eg plan, you think about, well, what were our house, maybe one of your houses? We’re gonna build a robust legacy giving program. Which, which tony I know, you know more about than I do. So I don’t, what do you think are the KPI S that people should measure when they’re thinking about building out Planned Giving program?

[00:49:10.00] spk_1:
Oh, well, first of all, you’re not going to acquire new donors through planned giving, but some of the, some of the key metrics, uh how many conversations you’ve opened about, about the topic, how many solicitations you’ve actually gotten to um might be just how many meetings you’ve had around this topic, which is different than the conversation. You know, you may not have quite opened the conversation but you had a meeting to, to suss out the possibility. So, you know, those are so there’s three like number of meetings, number of conversations opened, number of solicitations made, of course, number of commitments. Yeah, donors are willing to make. So there’s, there’s four early

[00:50:50.10] spk_2:
ones. Yeah, exactly. And so the, the KPI has to match up to whatever your strategy is and it basically needs to, it needs to be I think of KPI S as both leading, there’s leading indicators and then there’s trailing indicators. So the leading indicators you described are like how many conversations, you know, we’re open. Uh meetings have, would be a very early leading indicator. And then how many, you know, conversation now you’re starting to get a little bit further, the trailing indicators. Um You know, you start to evaluate at different phases. Like are we gonna hit our goal? Is this strategy working or is it not working? Does it need to be adjusted? So the idea is that together those three things and by the way, throughout the book, I hope it becomes clear, but I’ll just share my own personal experiences when in doubt, make it as simple as possible. Create KPI S. They’re easily trackable that you don’t have to spend a lot of time going into a lot of different systems. Get this data. You want to be thinking about how do I make this as easy as possible? I don’t need to spend any time describing what it means when we say website traffic or conversion rate or average gift amount. We don’t have to describe what it means, like number of laps donors or whatever. Um And you just want to have your system set up so that your KPI dashboard you can regularly look at and not have to spend a lot of time building out. People think like, oh, data driven and you know, people, people want want a Ferrari when what they need is a Kia, you know, and they don’t even have a pit crew to like help them racist formula one car around the track, like find the Kia. Find the Kia that’s, that’s, I guess my metaphor advice on that,

[00:51:12.56] spk_1:
that’s the rapid growth plan and, and the one I do want to close on know your strength, that I know your strength chapter. Do you know your strength?

[00:53:47.17] spk_2:
Yeah, I think that this, this rings true both on an individual and an organizational level, right? Um And where is it that, that you are uniquely positioned to drive impact like nobody else can. Um I mean, you know, how, how it is, I think about like organizations that come to us and they think they’re the only ones solving the water crisis. You’re like, actually there’s a lot of people doing exactly what you’re doing. Um And I think it’s, I think it’s just really important to have a clear idea of, you know, what problem are we uniquely positioned to solve in a way that is unique to our culture? So I’ll use, I’ll go back to team Rubicon as an example to drive this home because we talked a lot about it. Um When you think about disaster response, there is response, the immediate response. Uh Well, there, there’s, there’s like preparedness, you know, readiness is the community ready for disaster. Then there’s the actual like response to the disaster and then there’s a long term recovery, right? And Team Rubicon, when we first got started, our strength was really in the response because we were able to pull from the military culture to very quickly respond. We didn’t have a lot of bureaucracy. We didn’t have a lot of red tape. Um, but it was really challenging to get into the recovery business in the early days by business. I just mean, the business of serving folks affected by disaster, not making money on recovery, but like, you know, that’s a different, that was a different organizations strength. That’s a different skill set to be able to build out rebuild communities affected by disaster re roof homes. And all that team Rubicon really didn’t get involved in that for a really long time in their trajectory. And it wasn’t until they had clearly uh they had leaned into their strengths on the response side and they had really figured out what worked and then they thought, okay, how, what worked in there that could work with, with how we would go about the recovery and how does that compare to someone like the Red Cross and how they approach the rebuild effort? Um So knowing your strengths and knowing your sector is super important. It’s like, what do you, what’s that North Star? What are you trying to achieve? What’s your cultural principles? What, what makes you uniquely good at what you do and lean into that relentlessly and stay focused on that and don’t try to become the latest thing in every category. Um I guess is what I would say at a, at a high level. Um Is there something that stood out to you in that chapter. Tony that I didn’t talk about their,

[00:54:16.97] spk_1:
no just identifying and leveraging what you’re strong at instead of trying to go broader. You know, some people and some organizations may try to improve weaknesses rather than double down on their strengths.

[00:55:24.82] spk_2:
Yeah, people do this all the time, right? Like that’s a good point. I’ll share one more thing and I know like more and more and more. I am really comfortable with the visionary role. Like I love starting things. I don’t particularly enjoy finishing them nor does my team like it when I tried to finish things because I’m not very good at that. It’s really hard for me. It’s a hard muscle to kind of push through. But I have like found Bobby, my operational partner. She’s the magic at 10,000 ft. She connects the executioners with the 30,000 ft vision and makes project plans and makes sense of things and loves finishing projects, not starting them. So knowing your individual strength as a leader to and figuring out like, am I more comfortable in futuristic vision planning? Um or am I more comfortable in operational izing things and figuring out what you need as an operational partner? Because really nobody has it all like you just don’t and you might be able to flex when you absolutely have to. But your best flex is going to be their worst, just standard operating procedure because that’s their strength right. So I found that we’ve been able to grow a lot faster in clients to like we, we work with a lot of clients that are C E O s that don’t have operational partners or sometimes they get in the way. And it’s like knowing when you should stop and when you’re, when the operational ist should pick up is really an important thing to distinguish

[00:55:57.57] spk_1:
Matt Scott. The book is the high growth non profit Proven steps to quickly double your revenue and drive impact. It’s at cosmic which is cause C A U

[00:56:00.65] spk_0:
S E M I C cosmic

[00:56:09.47] spk_1:
dot com slash book and it is free to you, including the shipping, shipping, shipping is covered. Matt. Thank you very much. Thank congratulations again on the book. Thank you for sharing your thinking.

[00:56:17.16] spk_2:
Yeah. Thank you, Tony. I really appreciate

[00:56:19.24] spk_1:
you. My pleasure.

[00:57:09.85] spk_0:
Next week, I’ll bring the 1st 23 NTC interview and they’re all gonna be excellent. I’ll just pick one. That’s extra excellent. Yeah, extra excellent. Exactly. Next week’s show is gonna be extra excellent. Just like I said, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We are 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. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy And this music is by Scott Stein. 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.

Nonprofit Radio for October 3, 2022: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

 

Pratichi ShahYour Dismantling Racism Journey

Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions. (Originally aired 7/8/20)

 

 

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[00:01:58.44] spk_0:
Hello 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 oh, I’m glad you’re with me, I’d be thrown into necro psychosis if you killed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. You’re dismantling racism journey starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify? Talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit. My guest is pretty itchy Shah founder and Ceo at flourished Talent management Solutions. This originally aired july 8th 2020 on Tony’s take two, let’s debunk plan to giving myths. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is your dismantling racism journey. It’s a real pleasure to welcome welcome. I’m not welcoming. I’m welcoming, I’m welcoming, she’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years human resources equity and inclusion and organizational development in the nonprofit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and Ceo of flourish Talent management Solutions. The company is at flourish tMS dot com. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:10.09] spk_1:
Thank you so much tony I appreciate being here.

[00:02:14.25] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have you um and I’d like to Jump right in if you’re, if you’re ready. Um,

[00:02:20.35] spk_1:
absolutely.

