Tag Archives: NTEN

Nonprofit Radio for July 17, 2023: Communications & Development Teams Working Better Together

 

Misty McLaughlin & Alice HendricksCommunications & Development Teams Working Better Together

Misty McLaughlin and Alice Hendricks close our 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage, as they reveal how these two teams can avoid the common conflicts and tensions, to come together collaboratively. They’re the principals and founders of Cause Craft Consulting.

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

I love our sponsor!

Donorbox: Powerful fundraising features made refreshingly easy.

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

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

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Transcript for 649_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230717.mp3

Processed on: 2023-07-14T17:51:38.366Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…07…649_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230717.mp3.293455570.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/07/649_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230717.txt

[00:00:34.85] 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 us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of mono aphasia if you uttered the word fail because you missed this week’s show. Here’s Kate, our new associate producer just promoted from announcer with highlights of this week’s show, Kate. Congratulations on your promotion.

[00:01:13.64] spk_1:
Thank you, Tony. I’m happy to be here and now communications and development teams working better together. Misty mclaughlin and Alice Hendricks close our 2023 nonprofit technology conference coverage as they reveal how these two teams can avoid the common conflicts and tensions to come together collaboratively. They’re the principals and founders of cause craft consulting on Tony’s take two.

[00:01:15.88] spk_0:
I finally have someone to blame.

[00:01:20.84] 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.

[00:01:34.89] spk_2:
Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference in Denver, Colorado, where we

[00:01:49.07] spk_0:
are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology

[00:01:50.04] spk_2:
strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me now at the, at the conference are Misty mclaughlin and Alice Hendricks. They are both principles and co founders of cause craft consulting, Misty. Welcome back.

[00:02:08.19] spk_3:
Welcome to non profit

[00:02:09.04] spk_4:
radio.

[00:02:10.13] spk_2:
Pleasure to have you both co founders, the

[00:02:11.96] spk_3:
principles. Thank

[00:02:18.51] spk_2:
you. Your session is communications and development team working better together. Alright, Alice, since you’re the first time non profit radio, why don’t you give us an overview of what’s, what’s out there between these two teams and why this is important,

[00:02:47.95] spk_4:
you know, tony, it’s a really important topic because over the 20 years that I’ve been in the sector working on both development and communications teams projects from a technology perspective, we’ve noticed that there’s often inherent conflict between those two teams primarily because their mission are very different. Development departments need to raise the money, communications departments need to get the word out and so nobody is doing anything wrong. They’re all living their jobs in the right way, doing the right thing. However, because of the inherent conflict, friction occurs between people and teams often don’t get along. They fight over resources, they don’t have good processes and that can lead to a feeling of discord between staff and organizations.

[00:03:17.40] spk_2:
Interesting. Okay, I, I was very interested to read this uh because I’ve not, I’ve not seen this but I’ve been a consultant for so many years. Um you know, I could see why I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t know about it. I do plan giving consulting. So that’s a narrow niche within one of the two silos we’re talking about, well, hopefully not silos within one of the two teams that we’re talking about, you know, in development. Um So, yeah, I’m not aware of that, Misty, how does this conflict sometimes play

[00:04:06.19] spk_3:
out? Well, Tony, that’s a great question. So, um we have been seeing it for years but then we saw an article a few years ago in the Chronicle of Philanthropy kind of talking about what the implications of this phenomenon are because it is kind of, I think it’s reasonably well acknowledged that this happens sometimes to the point that those two teams don’t work together at all. And so you have kind of two separate pieces and they just decided we’re not going to work together. And then there are times that it’s actually a

[00:04:12.09] spk_2:
disaster. We can’t raise money if we can’t get the message

[00:04:25.54] spk_3:
out. Exactly. And we can’t, and we can’t get the message out if we don’t have that kind of core audience on board. Right? I mean, fundraising represents a significant audience of importance for the organization. So the Chronicle of Philanthropy did a piece about this and then we just continued to see it, continue to see it, see it play out in all these ways. And we decided to do some research about this. So our session is actually kind of presenting some of the results of that research. We heard from 85 organizations about what this looks like in their organizations and how it plays out from, I would say dynamics that are mildly ineffective and involve some minor friction to complete breakdowns.

[00:04:50.06] spk_2:
We’re not talking to each other. We’re not, we’re not going to send your messages or we’re not going to support your message. Support your messaging.

[00:05:14.57] spk_3:
Exactly. Or we’re going to circumvent the approval process and we’re just gonna send something out before you can stop us. And if it contradicts the mission or it contradicts, for example, like a shared messaging hierarchy. Oh, well, as long as I got my message to my audience and it happens on both sides, it’s no one’s at fault. I mean, people really in general, people aren’t devious, they want to work together. They sometimes just can’t figure out exactly how to make that happen. Um And then, you know, often what is just a kind of personal conflict blows up to be something happening more at a team level or more at the departmental level, leaders have a huge role to play in this. And if two leaders between those two departments don’t get along, it’s difficult for staff to kind of figure out how to navigate the

[00:05:39.74] spk_2:
President’s or something. Exactly. Um Is there uh do either of you have, well, you work, you work in the same company, you know, all the same, you have the same clients? I mean, is there a, I don’t mean to focus on the inflammatory. But is there, is there like a story of conflict, maybe, maybe like a good story of conflict and then later on, we could tell the epilogue where it came out, came out. Well, after cause craft consulting intervened. Is there a story like that?

[00:07:14.95] spk_4:
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s lots of stories like that. What we see often dynamics that happen because of this is delayed getting emails out the door or vetting process is just it’s going to take me four days to get back to you to approve the content or choose the photo or complaints about just the lack of collaborative working together. We also often see the leaders might not get along of these two departments, but staff themselves develop and forged relationships of trust amongst each other, which is great. You really want to have good, strong personal 1 to 1 relationships. In fact, in our research results, one of the ways that we saw people who responded, that mitigate the fact that the teams themselves weren’t getting along is that just they made friends with someone on the other team so that they needed a file update or some piece of collateral, they would ask their friend, which is wonderful because you have a trusted friend. But for us as process design consultants, we see that as a dysfunction, we see that as a lack of people really understanding what their role is, who’s supposed to be doing what, what lane they should stay in, what you can expect from someone and another team. So the really the solution to all of this is good, strong leadership, building trust and good process. So everyone is clear about what you’re supposed to do, what happens next and that helps mitigate the conflict. But yeah, I mean, it can be very hard to work in an organization where you don’t get along with others.

[00:08:56.77] spk_3:
One organization that we came across the international relief organization, so obviously a big part of their, their work is fundraising and engagement went in times of crisis, right. So rapid response, emergency response is huge for them. And it’s kind of the core source of their fundraising. Um the development department in the communications department sort of went through this period of years where they just couldn’t figure out how they were going to message in these moments and it would sort of be a simmering tension. Um And when it was a non conflict, exactly, it’s a core function of the organization. And so it would be a kind of a problem, but they would sort of come to some sort of agreement, but then a crisis would happen and they couldn’t get a message out the door in order to be able to fundraise around that message. And so they would miss the moment again and again and again, in these moments that they should have been coming together and pulling together as a team. So in that case, they brought us in to say, how can we get these two teams to work together? We want a message and comply completely different ways, particularly in these moments of crisis, we want to use the channels. So the digital channels, in particular, with this kind of hot spot of, well, who’s going to say one, an email and who gets to press the send button, who gets to have the final word on how we’re going to talk about this. Um And we went through a whole initiative to try and solve this and get them talking to each other. And it was a lot about getting them to use the same language and recognize each other’s expertise that they just come from different worlds. Somebody who responded to our survey said, communications is all about saying what the message that the organization needs to get out and development is all about trying to say what the donors want to hear. And those are just two completely different worldviews. And so when you can put those together and say, where’s the common ground in this? How can we represent our organizational priorities? And at the same time time, really translate that to words and language that really resonates with donors and causes them to act.

[00:09:47.72] spk_2:
Okay. So let’s start to get to some specifics that we can, we can recommend if you are uh suffering the symptoms that the two of you were talking about 55 minutes ago um disharmony and yeah, antagonism, frustration. All right. Um because we’re, we’re, we’re, yeah, we’re striving for harmony. We’re gonna leave disharmony behind and striving for harmony. Alright. Um you talk about a clear message prioritization, so deciding in advance, I guess this instead of me trying to guess Alice or Misty, you’re better. Alice is waving to Misty. So different

[00:10:11.08] spk_4:
in terms of doing a content strategy where it’s clear about what we’re trying to do and having things planned in advance. So we know what, how we will behave in any given situation. It’s governance, it’s a process governor project of understanding when this crisis is going to occur. If you’re an international relief organization and there’s a tsunami, what do you do having those plans already laid out? So it’s clear about what you’re supposed to do, what the other people on what other team is supposed to do. And that’s a process design. In our research we asked, is there any governance over the messaging? And most of the respondents said no, there might be some process or a shared calendar, but we really don’t have a way of knowing how to behave when something happens.

[00:10:40.61] spk_2:
Okay. What does this governance look like?

[00:11:39.72] spk_3:
That’s a great question. So governance can happen at a lot of a lot of different points in working together a lot of different points in that sort of relationship life cycle. So for example, when you have a project, making sure that if those teams are gonna be working together on, for example, a campaign or a long term body of work, or maybe there’s a new programmatic area that’s rolling out. You always start with a tool like a project charter or terms of reference as an international organizations, they call a charter terms of reference. Um But the idea is that you’re so together and you’re saying, okay, how are we going to talk about this? What is our organizational positioning, not just messaging but positioning? What is our relationship to this thing that’s happening part of the social problem? What’s our unique value proposition? And how are we comfortable talking about this as an organization? How are we not? That’s the content strategy piece that Alice was speaking to? What do we think the best channels to do that? And how when something happens around this, when there’s a big news event, when there’s something to respond to, how are are we going to work together? And that’s, you know, forever, how are we going to work together? But in this specific case, on this topic, how are we going to work

[00:11:46.52] spk_2:
together these workflows, workflow process? Exactly. All shared and agreed in

[00:12:32.68] spk_3:
advance. Exactly. And that everybody on the team knows, right. It’s not just an agreement that two leaders make everybody, individual contributors need to understand what they’re supposed to do. How do they feed into the system overall? So that they’re working hand in hand together. And a lot of the time, there are certain teams, for example, digital teams, they are forced to operate between communications and fundraising wherever they sit there, controlling channels that all these different parts of the organization need to use a lot of the time. That’s a starting place for forming some shared working agreements or some principles that are used in moments like this. There are a lot of other tools to. So for example, she calendars so that there is one shared view of every external communication that’s happening, whether it’s a fundraising ask or it’s a media piece coming out or it’s some sort of campaign, broad marketing campaign that there is one shared view and everyone gets a view of the whole of what the audience is seeing instead of a kind of micro departmental specific view,

[00:13:00.50] spk_2:
other other other processes that you can share that. Yeah.

[00:13:24.31] spk_3:
Yeah. So we have a whole list in our presentation of hard tools and I would say something like the calendar and the workflows, those are hard tools. Um There are also soft tools and I will just say for fairness purposes, these soft tools like work in any two departments that are having a breakdown. We were here two years ago where we were online two years ago at NTC talking about fundraising and it teams and frictions between those teams. There are lots of places, obviously, it’s not just limited to development and communications. But some examples of some of the soft tools would be um you know, doing shared planning activities. So doing your annual annual plans together, not doing separate departmental plans but saying, what do we want to accomplish this year? What does that look like?

[00:13:48.11] spk_2:
It’s an outside consultant? So what do I know from collaborative calendars? I thought, I thought this especially communications and fundraising. I would have thought that this was all happening.

[00:15:03.09] spk_4:
Think about even pre internet fundraising departments were doing plan giving major gifts and direct mail and they were doing their own thing and direct mail is kind of its own bespoke thing. It’s still kind of done the same way. It was about 25 30 years ago, right? When you enter, when all of a sudden digital happened, everyone, the the email list is really a file of all the supporters. Communications often feels like there’s an audience about just awareness and brand engagement and marketing and all I want to do is engage those supporters in that way. Development looks at that list and says these are prospects or they’re already donors that I need to feed and nurture. And so part of it was the shared technology often created the conflict around who’s list is who’s who gets to message to who about what message, right? So what is the content of the message that’s a fundraising message versus a educational message or what the organization is? Doing the part of that has been, I think that most of the conflicts are around ownership of the odd, they believe they have different audiences. But supporters of an organization don’t have a hat on and say, I’m a donor or another hat on and say, oh, I’m interested in this content. That’s not how it really works. But that shift is slowly happening and we’re seeing more collaboration around that because of the proliferation of channels that everyone is engaging on social email.

[00:15:52.01] spk_2:
What’s your advice around who should be in these conversations were doing the annual calendar? Is it I imagine it’s not only the two heads of the of each team, but how deep do we go to every, all the members of each, both teams? I mean, our listeners are small and midsize nonprofits. So we’re not talking about 25 person fundraising or communicate, but still there could be six or eight people on each or even combined. What’s your advice around? Who

[00:16:40.93] spk_4:
does this planning? Transparency is super important especially to employees now, you know, where we live in an age where feeling aligned with the mission and your work and coming to work and really having a good experience at work is very helpful. So our advice is usually be as inclusive as possible with everyone who can participate in a planning exercise. Bring them in because you know, we live in an age where people are quitting and quiet, quitting and if you live, if you are working in an environment where there’s tension with other teams, that’s a good sign. That’s a problem. I mean, it might be a retention issue there for organizations. So when you do strategic planning together or redesigning a process or anything that will enable a change to happen, it’s, it’s best to be as inclusive as possible.

[00:16:45.92] spk_2:
Or, or if everyone is not included in the actual meeting, then bringing it back to your team incrementally. It’s not like it’s all going to be decided in a 90 minute meeting, bring it back feedback, representing that feedback to the, to the working group or the

[00:17:01.53] spk_4:
collaboration.

[00:17:10.59] spk_2:
Okay. Okay. Um Anything else we should be talking about work processes planning besides, well, you were starting to talk about soft, you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t really flesh out. We got digressed, digressed you into more discussion of the hard tools, lackluster, you’re suffering a lackluster host.

[00:18:53.56] spk_3:
There’s a lot, there’s a lot and this is I think where I was going with that was to say these are tools that work in other breakdowns, they work in any breakdown in the human system. But for example, saying we’re taking the whole team away twice a year for one day or two days. And that means development and communications. That might also be a marketing group that might also be a digital team or it might be sub working groups, but we’re going to do these two day intensive retreats where we really try and understand each other’s expertise and map solutions together and those could be processed solutions or that could be campaign planning. It could be anything, it could be exploring new audience opportunities um There and there’s all of the piece we’ve just heard so many clients say this year, you know, this wasn’t working well before the pandemic, but now we’re just broke down by the side of the road. Our ropes have frayed between these two teams and even within our own teams, we’ve on boarded new staff, they’ve never met each other. And so what is it that we’re going to do? So understanding, for example, when you need to pick up the phone, when email is not enough, our slack is not enough, texting is not enough. We need to actually pick up the phone and work together in a human way towards a solution. Um That, that those kinds of pieces as obvious as it sounds, they’re not pieces that people have necessarily incorporated into their ways of working, particularly younger staff. So understanding that there’s a whole range of those kind of tools that you can use um and sort of working norms that you can establish with those teams if you were a leader or even just a manager of a small team. I think one of the most interesting things we found in this survey is that this tends to be less of a problem at small organizations, particularly when you have like a one person development and communications team, you have to work together. You don’t have a choice. This is a problem that happens often with growth and scaling that relationships that once worked. It’s just harder to figure out how to do that. The more humans you have in the

[00:19:17.28] spk_2:
mix retreats. Plus there’s social time built in. What about? It cannot be a soft tulle, just social time that we’re not doing any planning. But we’re doing, I don’t know, you know, one of the mystery, one of the mystery places, solve the murder mystery places or, you know, whatever or just drinks a game room. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Just get to know each other outside our, our marketing and communicate.

[00:20:04.70] spk_3:
This can be very social. But the idea of like after we do something, we have to do some retrospection together, I think that often gets lost in these teams because people are moving so fast, you move from one campaign to the next campaign to the next ask. And now so many teams have the data to sit down together after doing something, even something that maybe didn’t go very well and saying, well, what worked here? Is there something we can learn together and kind of using the data is a way to have an independent objective view. You can all analyze together and say, what does this mean for the future? How do we do it? And you can do those in a fun social way. It doesn’t have to be a boring, sort of like. Now we’re going to do a postmortem and we’re all going to look at it. You can, you can sort of make this a part of the way that you work together.

[00:21:13.56] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice for 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. They’ve got something new. Now, you can accept cashless donations anytime and anywhere with donor box live kiosk, turn your ipad or Android tablet into a kiosk to boost in person giving. And with their new additions to donor box events, you can sell tickets in 43 currencies and ask buyers to cover fees. Put these two together and you’re in person events will take off donor box helping you help others. Donor box dot org. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:21:16.08] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. How, how are you?

[00:21:18.85] spk_1:
I’m doing well. How are

[00:22:58.51] spk_0:
you? Uh, I’m great. I’m great. I’m glad you’re with us. And, uh, and congratulations again on your promotion. That’s so, that’s Kate. She’s not an intern. She’s our associate producer, but I have someone I can blame. Now, I’ve been saying for years, where’s the intern? Yeah, I wish I had an intern every time I make a mistake who would say who writes this crappy copy? I wish I had an intern to blame. Well, I don’t have an intern but I have an associate producer now, I have an associate producer that I can blame. It’s beautiful. So, any flubs? Well, I’ll just leave them at flubs. I won’t go more, uh, I won’t be more extreme with another F word with any, with any, with any flubs. I’ve got an associate producer that is now going to be responsible. I’m thinking this, this is today’s news. I’m just thinking, I’m glad that Kate is not a member of Sag after yet. Otherwise I would have lost her. She’d be, be on the line so we wouldn’t have her but not a member yet. It’s relieving. It’s sort of, there’s a burden lifted from my shoulders that I no longer have to bear the responsibility of my own mistakes. That’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to be responsible for my own flubs any, any longer. Very relieving. That is Tony’s take two.