[00:02:48.05] spk_0:
You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. Um, I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:34.85] spk_1:
Yeah. You know what it often it starts with listening. I mean to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does start with listening. It’s understanding for organizations. It’s understanding where we are. Um, so it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of, hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is is are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely been marginalized or oppressed in the past joe. General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:50.19] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for. What do you mean by that?

[00:04:45.05] spk_1:
So a lot of time the voices that are saying, hey something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices. They’re speaking maybe from a place of privilege and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive, for instance, if the I call it kind of the the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee. This is back when we were in fiscal offices, um, we need almond milk too. But the question is is are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain and it just talks about preference. But are we list listen to the voices of people that have been oppressed who have, who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a, as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement. Those are the voices that we need to listen to not the ones who have a preference for one thing or another.

[00:05:08.34] spk_0:
Um let’s be explicit about how we identify who, who holds these voices, who are these people?

[00:06:03.47] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to center the voices of those from the black community. And that means those who have either maybe not joined, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs, Maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it as understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move people up? Move people in move people out if we don’t have the voices in the first place? Because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about? Who’s coming into our organization? Who’s leaving our organization, Who’s able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like. So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on. So that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:52.58] spk_0:
Alright, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for board board positions turned down for employment? Um, I’m not even gonna say turn down for promotion because that would presume that they’re still that that presumes are still in the organization, But I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us, who aren’t volunteering, who aren’t supporting us in any way, but we’ve marginalized them. We’ve cast them out before they even had a chance to get in

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
potentially. Yeah. And then actually probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being uh to your point of volunteer. So so we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:36.46] spk_0:
Okay. I’ve gotta I gotta drill down even further. How are we gonna identify these people within within our organization as it is? How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalize these voices of color over the let’s just like in the past five years, what have we if we’ve done this? How do we identify the people we’ve done it to?

[00:08:33.53] spk_1:
Yeah. It’s a really it’s a complicated question. It will differ by organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is, how things flow within a subsector. The size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down, why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews, we know that there is not always uh an HR presence in a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews, first of all, let’s make time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. Um but if if there isn’t a formal HR presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board position or a volunteer. It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined as possible. And within those groups, understanding are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there.

[00:09:02.40] spk_0:
Yeah. Okay, Alright, so, alright, um we go through this exercise and and we identify we’ve identified a dozen people, um they’re not they’re not currently connected to us and uh it may be that they have had a bad experience with us, that they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else. That could that in itself could be, let’s

[00:09:18.28] spk_1:
say that

[00:10:08.31] spk_0:
in itself could be uh not something other than benign, um but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about, so, so in some cases they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases they may have, they may have turned down that board position because they saw the current composition of the board and they didn’t feel they felt like uh maybe being an offer, you know, a token slot or whatever, whatever it might be. I’m just, I’m just suggesting that some of the, some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder or potential stakeholder roles that they could have had. Um what do we reach out to them and say, how do we, how do we get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel unwelcome him?

[00:11:21.79] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Um we tried carefully and we honored the fact that they in fact might be getting that same question from many other other organizations, friends, colleagues, family members, in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, white supremacy of dominant narrative and dominant culture. That’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that, that is not the member that is not up to. The member is of oppressed societies to have to tell us that, Right? So what they, what we want to understand is kind of, what did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was bad? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us. Is this not a good time to do that because they’re already exhausted. I said to a colleague recently, you know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live there to live that reality and for many to lead the charge, right? Because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So to we can’t even understand what those layers of existence are like. So I think it’s treading very carefully and should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire. Then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us? What where did you find us either not appealing or where did you? Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:50.37] spk_0:
Okay, well that’s further down. I’m just trying to get to like what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:55.10] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. It depends on the organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that to be honest with you because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want to offer kind of a blanket response and inadvertently tokenized people by saying, oh, of course you’re gonna want to engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation.

[00:13:35.19] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They had a very smart newsletter this week. We often can’t predict news outcomes, but we often do know news is coming, for instance, hurricanes during hurricane season, the Duffy decision on abortion and the november midterm elections. We know in advance that there’s going to be this news. The smart nonprofits turn to communication says prepare talking points for all the possible outcomes in advance and they’re the ones that get the day one quotes and the op EDS and they own the issue on social media. So prepare your messaging in advance, then launch when the news breaks. It’s brilliant turn to communications. Your story is their mission. You can get their newsletter which is on message at turn hyphen two dot c o. Brilliant. Now, back to your dismantling racism journey. What are you inviting them to do with you have a conversation, share your experience with us, is it?

[00:14:42.37] spk_1:
Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. But again, it really depends on where the organization is. Right. So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? It’s understanding who we are in, where we have contributed to structural racism, to pretend to a culture of that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations, that is in some ways upholding white supremacy or is completely holding upholding white supremacy and its culture, there’s that general education of understanding all of that and then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is, right? So it’s both. And um so it’s really highly dependent upon where is the organization uh case for us, who you’ve talked to? The head of Equity in the center describes a cycle that is brilliant um around awake too, woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you, where are you on? Um where are you and being pluralistic? Where are you and being inclusive? All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out and if you even should reach out there maybe work that has to be done internally before that reach out can happen again, just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to talk to.

[00:15:09.48] spk_0:
Yeah. Kay was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:15:16.71] spk_1:
Yeah. The the organization is doing and has been since its inception has been doing incredible work. K is leading that work. Um and and both her words always contain wisdom and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:15:48.30] spk_0:
How about in your work are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now, Do you you bring these outside folks in sometimes too to to have these conversations

[00:16:16.58] spk_1:
sometimes. Yeah, sometimes again being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around um, having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state? What is the desired future state? Right. So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us as an organization if it means solely in numbers piece right? Like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how will we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us? So it’s kind of defining both current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:17:00.63] spk_0:
Okay. And now you and I are talking about, you said you know, we’re still data gathering, so we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right. Okay. Okay. And your work, you you centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from

[00:17:05.04] spk_1:
there.

[00:17:27.69] spk_0:
I don’t know. Are we okay. Are you okay, Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else? Okay. Um, so what what is it we’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and midsize nonprofits to, to commit to you.

[00:17:30.41] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own

[00:17:32.40] spk_0:
learning

[00:17:33.56] spk_1:
and, and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning. Right? Again, Going back to what we said earlier, it’s not relying on those who have been harmed or oppressed to provide the learning. So first of all, it’s an individual journey that’s a given. Okay. Um,

[00:18:32.11] spk_0:
can I, can I like to like things like people, I like action steps. Okay. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching Youtube, watching, um, folks on Youtube of course. Now I now I can’t remember the names of people, but no Eddie Glaude. Um, so Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written a just released this last week, uh, biography, well, not so much a biography of James baldwin, but, but an explanation of baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know, who I’ve been listening to. So we were talking about educating like learning from thought leaders around yeah, privilege structures, whether reading books listening to podcasts.

[00:19:00.76] spk_1:
Absolutely. It’s around, it’s around structures, but it’s also understanding things that we do all the time in organizations and how I as a leader might perpetuate those, right? So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional. Um, language tends to create our reality. So, and and it either language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader? Um, as in my own kind of inclusion or not? So, I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism, around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth, because it’s not just an intellectual exercise. This is emotional, too, and therefore has to have emotional resonance.

[00:20:10.42] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into what about personal, you know, your own personal journey, your own personal education, uh, fact finding and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know, and it’s no, no revelation. This is it’s difficult. It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone, uh, how you offended a group. Um, if you were, you know, speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied. I don’t know how many times. I mean, this introspection is likely painful,

[00:20:12.44] spk_1:
likely likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t I can’t really envision it. Not at some level being painful.

[00:20:21.92] spk_0:
Yeah. But you’ve caused pain. You know, that there’s a recognition there. Yeah,

[00:20:27.16] spk_1:
exactly,

[00:20:27.62] spk_0:
painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of the person or the group that you.