[00:23:20.68] spk_1:
Not what I was expecting and I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into here but whatever we’ve got just about a butt load more time now. Back to communications and development. Teens working better together. Hmm.

[00:23:23.89] spk_2:
Where else should we go with the topic? We still have some time together. You know, we haven’t

[00:25:24.42] spk_4:
talked about yet when you, if there’s something broken that needs, that needs healing, you know, you think about these conflicts in any, whether it’s between communications and development, between it and development, any kind of processes that are broken and cause frustration and friction within teams. It’s useful to have another event happening and that needs change and then you can overlay process improvement during another change. So a good example that we often find is that if someone is migrating from one software tool to another, it’s a great opportunity because people are going to use a different technology when they come to work every day. The common thing between development departments and communications departments is that they all use digital tools. They use CRM S, they use email marketing tools, they are always tied to technology. And so if the technology is changing, it’s a great opportunity to think about what role do we need doing? What activity in this tool? And then you can take that one step further and say, how should all these roles work together? What’s the workflow? What’s the process here? Who’s supposed to be doing what and what you find in a lot of organizations is there’s a often individuals that they’re just willing to learn everything. So they’ll take on any project and they can use the tools really easily and they end up doing more than their job description, then you have others who just really don’t, don’t have their role clear about what they’re supposed to be doing. So you have an opportunity in something as, as something like a CRM migration. You can also take a look at the staffing and the staffing structure and the processes and improve some of these frictions almost under the guise of as we go through this technology migration. Let’s take a look at how we’re actually doing our work and that’s useful because sometimes new technology has different features. So you need a skill set of a subject matter, expert in a purse skill. How did that person fit in? Which means how to other people’s jobs change. So if you look at the human component around technology

[00:25:40.50] spk_2:
and sometimes technology is not the sole solution, the people in the processes could very well be contributing to the to the problem that we’re looking for the tech to solve.

[00:26:22.77] spk_4:
Usually the text, I would say almost all the time when we hear about a technology problem, the technology is working as intended. It’s a people and process and workflow problem. Sometimes tools are older and they need to be renovated or an organization has developed a new strategy, an organization that mostly does touch engagement or gets corporate gift or grants wants to start a mass marketing program. They need technology that can better accommodate those different strategies. Those are all opportunities to stop and look at process. How are we looking, how are we working together? What organizational structure do we have? Is everybody is or do we have all the right roles in our team? And it’s a great opportunity, we find that a lot of the time we do a lot of change management and process design around the human component of the technology and it really has nothing to do with the tech itself.

[00:26:34.31] spk_2:
Is there another example, Alice that you can share around an event that merits this this kind of attention and planning and introspect. Really, it’s introspection, I think its organizational introspection, something else non tech

[00:27:33.47] spk_4:
oftentimes a new leader will come in so a new leader can come in and have a new idea or a new program. Like the example of now we’re going to start doing a new strategy. So any type of external force of change, if there’s a moment of critical change, that requires the opportunity to take a step back and look at how things are working. You’re absolutely right. It takes a very self actualized executive director to say here, I’m getting complaints from my development director and complaints from my communications director. I need to bring in an outside consultant and figure out a better process so people can work together. That doesn’t often happen. Usually there’s some other pressing external event like a new person comes in, who’s a leader, a new development director and director and executive director who says, wait a minute, this doesn’t seem right. Why are people complaining and not getting along? Let’s take a look at that or it’s a technology thing. It’s like our tools aren’t working together.

[00:27:58.51] spk_2:
Okay. That was a good example. Thank you. Alright, cool. I’ll put you on the spot. Thank you. All right now. You’re cause craft consulting, you’re not flustered. I, I put you on the spot and you rose to the moment. Of course. What is no surprise, surprise? Yeah, that’s right. All right. Um We still have some time if there’s other stuff you want to, we talked through your three learning objectives, stated, learning objectives for the, for the session. But what else, what else you’re gonna share with folks that we haven’t talked about? Maybe we

[00:28:11.46] spk_3:
could talk a little bit about our survey results. Um I think we learned some

[00:28:14.54] spk_2:
more motivation type. Okay.

[00:28:57.93] spk_3:
Well, one of the things we asked about values beyond motivation, beyond motivation. Uh the subject of structure because we were, we were curious about and we have observed a lot. It’s not a perfect structure that perfect organizational way of structuring this work of these teams that works well every time. But what we really noticed is there are big differences in the way that these breakdowns happen that are a result of structure. So when you have a development in the communications team and one department, it’s not that that’s a perfect structure. It’s just harder to have a lot of conflict where people don’t work together, right? But as an organization grows, you tend to have two separate functions, people specialize and they pull apart. That’s one moment where a lot of conflicts can happen. Um where digital lives in an organization that’s a big differentiator in terms of. So if digital lives in communications. Sometimes there’s a real breakdown between development and calms. Digital are the ambassadors that go back and forth and the emissaries between those teams and are the ones that are trying to connect the ropes. Even when those

[00:29:17.95] spk_2:
earlier you said something similar. Yeah,

[00:29:27.92] spk_4:
they have to be the mitigators, you know, they have to, they’re getting the pressure from both sides and they actually have to serve both departments. So oftentimes the attitude and approach the digital team can be one of either exacerbating conflict or bringing people together.

[00:29:32.93] spk_2:
What about the existence or not? Of the same leader over two different teams. So, but they’re not the same team, they’re two separate teams but same director or vice president. Does that, does that make a difference in terms of likelihood or not of conflict? That’s a good

[00:29:57.92] spk_3:
question. I would say it depends sometimes that leader themselves really has a career that aligns with one function or another. We’ve seen, I have an exam recently, the department that its development in communications, but the leader is really a long term career fundraiser and communications. A little left out. It’s like kind of a child that has the parent that’s really aligned with the other child. So if you have a strong leader who equally invested in both sides and really thinks from the perspective of both sides that actually can work very well as a structure, we’ve seen a lot of that

[00:30:28.41] spk_2:
interesting because they come from a background of one of the other. So they’re going to be much more fluent with one function.

[00:30:51.56] spk_3:
Exactly. As something else we saw that I thought was really fascinating. Is we asked how many of these organizations have a dedicated marketing or engagement team that’s not exactly calm and it’s not exactly development. It’s a marketing function and a huge portion. I think almost 70% said that they have marketing teams when we would have these conversations 10 years ago. Marketing, it’s still a very dirty word in organizations. If you said marketing people would say, well, I’m a nonprofit. We don’t do marketing that’s changed hugely railed

[00:31:14.88] spk_2:
against that, but I always bristled against that, but it has changed, it has changed marketing and promotion. Now we talk about promotion. Promotion used to be sales promotion, like selling lay’s potato chips at a point of sale, you know, in a supermarket that was sales promotion. Uh You know, we’ve, we’ve there are things we can learn from the for profit sector, right? Everything corporate is not dirty. Exactly and marketing and promotion, I think are

[00:31:41.11] spk_3:
examples and marketing. A lot of those teams see themselves as engagement functions as thinking across all the ways that an organization might engage and thinking about the full funnel, the kind of full end to end relationship even for non donors, like volunteers, activists. Um lots of other folks, service recipients even, how do they play into the way the organization needs to be engaging them. Well, the

[00:32:46.09] spk_4:
for profit world has kind of nailed this with the idea of customer experience management. Now you have big companies that have CX. So when you think about the donor experience or the supporter experience, thinking about it, from that perspective, it’s about the curation of an entire holistic experience. The for profit world has nailed that when you, it’s, it’s important to actually for all of the teams to consider their audience as one audience. And how do we, what do we want that experience of our audience to be? And that like I said before, you don’t put your hat on as a donor and a hat on to someone else. So thinking from all of the new knowledge we have from customer experience management, applying that to how we’re going to engage our supporters. We have seen organizations combine their development and communications teams like you said before into a public engagement, um External affairs, other names of teams that have a single leader, the benefit of that is also there’s a single source of making a decision or setting priorities, which is really helpful to have right now, the teams have competing priorities and there’s no arbitrator besides maybe the executive director or the executive committee to say yes, we’re going to focus on this and we’re not going to focus on that. We talked

[00:33:07.22] spk_2:
about message prioritization, okay. Right. Single single decision maker. Alright. Anything you want to leave us with, I let Alice open. So Mr, you want to leave us with something harmonious and uplifting, empowering

[00:33:17.27] spk_4:
the harmonious and uplifting, encouraging,

[00:33:19.09] spk_2:
encouraging, and empowering.

[00:33:57.97] spk_3:
Well, one of the things that gave me great relief in analyzing the survey results was to realize that I think most people know that these two teams actually have more in common than many of the other teams in the organ. There are some natural points of harmony built in. They both really care about results and outcomes. They are very focused on reaching audiences. They think from outside in and not just an inside out perspective. And by that, I mean, they think about these audiences and what do these audience needs. They’re curious about how to reach them, they want to message right and represent the organization, well, they want to get it right. And they see themselves as bro the work of the organization to the world at large, making it relevant and meaningful. So there’s a ton of common ground. I think that just gets obscured a lot of the time by these persistent thorny dynamics. And when you can help people to see the common ground, people are relieved and excited to work together almost universally. We’ve seen that over and over again. The will is there people just sort of need to be given permission and shown the way

[00:34:26.58] spk_2:
Mr mclaughlin Alice Hendricks, both principles and co founders of cars, craft consulting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you Alice and thank you for being with nonprofit radio coverage of 23 nt. See where we are not sponsored by lay’s potato chips. Even though I gave them a shout out, we are sponsored, in fact by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us

[00:35:02.90] spk_1:
next week giving circles with the woman who popularized them. Sarah Llewellyn. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:35:06.21] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:35:25.10] 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 associate producer, Kate martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:35:51.75] 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 July 10, 2023: 10 Easy Ways To Boost Your Fundraising On A Budget & Personalized Fundraising At Scale

 

Rosalind Zavras & Julia Toepfer: 10 Easy Ways To Boost Your Fundraising On A Budget

Relationships; storytelling; thanks; impact; consistency; and more. Rosalind Zavras and Julia Toepfer share tactics you can use right away to increase your fundraising impact without busting your fundraising budget. Rosalind is CEO of Aropa Consulting and Julia is from the National Immigrant Justice Center. (This was recorded at the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN.)

 

 

 

 

Joe Frye & Peter Yagecic: Personalized Fundraising At Scale

Here’s the 11th easy way to boost your fundraising! First, adopt a better definition of personalization, beyond first-name emails. Then, understand the many types of personalization available. The advice comes from Joe Frye and Peter Yagecic, both with Town Hall Agency. (This is also from 23NTC.)

 

 

 

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

I love our sponsor!

Donorbox: Powerful fundraising features made refreshingly easy.

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

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

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Transcript for 648_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230710.mp3

Processed on: 2023-07-09T01:03:01.467Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…07…648_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230710.mp3.424856454.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/07/648_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230710.txt

[00:00:25.58] 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 suffer the effects of Jerome Erasmus if you dragged me down with the idea that you missed this week’s show.

[00:01:55.47] spk_1:
10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget, relationships, storytelling. Thanks impact consistency and more. Rosalind Taveras and Julia. Temper share tactics you can use right away to increase your fundraising impact without busting your fundraising budget. Rosalyn is CEO of a rope a consulting and Julia is from the National Immigrant Justice Center. This was recorded at the 2023 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 and personalized fundraising at scale. Here’s the 11th. Easy way to improve your fundraising. First adopt a better definition of personalization beyond first name emails, then understand the many types of personalization available. The advice comes from Joe Frye and Peter Logistic, both with Town Hall Agency. This is also from the 23 and TC on Tony’s take two, got feedback. 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 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget.

[00:02:24.58] spk_0:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC 2023 nonprofit technology conference. We are sponsored here at the conference by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. With me now are Rosalind Taveras who is CEO of a rope, a consulting and Julia Tepfer, who is senior marketing and digital engagement strategist at the National Immigration National Immigrant Justice Center, Rosalind Julia. Welcome to non profit

[00:02:37.12] spk_2:
radio.

[00:02:39.25] spk_3:
Alright,

[00:02:54.52] spk_0:
pleasure, pleasure. Your session. Uh is 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget and it’s already, it’s already in your past. You can relax, relax. All right. Um Leslie Rosalind, why don’t you get us started with just, you know, some like 30,000 ft overview of why this is an important topic.

[00:03:04.46] spk_2:
Well, I will and one thing that we really emphasized is there technically are no easy ways to boost your fundraising. But our strategies were how to make your fundraising easier and your processes, especially for small teams. How can you leverage different tools so that you can fundraise effectively? Even if you are resource

[00:03:53.83] spk_0:
strapped, there is no easy way. There is no panacea. Okay. Okay. Um Julia, you wanna, you have, I’m just looking at the the learning objectives or learning outcomes. I think they call the list of fundraising tactics. Start right away. You wanna, we have 10. We don’t necessarily, it’s not ping pong. We’re not gonna go Julia Rosalind. Julia Rosalind. But Julia, do you want to kick us out with some, some of the

[00:04:18.70] spk_3:
strategies? Yeah. Um I mean, one of the things that we talk a lot about um in the session is relationship building and how important it is to establish a strong relationship with your donors. Um and um some of that comes from talking directly to them, um comes from thanking them often um knowing what their needs are and why they are connected to your organization, why they’re passionate about what you do. Um And so a lot of the tips and tools that we talked about really stem mostly from, from some of the that initial relationship

[00:04:45.47] spk_0:
instead of transactional treating KTM communicating when we want something. Alright, so I’m gonna make, I’m gonna make you drill down. I want to, I want to hear the 10. So start us off with number one.

[00:04:51.33] spk_3:
Um Do you remember what exactly number

[00:04:54.35] spk_0:
one, I’m not going to know

[00:05:33.15] spk_3:
the number 11 that we talked about in the session was thinking your donors and doing it in, in creative and different ways. So um making ensure that you particularly thank them after the um the transaction receipt, you know, an auto response email is not a thank you. Um So making sure that you really build that relationship through thanking them. Um And using some really creative methods um to continue that conversation with them and thank them for their, for their donation. Ross had a had a great um tip of um writing letters to them and um doing it through a method called Punk Post which send

[00:05:42.91] spk_0:
letters and you have some of these creative, I don’t want you to just say we talked about creative ways. I want to hear what the creative ways are

[00:05:59.04] spk_2:
really interesting service that has cards and then they employ artists to give creative designs and handwritten notes within the cards. So especially if you’re not an artist and you or maybe you don’t love your penmanship, you can use punk Post to send these really beautiful cards and they’ll do the stamp, they’ll do everything for you. So you just pick the card type in your message and they’ll send it and you can do big groups of these for donors as well. So you

[00:06:24.92] spk_0:
post dot com. Is that easy? Okay? Okay. Alright. If you don’t like your own hand, but people do like handwritten notes, they love them, but if they can’t read them, then they’re not very valuable. So if your handwriting is that bad, but people do love, respond to handwritten notes. They really do another creative way. Rosalind creative way of saying thank

[00:06:51.13] spk_2:
you. And this also goes back to our second strategy which is segmenting your donors. So understanding who your donors are and why they got connected to you and then creating a thanking strategy from there. So you wouldn’t thank someone the same way for coming to your house for dinner as well as giving you a birthday present, right? Those are two different interactions. So your donors should also have two different types of thank you, depending on how they come in to your organization or maybe what they’re interested in. Okay.

[00:07:34.95] spk_0:
Okay. So thank you, segmenting. Um segmenting, I guess, you know, also by what their interests are, what they’ve given to. Okay. And technology helps with these things, right? Tags, attributes we can segment in your CRM, you can segment in your email, uh app. Okay. Okay. You wanted to keep going wrestling some more, some more of the 10. We’re gonna hit all 10. So we’re not letting, uh letting you hold out on non profit radio listeners. Okay. What else? What else do we have?

[00:07:53.88] spk_2:
Another great tip is to talk to your donors and this is one of my favorites. So that’s why I’m jumping to this one. A lot of us are nervous to speak to our donors. Don’t really. No. Should we call them? Yes. Call them, text them, email them, get to know your donors because they are excited about the cause that you’re working on and they want to get to know you and they’re excited if you want to get to know them as well as we were saying earlier. Fundraising is relational. So build a relationship, the same way that you would build a relationship with a friend or colleague.

[00:08:13.12] spk_0:
What are some things you could talk to folks about if you’re picking up the phone, talking, how

[00:08:18.14] spk_2:
they got involved, how they found out about your organization, things that they’re interested in, you could tell them about the programs that you’re working on and things that are coming up. And also it’s a great way to gauge what they’re interested in and maybe they’ll say in that conversation, oh, I didn’t realize you do this. I’d love to hear more about it. And then now you know which emails to send them because they’re most interested in this one particular program. Okay. Okay.

[00:08:52.30] spk_0:
Um And even, I think even if you’re calling and even just leaving a thoughtful message, even if they don’t call back, you still made a valuable, valuable contact. I think

[00:08:56.89] spk_2:
we also talked about you could potentially use volunteers to help out with this as well. Like you don’t have to be the only one calling all of these individuals, but just make sure that whoever is calling knows the verb that you want to use, knows how to talk about your programs, the way that you want them to,

[00:09:14.31] spk_0:
that can be a good exercise to for boards. I mean, it’s an easy, I’ve made lots of thank you. I do plan giving, fundraising. Nobody’s ever turned, turned down or been upset at a thank you call sometimes you have to reassure them. Actually, a lot of times I’m only calling to say thank you,

[00:09:32.67] spk_3:
thank

[00:10:02.91] spk_0:
you. Yeah. You know, because I work with plan giving donors to, to the non profits, but sometimes they make an outright gift to and since I might be the relationship manager, I’m calling to say thank you, I think, you know, but I just gave, you know, and I might say tony-martignetti from so and so charity I just gave, you know, or something like I’m calling to say thank you for that. Yeah. And then, then they let their guard down like instantly, but sometimes you do have to reassure folks, but for both, that’s a really easy call to make a thank you

[00:10:06.73] spk_2:
call. It makes everybody feel good, especially if you have a board that doesn’t exactly know how to fundraise or maybe they’ll say we’re uncertain. Start with

[00:10:27.57] spk_0:
the first one. They’ll see how easy they are and who wouldn’t love to hear from a board member of an agency that you just gave to volunteered for. All right. Um Julia, let’s go to you. What else?

[00:11:11.45] spk_3:
Yeah. So one I really like a lot is telling personal stories. So sharing um the victories of your clients, your staff, um really creating a personal connection between your donors and the cause that you um that your organization represents or the service, the services that you provide. Um We talked about um making sure that, you know, if you’re sharing a human’s story um to make sure that they have control over the way that story is told, um to make sure they have that they have consented to the way that you’re sharing that story. But it’s a really great way to really connect donors to the actual impact that, that they are having and tell

[00:11:24.40] spk_0:
the stories in what ways.

[00:12:21.13] spk_3:
Yeah. So um we shared a few examples actually um on, you know, you could do it through written stories, right on, on emails or in letters um but also on social media and through images and videos. Um Roz has um some great examples of um organizations that might not provide direct services to people. Um um but can still share pictures on social media platforms that still really tell a story of the work that their, that their organization does. Um In this particular case, it was um food in the back of a, of a minivan um from an organization that uh does food reclamation and delivers food to organizations that then distributed and it was still really sharing the story of the work um but didn’t necessarily involve people. So we really stress that like there are lots of different ways that you can share and tell stories. They don’t have to involve um people or animals. Um that it’s possible for all organizations to, to do that effectively. Rosalind

[00:12:42.23] spk_0:
sounds like it looks like you may want to amplify that some definitely.

[00:13:18.30] spk_2:
Well, and this woman also after the session came and asked a similar question, you know, she has an advocacy organization. So a lot of what she was working on is how can I tell a story when our stories numbers and, and one of the things that I spoke with her about was I’ve seen organizations in similar spaces tell the story about why the advocacy is so important. So you can connect your organization to. Okay, we’re working on this issue and pedestrian safety. So maybe we tell stories around why pedestrian safety is so important and how people have felt, walking on roads without sidewalks and you know, doing short videos and things like that. The other point that I like to emphasize is only use platforms that you’re comfortable with and that your donors use. You don’t have to be on a specific social media platform to share these stories if that’s not where your donor base lives and if they’re all, if emails really effective, then you can do a video and send it in an email,

[00:14:08.61] spk_0:
okay, meet them where they are not where you would like them to be. Uh okay. Alright. Um Anything more on anything more on that one on one personal stories? I mean, the point is everything, everything, all the work we do affects, impacts people somehow climate change, you could say, well, how do I reduce that to a story? Uh But that’s a, that’s a great example of a of an advocacy organization that personalizing, able to personalize anything more on that one before we know,

[00:14:13.74] spk_2:
I think we can. Yeah. Well, another good one is

[00:14:18.13] spk_0:
okay, Rosalind both. I like them both. Okay. Okay, I’ve been using now, I’m using both. Alright, thank you.

[00:15:02.29] spk_2:
Thank you. Another great one is to convey impact and so and convey impact in everything that you’re doing. Not just your emails but your social media campaigns. When a donor does give, how can you connect their gift to the impact of their dollar? Right? And that’s more than just saying. Thank you for your gift. You donated $5 to the education program. It’s rather this $5 allowed kids to come in and you know, gain access to new books uh so that they can now read after school, right? Um And a huge part of that is donors are excited about the cause. It’s not about your organization, it’s about your community and the work that you’re doing so center them in what you’re talking about so that they know that they’re part of the solution. Their donation affected change in an area they’re excited about that could

[00:15:17.25] spk_0:
even go back to personalizing the story. Enabled a student like tony to buy a book, attended school, whatever. Yeah,

[00:15:26.43] spk_2:
exactly. A lot of our tips work together.

[00:15:29.36] spk_0:
Okay. Very good. Yes, they don’t stand alone.

[00:16:16.64] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box. It’s the fundraising engine of choice. For 50,000 organizations from 96 countries. They’ve got something new. Now, you can accept cashless donations anytime and anywhere with donor box live kiosk, turn your ipad or Android tablet into a kiosk to boost in person giving. And with their new additions to donor box events, you can sell tickets in 43 currencies and ask your buyers to cover fees, put these two together and you’re in person events will take off donor box helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Now back to 10 easy ways to boost your fundraising on a budget.

[00:16:23.23] spk_0:
Ross. Let’s stick with you. Give us another one.

[00:16:40.13] spk_2:
Another good one is to test your online donation experience. And so a lot of us, especially in the fundraising space, we know what an online form looks like. We’ve filled them all out, we know them really well and we don’t really have an outsider’s perspective into what it looks like to donate. So a really good and I think this one is actually pretty easy and simple. Ask somebody who isn’t in fundraising to try and make a donation and give you feedback and even give them a little rubric to say, you know, here’s some questions that we would like you to answer as you’re trying to give this donation and let us know how it looks and feels and if there are ways that we can improve the experience.

[00:17:06.84] spk_0:
Okay, easy. Yeah, and do it from the outside easy. Okay, Julia, you got something, it’s getting harder now because we’re down like number seven or so. So there are fewer and fewer left for you to choose

[00:17:31.96] spk_3:
from. Yeah. So testing your assumptions is an important one. Not assuming that, you know, what works well with, with people and with your supporters and donors, um making sure that you really use um hard data to look at what it is that, that works for you.

[00:17:39.97] spk_0:
Assumptions like what, what assumptions are people, organizations commonly making?

[00:18:08.56] spk_3:
Yeah. So I think um like the way that they interact, the way that they interact with um with your donation page, I think was something that we touched on. Um and A B testing different messages, um different ways that people respond to um to your messaging. Um but also not testing, trying to test too many things at, at one time but um doing some A B testing with, with messaging and subject lines and, and things like that.

[00:18:31.67] spk_2:
Yeah. So really to piggyback off that if you’re going to test um do A B testing on emails, change one thing per email, right? Change the subject line. Maybe you have a subject line with emoji and one without emojis and see which one gets opened more and same with your social media, right? Post on a Monday and then maybe next week post on a Tuesday and see if you’re getting different engagement. It doesn’t have to be fancy you don’t need to use all these analytics tools, just create a plan and say, okay, we’re going to test this thing now and we’re gonna test something else later.

[00:18:55.05] spk_0:
And uh is there a minimum size that you should have before your testing or minimum, let’s say number of emails for, for validity.

[00:19:05.02] spk_2:
Um There are plenty of content specialist that will probably tell you yes and give you a number. I think you could test with five people personally. You can always um understand your donors more and understand how they communicate. So I’m a big proponent of no matter your donor base, how big it is, how small it is. You can, you can test and get valuable information.

[00:19:28.15] spk_0:
Um Go ahead Julia, you were, you were taking off some, it’s getting harder now. Yeah,

[00:19:48.39] spk_3:
I think so. I think we can remember um timely calls to action is a really important one that is actually really pretty rich because there are a lot of different ways that you can use that effectively. But um a lot of it relates to urgency and making sure that you’re conveying urgency um with donations, whether that is um around a campaign deadline or an event um or a holiday or something really tying it back to urgency and making sure that people know that it’s very important that they give right now. And creating that sense really helps to, to um encourage people to donate.

[00:20:18.94] spk_2:
It really also helps with donor acquisition when you have a current event that is directly affecting your cause to then try and create uh campaign and language around that as well. Uh The classy why America gives report is really interesting. And according to their survey, um and their, their data collection, 60% of donors were likely to give when asked in, in relation to a current event.

[00:20:42.82] spk_0:
So using a news hook or something right? Related to your work? Okay. Okay. Did you all have stories or cases that you shared like examples of these in real life?

[00:22:12.31] spk_3:
Yeah, I mean, we, we showed some examples in particular of the way that we um show the or quantify and show the um the impact of that donations will have like on a donation page really equating the um the way that people’s donations, what they’ll actually fund and the impact that they’ll really have. So um we showed some examples of how um Rose mentioned this too but how um you know, for our organization, $35 provides translation services for a refugee or $100 provides a legal consultation for a family. So we showed some examples of how you can come to those numbers and conclusions and figure out how to um determine the value that donors will see of, of what their donation actually does. And, and that really is about starting with numbers and making sure that you can see what it is that um, what value as relates to your mission and services, what, what dollar value might equate to something.

[00:22:20.65] spk_0:
Exactly. Exactly.

[00:22:27.49] spk_2:
And also within your organization you’ve been able to do timely calls to act because you work in immigration and unfortunately immigration has been in the news quite a bit. Right. Do you see also that cycle of when a news cycle happens, you’re getting more engagement. Yeah.

[00:23:17.18] spk_3:
Yeah, for sure. And I think, um, the, you know, when not only using the sense of urgency, but when you ask people is also really important, yes, using things that are happening in our communities and in the news is something that we do quite a lot. Um because our organization does respond directly to some of those on some of those issues. So yeah, that’s something that’s really important. Um We also pretty effectively um can use light boxes and notification bars to really amplify messaging that we’re sending out. Um and making sure that people really see that it, you know, when there’s a particular campaign, not all the time, but in a rapid response situation, that can be a really effective strategy for not only donor acquisition but also donor retention.

[00:23:34.03] spk_0:
Okay, who’s up to naming the last one or two? I have not been counting, but we’re who’s up to naming another one or two that are remaining

[00:25:24.06] spk_2:
a consistent communication is definitely remaining. Um And again, when I was reading different surveys of donors, you can range anywhere from 53% to 75% of donors will not give again if they receive inconsistent and unclear communication. So it is this is incredibly important uh to get right. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. One of our best strategies is, you know, create a calendar for communicating with donors and it doesn’t have to be on, you know, fancy social media planning calendar. It can just be in your Google calendar, your outlook calendar and share it with everybody on your team that communicates with donors. Because this is also really important if someone in the program team communicates with all of your volunteers who are also probably a good number of number of donors and sends them a bunch of emails in a row and then you tack on and the last email is about a giving campaign, they’re going to have email fatigue, right? And so let’s make sure everyone in the organization who does talk to donors are on the same page about what our calendar is and that everybody is using key language that you want. Another really good strategy is to look at all of your platforms online and make sure that the language and the logos are all the same. You know, I can’t tell you how many organizations that I start working with. This is one of the first things I do and then maybe I’ll go to a Facebook page and it has the old logo and it has language that doesn’t correspond to their website at all. And the nonprofit says, oh, well, that was just someone in development and we lost the password and we’re not, you know, we’re not on Facebook. So we’re not going to change it. And I say you need to change it because it is a public part of your persona and because these social media platforms are all seo linked, they’re going donors are going to find it and you want to make sure you control the narrative.

[00:25:42.12] spk_0:
Okay. Excellent. Is there more any other strategies? Yeah.

[00:25:44.21] spk_2:
Well, we had a bonus tip if we’re

[00:25:46.24] spk_0:
at. So it was you got 11 for 10? Oh, cool. Alright. Give us a bonus.

[00:26:46.27] spk_2:
Yeah, so it wasn’t counted in the original 10 because it’s not as quote unquote easy to do, but it can be very effective and it’s creating a peer to peer fundraising campaign. Uh And one of the reasons it’s not necessarily easy is because it requires a tool, right? It’s not necessarily a lot of our tips and strategies you can implement without needing some sort of fancy technology. You can use the systems you already have. But peer to peer really relies on having a peer to peer fundraising tool that people can easily access, set up their own campaigns and get ready to go. It’s also the really important to arm the um to give the donors that are participating in this campaign a ton of marketing material and a ton of training on what it looks like to fundraise for your organization. Just as I was talking about consistently communicating, you want to make sure that your wonderful, well, meaning donors are using the same language that you would use when they’re going out to um talk about their organization with their friends and

[00:26:49.21] spk_0:
family, give them resources. We’re talking about brand, you know, consistency you were saying, so give them the logo and the colors,

[00:26:56.41] spk_3:
tool kits, messaging, messaging,

[00:27:00.01] spk_0:
consistent messaging.

[00:27:19.37] spk_3:
Yeah. And we’ve even done um you know, starting off really with a small core group of folks. Um we started it with our board. Um but even doing a webinar with them to make sure that they understand the process of setting up the peer to peer page and, and how they see in the system who donated to them and how they think them and how they keep track of all of that. Um So really one of the things that makes it a little bit more of a complicated tip um is that it does require quite a lot of effort, at least to get off the ground.

[00:27:39.29] spk_0:
Um As I said, you need a platform. Is there a platform that the two of you like to use? Is that one of them preferred over the others? You can shout it out. What’s the diff?

[00:28:18.25] spk_3:
Well, I think one of the things that we talked about that’s really great is um if you are just getting started to, to piggyback off of foundations or other um organizations in your community that are doing giving days, um they often will provide the infrastructure for you to use and you can test out the tool and you know, a peer to peer tool in the process that way. So you don’t necessarily have to have your own in order to participate in those ways um through a community giving day or something. So that’s, that’s a really great one.

[00:28:26.64] spk_2:
And I like to stay as platform agnostic as possible because it depends on your team and your donors as to which one makes the most sense. Do you have very tech savvy donors who are really excited to go in and make changes or do you have donors that want something that’s plug and play because they don’t really understand how to use these tools and they’re just excited to go out and fundraise for you. So, you know, there are amazing platforms out there, but I really always start with who is your team and who are your donors?

[00:28:58.84] spk_0:
Okay. I did

[00:29:28.60] spk_3:
remember, I did remember one about, about matching matching grants and um matching gifts. Um And so we talked about how, um you know, a lot of it’s not great to leave money on the table. Um We talked about employer, particularly employer matching gifts. But then also, um if you, you are, again, this is a little bit more complicated. But if you are equipped for uh kind of recruiting matching grants from donors or companies or foundations, that, that, that’s another thing that can, that can work really, really well. Um particularly in um a campaign situation where you can say, you know, all donations up to $20,000 will be matched dollar for dollar until midnight. Thanks to XYZ donor.

[00:29:58.95] spk_2:
And when we say leave money on the table according to um, double the donation, they researched this and 4 to $7 billion a year goes unclaimed in matching gifts. And that, that is money that is just left on the table by all of

[00:30:20.81] spk_0:
the company. Let your employer know that you donated their simple form. Exactly. And they’ll send the same or whatever they are match, match.

[00:30:23.06] spk_2:
And even I’ve seen reports that up to 40% of fortune 500 companies now have a volunteer match program as well. Which means if you have a volunteer base, maybe they haven’t donated. But they work for one of those bigger companies. You should also talk to those volunteers and see if they can talk to their company and if they’ll match some of the time that they’ve donated.

[00:30:43.51] spk_0:
Oh, so it’s the company providing another volunteer to piggyback on the employee that’s already volunteering for the organization. No,

[00:30:52.59] spk_2:
it’s the company writing a check equivalent to that person’s time.

[00:30:55.69] spk_0:
Oh, it’s giving cash equivalent to the

[00:30:58.24] spk_3:
volunteer time.

[00:31:10.84] spk_2:
Oh, and this has been a very effective strategy for one of my clients because they have a mentor program and all of their mentors are volunteers from large tech companies. And so they get often written checks from those employers saying, oh, I’m so happy my employee participated in your program. Here’s a check for their time.

[00:31:20.12] spk_0:
Damn. So 20 hours in a month or something, or 20 hours in a year, it was more like like somebody donated 20 hours in a year and the employer will pay the nonprofit, the value of that 20 hours. Okay. Excellent. I’ve never heard that. What is that called?

[00:31:36.85] spk_2:
Volunteer?

[00:31:42.17] spk_0:
Aptly named? Alright. Um okay. So anything else anything we probably, well, I don’t want to let you off the hook. We may have named all 11 but did we I think

[00:31:51.06] spk_2:
so confident. Well, like I said, they’re all super intertwined. So um we covered them all. I don’t know if we named

[00:32:05.19] spk_0:
one way or another. Okay. Alright. Alright, fair enough. All right. Um You, you’re one of your outcomes, tried and true fundraising tips from other nonprofit professionals do that that does come from the audience or, or, or I mean, you two are already a nonprofit. So is that redundant? I don’t know are the tips coming from you to or from the audience?

[00:32:24.46] spk_2:
And we had really good audience participation and they gave some of the tips that they use. So let’s bring them in.

[00:32:29.97] spk_0:
So share some,

[00:32:32.17] spk_2:
please. One organization mentioned that they have a threshold over $350. That’s when they start calling people. And that for them has also been incredibly effective. They just pick up the phone and they give donors a call um if they’ve reached that amount and that also helps them manage it a little bit because then they’re not necessarily calling everybody, but they know that that’s their threshold. My recommendation though is even under that 3 50. Take a sampling maybe and occasionally call them as well

[00:32:59.36] spk_0:
or like whatever you whatever you think you have the bandwidth for. If $50 is a big donation for you, then maybe that’s your threshold if you can manage it. Okay. Alright. You got another one came from the audience,

[00:33:48.57] spk_3:
another one that somebody shared was that they crowdsource stories from their participants and um collect them and share them out in monthly emails and they share a few stories in each email um in that the person’s words who submitted the story and it might include a photo, but it’s all coming pretty much directly from the participants themselves. And they mentioned that they put um a fundraising, a donate button, not even a hard ask, but just to donate button in the bottom of those males. And it generates quite a lot of donations just from this one email that shares these impact stories from, from folks who have participated in the services. Um and even with the soft ask, they get a great return on those.

[00:34:15.28] spk_2:
That also reminds me another tip. Um, and an audience member echoed this was around lapsed owners. So going back to segmenting your donors, if you can segment who has lapsed, then reaching out directly to them and talking to them and saying hi, we’ve missed you or, um, you know, here’s information about our programming. Again, targeting lapsed owner specifically has had great returns both for my clients as well as the woman that came and spoke

[00:34:30.72] spk_0:
and targeting them more digitally

[00:34:42.00] spk_2:
email, just having direct language to them that says like, thank you for your support. We miss you. Can you come back or here’s what we’ve been up to, especially if you have lab donors that have been away for five years, 10 years. You can use that as a great opportunity to say, this is everything that’s changed in the organization in that time and sometimes they just forgot, but they haven’t donated. And so reaching out to them and communicating with them in that way will help jog their memory and say, oh yeah, I love what you’re doing. Yes, I’ll donate again.