[00:20:33.80] spk_1:
Exactly, right. I

[00:20:34.78] spk_0:
don’t know, offended, stereotyped, mean to put off, you know, whatever it is, you’re

[00:20:40.73] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work as much as I know, you know, to some degree, people want this to be work that can be kind of project managed if you will or it can be put into a process or a series of best practices or benchmarks

[00:20:53.94] spk_0:
to

[00:21:05.75] spk_1:
some degree, not very much, but to some degree. Yes, absolutely. The some a little bit of that can happen, but that in and of itself is a bit of a dominant narrative, right? That in and of itself is kind that that centering white culture. So I think what we need to understand is this is not just going to be again to sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be arms length. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:21:41.49] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um All right. So I made you digress and deeper. What else, what else you wanna tell us about leadership’s commitment and and and the importance of leadership commitment.

[00:23:23.38] spk_1:
Yeah. So, so it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organization has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a, hey, let’s touch base on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative first of all, that’s not really doing the work anyway. Um but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person check in on this, that that’s not what this is about. It’s really, it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous. Which in the case of many nonprofits, it is if you take a look at Building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership work around how people move through the sector or don’t and how people communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not. Um though i that is an oversimplification in some ways. So I would encourage people to go to building movement Project’s website and check out their work. Um but you know what, why are we so homogeneous? Why is our board? So homogeneous? It’s it’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So to your point earlier about, you know, how do we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at Who is present, right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Does any does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar or they have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say.

[00:23:45.71] spk_0:
How

[00:24:08.90] spk_1:
Do you get 10 years of experience if you’ve not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that we can that we can begin to integrate in our conversations? Because life experience is equally valuable. Are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of a of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those, those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things, there’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or organizational culture.

[00:24:24.52] spk_0:
Yeah, yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:24:27.44] spk_1:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the areas bleed into each other.

[00:24:38.31] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah. Um, you know, subsumed in all this, I guess. I mean, it’s okay for leaders to say, I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and and right. I mean, supporting it, but I don’t know what we’re going to find.

[00:24:54.28] spk_1:
Uh

[00:24:55.50] spk_0:
Right,

[00:24:56.39] spk_1:
right. And that in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the that’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:25:03.34] spk_0:
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. This, you know, I had I had a guest explained that this is not as you were alluding to, uh it’s not the kind of thing that, you know, we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting, then we’ll have this list of activities and, you know, that then, you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that

[00:25:26.67] spk_1:
because we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole selves to show up that it is um It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:25:44.56] spk_0:
Alright. So it’s not gonna be as simple as our budget meetings.

[00:25:48.62] spk_1:
Absolutely different. Different kind of hard.

[00:25:52.76] spk_0:
Alright. And we’re gonna have an outcome at every at every juncture at every step or every week or every month or something. That’s

[00:25:58.65] spk_1:
right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way. Um We are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on

[00:26:56.36] spk_0:
it’s time for a break, fourth dimension technologies. Are you seeing technology as an investment, an investment in your people, the people you’re helping, the people who work for you, the people who support you, an investment in your sustainability and investment in your programs four D. Can help you make better tech investment decisions. Check them out on the listener landing page at Just like three D. But you know, they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return shall we to your dismantling racism journey. Alright, so that’s what it’s not. What, what does it look like?

[00:27:59.80] spk_1:
It absolutely looks different for every organization. It absolutely looks different for every organization and that’s why it’s so critical to understand kind of where are we right now? Um where are we? As far as all of the components of our organization? Right. So volatile. Again, volunteers board staff culture. You said, you know, we were talking about people organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. Um, it is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How um so we do engagement surveys, Right. A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those disagree in a disaggregated way? Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization, Whether you can provide dissenting opinions, whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss with feedback, um

[00:28:01.00] spk_0:
whether

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues, boss, leadership etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding are they being experienced differently by different communities within our organization?

[00:28:26.10] spk_0:
You mentioned disaggregate ng. That that’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:28:31.94] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:28:35.58] spk_0:
Oh, of course. Aggregating. I’m sorry.

[00:28:39.09] spk_1:
Oh, that’s okay.

[00:28:40.34] spk_0:
You’re stuck with a lackluster host? No, of course, yes. Aggregating

[00:28:44.36] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:29:00.70] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day, but thank you for being gracious. Okay. Yes. We we we want to disaggregate of course. Um and look by population and I guess cut a different way. I mean depending on the size of the organization, um age, race, uh

[00:29:25.54] spk_1:
race, ethnicity, um of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix. Um gender as well. Including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference in how people experience our organization? We we know then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is causality unless they’re unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that. Right? But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and causality and then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:29:57.07] spk_0:
We we we wandered, you know, but that’s that’s fine. I

[00:30:03.50] spk_1:
people

[00:30:09.82] spk_0:
culture and um and leadership all coming together. Um where where where do you want to go? Uh I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership. What’s a good, what’s a good next one?

[00:32:27.52] spk_1:
Yes. Well, so, so this is what you’re doing, right? As you’re you’re collecting information and all of those three areas. Right? And one so a couple of things that I would add to that is when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences, when you look at the leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, Right? And so what, what is happening? What’s not happening? What’s stated out loud? What’s not stated out loud? What are the unwritten rules? There is also the piece that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems. Right? So things like performance management, things like um where people may sit back when we were in physical offices having access to technology, all of those kinds of things, particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices, so does everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job, to do their jobs to do their work? So it is looking also at your operator side and saying, how do we live our operational life? How do how do people experience it, who do we engage with to provide services for our operations? How do we provide services if you will, for lack of better term to our employees? So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, Right? Because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that too. And finally, I would suggest again as part of this and as a wraparound is what is the internal external alignment? Right? So I often hear people say, hey, you know what, this is the subsector we work in, people would think that we’re really equitable, but internally we are living a different life than what we are putting out to our stakeholders and our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life? And how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program Programmatic work is actually may be further along to the extent that this is considered to be a contain, it’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally. So

[00:32:31.20] spk_0:
there’s dishonesty there disconnect that

[00:32:34.70] spk_1:
there’s a disconnect

[00:32:36.18] spk_0:
disconnect

[00:32:36.88] spk_1:
for sure and possibly yeah, dishonesty and hip hop maybe even hypocrisy.

[00:32:47.12] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. But again, all right. So that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. Exactly. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:33:05.70] spk_1:
Right. Right. And and so what I try to do is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might evolve give in the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out. How do we kind of get there? How do we, how do we evolve our systems? How do we evolve our people practices? How do we evolve our culture. So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership.

[00:35:27.37] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving. I hate these insidious, pernicious myths like the one that planned giving will hurt your other fundraising and the one that you need a lawyer because plan giving is so complicated. I will debunk the top five myths in a webinar on Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific time, one p.m. Eastern time. but the time doesn’t matter because if you grab your spot for the webinar, you’ll get the video. This is 2022 you don’t need to be there. We’d love to have you live, but you don’t need to be there. I will be debunking these insidious myths in plain simple language and I’m gonna weave in my stand up comedy. The host is NP Solutions. They’re hosting, you are hosting me, they’re hosting us. That’s what hosts do they host their hosting? You go to N. P solutions dot org and click on workshops. What could be simpler. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for your dismantling racism journey with Gene Takagi. No, no, it’s with who writes this copy? I need an intern so badly, desperately. So I have somebody to blame. Please. You’re dismantling racism journey with pretty itchy Shah and intern resumes are welcome. What about the use of a professional facilitator? Because well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings uh but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an expert facilitator. Yeah,

[00:36:50.97] spk_1:
absolutely. So, so, you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and and and kind of an in inside look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from, you know, our health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. Um, we we want that external voice. What I would say is it’s likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator and I say expert in quotes um, for everything. So for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think I’m the right voice to be centered. I would rather center voices like those at um, At race forward at equity in the center at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. Um, you might want to call in a voice for White Ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white voices. I’m

[00:36:51.22] spk_0:
sorry that white Ally ship. Yeah. What is that?