[00:35:08.71] spk_0:
And I didn’t realize that I had stopped and you found success even going back that far, going back 10 years, very successful. Interesting because that’s typically, I think folks will like do one or two, maybe three years lapse. You found success going back as far as 10 Okay.

[00:35:36.05] spk_2:
Okay. And again, it’s about targeting the communication, right? So you would target a 10 year lapse donor differently than a one year lapse donor. The one year lapse donor might have just credit, credit card expired or something changed. And that’s why they haven’t given, whereas the 10 year lapse donor is there, probably aware they’re not giving to your organization anymore. So use this as an opportunity to talk to them again about what may be their life has changed? What are their priorities again? Get to know them and say, hey, you know, we love your support. Is there something that we can do to get that back?

[00:36:02.00] spk_0:
Awesome. Any other area? The pros from tips from either one of you to professionals or that came from the audience trying to immerse listeners in the in the session experience.

[00:36:10.04] spk_3:
Okay. Those are the ones

[00:36:12.30] spk_0:
we’re not gonna okay. Put you on the spot. Um Rosalind, why don’t you leave us with inspirational thoughts around easier ways to boost your fundraising, the value of all these things we just talked about.

[00:36:36.33] spk_2:
Well and again, donors are excited about the work that you’re doing. So when we talk about tips to boost your fundraising, it’s about honestly just connecting with them and having them connect with your organization in fun, interesting and personalized ways.

[00:37:12.31] spk_0:
Rosen is a CEO A Ropa consulting and Julia Tepfer, Senior Marketing and digital Engagement strategist at National Immigrant Justice Center, Rosalind Roz Julia Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing. Thank you for being with nonprofit radio coverage of 23 nt see where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us.

[00:37:20.87] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:38:25.11] spk_0:
Thank you, Kate. Have you got feedback? You know, I’m always interested in your opinion of nonprofit radio. It might be an individual show or a guest or topics that resonate with you or some topic that you think was off topic, didn’t, didn’t really belong on the show. You know, it might be this week’s show, it might be next week’s next month, next year. Anytime I’m I’m interested in your opinion, I’m interested in your feedback. I welcome it. Positive, negative, good, bad. I can take it. It’ll be okay. I’ll be fine. I am genuinely interested in what you think about what you’re listening to week after week. And the best way to get feedback to me is either the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com or just email me tony at tony-martignetti dot com. Eight

[00:38:26.57] spk_1:
that is Tony’s take two. We’ve got Boo koo, but loads more time here is personalized fundraising at scale.

[00:39:06.50] spk_0:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 NTC. Our continuing coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now is Joe Frye Account, group director for nonprofit and Cause at Town Hall Agency and Peter, Vice President of Innovation at Town Hall Agency, Joe Peter. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks

[00:39:14.64] spk_4:
for having us. Thanks

[00:39:15.42] spk_0:
tony and my welcome also to the, to the teams at Town Hall Agency. What Peter, what is Town Hall Agency about

[00:39:33.06] spk_5:
Town Hall agency is an agency that is focused on the non profit and higher education sectors and it’s a full service digital agency. We have been uh kind of evolved and grown out of our parent company, which is, which is Situation Group and Town Hall. We, we have really brought a lot of folks on board to grow that brand for us. Uh And Joe can speak a little bit more to that, but it is, it is an outgrowth of the work that we’ve been doing for a lot of our uh clients that care about creating passionate communities and really making sure that we’re making impact in the work that we’re doing.

[00:39:59.55] spk_0:
Your session. Topic together is personalized, fundraising at scale a how to discussion. So we’re gonna talk about the how to of personalized fundraising at scale. Joe, what what could nonprofits doing a little better? It sounds like with

[00:40:29.38] spk_4:
personalization. Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, I think when we look at the data already, about 60% of non profits are doing some sort of personalization, right? It’s the at scale that we’re really talking about. Um And it really, to me and to Peter, we were talking about this, it doesn’t necessarily start with the tech stack. It’s more of a mindset. Um And how do we break down the silos within nonprofits? Um So that we’re not personalizing one channel at a time, but we’re personalizing the whole ecosystem.

[00:40:46.94] spk_0:
And so you’re encouraging us to go beyond the hello, first name, email, personal and, and assuming that we were personalizing, we use people’s first names and

[00:41:12.30] spk_5:
emails. It’s not a bad place to start, but it’s really growing from that and kind of thinking about the subtle ways that you can do personalization across multiple different channels. So not just saying okay, one and done, we do it here, we’ve ticked that box. But how can we always be thinking about increasing that level of personal is a because we see that constituents respond to that. They actually, they have a tendency to give more when personalization is done, right?

[00:41:20.13] spk_0:
So Peter, how, how far can we go? And what’s, what’s a better definition of personalization?

[00:42:03.02] spk_5:
Well, I, I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot that’s coming out right now in, in thinking how this is going to impact every single part of our lives. I think we’re being personalized to, in ways that we do don’t even realize every single day. And, and one of the things that we talked about in our panel was how can we make sure that we’re always doing a feedback loop of the data that we have, we have first party data about the people were communicating to. And then that the second piece is really making sure that all of that data is consistent, cleaned up, de duplicated, not the most fun part of the job, but that really allows you to then take action what you know, and then always be listening when you’re continuing that conversation with your constituents, they’re giving you feedback on how they open their emails when they do that and the kinds of things, the things that they’re reading on your website. So always make sure there’s a feedback loop to not just rest on your laurels about what you think, you know, but how are you continuing to learn about those people as you evolve in that relationship with them?

[00:42:28.54] spk_0:
You mentioned that we’re always being personalized to, I mean, I’m thinking of any of the, any of the online retailers, you know, customers who looked at what you looked at, looked at these other things, people who bought what you bought these other things, people who bought what you bought, bought these other things with those. I mean, these things paired together, right? We know this is your preferred address, you know. So in those types of ways, is that what you mean? Yeah,

[00:42:48.46] spk_5:
the example that we used

[00:42:49.50] spk_0:
in this is one example, retail and online

[00:42:57.29] spk_5:
retail. Yeah, the example we used in our presentation was about kind of online streaming platforms. They’re all vying for our $8 a month right now. And the ones that are making sure that they know what we like and giving us those recommendations from their content library. Those are the ones that are going to have that competitive edge. So I think we see it a lot in the for profit world that, that personalization is kind of survival of the fittest. But then, you know, the challenge is how do we adapt that for nonprofits when we’re not putting those up against each other in a competitive way? But we’re hoping that we can just make sure that we have the best relationship with our constituents.

[00:43:26.43] spk_0:
I just got an email yesterday that HBO Max is becoming Max. That that’s an interesting branding. I would have thought HBO Max would be better uh keeping their name, front center, but

[00:43:39.27] spk_5:
there’s a lot of money to make that

[00:43:54.59] spk_0:
decision. Okay. Um So look for that big change. Uh So, so do we need some infrastructure, we need to be able to capture and preserve and then coalesce the data that you’re, you’re talking about? Either one of you need infrastructure back in before we can personalize that scale. I

[00:44:26.70] spk_4:
mean, I think one of the things that Peter and I spent a lot of time thinking about is what you do actually need, right? You need data, you need a tech stack, you need a website, you need an email platform, you need something like that. But really it’s organization, right? It’s, it’s a little bit of time. And in our panel, I talked about an example of the client a couple years ago where we spent two hours a month, tagging their data for four months and we had enough data to then personalize everything to them two hours in a month. Yeah, it wasn’t much time at all. Right. And we didn’t ask them for new technology we used what they were using. Uh And so I think there are ways to do it. It’s why we like to say that yes, it can be a tech stack, but really it’s a mindset.

[00:44:45.53] spk_5:
And I think unless you’ve built your own technology from the ground up, chances are there are features within the tech that you use today, you don’t know how to use or that you’re just not using to the extent because those platforms are always improving

[00:44:57.88] spk_0:
tags, attributes, segments, segments. What else are these things commonly called across different platforms? Anything else that

[00:45:31.73] spk_5:
mark that there’s a lot that falls on like marketing automation. Um You know, I think there are more and more platforms that can identify the best time to send, not just for your entire audience but based on you, you know, when do you tend to engage with those emails and then when I hit send for that, you know, maybe it’ll hold that email until it knows when tony is going to open it and it will deliver to you at the right time. So it’s just scale being able to exist. It does exist,

[00:45:34.73] spk_0:
just describe something that you’re dreaming of

[00:45:37.16] spk_5:
that exists. Otherwise I’m going to go off and trademarks but know that exist today. Absolutely.

[00:45:41.67] spk_4:
Existing tools kind of upstream and downstream, right? Like not just the really expensive tools but also the more achievable approachable tools. Okay.

[00:46:13.92] spk_0:
So folks may already have this these resources, you just have to exploit them. That’s right, because I’m thinking of, I use male chimp for my company, emails and uh blasts for the podcast. There are, there’s, there’s like send time optimization. Um I don’t know if it’s including optimizing for me, but it’s including optimizing for the folks I’m sending to and I’m not even thinking about segments, I could set the audience and then segment and then send time optimization for the different segments. I’m just doing it in one

[00:46:37.85] spk_4:
group. Alright. And right, that’s, that’s part of when we define personalization. That’s part of what we’re talking about, right? Like a lot of people think personalization, 1 to 1, ultimately, we’ll get there. But like let’s start in a smaller phase of personalization, one to a persona, one to a group of people. Let’s build our confidence there. And I think a lot of it is kind of, it sounds so big and intimidating and you know, we have all this data and we’re gonna get lost in that data. But when we break it down and we really try to crawl, walk, run a personalized approach. We can do it in ways that everybody gets on board. We can start to break down some of those silos and barriers inside of organizations, bring everybody to the table know clearly.

[00:47:00.10] spk_0:
And then it just become awareness because we’re reassuring folks that a lot what they need is already in place. It’s just exploiting it.

[00:47:22.34] spk_5:
And I think the subtlety of how you approach it and how you start that, that crawl phase. I think we’ve all gotten that email that was personalized to us, but maybe it had the wrong name or it had the first name tag instead of our actual name. And you may I equate that to, uh, if a romantic partner calls you by the wrong name, you might forgive that, but you’re never going to forget that moment. So, so how can we be thinking about personal, personalizing things in a subtle way where it’s just enhancing what we know about you? But we’re kind of mitigating that risk of maybe, you know, as all technology does from time to time, you know, makes a mistake. But, but that’s really where that second stage we were talking about before of making sure that your data is constantly sanitized up to date, clean and consistent. Are there

[00:47:47.25] spk_0:
other examples that we can, we can give folks a different types of personalization. Yeah.

[00:48:56.61] spk_4:
So I like, I think there are a couple of things we can do personalization wise. One is we can personalize to the content. So um right, hubspot came out a couple years ago now with the stat that they have dynamic CTS built into their platform. Uh And so essentially the CT A changes based on your data uh and they came out and said it converts 202% better than a static one. That’s a huge number. But what are we actually personalizing that too? Is it the story that it appears underneath? Right? So our ask is based on uh whatever the blog post topic is and like what was able to help that person and that impact story or we personally personalizing it to the fact that tony donated $100 last month. Now we want them to donate 100 and 20 because we want them to donate 20% more. So, what are we really personalizing too is a good, a good place to start. Um You know, one of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time with is working with organizations have gift catalogs and how to activate a gift catalog across a blog to then have a CT A that isn’t even dynamic. It’s static, but it’s written in the same way that the ask and the gift catalog is so that way everything ties together. So regardless of which channel somebody’s engaging with you with or what the ask is. Everybody’s on the same page about what that actual ask is going to be. And it feels more personal to the donor and the potential donor.

[00:49:09.98] spk_0:
Peter. Other examples. Yeah.

[00:49:32.43] spk_5:
Well, I think one of the things that Joe and I were having some conversations around, uh and I know he’s done some, some campaigns with this personalized video is something that’s becoming more and more attainable without, you know, breaking the bank. Really, there are a lot of services that you can work with to have different videos stitched together. They could include things like your donation history or, or just an appeal to you or, or really just includes segments, you know, as part of that B roll that of things that we know that are important to you. So when you’re thinking about a video campaign or an end of your appeal, you can actually start to use more and more to uh tools that, that every piece of that campaign have some level of personalization going

[00:49:50.42] spk_0:
on. Are there any video platforms that you can, you can shout out recommend as a potential resource

[00:49:56.18] spk_4:
we like item, you spell it. Idomoo

[00:50:01.90] spk_0:
idomoo

[00:50:05.18] spk_4:
dot com dot com. They do a great job really connecting in um to a database or uploaded Excel docs. Um

[00:50:14.18] spk_0:
So the video, so Peter, you’re saying like the B roll can change based on the data that’s in your CRM.

[00:50:30.45] spk_4:
Yeah, B roll the music, the ask everything, right? So everything is a data point. Um And it doesn’t really change your production process that much. They, their system has an after effects plug in that. A lot of producers and editors are already using after effects to produce videos. Um And so you define what the personalization is, what the element is and then you create all the different assets to that. Um But to your

[00:50:45.40] spk_0:
point, both of you, you could start with, maybe, maybe start with first name and maybe giving history or something like that or start simple. Don’t, don’t, you know, you’re not, you don’t have to be Martin Scorsese to produce your first one. But explore

[00:51:32.04] spk_4:
and I think like also, right, if you, if you even wanted to explore it at a higher level, um when somebody makes a donation, right, you, you know what they clicked on before they donate it typically, right? You’re gonna know if they came from an email article from a blog post from something. And so if you take that and you say, you know what, I’m gonna follow up with a personal thank you from somebody that benefited from a donation like this or from our president and CEO or from somebody on our team. Uh And I’m only gonna show them stories and content around the topic that they actually donated to. Um It’s a nice way to personalize in a very subtle way. So it’s not actually saying, thanks Tony for your donation of X, but it’s saying thank you for your support with a personal uh personalized aspect and then also showing them other stories, other impact that you have in that that segment

[00:51:48.01] spk_0:
related to what they gave to. Yeah, he’s a great example. Any other what other examples that we

[00:52:37.21] spk_5:
got on the media buying side? There’s a lot of conversations we’re having around dynamic creative. So this idea of dynamic creative that you when you’re building out your, let’s say it’s your display ad, you have a few different versions that you upload into a system. And then that system can based on targeting as media has always done. But it can also, you know, know where you are geographically and it can say, uh you know, here’s, here’s an opportunity for you in your area and it will show you something different because you’ve set up the rules to do that. It takes, it does take a change of workflow, the tools are getting cheaper, but it does require your team to maybe work in a way that they haven’t done in the past. And the non waterfall way of saying, okay, we’re going to put this ask out to the designer to get back the assets and then we’re not going to talk them again. Well, we may need to go back to that designer and say, you know what we need another variation that can achieve this thing that we’re trying to target. So can we get a few more from you? And it’s just really about making sure that, that the team is, is having that communication. It’s, and there’s a muscle within the organization to be able to adapt to that.

[00:52:58.92] spk_0:
And you were talking about media buying. What are some examples of your, your think? Um

[00:53:00.28] spk_5:
Well, just like the ads that we see,

[00:53:01.81] spk_0:
search, search, search,

[00:53:04.06] spk_5:
search ads

[00:53:28.70] spk_4:
and search ads. It’s, it’s built into Google Google ads from from the start, right? They have the dynamic ads and they optimize for you using AI but you can also optimize by location and, and some platforms allow you to kind of put together other assets. Um I mean, I also think about, you know, as just another example, thinking about communication channel preference and frequency. Um for some reason, I don’t know why my mom will not text me but she Facebook messages me. I can’t get her to text me, but her preferred channel is Facebook messenger. Um And so, you know, with donors, they all have a preferred channel um and a communication frequency that they want to hear from you. And it’s okay to ask for that. Uh

[00:53:47.61] spk_0:
Simple surveys. Yeah. How do you, how do you like us to be in touch with you?

[00:53:52.43] spk_5:
Yeah. And you mentioned Male Chimp a little while ago, tony is something that you use. The survey tools are built into that platform as well. So you can, you can deploy an email that links, you write to a survey on the same platform and then that survey will automatically update those tags on that constituent that you already have. So it’s, it’s, it’s both you can, the tools have never been better to integrate those different tools. But some of those tools are actually adding within themselves to give you even more.

[00:54:19.99] spk_0:
Any other examples you want to share? Did you do your session already or it’s coming up? Any other examples that came from maybe questions or that you shared? No, holding, holding out on non profit radio.

[00:55:10.27] spk_4:
No, we um you know, we talked a little bit about a little bit about chat, lots, a little bit about automation or across social platforms, right? Um I’ve used in the past multiple platforms, but I really like many chat as an example where you can actually set up triggers. So somebody that likes a post or somebody that comments on one of your post gets a message sent to them through whatsapp or any of the Facebook ecosystem messenger wise. Um And it’s just a nice way to kind of build that communication back and forth in that network uh in a not really creepy way, right? Like everybody wants to be engaged with or if they don’t, they tell you, they don’t want to. But it’s often a nice way to kind of automate some of that when we’re thinking about how we can do it. It’s,

[00:55:18.26] spk_0:
it’s interesting. Alright. So somebody liked or commented on a post. Yeah, I don’t know. Just a like and then they get something

[00:55:21.21] spk_4:
they could, I mean, you can set up whatever rules you want. Right. Maybe it’s three likes, four likes.