[00:38:01.95] spk_1:
So if we think about the or the organization, right, and are kind of culture and our people um, who who on staff sees themselves as an ally. And how can they be good? How can how can white people be good allies? Right. And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture. Um, and then finally, so keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know, who is going to be the person in my case, this actually might be me is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that, who’s gonna provide the training because there are skills necessary right to have these com conversations. There are foundational communication skills, there is the ability to give feedback. Um, there is the ability to communicate across cultures, across genders, across across groups. There is ability to be collaborative. So so also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from? One source is not ideal and unlikely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be, it’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:38:26.14] spk_0:
What what else do you wanna, what do you want to talk about? You know, given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:39:44.81] spk_1:
Yeah, I think, I mean, look, first of all I hear a lot of organizations say like what what is the access point, like what do I get started doing? We put out a statement um in some cases we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the programmatic work that we do and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding kind of why where are we now through all of the ways that that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes. Where are we now? What is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing, What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture, if we are living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we are back in an office, even our physical setup. How how does that affect us and how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state, what is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be along all of the areas that we said. Right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building, um some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group. Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is it is understanding where you are that determines what your access point is. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out this statement then there then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:40:22.11] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to Yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent, your organization has probably said something in the past 56 weeks.

[00:40:23.77] spk_1:
Absolutely

[00:40:26.78] spk_0:
to that, to that statement.

[00:40:43.46] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say and pardon the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment, so not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through, they have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and to center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:41:15.89] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change uh institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi

[00:41:37.59] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. To hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team and to Nascar and places where we, I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible, but we we are same change and and the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:42:41.88] spk_0:
right and not and also recognize that it’s just a beginning. You know, removing confederate statues, um taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings. But I think worth worth noting. I mean worth recognizing and celebrating because The state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for, I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that just that long 18. Some things I think is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long, it’s been a long time coming. So recognizing it for what it is and celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent that represents the change, the beginning of the beginning of change. All right. Um well, you know, what else, what else, what else do you want to share with folks at this? You know, at this stage?

[00:43:50.39] spk_1:
You know, I think, I think the main thing is um dig in, We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that that we have been living this society societally for so long. Our organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization that were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at like a post racial culture, that’s not the case, that’s just not the case. Um, so where do you want to dig in? Where do you want to dig in, chances are good you are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey. So dig in from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re waiting for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not it’s not based solely on analysis. There is a p there is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if we’re waiting for endless analysis to happen or to kind of point us to the right time, that’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path, as we’ve said a few times during the course of our conversation, this is about emotional resonance and an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So, dig in, dig in wherever you are right now,

[00:44:38.44] spk_0:
what if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, I’m not even second or third tier management or something, You know, how do I elevate the conversation? I presume it helps to have allies. What if what if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who, who are in leadership?

[00:45:11.35] spk_1:
I think look for the places where there may not be resistance, right? So look within the organization. Um, if there is resistance at a particular level, then you know, who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? And I think, I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions if you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly in the black community, I think you’re coming from one place if you are, if you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein. Um, and I think, I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction, I think in most organizations, it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now,

[00:45:47.45] spk_0:
and what is the, I don’t want to call it outcome. What, what, what what can the future look like for our organization if we do embark on this long journey,

[00:46:18.02] spk_1:
uh, cultures that are equitable in which people can show up as their whole selves, um, in which there is not only one right way to do things which tends to be a very kind of white dominant Western culture, linear sequential way of, of managing work of managing communications, etcetera, but that in fact work can be approached in a number of different ways and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all hold very near and dear. And so they are able they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:46:44.78] spk_0:
when you started to answer that, I saw your face lighten up your I don’t know, it was a smile, it just looks like your face untended. Not that you’re nervous,

[00:46:55.65] spk_1:
Your face changed,

[00:47:06.37] spk_0:
started to answer the where we could be. Uh yeah, it was, it was palpable. Alright, alright. Are you comfortable leaving it there?

[00:47:09.88] spk_1:
I think so. I think so what have we not covered that? We need to cover for your listeners,

[00:47:15.60] spk_0:
you know that better than I getting started. That’s

[00:47:34.18] spk_1:
fair. Look, you know what, this is, this is the future that is written with many voices and and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me, but I dare say someone, someone out there does know that and and they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:47:47.19] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. Alright,

[00:47:50.25] spk_1:
no doubt. Yeah,

[00:48:02.94] spk_0:
she’s founder and Ceo of flourished Talent management Solutions and the company is at flourish tMS dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you very very much.

[00:48:05.97] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation

[00:49:10.60] spk_0:
a pleasure. Uh it’s a responsibility and happy to live up to it. Try trying next week Beth Canter and Alison fine on their new book the smart non profit if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com were sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies their I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great

Special Episode: Your Dismantling Racism Journey

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My Guest:

Pratichi Shah: Your Dismantling Racism Journey
Starting with your people, your culture and your leadership, how do you identify, talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your nonprofit? My guest is Pratichi Shah, founder & CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions.

 

 

 

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[00:01:49.94] spk_0:
welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. This is a special episode of non profit radio to help you be the change around racism and white privilege. You’re dismantling racism, journey, picking up from our last special episode, starting with your people, your culture and your leadership. How do you identify talk about and begin to break down inequitable structures in your non profit? My guest is pretty sheesha. Founder and CEO at Flourish Talent Management Solutions were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com by Cougar Mountain Software Denali Fund. Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits, Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot studio. It’s a real pleasure to work. Um, welcome. I’m not working. I’m welcoming. I’m welcoming pretty sheesha. She’s an HR strategist and thought leader with 25 years experience in all aspects of talent management. She’s making her face when I say 25 years, Human resource is equity and inclusion and organizational development in the non profit and for profit arenas. She’s founder and CEO of Flourish Talent Management Solutions. The company is at flourish. Tms dot com Prodigy, Welcome to the show.

[00:02:01.84] spk_1:
Thank you so much, tony. I appreciate me here.

[00:02:44.80] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure. Pleasure to have you. Um, and I’d like to jump right in your if you’re ready. Um, absolutely. You know, racism and white privilege most often look very benign on their face. I had a guest explain why use of the word professional in a job description is racist. I had a more recently, I had a guest explain how not listing a salary range in a job description was felt racist to them. So how do we begin to uncover what is inequitable and right under our noses yet not visible on its face?

[00:03:07.84] spk_1:
Yeah, you know it often it starts with listening. I mean, to state state a bit of the obvious. It really does serve listening. It’s understanding for organizations, it’s understanding where we are. Eso it’s listening to the voices that may not have been centered. We’ve become better as organizations and being responsive to staff. I hear that a lot kind of Hey, this is what my staff is telling me. This is what we need to do. But the question is, is, Are you responding to the voices that have possibly been marginalized? Likely that marginalized or oppressed in the past? General responsiveness is not the same as centering the voices that really need to be heard. So it’s first off just understanding where you are as an organization and listening to the people who may have experienced organization in a way that is different than you think.

[00:03:41.67] spk_0:
So when you say general responsiveness is not what not adequate, not what we’re looking for, what do you mean by that?

[00:03:50.11] spk_1:
So a lot of time, the voices that are saying, Hey, something’s wrong or we need to do this or we need to do that are not the voices of those that have been marginalized and oppressed. They tend to be maybe the loudest voices there, speaking maybe from a place of privilege, and that needs to be taken into account. So being responsive. For instance, if the I call it kind of the almond milk issue being responsive to a staff that says in addition to dairy milk for coffee this is back when we’re in fiscal offices. Um, we need almond milk, too. But the question is, is, Are we listening to the voices of those that weren’t able to consume the dairy milk? It’s not a perfect metaphor. It’s not a perfect analogy because that one ignores actual pain, and it just talks about preference. But are we listening to the voices of people that have been impressed who have who have been, who have heard the word professional or professionalism wielded against them as a pad as an obstacle in their path to success in their path to career advancement? Those are the voices that we need to listen to, not the ones who have a preference, for one thing or another.

[00:05:00.05] spk_0:
Okay, let’s be explicit about how we identify who who holds these voices. Who are these people?

[00:05:19.34] spk_1:
It’s people that have have come from. It’s particularly right now when we talk about anti black racism, we need to censure the voices of those from the black community, and that means those who have either maybe not joint, not just not joined our organization for particular reasons, but maybe they have not joined our board. Maybe they have not participated in our programs that maybe they haven’t had the chance to. So it’s really from an organizational perspective, think of it, is understanding what our current state is. So how does your organization move? People up, move people in, move people out. If if we don’t have the voices in the first place because maybe we’re not as welcoming as we should be, then what does the data tell us about who’s coming into our organization, who is leading our organization, who is able to move up into our organization, what our leadership looks like, what our board looks like? So at times the fact that there is an absence of voice is telling in and of itself, and our data needs to be able to explain what is going on so that data needs to be looked at as well.

[00:06:44.14] spk_0:
All right, so we need to very well, good chance we need to look outside our organization. You’re talking about people that we’ve turned down for bored, bored positions turned down for employment. Um, I’m not even going to say turned down for promotion because that would presume that there’s still that that presumes there still in the organization, but I’m talking about very likely going outside the organization. People who don’t work with us who aren’t volunteering ho aren’t supporting us in any way. But we’ve marginalized them with cast them out before they even had a chance to get in.

[00:06:47.88] spk_1:
Potentially. Yeah, have been actually, probably probably there is something that they have not found palatable or appealing about working with us or being a sensor or being off to your point of volunteer. So we need we need to look at why that’s happening.

[00:07:28.04] spk_0:
Okay, I’ve got it. I got to drill down even further. How are we going toe? Identify these people within. Within our organization as it is. How are we gonna figure out which people these are that we’ve marginalized these voices of color? Um, over the just like in the past five years. What have we if we’ve done this, how do we identify the people? We’ve done it too.

[00:08:44.48] spk_1:
Yeah, you know, it really is a complicated question. It will differ my organization, right? It differs by what your subsector is. How things slow within a subsector the size of the organization. A really good place to start is understanding who has turned us down. Why have people left? So take a look at exit interviews. Even if you’re not doing exit interviews. We know that there is not always a nature, our presence and a lot of our organizations. If there aren’t formal exit interviews first, well, it’s my time for those because we need to understand why people are leaving. But if if there isn’t a formally h your presence, what do we know about the circumstances under which someone left organization or said no to a job offer or said no to a board, position or volunteer? It’s also important to ask, expanding our definition of stakeholder groups, engaging with all of our stakeholder groups as as broadly defined, us possible. And with in those groups understanding, are we reaching out to a diverse audience to say, Why would you engage with us? Why would you not engage with us in any of those roles? So, yeah, it’s gonna be a little bit harder to understand the people who are not there because they’re not there. Okay.

[00:10:02.96] spk_0:
All right, so All right. Um, we go through this exercise and and we identify. We’ve identified a dozen people. They’re not. They’re not currently connected to us. And ah, maybe that they have had a bad experience with us. Yeah, they may have turned us down for employment because they got offered more money somewhere else that could that in itself could be that itself. Could be not something other than benign. Um, but let’s say they moved out of the state, you know, they were they were thinking about. So So in some cases, they may not have a bad have had a bad experience with us, but in but in lots of cases, they may have. They may have turned down that board position because they start the current composition of the board. And they didn’t feel they felt like, maybe being offered, you know, a token slot or whatever. Whatever it might be, I’m just I’m just suggesting that some of the some of the feelings toward the organization might not be negative, but some might very well be negative of these dozen people we’ve identified in all these different stakeholder potential stakeholder roles that that they could have had what do we reach out to them and say way? Get them to join a conversation with an organization that they may feel, uh, unwelcoming.

[00:10:10.53] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think right now, especially we tread carefully. Weigh tried carefully, and we honor the fact that they, in fact, might be getting that same question from many other other organizations friends, colleagues, family members in which people want to understand something. What we’re seeking to do is not be educated on the overall picture of white privilege, weight supremacy, off dominant narrative and dominant culture that’s on us. That’s on all of us individually to understand that that is not the men that is not up to the member. It was a press society started to tell us that. Great. So what they What we want to understand is kind of What did you experience with our organization? What was the good? What was that? And first of all, do you even want to engage with us? Is this not a good time to do that? Because you’re already exhausted, I said to ah, calling recently, You know, we can’t even understand the reality of what it’s like to live the re it to live that reality. And for many to leave the charge right because they’re also showing leadership in the movement. So, Teoh, we can’t even understand what those layers of existence or like, So we think it’s treading very carefully. And should we have the ability to engage with someone because they have the space, the energy, the desire, then I think it’s understanding and asking kind of what’s going on for us. What? Where did you find us? Either Not a feeling or Where did you Why did you not want to work with us in whatever capacity we were asking? And it’s asking that question.

[00:11:40.34] spk_0:
Okay, well, that’s further down, right? I’m I’m just trying to get to, like, what’s the initial email invitation look like?

[00:11:46.71] spk_1:
It depends on the organization. Eventually organization. It depends on the relationship. I wouldn’t presume to give words to that, to be honest with you, because because I think it also depends on the person that you’re asking. I don’t want toe offer kind of a link. It was on December inadvertently token ice people by saying, Oh, of course, we’re gonna want toe engage with us. So I really think it’s dependent on the situation,

[00:12:10.64] spk_0:
okay, and and what do you inviting them to do with you? Have a conversation. Share your experience with us? Is it?

[00:13:12.23] spk_1:
Yes, essentially. I mean, that’s what it boils down to, but again, it really depends on where the organization is, right? So this is your data collection moment. This is information collection. Where else are you collecting information? What what else do you know? What other steps have you taken to begin that educational process? Because there’s there’s kind of a dual purpose here, right? Is understanding who we are in where we have contributed to search for a race of them, to pretend to a culture that does not support differing viewpoints, differing populations that is in some ways upholding white supremacy, or is completely holding, upholding white supremacy and its culture. There’s that general education of understanding all of that. And then there’s understanding what our organization’s role is right, so it’s both and eso. It’s really highly dependent upon. Where is the organization case? Warez You’ve talked. Teoh, the head of equity in the centre, describes a cycle that is brilliant around awake to woke to work. Where are you in that cycle? Are you? Where are you on a where you in vain? Pluralistic, Where you and being inclusive. All of those things depend on what you’ll ask and how you’ll reach out. And if you even should reach out there, maybe work that is to be done internally before that reach out can happen again. Just being considerate and sensitive of those who are willing to start, you

[00:13:46.24] spk_0:
know? Yeah. Okay. Was our guest for the last most recent special episode on this exact same subject. Thank you.

[00:13:53.53] spk_1:
Yet the organization is doing, and it has been since its inception, has been doing incredible work. A is leading that work on dhe. Both her warrants always contain wisdom, and the products that they’ve put out are extraordinary.