[00:55:26.33] spk_0:
Yeah, maybe a couple, a couple, a

[00:55:42.20] spk_4:
couple of engagements. And I think that’s where like, you know, I think a common theme, especially at this conference but that we often see is always be testing and it’s what really is that, you know, is it after five likes, somebody is likely to want to engage with you more and they’re looking for feedback from you. Um or is it after 10, like what really does that donor journey look like? And I know everybody is a little bit different. But, and

[00:56:25.31] spk_5:
I think Joe, you, you alluded to this in our panel, but when you’re engaging, when constituents are supporting a nonprofit, they see that relationship is very personal. If they’re going to give you their money, it’s usually because it’s something that they believe in, they support your cause. So, so we find a lot of times people are looking, you said it might seem a little creepy, but we, we find that people that are willing to give often want to engage in a dialogue. So it’s just about making sure that we’re engaging with them in the right way. They don’t just hear from us, you know, once a year when we need money, we’re making sure to, to put information in front of them that we, that we know is with them for them based on what they’ve said to us

[00:56:28.08] spk_0:
before. It was just that one example of the single, single lake, single thumbs up. And then I get a message on what’s

[00:56:47.03] spk_5:
happened. Well, yeah, and you know, we touched very briefly, uh you know, on A I what AI is going to be doing to the world of personalization. Uh I was at a talk recently from Amy Webb from the Future Today Institute and she said we used to search the internet and we’re getting to a point where the internet is now searching us. So just everybody buckle buckle your seatbelts in terms of what’s going to be happening in our worlds around uh the kinds of messaging that we’re hearing from all the new AI that’s coming online.

[00:57:03.11] spk_0:
What does she mean by that? The internet searching us? Well,

[00:57:16.74] spk_5:
that all the signals that we’re putting out into the world about our preferences, what we like that, that, you know, in the best case scenario, you have a dedicated team that’s looking at those making sense of them and, and figuring out a strategy that works to communicate. But when you just, you know, we’re getting to a point where a lot of tools are being unleashed that haven’t been tested before. So, you know, what was the micro response time from how someone moved their mouse from the bottom of the screen to the top. Does that have an indication of maybe a health issue that they’re dealing with? And you just, it doesn’t take long to go into some, some really black holes around this conversation.

[00:57:41.43] spk_0:
Trillions and trillions and quadrillions. We’re all,

[00:57:44.88] spk_5:
we’re all putting out data. Yeah.

[00:58:12.73] spk_4:
And I think that’s the thing, right? Like data, the amount of data can be scary, right? Like I have to analyze all this data um from a personal standpoint where Peter and I I kind of start is you don’t have to analyze everything. Let’s make a hypothesis, right? Like do people care more about where you do your work? Do they care more about the aspect of what you’re doing? Like what do they really care most about? And let’s try to just collect data around that and organize that data first and see if that’s actually what they care about and then move on from there. Yeah.

[00:58:14.74] spk_5:
And don’t be afraid to act. I think it’s possible in an overwhelming sea of information to become paralyzed. But, but you know that at the end of the day, the goal is to try something and see what impact that has. See if it moves the needle and make sure you’re paying attention to those performance indicators to make sure what you want to do is actually happening.

[00:58:32.04] spk_0:
So staying short of the micro seconds that it takes to move the mouse, how can we collect on our own? Some of this, some of this, some of the data that we can be then used for uh personalization at scale.

[01:01:07.08] spk_4:
Yeah. Um Well, to go back a little bit about the data piece, right? Like let’s let’s take a step back and think about why personalization really matters and like why it started in in the more commercial world first. Uh there’s a data point out there that says every second it takes me to, to think about where I’m at on a website and to act, take the next step, there’s a 10% drop off for every second. So 10% plus 10% plus 10% right? And so it’s easy to see how somebody can go from clicking on an ad, a search at Google Grants, add something like that to a website that takes a couple of seconds to load to where you went from, somebody who was going to give to you. So now there’s a 50% chance, right? Because you’re 567 seconds in by that time. Um And so personalization really started as a way to remove friction, uh which is what people often are looking for. And we know that people are really interacting with organizations across channels across platforms. Maybe it starts with uh friends um post on IG or linkedin sharing a success story and you click on that and you’re interested and you sign up for a newsletter and then you get a newsletter and you kind of read another blog post and you kind of build your relationship over multiple channels. Um But when we think about the data that you can collect, right? It’s what if you’re, you’re collecting like the last step. Um Google Analytics has a previous step metric. So everybody that goes to your donation page that converts, what was the previous step that they were on? What was the content? Um Let’s analyze that content. Let’s see what, what looks good about it? Is it 1000 word blog post? Is it a video that was embedded? Is it the ask itself was $50? And we know you actually only gave 25. Why did you only give 25? We can start to look at some of that data. Um And with an email, right, we can see what you’re clicking on open rates, uh platforms like mail chimp and hubspot and in constant contact, they all do that on an individual email record. Uh So you can actually start to see and when we do these uh and we start tagging me. So let’s start with email, right? And let’s figure out if we’re tagging around topics. What tags are people clicking on? Like are people only clicking on an article about X or are they only clicking on articles about why? And let’s start to segment those and build out more detailed personas just from an email engagement because they’ve given you their information, they’ve said they want to hear from you. They’re going to engage with you likely. Um, and it’s just an easy way for us to start there and then expand it out to multiple

[01:01:11.11] spk_0:
channels. Everything you just named is eminently doable if you’re using the most basic email, email service. Yeah, Peter

[01:02:33.78] spk_5:
to go back to, I think the idea of being a good steward of that data um treating it responsibly. Not only because legally you have to and more and more laws are coming out to say, you know, this is, this is how governments are protecting all of our data every single day. But also listening, listening to your constituents letting them know, we alluded to this earlier, letting them know why we want that information and how we intend to use it. We really just want to deepen our relationship with you. We want to make sure we’re landing your in your in box at the right time when we have something to say and when we think this is going to be important to our relationship and we’re listening to you, if you want to come to us and say, you know what? I need a break, I need to, you know, I want to change our relationship and being responsive to that. It’s not so that’s not just the technology and you know, all of the check boxes we’re all familiar with when you hit the unsubscribe button on an email and it takes you to that form and it’s like, why are you leaving? That’s kind of very cold. You have to do that. But also because privacy laws require outreach and you have to be listening to that you have to have in most states, a phone number and an email address where people can reach out to you and say, tell me what you know about me and in our organization, we listen and, and we look at every single one of those and we treat them with respect and we treat them as we would want to be treated if we were reaching out to somebody else who had our data.

[01:02:40.14] spk_4:
And again, that’s, that’s process, right? That’s not, that’s not necessarily technology, it’s, it’s a process internally and that’s part of the reason we say personalization is a mindset.

[01:03:04.77] spk_0:
Yeah. Um Peter, can we go further? So Joe identified um you know, like I was saying, data, that’s eminently collectible. You, you can start tomorrow, just turn on some analytics or, or just go back and look at data that’s already been collected. What will be the next step in terms of data that we could collect or methods that we could use to collect data for more personalization?

[01:03:50.19] spk_5:
Well, I think the way we think about it is may be reversed a little bit. We want to start with what, what is the outcome that we’re looking for? And how do we get there? Because I think it can be really tempting to just say, let’s plug another data source into the machine and see what happens. And I think that’s what you’re seeing a lot with a lot of the large language models that are pervading and coming out in the AI world right now. It’s, let’s just hook up everything that everybody said on reddit and see what happens. And I think as an organization, we don’t want to be, we don’t want to collect something that we don’t need to have to make the relationship better. It’s very tempting um to say like, oh, look, we can get 50 more data points. But if you don’t have a plan for that, then, then you’re just kind of bloating your systems and you’re, you’re risking having more than you need. Um So I think it’s, it’s, how do we, what is the end goal that we want? How do we want that constituent to feel at the end of this relationship? And then what do we need to get there? And, and let’s not over indulge.

[01:04:20.35] spk_0:
Yeah. Very good point. All right. Um What else? Um What else from your session that we haven’t talked about yet? We still have some time if, if there’s more we can talk about.

[01:04:27.75] spk_5:
Well, I think we, we were really encouraged by the, some of the conversations we had after the session. Questions.

[01:04:33.89] spk_0:
Yeah. What, what questions came or what Yeah, I think, well, he can come

[01:04:40.51] spk_5:
anytime you want the vice president. I’m just here to make Joe look good. That’s my job today. I don’t know.

[01:05:09.64] spk_0:
I see Deray vice president and group director, so Peter is the vice president. All right. Um, no, I’m not trying to create a tension within, within town. Yes. Right. Right. Um, what else came from? Yeah. Get Joe Rogan’s numbers. Right. I start going to fisticuffs. Um What else came from this audience feedback, whether questions or comments after privately, what stuck with

[01:06:25.03] spk_5:
you? I think one of the things that stuck with me was going back to what Joe was saying. It’s, it’s not just about the technology and making sure the gears are spinning, but oftentimes in organizations, it’s about the human work of getting teams that are all focusing on their own individual piece of it who are very proud of the work that they do to come together and have a conversation and understand what the bigger goal is. So there were, we all have egos. We, we all want to be told we’re doing a good job and if my part of the machine is working, I’m going to call it a day. Don’t bring me into a meeting to tell me how I have to change something because now some and so what I’m doing is working, but to really achieve something like personalization at scale, it does require getting people into a room together and almost having kind of like a professional therapy session and saying this is where we’re trying to go with our, imagine if we had a system that looked like this. Now, we’re not saying anybody in the room is preventing us from doing that, but we know that we’re only going to get there together by cooperating and finding a new way to break down those silos that exist today and, and how we do that needs to be respectful of everybody who wants to show up and it’s gonna be key to making that happen. Okay. Very good,

[01:06:26.01] spk_0:
very good perspective. Anything else that for anything struck you from the questions, anything else, audience related questions, comments

[01:07:58.00] spk_4:
that yeah, I mean, I think um I think there were really two things, one kind of piggybacking a little bit on that. We spent some time talking about making sure that when you’re collecting KPI S to see if personalization is a success, right? When you’re starting small, like what are you actually looking at? Um if you personalize the subject line of an email, the primary KPI shouldn’t be a donation, it should be an email open, right? And so when we start to have these leading indicators um that are kind of micro metrics that we’re looking at, we can start to get more people on board because we’re then sharing the same language with them, right? Uh We spend a lot of time talking about uh just how different people perceive different words, uh awareness, for instance, right? Like when we run an awareness campaign as an agency, we’re thinking it’s brand lift, right? The action is, does somebody remember your organization name and what you do? Um But oftentimes when organizations come to us and they say we want an awareness campaign, they actually mean they want somebody who doesn’t know them to take an action. Uh and it’s a, it’s a small difference but it does change one, the metrics that we’re tracking and to the type of, of media by that we do. Um And kind of how we message that. Uh And so I think it’s important, like all teams have slightly different language are slightly different connotation of a certain word. And so getting everybody, like Peter said in a therapy session at the beginning to kind of define everything that we’re gonna talk about. Everything that we’re gonna do is a really important key step. Um And it starts with a pis

[01:08:21.76] spk_5:
and, and just because you think something may seem obvious, don’t assume that everybody in that larger group when they get together is necessarily going to click on everything. And an example I often use is in the world of technology, a developer means one thing, someone who codes software in the world of nonprofits development is raising money. So just that assumption, if you’re going off on a tangent about something, and there are people in the room who maybe haven’t worked together before. Don’t assume that everybody is using the exact same dictionary

[01:08:27.75] spk_0:
work in development, right?

[01:08:29.90] spk_5:
Good website. No, no, no, not that kind.

[01:08:45.51] spk_0:
All right. Leave it there. Does that sound good? Alright, they are Joe Frye account, group account, group director for nonprofit and Cause Town Hall Agency and Peter president of Innovation at Town Hall Agency. Just to foment a little more dissension back at the

[01:08:50.47] spk_5:
agency. Thank you very much for

[01:08:53.45] spk_0:
sharing. Thanks. Thanks Peter. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with me.

[01:09:21.77] spk_1:
Next week, we wrap up our 23 NTC coverage with communications and development teams working better together. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I

[01:09:24.73] spk_0:
beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[01:09:43.62] 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 show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

Nonprofit Radio for April 24, 2023: Technology Governance

 

Maureen WallbeoffTechnology Governance

Maureen Wallbeoff

Sounds boring. In anyone else’s hands, it might be. But Maureen Wallbeoff brings her energy and lightness to help us understand the symptoms of unmanaged tech; the value of a technology governance group; and strategies for easing common technology pain points. Maureen is The Nonprofit Accidental Techie. (This continues our coverage of NTEN’s 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, #23NTC.)

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

I love our sponsor!

Donorbox: Powerful fundraising features made refreshingly easy.

 

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

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

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
View Full Transcript

Transcript for 637_tonymartignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230424.mp3

Processed on: 2023-04-24T14:42:31.765Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…04…637_tonymartignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230424.mp3.443972876.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/04/637_tonymartignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230424.txt

[00:01:28.31] 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 come down with Trigon Itis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Technology governance sounds boring in anyone else’s hands. It might be, but Maureen will be off, brings her energy and lightness to help us understand the symptoms of unmanaged tech, the value of a technology governance group and strategies for easing common technology pain points. Maureen is the nonprofit Accidental Techie. This continues our coverage of N tens, 2023 nonprofit technology conference on tony Steak to a great non profit podcast. 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 technology governance.

[00:02:18.51] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know what it is. You know, it’s the 2023 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. You know that we’re in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado Convention Center what you don’t know is that now I’m with Maureen will be off. We are sponsored at 23 NTC by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits and very grateful for their sponsorship. Maureen will be off is nonprofit digital strategist and technology coach at the nonprofit Accidental Techie with Maureen will be off. So she’s also aptly named and

[00:02:20.58] spk_2:
I say hello right back to

[00:02:23.13] spk_1:
our last interview.

[00:02:24.52] spk_2:
Wonderful. You worked with her where she Firefly partners hired her a million years ago. I, I was, I was one of the owners and a partner for 10 years staying in my hotel room this week. So

[00:02:43.12] spk_1:
I’m going to the Firefly.

[00:02:44.59] spk_2:
So am I will see you?

[00:02:47.30] spk_1:
There were a founder, founder and

[00:03:10.66] spk_2:
another 2008, some silent business partners came together and gave us an opportunity to start an agency. They gave us a little money and we were fully remote from day one when all we had was a O L instant messenger to chat with each other. That will tell you how long ago that was 2000

[00:03:18.04] spk_1:
and

[00:03:36.88] spk_2:
2018. So stayed for 10 years. And then I felt like I was so far away from the organizations themselves to actually lend a hand because we had people like Corley who were working directly with our clients. So I sold my shares and left the organization and started my own solo consultancy. At that point. I’ve

[00:03:43.04] spk_1:
known Jen Frazier. For just a few years. But I didn’t know that I’ve known you since you were on non profit radio last year. I didn’t, I just didn’t know about the connection.

[00:03:52.40] spk_2:
You know, we’re all connected here.

[00:03:55.08] spk_1:
So we’ll see, I’ll see you at the pizza party tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,

[00:03:58.82] spk_2:
tomorrow night.

[00:04:01.13] spk_1:
All right, Maureen. We’re talking about technology governance for accidental techies. Why did you feel that this was important enough that it merited a session at 23 NTC?

[00:04:52.55] spk_2:
Because most organizations, whether they’re large or small have simple technology or very sophisticated technology really struggle with managing it as a holistic ecos system. So the fundraising folks handle their tools, the communications folks handle their tools. But, but you know, when we bring these products, software CRM into our organizations, it’s really tricky to get it all, to talk to each other, to work well, to make decisions for the best interests of the organization as opposed to just the users of that system. So often when I work with nonprofit clients, it’s the first time, the right group of people, like a cross functional, collaborative group of people have sat down and made decisions about technology together with everybody’s interests and needs in mind and it makes your systems work better and it helps you get a return on investment.

[00:05:19.44] spk_1:
So we’re envisioning a nonprofit where there are disparate systems, like there’s an accounts payable there, maybe there’s a treasury system, maybe there’s another bookkeeping system or something. There’s, of course, a fundraising system, there’s an hr

[00:05:34.57] spk_2:
email marketing, peer to peer fundraising volunteers, etcetera.

[00:05:45.78] spk_1:
Now, what about the companies that endeavor to put all these under one, um, mass name? Like, like, I don’t know, the salesforce or Blackball. Do those actually help small and mid size? Our listeners are in small and midsize shops. There’s, there’s no, um, I don’t know, there’s no 1000 employees, uh non profit listening, most likely. So do those big, do those big names work for small and midsize?

[00:07:43.13] spk_2:
They can, they can if they’re governed, if someone is paying attention to them, if the right people are talking about what’s working, what’s not working. Usually what happens in the small to mid size shops is the stuff as a whole is not cutting it, you know, or you’ve got redundancy, you’ve got two platforms that do the same thing or more or even something as simple as multiple canvas accounts, you know, like let’s talk about what you have, bring it all together. Um Make sure that users are supported, make sure that you know what you’re spending on this stuff and that the data is moving around between the systems instead of um data silos because that’s really where the power of all these tools comes in is, yeah, you can pay your staff. Yeah, you can collect online donations. But if different people have different needs and they’re not sitting together collaboratively making decisions, it causes friction and frustration. Often folks feel like they need to be a technology expert in order to govern their technology. So they don’t do it or they feel like, hey, I’m paying for this thing. It should just do what it’s supposed to do. It’s like if you hired a new staff person and never on boarded them, they’re professional, they know what they’re doing. They’ll just come in here, we’ll give them a computer and they’ll go not going to perform as well as a person who is managed, overseen and kind of guided to be the best that they can be. Alright,

[00:08:07.30] spk_1:
let’s talk about some of these symptoms of unmanaged technology bundle stack stack like a pro totally pro tech stack. Yeah. What does this look like that? We know we’ve got an ungoverned stack surrounding us, engulfing us. Maybe it’s engulfing us like it’s an Amoeba were a little Amoeba also were something smaller than an Amoeba. Amoeba have to eat two and it’s being engulfed by this Amoeba tech stack.

[00:09:53.73] spk_2:
What some of the symptoms are, are things like I just mentioned, you’ve got multiple of the same function, three email tools. Why, you know, probably just one would be better that way you can get really good at that. In addition to only paying for one thing, staff are due doing a lot of manual work that could be automated. So I’ve worked with an organization, small organization where everything was people powered even though they were paying a lot of money for the technology that they had in house. So change management, user adoption, none of that stuff was actually being taken care of. Um Your technology budget can grow dramatically year over year and no one really knows what you’re paying for everything, waste of money, waste of time. Uh You can also have turnover on your team if they feel like they’re um their pain points or their ideas for improvement are not being heard, they will leave and then you’ll need to start all over again. So it usually hits, there’s a, there’s a plan problem. You don’t have a plan for how you’re going to use all this stuff together. There’s a people problem, your folks are not trained properly or don’t have the right skills to be successful using this stuff, platforms, maybe you’re not in the right system or there’s a big gap or a business process problem. So a governance group small and scrappy meet once a month and kind of do updates with each other. Hey, here’s what we’re working on in our area of the text. We’re

[00:10:04.66] spk_1:
gonna, we’re gonna get to the technology, to your T G technology, technology Governance group, but I just want to see any more, any more symptoms of malfunctioning

[00:10:50.44] spk_2:
large frustration and you might not, you might be confusing your supporters because if they have one platform that they’re using, that looks and feels very different from another platform like I’m a volunteer and donor and the rules are different. Um Depending on which system I’m using. Um You probably are not giving your supporters the seamless experience that all of this stuff that we say we have to have inside our organizations to engage our supporters effectively. Um You’re failing on that promise, you know, you’re paying a lot for something that feels clunky, frustrating lots of manual workarounds. So

[00:11:00.80] spk_1:
a solution is the technology governance can be who should be a part of our T G.

[00:11:32.53] spk_2:
The T G G is an interesting little animal because when you think about another meeting, like I have to be part of another group, I have to go to another meeting. It pre fatigues most of us, right? Like I’m not, not into that so much. But if you pick the main system owners or users, like the person who’s your database manager on the fundraising, somebody from marketing and communications, somebody from finance, you made the point

[00:11:36.59] spk_1:
earlier. This does not have to be a technology

[00:11:38.57] spk_2:
person. No, no, no, no.

[00:11:41.38] spk_1:
You may not even have a tech

[00:11:42.35] spk_2:
person. You probably don’t.

[00:11:44.44] spk_1:
Your, your I T support may be

[00:11:46.35] spk_2:
outsourced or your kid. You know, in some cases, depending on the organization. No, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not past

[00:11:57.47] spk_1:
the server in the dripping, dripping mop closet. Let’s hope.

[00:13:45.46] spk_2:
Let’s hope everybody’s in the cloud and they’re paying attention to security and password management and all that good stuff. But the technology Governance group meets once a month for four months, for an hour a month. And you’ve got to appoint somebody to come up with an agenda so that it’s a real meeting. It’s not just everybody sitting and complaint. I hate this. I’ve asked six times to get a new whatever, what, that’s not the point of this meeting point of this meeting is to talk about what you’re doing in your systems, maybe make some business process decisions. I’m working with an organization right now who is starting to make plans to text their supporters. They’ve got the platform in place, but they don’t have any business rules around it. So the data guy, the communications person and um a couple of other folks are part of this T G G and we just had our April meeting a couple days ago on Monday and the everybody shared updates for a few minutes, got the mic for about 10 minutes and then we spent the second half an hour hammering out what the communication policy was going to be for collecting text cell phone numbers and using them across the organization. So they were really able to say we want to provide the same experience to everybody, whether they’re filling out a survey or making a donation. And here’s how we’re going to set up our system so that they align with our business rules. They had never had a policy before. Never thought about texting organizations. So rather than having that happen in a silo just in communications, you need your data person who is going to make the change that says, you know, here’s my cell phone number and the check box that says, yep, I’m opting in you. Folks can text me that would have probably taken six months to pull off if we had not sat down and talked about it for 25 minutes. As a group,

[00:14:57.76] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box, the online donation platform. How many possible donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? That is tragic. You can stop the drop and break that cycle with donor boxes. Ultimate donation form added to your website in minutes. It’s freaking easy. So easy. When you stop to drop the possible donors become donors four times faster. Checkout easy payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract. You’ll be joining over 40,000 U S nonprofits donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to technology governance.

[00:15:02.65] spk_1:
Why did you say the group only needs for

[00:15:53.22] spk_2:
four months? Because when you’re first starting out, it feels like a big deal to say we’re going to be every month for the rest of our lives as long as we’re working here. So we’re taking a four month increments, four month increments. Um The other thing is these groups take a little while to gel. Right. You’ve never really talked about this stuff is a group before. Um, what, what gets raised in here, what needs to be, uh, turned into its own initiative with an owner like, hey, Kathy, you’re going to go work with whoever on this texting thing and then report back to the group next month. Um We’ve even had conversations like, um, what do we need from each other on these, um, codependent technology initiative improvements, problem solving stuff like that.

[00:15:56.26] spk_1:
All right, this is all fodder for the agenda, an agenda

[00:16:26.82] spk_2:
has to be an agenda. And you know, my, if I’m running the group for an organization, which I do often in these first couple of months to just like set it up and run it, facilitate these meetings, then I just hand it over to somebody at the organization and they keep running it. Um Do you know the four stages of group dynamics? Four stages of group formation? Okay. So you have forming storming, which is where the second meeting happens and people are like, you’re not letting me do what I wanted to. Then there’s nor ming where you start to settle in. That’s month three performing, you hit at month four where people know what to expect at these meetings. You often

[00:16:46.14] spk_1:
you’ve governed

[00:16:46.93] spk_2:
your technology, you are all done, then

[00:16:49.81] spk_1:
you have to start again with form.

[00:17:49.03] spk_2:
Every time somebody new hits the team, you go through these stages. But that’s another, another interview for something else. But the first four months you’re sort of figuring it out. Your jelling, you’re developing your group rules and the things that are important enough to talk about at these meetings and then send notes around. Somebody takes notes or you record the meeting and send the recordings around and everybody’s responsible for following up on their stuff. So at the end of every T G G meeting, you’ve got a little five minutes where you say, all right, here’s the action items coming out of this meeting. You’re going to do that, you volunteered to do this, you two are going to work together on that. And then the life of the meeting extends outside the meeting and between meetings and kind of gets people rowing the boat in the same direction instead of in a circle, which is what it feels like sometimes,

[00:17:52.03] spk_1:
right? So there’s work between the meetings collaborative like you expect of your committee’s on your, on your board should be right. You know, hopefully your board is not only working one quarter, two hours every quarter. That’s a, that’s a,

[00:18:07.17] spk_2:
that is a low performing board,

[00:18:10.24] spk_1:
right? Yes, that’s exactly responsibility, accountability, of course.

[00:18:16.58] spk_2:
And you’re working together in the in service of helping this technology meet your mission instead of individual teams, you know, kind of elbowing each other out of the way to

[00:18:32.69] spk_1:
anything else about our technology governance group. We

[00:18:35.64] spk_2:
should know it should go longer than four months. So I’ll just say most of the time you

[00:18:40.45] spk_1:
keep wrap it up,

[00:18:47.86] spk_2:
the other benefit to these meetings can be helping you with at budget time because tech is often spread, tech funding is often spread between different business units or cost centers at an organization. And so coming together and talking about what’s going to be in my budget, what’s going to be in your budget. So we need to work on something that benefits both of us whose budget should that go in? Um helps you earmark those funds for when it’s time to work on those projects.

[00:19:16.50] spk_1:
Let’s let’s move to um problem solving methods for for common pain points. So we identified the pain points that they’re more. Don’t hold out on non pop radio listeners like redundancy turnover,

[00:19:32.59] spk_2:
frustration out of control

[00:19:40.71] spk_1:
budget doing the same thing. What is there more? I think

[00:19:46.55] spk_2:
the other one that I think is poor business relationships with your technology vendors. Very

[00:19:53.70] spk_1:
good one. Alright. Frustration talking to

[00:19:57.99] spk_2:
them. Yeah. Not getting good service or not getting your solutions. Would

[00:20:22.51] spk_1:
we, we would probably default and say it’s the vendors problem. It could be, it could be our own, could be our own internal problems because we’re, we’re feeding the vendor six times a day with disparate number one priorities. No hr who told you fundraising was number one hr is number one and who told you that it was accounts payable that person is whacked. It’s hr, so you’re on the phone with me now.

[00:20:29.58] spk_2:
I’m number one now. Yeah. Um, the other way to think about that problem may not be the vendors problem and it might not even be a technology problem. Tony

[00:20:40.77] spk_1:
person. Right.

[00:21:17.03] spk_2:
Because we blame the technology 1st, 2nd and 3rd, the stupid XXX, whatever it is because we don’t have to interact with that thing. I don’t have to go to lunch with that CRM or whatever it happens to be its inanimate. So it’s easy to complain about the whatever but often you peel that back and that’s not the root cause. So if you fix what you think the technology problem is, you have the same problem later and it starts to become this unsolvable problem at your organization. You don’t have the app to take another run at it after the first couple and you just start living with it, which is never a good idea because it’s always going to get accommodation

[00:21:27.35] spk_1:
in your personal life in your technology boundaries, accommodation. These things are

[00:21:32.99] spk_2:
important, the right root cause. That’s right. Alright. So

[00:21:36.12] spk_1:
some, some you have some methods.

[00:21:44.30] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. So one of them is the five wise, have you heard

[00:21:46.86] spk_1:
the four stages of group dynamics? I know the seven colors of the rainbow, yellow, green, blue indigo

[00:21:55.21] spk_2:
violet.

[00:22:11.71] spk_1:
Those five crime families in New York? Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino Genovese crime families in New York. I do not know the wise. Okay.

[00:22:15.85] spk_2:
So the five wise are someone makes a statement like a problem.

[00:22:20.73] spk_1:
The three Wise Men Balthazar Melchior and the other

[00:22:25.68] spk_2:
one. Oh, gold Frankincense. And, but I don’t know who brought what

[00:22:34.06] spk_1:
Balthazar Melchior. See, I don’t even know the three Wise Men. Ebenezer. No, that’s, no, that’s the, that’s the Christmas story. Caspar Caspar Balthazar and Melchior. I think I’m pretty sure that

[00:22:46.85] spk_2:
I

[00:22:56.27] spk_1:
interrupted, rudely interrupt the guests. I know something else. I think of something else. I know so few things that I know. I have to shout them out whenever I get an opportunity. Alright, I’m sorry, the five wives,

[00:24:06.79] spk_2:
five wives of root problem identification. So somebody might say this email tool is terrible. I can’t segment my audiences like I can’t send to donors and non donors. It’s a pain in the neck to do that. Can’t do with stupid email tool. Why can’t you do? That is the first way and someone might answer that question. Well, um I can’t do it because we’re collect, we’re getting data from other places and putting it into the email tool. And so we’re not collecting that information over here. All right. So it’s not an email problem. It’s actually a data problem and it’s tagging, right? Like donor Tony’s donor, Maureen’s a non donor. There’s no easy way in your database to pull those audiences out and make sure that they get the right message. So that is probably a business process problem, not necessarily a technology problem. So that was a simple little example of one of those problem solving techniques

[00:24:09.43] spk_1:
that why was, why can’t you, why can’t we do this?

[00:24:12.69] spk_2:
Why can’t we do this? Well, I don’t get the data in the way that I need. Why don’t you get the data in the way that you need because we collected over here. Well, why do you collected over there? So yes, five wise people get annoyed. First two wives are easy as you go through wise 34 and five people get annoyed because they really have to dig deep and think about it.

[00:24:38.20] spk_1:
Okay. We can have the we could have the play on the five wise, the wise, wise, wise, wise, wise, wise, wise guys or the five wise

[00:24:53.50] spk_2:
problem solving. Another problem solving method

[00:24:57.75] spk_1:
method. You’re asking these questions internally, you’re asking these five questions. Okay.

[00:25:22.96] spk_2:
And literally sitting with it um in your technology governance, in your governance group or in a little spin off. Yeah, everybody’s got technology gripes and pain points and wishes that it was different or easier. They want the easy just today the Q R code to open my hotel room door did not work on my phone. So yes, I am right there with

[00:25:30.96] spk_1:
you. I still go for the, I still go for the cards. You so you go this

[00:25:35.82] spk_2:
time. But guess what? I had to go to the desk and get a card.

[00:25:40.32] spk_1:
I haven’t, I’ve never, I’ve never tried opening the, just give me a card, boarding

[00:25:46.67] spk_2:
passes, print the boarding pass and have it on my phone

[00:25:50.90] spk_1:
for the,

[00:25:52.50] spk_2:
everybody’s got their lines that they

[00:25:55.11] spk_1:
won’t do the hotel room because I don’t want to be tired

[00:25:57.83] spk_2:
and not able to get in and, you

[00:26:10.63] spk_1:
know, looking for my nap and then I gotta go downstairs again. Talk about first world problems. I have to go down to the lobby again. You’re more trusting on the hotel front.

[00:26:15.34] spk_2:
This time. I tried it. That would be the Hyatt Regency across.

[00:26:26.05] spk_1:
Can you stay on track?

[00:26:32.03] spk_2:
Apparently not. Apparently not. So that was one problem solving technique. What’s the problem and why are we having the problem so that you’re fixing the right thing,

[00:26:43.75] spk_1:
fixing the right past

[00:27:57.30] spk_2:
that one. So another um another common situation is uh people get frustrated because the technology doesn’t work. I don’t know how to do this or it’s too hard to do a thing. Um That’s usually a training issue, right? Like someone got hired, they gotta log in and thoughts and prayers. Here you go, you’re young, you can figure it out. You gotta people. If you take nothing away from this interview, please, please, please budget for training and support. Um Everybody needs it. Some of us are more naturally agile when it comes to technology. Others, not so much but the way you get a return on your investment of the state stuff that you’re buying and using is if your team is empowered to use it well, efficiently, effectively. And when we figure it out on our own, we usually don’t figure out the easy and effective way to do it. We sort of stab our way through it. I made it work that’s fine. So empowering your staff to be competent and confident in the systems that they’re using to do their jobs. Um, staff morale goes up. You’re spending way less time fighting the technology and more time using it. So, a common problem is this thing isn’t working for me or I can’t figure it out. So pay for some training. That would be. So,

[00:28:12.46] spk_1:
which is, which, why, why is this? Why can’t I do this?

[00:28:17.40] spk_2:
Why does, why is this so

[00:28:19.15] spk_1:
hard? Why doesn’t it work? Why doesn’t this work for me?

[00:30:06.95] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two non profit radio is listed on nonprofit news feeds. List of the great non profit podcasts. And if they numbered the list, we’d be number one, we’re top of their list. In fact, I believe their list is misnamed. It ought to be the great non profit podcast plus a couple others, but very great. Right. We’re at the top of the list. Very thankful, very grateful to non profit news feed. Thank you very much for the recognition and I would be remiss if I didn’t. Thank you, our listeners. You help us get the recognition. You keep the show. You know, it’s not always. Number one nonprofit radio has been on lots of lists where it’s like number 14 out of 12. Um, you know, we’ve been down, we’ve been down on some list but doesn’t matter, you know, the ranking doesn’t really matter. Although if I was gonna do one I would do it. Alphabetical. I think I’d do alphabetical with nonprofit radio at the top. Of course, because the alphabet is going to start with the end and then, and then it reverts back to a etcetera. The boring way. That would be, that would be my list. So thankful to non profit news feed and I’m thankful to you are dear listeners. Thank you very much for helping us get the recognition. It really is gratifying to be on any list of non profit podcasts. But, but I mean, if you could be at the top of the great one, you know, you may as well and that is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for technology governance with the very un boring Maureen will be off

[00:31:37.87] spk_2:
another problem solving technique that is uh really easy is to map your ecosystem, like use power point or video or Miro or some white boarding tool. Zoom has a white board tool and literally make bubbles of all of the things that you have make a circle. My website is purple over here and my day databases over there and lay out what you have. Like most of the time, collectively, nobody really knows all the stuff that you have and the stuff that you’re using and what’s working and what isn’t. So figuring that piece out and having that map, that changes when we swap email tools or we change our volunteer system or a finance system, um, making that map be accurate will also help you pinpoint where the problems are really coming from. Uh blah, blah, blah. I hate our website but whatever, like it doesn’t work on a phone. Maybe that’s a problem who should be working together on fixing that problem? Is it really a problem or is it just a problem for somebody who’s using a Windows phone, you know, from 2015. So taking the time to have those collaborative conversations is also really, really helpful once you’ve got it all written out. Um And you can then, you know, we do have six email tools or three people have canvas accounts. We should probably consolidate that stuff. And

[00:31:56.98] spk_1:
what is this uh consolidated under what? Why, which, what, why are we

[00:32:06.51] spk_2:
talking? It’s uh it’s have as small a footprint as you can get away with. Just, just because you think you need something, people can sneak tools in without telling anybody, you know, like somebody inside a fundraising team goes a little rogue and says we’re going to add something new. Nobody else knows about it and you’re not getting the benefit of having that thing used to its fullest extent because tech is expensive and it’s kind of frustrating.

[00:32:31.66] spk_1:
Doesn’t have to start with. No,

[00:32:35.14] spk_2:
no. The five wise we was one of the problem solving techniques. The five wise is one of the problems solving

[00:32:39.88] spk_1:
techniques. So aren’t we on the five wise, we only did two of

[00:33:04.70] spk_2:
the five wise is a thing all unto itself. So the five wise helps you identify the root cause of your problems so you can fix the right thing. These are other symptoms with problem solving ideas for teams to use. If they’ve got people who say this is too hard for me to use. Why is this so hard? Not everything maps back to why you need to Google the five wise after this.

[00:33:15.49] spk_1:
In other words, you don’t

[00:33:16.50] spk_2:
know. I do know, but I think we’ve mixed them up a little bit. We’ve mixed our metaphor slightly.

[00:33:23.11] spk_1:
I guess you want to blame it on a lackluster host. No,

[00:33:25.66] spk_2:
never, never the

[00:33:27.58] spk_1:
most lust, lust, lust,

[00:33:32.81] spk_2:
lust.

[00:33:34.67] spk_1:
Alright. So, alright, so don’t look for everything to start with A Y like I was all right. We are on number four though now. So we finished mapping, we finished mapping looking where we have redundancies. People snuck shit in should not have your technology governance group advised you not to do that correct. We told you now your rogue rogue and do we boot you off or do we try to keep you in the group and remediate, you always

[00:34:04.63] spk_2:
get you to come along to the group dynamics. Please stick around and be one of us.