[00:14:25.14] spk_0:
How about in your work? Are you facilitating the kinds of conversations in your practice that you and I are talking about right now? Do you bring these outside folks in Sometimes too. Teoh have these conversations

[00:14:27.53] spk_1:
sometimes? Yes. Sometimes again, being highly respectful of if they didn’t want to engage with us, Do they even want to talk to us right now? My work really is around having an organization understand where it is right now. So what is its current state. What is the desire in future state? Right, So we know that we want to be a racially inclusive, racially equitable organization. Likely that’s already been defined. But what does that mean for us is an organization if it means solely in numbers piece rate, like we want to be more divorces aboard. Okay, that’s fine. But beyond that, how we make ourselves have a board culture that is appealing to those people that we want to bring in to work with us. So it’s kind of defining with current state and understanding current state to finding future state and then developing the strategy to get there.

[00:15:44.34] spk_0:
OK, now you and I were talking about you said you were still data gathering. So we’re still defining the current culture as it exists. Right? Okay. Okay. And your work, you You centered around people, culture and leadership. Can we focus on leadership? I feel like everything trickles down from there. Very chill. No, I don’t know. Are we okay? Are you okay? Starting with a leadership conversation or you’d rather start somewhere else?

[00:15:51.24] spk_1:
No, we can We can start that. Fine.

[00:16:04.54] spk_0:
Okay. Um So what? What is it? We’re looking for leaders of our listeners of small and mid sized nonprofits to to commit you.

[00:16:10.34] spk_1:
I think it’s first of all committing to their own learning and and not relying on communities of color to provide that learning right again, going back to what we said earlier. It’s not relying on those who have been harmed or a present to provide. The learning is the first of all. It’s an individual attorney. That’s a given. Okay,

[00:17:09.24] spk_0:
I like toe things like people. I like action steps. So we’re talking about our individual journey, our own learning. I mean, I’ve been doing some of this recently by watching YouTube watching folks on YouTube. Of course, now, right now, I can’t remember names of people, but no Eddie Glaude eso Eddie Glaude is a commentator on MSNBC. He’s just written just released this last week. Ah, biography. I am not so much a biography of James Baldwin, but but an explanation of Baldwin’s journey around racism. Um, so that’s one example of, you know who have been listening to. So we’re talking about educating the learning from thought leaders around yeah, revealed structures with reading books, listening to podcasts

[00:17:44.20] spk_1:
absolutely around its around structures. But it’s also understanding things that we do all the time and organizations and how I, as a leader, might eventually those right. So it’s sometimes the use of language to your point about the use of the word professional language tends to create our realities so another language will build a bridge or not. So how do we use our language? How do we use our descriptors? How do I show up as a leader in my own kind of inclusion or not? So I think it is absolutely that it is looking at thought leaders around things like structural racism around the use of language around people’s individual experiences to get that insight and depth. Because it’s not just a kn intellectual exercise. This is emotional to and therefore has to have emotional residents.

[00:18:47.24] spk_0:
Okay, thank you for letting me dive deeper into a personal your own personal journey, your own personal education, fact finding and and introspection. You’re talking about something, you know. And it zzz No, no revelation. This is It’s difficult of It’s painful. You know, you you’re very likely uncovering how you offended someone. Uh uh How you offended? Ah, group. Um, if you were speaking in public and something comes to mind or how you offended someone in meetings or, you know, multiplied, I don’t know how many times I mean, this introspection is likely painful.

[00:18:50.74] spk_1:
Likely? Likely. Yeah, more often. More often than not, I can’t. I can’t really envision it. Not at some level. They painful,

[00:19:08.88] spk_0:
but you’ve caused pain. You know that there’s a recognition there. Yeah, painful for you. But let’s consider the pain of person or the group that you, uh I don’t know, offended, stereotyped. I mean, put off whatever it is you’re

[00:19:31.28] spk_1:
that’s right. And that that’s why the work. As much as I know, you know, just some degree, people want this to be work that could be kind of project managed, if you will. Or it could be put into a process or a series of best practices arrangements to some degree, not very much, but to some degree, yes, absolutely. The sum of a little bit of that can happen. But that in and of itself is a bit of the dominant narrative, right. That, and of itself, is kind of at that centering white culture. So I think What we need to understand is this is not just going to be again, Teoh. Sorry to be redundant, but it’s not just gonna be intellectual. The fact that pain has been caused dictates that this be emotionally owned as well. It can’t be on life. It can’t be just intellectually owned with a project plan that I keep over here on a chalkboard or something like that.

[00:20:18.34] spk_0:
Emotionally owned. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um, all right. So I made you die aggressive. Deeper. What else Rails you want toe? Tell us about leadership’s commitment on dhe. The importance of leadership. Commitment?

[00:22:22.54] spk_1:
Yes. So? So it needs to be explicit. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be baked into the leadership. Whatever leadership structure of the organisation has, it needs to be an ongoing piece of that leadership. So it’s not a Hey, let’s touch face on our quote inclusion initiative. If it’s an initiative, first of all, that’s not really doing the work. And he went, but it’s not something that lives separately from ourselves. Let’s have HR kind of check in on this or let’s have the operations person checking on this, but that’s not what this is about. It’s really it’s authentically being owned by leadership to say, Yeah, I know it’s gonna be painful. And in looking at our organization, we’re gonna need to understand why our leadership is remarkably homogeneous, which, in the case of many nonprofits, it is. If you take a look at building movement project and the unbelievably great work that they’ve done twice now, they just put out an update to their leadership, work around how people moves in sector or don’t and how people, communities of color and people of color are represented in our leadership. We can begin to understand that by and large, they’re they’re not on the why. That is a no oversimplification in some way. So I would encourage people to go to building movement projects, went site and check out their work. But you know what? Why are we so homogeneous? Why is there a board so homogeneous? It’s It’s also unpacking and uncovering that. So, to your point earlier about you know how we look at people and how they move through the organization. This is where you look at who is press right? Not just who’s not with us, but who is with us? How do people get promoted? How does that system work? Just any. It does everyone have the same information? Is it a case of unwritten rules? Is it a case of some people move up because they’re similar? Or they have have 10 years of experience, which is something that we like to say. How do you get 10 years of experience if you have not been given those chances to begin with? So is there life experience that weaken that we can begin to integrate in our conversations, these life experiences equally valuable are we putting too much of a premium on higher education, education and its formal kind of traditional form. Are we putting too much of, ah, of an emphasis on pedigree of other kinds of those? Those are the things that ultimately keep people out. So taking a look at leadership and having leadership commitment ultimately means looking at all of those things. There’s an overlap and how we look at leadership or people and or your organizational culture.

[00:23:01.74] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, this is a it’s a continuum or

[00:23:04.18] spk_1:
absolutely, absolutely, and the areas bleed into each other.

[00:23:25.68] spk_0:
Yeah, of course, yeah, um, you know, I subsumed in all this. I guess it’s OK for leaders to say I don’t know where the where the journey is going. I don’t know what we’re going to uncover, but I’m committed to having this journey and leading it and right, I mean supporting it. But I don’t know what we’re gonna find.

[00:23:32.52] spk_1:
Right, Right? Right. And that, in and of itself can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. And that’s the That’s the kind of discomfort we need to get okay with.

[00:24:03.54] spk_0:
Yeah, all right. Yeah. No, I had I had a guest explain that this is not as you were alluding to, uh, is not the kind of thing that we’re gonna have a weekly meeting and will be these outcomes at the end of every meeting. Then we have this list of activities and you know, the you know, it’s how come it’s not like that. How come we can’t do it like that? Yeah, because

[00:24:07.08] spk_1:
we’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and it’s because we haven’t been inclusive in the ways that we do things and we haven’t allowed whole Selves to show up that it is, um, it’s It’s complicated and it’s messy because it’s human.

[00:24:21.44] spk_0:
All right, so it’s not gonna be, is simple. Is our budget meetings

[00:24:28.54] spk_1:
right? Absolutely kind of hard.

[00:24:29.50] spk_0:
All right, we’re gonna have an outcome it every every juncture at every step or every week or every month. Yeah,

[00:24:35.03] spk_1:
that’s right. That’s right. And if we expect it to go that way, we are likely going to give ourselves excuses not to press on.

[00:24:44.44] spk_0:
All right, so that’s what it’s not. What what does it look like?

[00:26:08.14] spk_1:
So it absolutely looks different for every organisation. It absolutely looks different for over organization. And that’s why it’s so critical to understand, kind of. Where are we right now? Where are we? As for us, all of the components of our organization, Right? So, Roland again, Volunteer’s board staff culture, You said, you know, we were talking about people, organization and leadership, which is obviously a lot of my work. It is getting underneath all of those kinds of things to say. So who experiences our culture? How eso we do engagement surveys, right? A lot of times we do engagement employee surveys, that kind of thing. Are we looking at those dis Agra and adjust aggregated way. Are we asking different populations to identify themselves? And are we looking at what the experiences are by population? Are we asking explicit questions around whether or not you feel like you can be yourself in this organization? Whether you can provide defending opinions whether you feel comfortable approaching your boss will be back whether you feel comfortable volunteering for particular work, whether you feel like you understand what a promotion or performance management processes, whether you get you the support that you need or to what extent you get support that you need either from colleagues bus leadership, etcetera. So it’s looking at all of those things and then understanding all of a being experienced differently by different communities within our organization.

[00:26:14.24] spk_0:
You mentioned dis aggregating. That’s where the data is not helpful, right?

[00:26:20.02] spk_1:
That is where we look at the data in terms of populations.

[00:26:28.43] spk_0:
00 Aggregate. Of course, aggregating You’re stuck with a lackluster host now, of course. Yes, aggregate

[00:26:32.47] spk_1:
early in the week.

[00:26:48.84] spk_0:
Thank you. You couldn’t say early in the day. But thank you for being gracious. Okay? Yes, we we we want Teoh disaggregate. Of course um, and look by population and I guess, cut a different way. I mean, depending on the size of the organization, um, age race, uh,

[00:27:38.81] spk_1:
raises ethnicity of physical ability, orientation. All of those need to be in the mix gender as well, including gender fluidity. So really looking at all of our populations and then understanding, you know, for these particular questions, is there a difference and how people experience or organization we we know Then what we do know is that if there is a difference that there is a difference, we don’t know that there is cause ality unless there unless you’ve asked questions that might begin to illuminate that right. But there’s there’s always that difference between correlation and cause ality. And then what you want to do is get underneath that to understand why the experience might be different and why it might change along lines of gender or race or ethnicity or orientation or physical ability.

[00:27:45.14] spk_0:
Way wandered, you know, But that’s that’s fine.

[00:27:49.50] spk_1:
People in organizations are

[00:27:57.94] spk_0:
people, culture and leadership all coming together. Where where do you want to go? I mean, I would like to talk about people, culture and leadership What’s a good? It’s a good next one.

[00:28:42.74] spk_1:
Yes, well, so so this is what you’re doing, right? Is your collecting information and all of those three areas right and want it. So a couple of things that I would add to that is, when you look at people, you’re looking at their experiences. When you look at leadership, you’re looking at commitment, makeup, structure, access, all of those kinds of things. When you’re looking at culture, you’re looking at how people experience the culture, right? And so what? What is happening? What’s not happening? What state it out loud? What’s not stated out loud. What are the unwritten rules? There is also the peace are that that forms all of these things, which is operational systems, right? So things like performance management, things like where people may sit back when we were in physical offices at having access to technology. All of those kinds of things particularly important now that we’re not in physical offices. So just everyone have access to the technology and information necessary to do their job to do their jobs to do their work. So it is looking also at your operational side and saying How do we live our operational life? How do how two people experience it? Who do we engage with to provide service is for operations. How do we provide the service is, if you will, for lack of better term to our employees. So it’s also looking at that because operations ultimately permeates organizational culture, people and leadership, right, because it kind of sustains all of that. So taking a look at that, too, and finally, I would suggest again, as part of this and as a wraparound, is what is the internal external alignment, right? So I often hear people say, Hey, you know what? This is the subsector we work in people with think that we’re really equitable, but internally, we are living a different life than what we’re putting out to our stakeholders in our constituencies externally. So what is what is our external life, and how does that need to inform our internal world? It’s not unusual for me to hear that the external life, the way we engage with stakeholders or the way we put out program programmatic work is actually may be further along. To the extent that this is considered to be a continuum. It’s further along than the way that we’re living our life internally.

[00:30:19.33] spk_0:
Dishonesty there this disconnected It

[00:30:24.39] spk_1:
is a disconnect for sure. And possibly yes, dishonesty and hip hop made even hypocrisy.

[00:30:35.76] spk_0:
Yeah, All right, but again. All right, so that now we’re looking like this is organizational introspection. There’s individual learning and introspection. Now we’re at the organizational level, right? Being honest with our with our culture and our messaging.

[00:31:13.64] spk_1:
Right? Right. And so what I tried to dio is to help organizations kind of look at those things and decide how we might have all given the future that we’ve set our sights on and given some of the principles that we’ve laid out, how do we kind of get there? How do we How do we have all of our systems had a way of all of our people practices? How do we have all of our culture? So hence the need to look at all of these things that centered around people, culture and leadership. What about

[00:31:33.64] spk_0:
the use of a professional? A facilitator? Because, Well, first of all, there’s a body of expertise that someone like you brings, uh, but also help with these difficult conversations. Talk about the value of having an Anek Spurt facilitator.

[00:32:22.73] spk_1:
Yeah, absolutely So So you know, I think I think there’s always a level of objectivity and kind of in inside Look by an outsider that you that you benefit from. We go to experts for everything from you know or health to the extent that we have access to those experts, which is a whole different conversation on race and oppression. We we want external voice. What I would say is it’s a likely not going to be the same expert or the same facilitator. And I say expert in quotes for everything. So, for instance, I am not the voice to be centered on educating an organization around structural racism. I don’t think on the right voice to be centered. I would rather send your voices like those at, um at race forward at equity in the centre at those who have lived the results of 400 years of oppression. So you might want to call in someone for that discussion for that education. There are people that are better and more steeped in that and whose voices should absolutely be centered for that. You might want to call in a voice for White I’ll ally ship because there is some specifics around that that we need to talk about without kind of centering white races.

[00:32:53.93] spk_0:
I’m sorry, White ally ship. Yeah. What is that? So

[00:34:04.64] spk_1:
if we think about the or the organization right and are kind of culture and are people who who won staff sees themselves as an ally and how can they be good? How come Apple boy people be good allies, right? And how do how do we further and embed that in the culture on dhe? Then finally, So keeping that in mind that there are gonna be different experts or different facilitators for different things, you know who was going to be the person in my case, this actually might be May is to help us evolve our culture and our systems so that we can be more equitable and take a look at that. Who’s gonna provide the training because their skills necessary rightto have these conversations. There are foundational communication skills. There is the ability to give feedback. There is the ability to communicate across cultures across genders across across groups. There, his ability to be collaborative. So So also strengthening those skills while we continue to look at those things. But to think that all of this help is going to come from one source is not ideal and likely it’s even inappropriate because everyone can’t be everything. I don’t try to be the voices that I can’t be. It’s inappropriate for me to do that.