[00:34:14.92] spk_1:
Yeah, you’re better off on the inside.

[00:34:34.95] spk_2:
That’s right. That’s right. And then the last technique for the second to last is what I call a no filter, pain point activity. And what that means is you grab your team and if it’s virtual there, if you come to the session tomorrow, I do have in the collaborative document because it’s not possible. So if you want to make an Excel spreadsheet, it’s a no filter pain point worksheet

[00:34:55.07] spk_1:
and not on the website. It is.

[00:34:59.04] spk_2:
Yes, it’s under free resources.

[00:35:00.91] spk_1:
So, what’s your site?

[00:35:03.22] spk_2:
Meet Maureen dot com? Oh,

[00:35:05.17] spk_1:
that’s clever. I liked it from last year. I remember that Maureen dot com. Click free resources,

[00:35:10.61] spk_2:
resources in the top navigation. You will find this worksheet

[00:35:14.04] spk_1:
there. Okay. Now, let us know what the worksheet

[00:35:17.06] spk_2:
is.

[00:35:18.89] spk_1:
So much stuff, so

[00:35:35.09] spk_2:
much stuff. Um The no filter pain point worksheet is a place. It’s sort of a meeting and a worksheet all in one. So you grab your team and you dedicate 90 minutes and everybody is allowed and encouraged to list everything about your technology that bugs them

[00:35:44.20] spk_1:
even

[00:36:39.15] spk_2:
if, even if they’ve mentioned it 60 times and nobody did a damn thing about it. Even if um it’s from a new staff person who has fresh eyes and is looking at some wacky thing that you’re doing to work around some technology problem. And they’re like, is there a better way to do this? So everybody gets a chance to list out their stuff and then you organize it into those four P categories. Is this a plan problem? Is it a platform problem? A people problem or a business process problem? So that also helps you get to the root cause these meetings are super helpful. They’re cathartic number one, because people can unburden themselves of like I really hate this X Y or Z thing. You also start to talk about things like maybe tony hates this product, but Amy loves it. You might want to match up Amy and tony so that Amy can help tony figure out, you know, to get beyond the things that are frustrating or friction for you. So it’s a good way to kind of get allies there. If everybody’s like we hate this thing, then you can make plans to replace

[00:37:03.24] spk_1:
it from the bottom up. Yeah. Uh I’m thinking of a verb for change. We can advocate for change. Advocate. Advocate is the noun advocated. So from the bottom up to try to

[00:37:22.15] spk_2:
make change, that’s right because often the leaders that your organization to have allies. Yeah, often the leaders of your organization sort of, you know, that things are a problem but they don’t use these systems every day or even often at all. They’ve got an assistant who’s pulling reports or, you know, giving them the information,

[00:37:32.31] spk_1:
especially if it’s the God fly, the perennial tech whiner coming, you know, that that person needs, needs allies.

[00:38:20.97] spk_2:
They do and they need to feel heard and then you sort of prioritize stuff, you’re not going to get to all of it. Another way to break the pain point. Worksheet results down is what are issues, things that are problems and what our opportunities we want to grow. Our monthly giving program. Our current system makes us manually run our supporter credit cards every single month. I don’t want to grow my monthly giving program. If it means I’m going to have to hire somebody else to start to run these credit cards. So what are we going to do about our technology so that we can grow without it turning into a problem for our team? Yeah, issues and opportunities another way and you just pick, you keep that list as a parking lot. You can add new stuff as it bubbles up or appears and you just methodically work your way through those things. Instead of being an individual experience of a problem, you’ve kind of made it an organizational list of things that need to be addressed.

[00:38:44.22] spk_1:
I always bristled at the parking lot metaphor. It’s childish. It’s Q, it’s Q, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a wait list. You know, we’re gonna put your, your ideas. Plus I heard it said one

[00:38:58.84] spk_0:
since

[00:39:23.47] spk_1:
some training, I think I may have to go back to when I, when I was a miserable employee years ago, decades ago. And yeah, we were in some training and some, some facilitated. Well, that’s not quite on point. Let’s put your very good idea into the parking lot. And he was talking, he was talking to, what was a guy talking to a woman? Like he should have patted her on the head. It was so condescending, so condescending. He may as well have patted her on the head. I didn’t mean he should have, he may as well have just. The parking lot

[00:39:36.17] spk_2:
was supposed

[00:39:36.46] spk_1:
to be so proud. Look. I made the sticky, that’s over the window that nobody can see because the light’s coming

[00:39:43.46] spk_2:
through.

[00:39:44.00] spk_1:
Yeah. In the closet. I made the sticky on the back side of the closet door. My parking lot,

[00:39:49.78] spk_2:
a lower priority list.

[00:39:52.88] spk_1:
It’s just, it’s a, it’s a list of priorities.

[00:39:55.70] spk_2:
I’m gonna start using Q or waitlist. You’ve changed my mind.

[00:40:01.70] spk_1:
I don’t know. It seems like a very pedantic

[00:40:04.57] spk_2:
metaphor. It is. People get it. But I understand that the connotation that it can have. I told you,

[00:40:11.87] spk_1:
I don’t know. It seems like a child’s game.

[00:40:16.55] spk_2:
All right, you’re playing candy land and you kind of get stuck in the parking,

[00:40:25.53] spk_1:
remember? Candy land? Yeah. Right. Exactly. A parking lot. Or, or, or, yeah, or, or it’s like being in jail for monopoly

[00:40:28.84] spk_2:
or in the sand trap. If you

[00:40:30.42] spk_1:
golf golfer. Let’s not go too far with sports,

[00:40:34.20] spk_2:
not my

[00:40:35.19] spk_1:
metaphors sand trap is golf. Golf, golf, golf. I think we have one more. Y one more of the five wise which don’t all start with a

[00:40:46.46] spk_2:
complete misnomer. Yeah, I

[00:40:48.89] spk_1:
wouldn’t put it in the parking lot, but it’s just misnamed. We have one more,

[00:40:54.76] spk_2:
one more which is decided you’re going to focus on internal problems or external technology problems, things that affect your supporters, your subscribers, your volunteers, your donors or your internal process

[00:41:08.38] spk_1:
accounts, payable sources.

[00:41:23.99] spk_2:
Right. Right. So that’s the other way to kind of tackle these things. Usually, it’s a little of both. It’s a little of both. It’s very tempting to do either or it’s very tempting to be internally focused or completely externally focused at the expense of

[00:41:29.03] spk_1:
your ignore us. We need to help our supporters, our fundraisers, fundraisers are volunteers or donors

[00:41:37.77] spk_2:
on my back

[00:41:40.85] spk_1:
in the parking lot and

[00:42:22.45] spk_2:
we don’t want to lose value people. So a bit of a balance is good and, and take small bites. That would be my, my other guidance here is when you’ve laid it all out there and you can see it like in all its gross glory, all the things that you’re struggling with, you can either feel very pre fatigued like we’re never going to work our way through these things or we got to do them all. Like right now now that we know what they are just take small bites, be realistic. Figure out how much time your tech governance team, your T G G can spend on this stuff. Be realistic in your deadlines and expectations if people can go fast and it’s possible to go fast, let them but always be honest with yourselves about what you have capacity to do. Otherwise this will just be another governance group or another initiative that is too frustrating and

[00:42:37.86] spk_1:
nothing ever happens. Talk about another example, very big on preventing fatigue. I am not keeping track.

[00:43:50.14] spk_2:
Yeah, I think our nonprofits and generally people are at capacity, kind of tired running on fumes. A lot asked to do more with less um in our small to mid sized nonprofits, that’s really hard. You know, like they don’t have the budgetary shock absorbers that a larger organization might have to toss another consultant added or by another thing or throw money at a problem to fix it. Small to midsize guys got to be scrappy. They’re all spread really thin. Um And so I just want to make sure that people are not using magical thinking when they’re trying to fix their technology. It’s very tempting to do that. Um If you think you’ve got a technology problem and your first impulse is to switch it with something else, stop do those five wise, find out what’s really going on because you might move, spent all that time and money moving into something new and you still have the same problem and that’s, that’s not great. That’s not a good thing. I like people to be happy and optimistic at work. I feel like they’re set up for success to the best extent possible and that they are going to work together to solve problems. That’s kind of what nonprofits do and

[00:44:12.91] spk_1:
technology’s role is to support that,

[00:44:16.23] spk_2:
make it easier.

[00:44:17.24] spk_1:
Yet another support.

[00:44:19.63] spk_2:
Often it is something that is, does not provide good feelings. Yeah. Like my key card, like my Q R code this morning.

[00:44:47.86] spk_1:
Exactly. Right. I would love to get your, we only have a couple minutes left. I’m going to ask you to be brief on this. I can Artificial intelligence, chatbots, chat, GPT there. The, here they, I see. I’m not, I’m not stopping it, but I, I see more, I see more risks than then benefits. I don’t know, maybe it’s maybe at 61. This is the technology that I’m going to be the Luddite around. But what’s your, what’s your take? I don’t, I don’t want to prejudice your, your strong, strong willed person. You’re not gonna be prejudiced by my opinion.

[00:45:11.86] spk_2:
Um, I think that it’s not going away. So I think, uh, people like us who are, you know, hesitant, worried, um, concerned should get to know it and then decide for ourselves where it is beneficial and where it is not in our own work lives, our personal lives because it’s common is here now.

[00:45:27.94] spk_1:
Talking about boundaries, then get acquainted with it. Yeah,

[00:45:34.17] spk_2:
I know thy enemy, you know what I mean? Or know what I’m worried from the outside. Let me find out what I really should be worried about by playing with this thing or interacting with it. Um, I can tell you that I’ve got some organizations who are using it to write fundraising appeals in 30 seconds.

[00:45:50.44] spk_1:
Right. They use it as the first draft and then they modify, they put their own tone to

[00:45:56.35] spk_2:
it. So it can’t, you know, we’ve all been faced with that blank piece of paper. I know

[00:46:24.34] spk_1:
my concern is what my concern is. That that’s the most creative thing that a fundraiser that you take your example can do is be faced with a blank screen and create from that blankness versus seeding that most creative task to the artificial intelligence and then you reducing yourself to copy

[00:46:25.04] spk_2:
editor,

[00:46:53.10] spk_1:
copy editor. I’m not diminishing copy editors in the audience, the two or three of you and that may be listening, but it’s not as creative a task as working from, from nothing and creating something. So and then so that leads to my concern. Do we become less creative? Does that mean we become dumber on an individual level? On a community level? On a on a world level? Is it a dumbing down because it’s a seeding of the most creative work that I think we can produce?

[00:47:22.12] spk_2:
I hear you and I do agree with you to a certain extent. I also think if your Annual Giving manager is spending hours writing appeals when they could be stewarding a major donor prospect or doing some relationship building or mentoring a new staff person. If they don’t have time to do all that stuff, it might make sense to offload some things. Not that you’re going to use them just as is, but give yourself a bit of a starting point

[00:47:33.92] spk_1:
or use them sometimes

[00:47:36.01] spk_2:
but not rely on them all the time. Right?

[00:47:40.30] spk_1:
We’ve got to leave it there. Maureen. Brilliant.

[00:47:42.05] spk_2:
Always wonderful

[00:47:46.01] spk_1:
in Portland, Oregon

[00:47:50.01] spk_2:
24 24. Tony. Thank you.

[00:48:07.59] spk_1:
My pleasure, Maureen will be off non profit digital strategist and technology coach at the nonprofit Accidental Techie with Maureen will be off meet Maureen dot com. So smart. I love that meet Maureen dot com. Thank you for, thank, thank you,

[00:48:11.05] spk_2:
my

[00:48:11.57] spk_1:
pleasure to and thank you for being with our coverage of 23 N T C the nonprofit technology conference 2023 where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits

[00:49:17.65] spk_0:
next week. Best and worst of non profit newsletters and digital self care and healing. If you missed any part of this week’s show, you know what I beseech, you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The 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.

Nonprofit Radio for March 20, 2023: #23NTC & Is A Social Enterprise For You?

 

Amy Sample Ward: #23NTC

The 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference is in April, hosted by NTEN. Come in-person or join virtually. Nonprofit Radio will be there. Amy Sample Ward, NTEN’s CEO and our technology contributor, tells us what’s in store.

 

 

Tamra Ryan: Is A Social Enterprise For You?

What are these and how do you decide whether to take one on—or even consider it—at your nonprofit? What kinds of businesses lend themselves to social enterprise and how do you structure the relationship? Tamra Ryan makes sense of it all. She’s CEO of Women’s Bean Project. (Originally aired December 13, 2021)

 

Listen to the podcast

Get Nonprofit Radio insider alerts!

Apple Podcast button

 

 

 

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

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

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.


View Full Transcript

Transcript for 632_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230320.mp3

Processed on: 2023-03-18T16:25:12.074Z
S3 bucket containing transcription results: transcript.results
Link to bucket: s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/buckets/transcript.results
Path to JSON: 2023…03…632_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230320.mp3.877988588.json
Path to text: transcripts/2023/03/632_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20230320.txt

[00:01:57.78] 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. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Orrico my Adonia if you paint me with the idea that you missed this week’s show 23 NTC. The 2023 nonprofit technology conference is in April hosted by N 10, come in person or join virtually non profit radio will be there, Amy Sample Ward N Ten’s CEO and our technology contributor tells us what’s in store And is a social enterprise for you. What are these? And how do you decide whether to take one on or even consider it at your nonprofit? What kinds of businesses lend themselves to social enterprise and how do you structure the relationship? Tamara Ryan makes sense of it all. She’s ceo of women’s being project. This originally aired 13 December 2021 on tony state to get in people’s faces again. Again, Here is 23 NTC. What a pleasure to welcome back, Amy Sample Ward as it always is, you know who she is. But she deserves a proper introduction. CEO of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor. Their most recent co authored book is the tech that comes next about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. They’re at Amy sample ward dot org and at Amy R S ward. So good to welcome you back. Good

[00:02:04.79] spk_1:
to have you. Thanks for having me. I’m excited that in a few short weeks, we will not be over Zoom.

[00:02:13.64] spk_0:
That’s indeed true. We will, we will, we will be hugging. So let’s talk about what’s coming up, this little thing. 23 NTC, the nonprofit technology conference in Denver.

[00:02:26.74] spk_1:
Yes. This little thing

[00:02:27.68] spk_0:
that you’ve been uh just occupying a couple, a couple hours a week, I suppose,

[00:03:14.81] spk_1:
Right? Couple of concurrent hours in my mind at all time. Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited. This is, this is the first nonprofit technology conference that’s happening back in person since 2019. However, it is also our first hybrid NTC. So people are going to be participating in Denver. People are going to be participating, you know, from their homes or offices virtually and a number of sessions where both of those people are in the same session at the same time. So we’re really trying to push, you know, push the limits of our own planning to push the A V team’s abilities, all of those pieces, see what Zoom can do all of that and make a conference that feels really great and dynamic and has different options for different people, regardless of how you’re joining or where you are or what comfort level or care needs you might have right now.

[00:03:37.84] spk_0:
So the in person people will be eligible for hybrid or for, for virtual presentations. And the virtual audience is is welcome to join in person presentations, work, working,

[00:04:45.58] spk_1:
not all of them but so at any given session block, there are sessions that are only happening in Denver. You have to physically be in the room presentation or the presenters are all in the room. Then there are sessions that are only happening online if you’re in Denver and you really want to see that session, you can also go online and, and watch it. Um And, and there will be spaces where you could do that as a group to um and there are hybrid sessions which mean there’s a room in Denver, there will likely be presenters in Denver, but there’s also maybe a co presenter online and an online audience. And so we have session hosts and facilitators in both places to make sure that the speakers are confident and comfortable managing all of that and they’re not trying to, you know, watch the chat or see what’s going on in the room. So, yeah, I think it’ll be an experience. I’m sure we will learn a lot. We are open to learning a lot but like, you know, true intent fashion, we will learn out loud with everyone else along with us, you know,

[00:05:07.68] spk_0:
you’re making all the permutations available across, across in person and hybrid. Alright. Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, like how many sessions are we looking forward

[00:06:19.31] spk_1:
to? Oh, my gosh. 100 and 50 some, I forget the, The, the single digit number there, but over 150 and really incredible keynotes which of course, you know, will be in both places that will be a hybrid. Um and I’m not sure if you’ve never been to the NDC what your uh experience with conferences or sessions are, but we also have different types of sessions. So we have 30 minute sessions which we try to plan during the day for when folks are in the you know, you couldn’t take more than 25 minutes of talking before your brain shuts down. So there’s short kind of tactical sessions. That’s where we see a lot of great um content, like do these five things to your website tomorrow, right? Like really clear to the point and then we have longer 60 minute sessions and workshops um and lots of diverse options in the longer session. Um It’s not just, you know, some conferences are very panel heavy. We do have co presenters so that there’s multiple perspectives and opinions that are being shared, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a session with two or three presenters is going to be a panel in its presentation, right? It might just be three people facilitating it together.

[00:06:41.88] spk_0:
Uh, the dates, let’s make sure everybody knows when we’re talking

[00:07:06.77] spk_1:
About. Yeah, April 12 through 14th, which is a Wednesday through Friday. Um, we totally know and can just say up front, we know that it conflicts with passover and Ramadan and we welcome the millions in legal fees that we would have had to pay to get out of it. Yeah. Well, it was a product of the pandemic rescheduling where we did have a contract before it felt like people could really come back. And so it got pushed to 2023 and, and we didn’t really have a choice of what that was. So

[00:07:26.09] spk_0:
When was Denver supposed to have been, was it supposed to be 2020?