[00:34:18.84] spk_0:
What? Um, what else do you want? Oh, what do you want to talk about? Given the level where that we’re at, we’re trying to help small and midsize nonprofits inaugurate a journey around racism and white privilege.

[00:34:33.95] spk_1:
Yeah, E Look, first of all, I hear a lot of organizations say, like, what is the access point? Like, What do I get started doing? We put out a statement. Um, in some cases, we are experiencing some dissonance between the statement that we put out or the problematic work that we dio and the way that we’re living internally. So it is really understanding. Kind of. Where are we now? Through all of the ways that we’ve been talking about over the last several minutes, where we now what is it that we’re not doing that we should be doing? What is it that we need to be doing? How do we define for us if we have an equitable culture? If we’re living racial equity, what does that look like for us? Um, how does that affect our programmatic work? How does that affect our operations? Everything from our finances to our people processes to when we’re back in an office, even our physical set up. How how does that affect us? And how would we define that future state? So it’s understanding what is my current state? What is my future state and then understanding how we get there and it’s likely gonna be a long all of the areas that we said right? So individual journeys, some group and individual skill building some evolution of our systems and some understanding of kind of how we can support each other and support ourselves for those that are that affiliate with a particular group, Um and then kind of moving us along to that place of where we want to be. So it is. It is understanding where you are at that determines what your access point iss. But I would say if you if you have done the work of putting out the statement, then there. Then look for look for where you’re not living that statement internally.

[00:36:26.93] spk_0:
That sounds like a very good place to yeah, to start your search for for an access point because it’s so recent. Your organization’s probably said something in the past 56 weeks, absolutely close. Are you hearing to that to that statement?

[00:36:46.33] spk_1:
Exactly. And and we are incredibly, I would say important the use of the term, but almost fortunate that so many thought leaders have been kind and generous enough to share with us their thoughts on this moment. So not just within the sector, but all the way across our society. So many people have taken the time and the patients and the generosity amidst everything else that they’re living through. They have agreed to share their thoughts, their leadership, their expertise with us. So there is a ton of knowledge out there right at our fingertips, and that’s a that’s another really great place to start and says center the voices that most need to be heard

[00:37:18.87] spk_0:
at the same time. You know, we are seeing beginnings of change institutions from Princeton University to the state of Mississippi,

[00:37:40.47] spk_1:
right? Absolutely. Teoh. Hopefully, you know, the unnamed Washington football team. And to not far and places where we I didn’t know that change necessarily was possible. But we we are seeing change. And the important thing is is to not be complacent about that change,

[00:38:44.72] spk_0:
right? And not and also recognize, that it’s just a beginning, you know, removing Confederate statues, um, the room taking old glory off the Mississippi flag. These are just beginnings, but but I think worth worth noting, and they worth recognizing and celebrating because the state of Mississippi is a big institution and it’s been wrestling with this for I don’t know if they’ve been wrestling for centuries, but that flag has been there for that. Just out long 18. Some things, I think, is when that flag was developed. So it’s been a long it’s been a long time coming. So, recognizing it for what it is celebrating it, you know, to the extent that yeah, to the extent it represents the change getting up the beginning of change. All right. Um, well, you know, for teaching What else? What else? What else do you want to share with folks at this. You know, at this stage,

[00:39:19.56] spk_1:
you know, I think I think the main thing is, um didn’t dig it. We need to dig in on this. We need to dig in on this because in the same way that we have been living this society really societally for so long. Or organizations many times are microcosms of society. So if we think as an organization were exempt or that were already there, we’ve arrived at a post racial culture. That’s not the case. That’s just not the case. So where do you want to get it? Where do you want it again? Chances are good. You are doing some version of looking at issues within your organization, whether it’s your annual survey, if you do it annually, or whatever in which you can use that information to begin this journey so diggin from where you are. It’s one of those things that if you’re waiting, if you’re reading for kind of the exact right time or further analysis to begin the journey again, it’s not. It’s not based solely on analysis. There is a P. There is certainly information. There’s data that needs to be understood. But if We’re waiting for endless analysis Toe happen or Teoh kind of point us to the right time. That’s not going to happen. The intellectualism needs to be there. But again, as we said in the path as we said a few times during the course for conversation, this is about emotional residents in an emotional ownership and a moral obligation. So diggin, diggin wherever you are right now.

[00:40:46.20] spk_0:
What if I’m trying within my organization and I’m not the leader, not even second or third tier management or something, you know, How do I elevate the conversation? Uh, I presume it helps to have allies. What if What if I’m meeting a resistance from the people who are really in leadership?

[00:41:16.68] spk_1:
I think Look for the places where the remains, not the resistance, Right? So look within the organization. If there is resistance at a particular level, then you know who do you have access to in the organization where there isn’t that? I think I think starting out not assuming that you have solutions. If you have expertise in this area, if you have lived through the oppression as a member of a community that has lived through the impression, particularly the black community. I think you’re coming from one place if you are. If you are not in that community and saying that you have expertise, I think you have to be a little bit more circumspect about that and introspective about what you can offer in this vein on. And I think I think we want to look for the places where there is some traction. I think in most organizations it’s not unusual to be getting the question right now.

[00:41:50.41] spk_0:
And what is the I don’t want to call it outcome. What’s what look in the future look like for our organization? If we do embark on this long journey?

[00:42:02.14] spk_1:
Yeah, cultures that are equitable, in which people can show up as their whole Selves, in which there is not only one wrote right way to do things, which tends to be a very kind of white, dominant, Western culture, linear, sequential way of of managing work, of managing communications, et cetera, but that in fact, work can be a purged in a number of different ways, and that solutions can be approached in a number of different ways. People get to show up and give their all to these missions that we all feel very Narron dear. And so they are able, they’re empowered. They are able they are celebrated without sticking to a set of preconceived guidelines or preconceived, unwritten or written rules that don’t serve us anymore. Anyway,

[00:42:59.20] spk_0:
When you started to answer that, I saw your face. Lighten up. He your You know, it was a smile. It just looks like you’re faced untended. Not that you’re nervous. You’re facing hard to answer the where we could be.

[00:43:03.60] spk_1:
Who doesn’t like to imagine that future?

[00:43:09.30] spk_0:
Yeah, it was It was palpable. All right. Are you comfortable leaving it

[00:43:12.77] spk_1:
there? I think so. I think that what if we not covered that we need to cover for your listeners?

[00:43:18.70] spk_0:
Your know that better than I a place there at getting started.

[00:43:24.11] spk_1:
That’s fair. Look, you know what this is? This is the future that is written with many voices. And and while I think I can be helpful, I don’t presume to be the voice that has all the answers. I definitively don’t. I definitively don’t. And so what we have not covered is actually probably not known to me. But I dare say someone. Someone out there doesn’t know that. And they will likely be putting their voice up, which is exactly what we want.

[00:43:50.07] spk_0:
Yes, we will be bringing other voices as well. All right.

[00:43:53.06] spk_1:
No doubt. Yeah.

[00:43:54.31] spk_0:
Petition Shaw. She’s founder and CEO of Flourished Talent Management Solutions. And the company is at flourish tms dot com Petitti. Thank you so much. Thank you very, very much,

[00:44:13.89] spk_1:
tony. Thank you. Thank you for opening up this space and having the conversation. Ah,

[00:45:04.76] spk_0:
pleasure. It’s a responsibility and, uh, happy toe. Live up to it. Try trying. Were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com My Cougar Mountain software, The Nolly Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for non profits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant her mountain for a free 60 day trial. And by turned to communications, PR and content for non profits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot ceo. Our creative producer was glad Meyer, huh? Shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide. This music is by Scots. Many thanks to Susan and Mark for helping you get this special episode out quickly with me next time this week for non profit radio, big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great