[00:08:51.96] spk_1:
It was supposed to be 20, early, 2022. Yeah. But we pulled the community and folks just weren’t ready for a big conference yet, you know, which is totally understandable. Lots of folks still aren’t, which is why we have the hybrid and the virtual options. But um at least moving it to 23 meant all communities could have access to vaccines. You know, we have people coming from lots of different countries to the conference traditionally. So I really wanted to make sure that it felt like folks were at a place where they could be ready if they wanted to be to come to the conference. Um, and we have various options in place for folks who may either be feeling like this is their first conference. Um And the pandemic is still happening and it feels really stressful or overwhelming there. You know, we’re asking folks to wear masks, we will have masks available. I have already ordered them to the advanced warehouse, you know, but we also have um more lounges than we’ve ever had so that people can go to a smaller space um and relax or we’ve talked to the Convention Center about having different ways that people can eat, even smaller areas, eat outside, take their food wherever they want to go. So we really are trying to think both of impacts for folks who maybe are trying to um you know, they have observances for whether Ramadan Passover etcetera and we can support how they engage through that or COVID concerns and how we can help them, you know, navigate a big conference with those as well.

[00:09:07.74] spk_0:
I intend never afraid of filling up their

[00:09:09.65] spk_1:
plate. I know technology

[00:09:12.71] spk_0:
wise, accommodation, wise, equity, etcetera. It’s all you take it all on. Yeah, I always admired, I admire it, not admired passively like somebody admires it, I admire it. I

[00:09:57.83] spk_1:
appreciate you saying that. I think, you know, it feels to us like we want to do the work to honor all the wholeness of the community so that everyone in the community feels like they are welcome. It also is the kind of thing where you don’t even realize like how much work it is to make thoughtful accommodations until you really open that door, step through it. You’re like, oh, this is a whole room. This is not like a closet, right? I wasn’t just grabbing a coat. I just went into a whole walk in clause opposite of, of options. So I really just shout out to the accessibility committee which is all community members and they work year round with staff to think about ways that we can make the conference even more accessible and support more community members.

[00:10:47.18] spk_0:
All these are the reasons why I always bring non profit radio to the two N T C. This, this is my eighth or ninth or something like that. Um And so we’ll be on the exhibit floor sharing a booth with our sponsors Heller Consulting. So come see us at 4 20 for 4 20 for a, I’m the A non profit But yeah, so come see team Heller. Very grateful, grateful for their sponsorship of us at NTC. And I’ll be capturing Oh a dozen or 15, roughly interviews that will be on non profit radio in the coming months after April 12-14 and Amy, of course, we’ll get you, we’ll get you in the schedule.

[00:11:00.46] spk_1:
I’ll stop by the booth. Well, yes, I gotta get, I

[00:11:06.95] spk_0:
gotta get you on the schedule because you’re the, you know, you’re all over. So I gotta get, you gotta get you nailed down for for an interview. Yes. Um Why don’t you share with folks? Awesome, awesome keynotes.

[00:11:17.81] spk_2:
Yeah.

[00:12:16.22] spk_1:
Yeah. So on the first day we have Sophia Noble who just launched a new race and gender and technology program, which is so awesome. She’s at U C L A and on day two, we have Messiah Burciaga Hamid who has been a staff and is now the board chair of native land, a tool that folks have hopefully and likely already used when you are looking up whose land you are on. Um And then on day three on Friday, we’ll have what I can only imagine is going to be the most high energy exciting keynote at nine in the morning from Evan Greer. Um She’s the director at Fight For the Future. Um an organization and 10 has partnered with on some of our um advocacy on save dot org, et cetera. So action packed keynotes, lots of great ideas. It’s going to be really good action

[00:12:43.56] spk_0:
packed centering diversity, admire it, admire it. I want to remind folks that N 10 is also known for wonderful food. They spend a lot of time thinking about what the menus are gonna be. The food is always excellent. So if you’re a foodie, you might say, you know, it’s a conference. All right, we’ll get some, we’ll get some rubber chicken, you know, but we’ll tolerate it. No, it’s not. It’s not gonna be the case. That’s not gonna be if there’s chicken. There will be chicken cordon bleu also be vegan options. There will be vegetarian options. There will be

[00:13:29.63] spk_1:
only have 11 day or at least one full lunch menu that is all plant based. Um, and then we have, you know, lots of options. Everything is labeled the full menu in every ingredient is in the conference app. So you can see whatever dietary needs you might have how those are or are not met. Um, and we actually just met yesterday with the catering rep. Um, and slowly watched his eyes kind of glaze over as we were saying, you know, not just, oh, could we have a sandwich instead of this salad? We were saying inside the menu, we see that you’re using this ingredient and we’re changing this specific ingredient and we would like, you know, we don’t need brisket at nine in the morning for our attendees. What’s a plant based option? And every time he said Tofu and 10 staff were like, we’re going to challenge the chef to come up with something better.

[00:13:53.71] spk_0:
Yes, you pay attention to the food. It’s

[00:14:40.73] spk_1:
exactly. And if you’re spending your time in a session, feeling kind of anarchy because you didn’t like what you ate or feeling hungry because there wasn’t food for you. It takes away from your opportunity to learn. So we want folks to really feel taken care of so that however whatever big needs they have and sometimes they’re not learning needs. We know, sometimes come to the conference just to like, find those two other people who have done the thing that they’ve done and feel like they could hear somebody say to them like, yeah, it’s really horrible, you know, but you can get through this project or you can find a new vendor or, you know, whatever it might be. Like, you also have the, the emotional capacity to go take on finding those conversations because again, you’re not spending all your time worrying about. Are you gonna have food or where is a bathroom in this giant convention center or whatever else? You know,

[00:14:54.99] spk_0:
you take care of the, you take care of the whole person, you do the whole people. There’s more than one person attending. Yes,

[00:15:22.68] spk_1:
There is more than one person, which is part of why it feels a little overwhelming because we’ve spent, you know, of course, in 2020, there was no conference and then in 21 and 22, it was a virtual conference, and and there were lots of people registered, which was great, but you never had to necessarily feel the Kind of um feel the size of that many people registered right? The way you do when you see everybody from the stage and you look out at a big room. But we’re, I mean, we’re on track to have close to 2000 registrants. Of course, some of those are virtual. But um that’s a really big number, you know, so we probably have 1500 in Denver um and 500 online.

[00:15:50.85] spk_0:
A lot of people. Yeah, but you’re, you’re, you’re curating us, you’re taking care of

[00:15:54.82] spk_1:
your, we’re gonna take care of.

[00:16:20.92] spk_0:
And finally, I want to remind listeners that this is called the nonprofit technology conference hashtag 23 T C. But it is not a conference that is exclusively for technology folks that, that are, you know, C T O s and technology majors and computer science. It is not, it’s for anyone who uses technology in their social change work. And isn’t that all of us? I mean, unless you’re still on index cards and legal pad and

[00:16:38.18] spk_1:
we welcome you. If you’re still on index cards, don’t be overwhelmed. Come to the NTC. Someone will sit down with you and they will get all those cards into a database for you probably for, for free with like the first month of the CRM for free. Like we just need to get you off those cards.

[00:16:43.23] spk_0:
Alright, hopefully not. But yeah, it’s, it’s not only for technologists for anybody who uses technology. That’s why I love to capture a ton of tons of interviews to share, to share with listeners. All right,

[00:16:56.01] spk_1:
thanks so much, tony I can’t wait to see you in Denver. It’s gonna be so fun.

[00:16:59.82] spk_0:
Absolutely. My pleasure. I’m looking forward to seeing you. Good luck with the conference planning and we’ll see you in about a month

[00:17:08.64] spk_1:
so soon. Thank you,

[00:22:19.99] spk_0:
Amy. Folks. You’re suffering a lackluster host. 15 minutes talking to the CEO of N 10 about the conference that they’re hosting. And I forgot to ask, where’s all the information? Where do folks go to register? You go to N 10 dot org, N 10 dot org gives you all the information. Of course, it’s very prominent on their site. Sheesh. Now it’s time for Tony’s take two last week. I was listening back and I talked about being in person with people again and, you know, I gave you a bunch of superficialities and generalizations. But why I think where’s the detail? Why, why is it joyful and pleasurable and so much better and authentic and real? You know. So I’m listening, I was like, Okay. Yeah, but why, but why I’m asking myself as I’m listening. It’s a good thing I have guests because otherwise the show would, would crash guests who provide substance and detail. Uh otherwise you’d have 45 minutes or an hour of superficiality. Okay. So why this is why a bunch of reasons as a, as a the guy, you know, um the presenter at a webinar, I don’t have to scroll. If it’s a big, big audience, you have to scroll and zoom to see everyone. Not so they’re all there. They’re all right there in front of you. It’s a beautiful watch, the generality that beautiful, watch the generalities trying to give detail and also when I’m sharing my screen, you know, Power point, everybody gets reduced into a little like a 1.5 by 1.5 box. And you can see even fewer people then when I’m not screen sharing. So no tiny boxes, everybody’s visible. I can, I can see the screen, my slide up on the screen, the nice big screen and I can see the people there you are. It’s wonderful. Watch the generalities, conversations, of course, conversations so much easier. Not once. Did anybody have to say? Okay. Well, you go first uh to parse out the delegate out the conversation we’re face to face. It’s just, it’s natural, the natural ness of it. Natural. Nous, the word, the hands, you see the hands immediately, you don’t have to scan the, scan the screen to see a little uh one dimensional hand going up real hands right there in your face. It’s fantastic. We’re generalities. Watch that, watch that the laughter, the groans. You can hear them. People aren’t muted feedback, live live and in person so much easier for the audience to cross talk. It’s, it’s doesn’t work in, in zoom, especially if it’s particularly large. People can’t talk at all. Everybody’s the questions are in chat. There’s another, there’s another reason you can the questions dynamic back and forth. Well, I don’t quite understand, you know, this chat, chat typing and, and audience members were talking to each other. This was I’m going back to uh conference. I did in a Long Island. Yeah, people could talk to each other and, and help each other. I, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. So those are all my reasons. That’s the detail. That’s what you, that’s what you listen to. Non profit radio for detail, not superficiality and generalizations. So if you can, if you get the opportunity and then of course, the lunches, I didn’t even mention just two face to face lunches and of course, natural conversation, not, not delayed. You know, it’s, it’s not no problem if you interrupt somebody’s talking. Well, you know, somebody jumps in, it’s not an issue, everybody can be heard natural, natural. So if you get the opportunity face to face, please take it. Don’t make virtual your default. Don’t go there. That’s Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for the uninterrupted is a social enterprise for you. Sit back and get comfy. It’s a pleasure to welcome Tamra Ryan to non profit radio She is CEO of women’s bean project, a social enterprise that provides transitional employment to women attempting to break the cycle of chronic unemployment and poverty while operating a food manufacturing business. She’s a former partner and board member for social venture partners, Denver and currently serves as part time interim CEO for the Social Enterprise Alliance. She’s at Tamara Ryan and the enterprise is at women’s bean project dot com. Tamara, welcome to non profit radio

[00:22:29.12] spk_2:
It’s great to be here.

[00:22:33.07] spk_0:
It’s a pleasure, pleasure to have you. Why don’t you first explain what women’s being project is all about? Because it’s an example of what you and I are going to talk about for a while.

[00:23:32.84] spk_2:
We are a food manufacturing business. We started with Bean Soup in 1989 and that’s where our name comes from. But today we have 50 different food products that we sell all across the country. What makes us Different is that we employ women who are chronically unemployed. So a typical woman we hire hasn’t had a job longer than a year in her lifetime. Though the average age is 38, they come and work for us as for a full time job for 6-9 months. And during the time they’re with us, we teach basic job readiness skills. And then we also, in 30% of her paid time, we teach her life skills, we teach problem solving and goal setting and budgeting and planning and organizing. And so this whole thing is her job for these 6-9 months. At the end, she graduates our program and moves on to mainstream employment in the community. So we’re kind of two businesses were running a food manufacturing business and a human services business,

[00:23:50.43] spk_0:
which is exactly what, what the type of model will, will, will be talking about what I admire about that I found very interesting is that you said it. Um, Well, you’re used to saying it but I want to call it out for 30% of their paid time. The women’s paid time is not spent working. It’s spent learning the soft skills of employment.

[00:24:02.42] spk_2:
Yeah, we call it the you job, the Y ou job. So, she has the bean job and she has the U job and she’s paid for all of it.

[00:24:13.14] spk_0:
Uh, yeah. So I see the value and you’ve had, uh, you’ve had a lot of success with folks, women having jobs longer than a year after they’ve, they’ve, I’m gonna say graduated. But

[00:25:04.10] spk_2:
the project, yes. So we track them at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months and we track them. What makes it easier to track them is that we pay them for those check ins. So we pay them $50 to check in at six and 12 months, $75 at 18 months and 100 bucks at two years to check in with us. And what we found that is that at a year, uh, 95 plus percent of the women are still employed. And I think what makes, what’s significant about that is that again, the women we hire haven’t had a job longer than a year in their lifetime before they come to us. So, what we really want to know is, are we setting them helping them on a path for long term employment? You know, being able to sustain that employment.

[00:25:20.79] spk_0:
So what kinds of nonprofits are? Our listeners are all in small and mid sized nonprofits. So I, I think there’s an ideal subject for listeners, what, what types of nonprofits could consider having a social enterprise as part of their part of their work?

[00:26:38.22] spk_2:
I think organizations that are serving people who are on use, you know, by necessity on public benefits and really who for a variety of reasons, whether it’s because of a felony background or it’s because of uh low education levels or because of the history of addiction, you know, a variety of things that get in the way of, of getting and keeping employment. And so if you’re serving those people anyway, one way to help them in addition to helping them with build their foundation of, of soft skills is to employ them in a social enterprise. So that’s just one way that a social enterprises run. But it’s, you know, it as adults, we learn by doing so it’s a really great way to work with the people that you’re working with anyway, to create a business where you’re helping those same people in the long run. Be able to be successful.

[00:26:41.55] spk_0:
You were a partner of social venture partners in Denver. What, what did you look for when you were investing in these types of organizations?

[00:27:20.17] spk_2:
Well, we specifically in S V P, Denver, we’re looking for small organizations that both needed some funding, but also needed some technical assistance. And the reality is that we don’t, if you’re, if you’re running a human services organization, you don’t necessarily have somebody on staff that has the skills to launch a business. For instance, you know, even to do that market research, to figure out what kind of business that might be um have the operational skills. You’re, you’re running a business, human services business, but you’re not necessarily running say in our case of food manufacturing business. And so S V P really looked for organizations that needed the skill set of our partners and also could benefit from the funding that we were providing that. And then svp’s model, the funding and the, and the technical assistance go hand in hand.

[00:28:14.48] spk_0:
So what, what about organizations that, that uh don’t have the expertise that they need? Uh Let’s, let’s assume most of our listeners are not in Denver. So they don’t have access to S V P. Denver. What, how can they, how can they fill that void? And even just start, like you’re saying, like initial market research, how do they know where to get, how to get started?

[00:30:19.38] spk_2:
Well, every nonprofit has a board and I would venture to say that most nonprofits have business people on their board. So there are a lot of resources either through board members or through people that board members know the one great thing that I’ve observed and I didn’t come from the nonprofit world for my entire career. I was in the private sector before. And what I love about being in the nonprofit world is that there are lots of people who want to help and, and just need to be need, they need help knowing what you need. And so I’ve been, I’ve seen lots of ways we’ve been able to engage uh professionals in, for us in, in food manufacturing, um who have expertise that we need to sit on, say a business development committee and help us look at uh new product ideas. And I think that same concept could easily be applied to any organization that’s trying to figure out what kind of business they might run because that’s the key, you could decide to start a business, but it still has to be a viable business. The just, just starting a business, you’re not gonna get the halo effect of, you know, you’re doing it as, as a non profit and therefore it’s going to succeed all the same market. Um factors come into play that do for any business. And so you, you really do have to still find a viable business that makes sense that is needed that you can price appropriately. Um One of the things about the research for social enterprises or whether or not consumers are going to buy from a social enterprise, whether it’s a product or service. One of the statistics is that all other things being equal. So in other words, quality price, etcetera people more and more have a tendency to purchase products and services from a mission based organization or mission based company. But the most important part of that statement is all other things, other things equal, all other things

[00:30:26.35] spk_0:
being equal. Right? Yes, you have to, you have to be able to compete with your private, enter strictly private enterprise, market driven, profit driven competitors.

[00:31:37.05] spk_2:
Yeah, you have to be able to compete and yet at the same time, you also need to figure out what your Um competitive advantages yourself. So for instance, in our case, we are able to um we’re right now in the holiday season, you know, September to December for women’s Bean project, 70% of our sales are, are made. So, you know, we really peaked during this time of year. One of our competitive advantages is we can bring in volunteers to help us say pack boxes or help us, you know, get shipments out the door or, you know, help with, with prep of product. And um that’s something that is a bit of a competitive advantage because if we were just, you know, in the, in the private sector running a regular food manufacturing operation, we really, I don’t think we could, you know, look somebody in the eye and get and get that kind of assistance. But for us, yes, it’s a way to engage donors to get people really invested, get new customers. You know, there are so many ways that, that bringing people from the community in to help us is advantageous, not just to get the work done, but to get additional support for our organization.

[00:32:13.43] spk_0:
So you’ve opened yourself up to a whole new set of metrics as, as having a social enterprise and we’re gonna get to what, what the relationship is between the company and, and a nonprofit or, you know how that could be set up by different, by different organizations. But, but you’ve, you’ve got to measure, you’ve got to measure the company’s profit and the company’s output and productivity, productivity per employee hour or, you know, whatever, you know, the, the, the key metrics for the business are as well as the social outcomes of, of your graduates and your employee members and your, your,

[00:33:00.64] spk_2:
it’s, you know, I joke sometimes it’s a horrible way to run a business, right? Because we intentionally everyday hire women. We don’t know if they’re gonna come to work every day. I mean, that’s part of their barriers to employment and we work with them and they help, we help them become great employees and as soon as they become great employees, we let them go off and become somebody else’s great employee and we start all over again. Uh and it’s so it’s super inefficient and we also over higher. So if we were a for profit company and we were trying to be as efficient as possible and, you know, squeeze every penny out of our margin. We absolutely would not hire as many women as we do, but that’s not the point. The point for us is to use our business to advance our mission. So we hire as many women as possible as we can justify based on what our sales are going to be.

[00:33:33.96] spk_0:
So, what are some of the things that nonprofits need to think about beyond? Alright. What’s, what’s a viable business? What other, what other factors are important?

[00:33:47.78] spk_2:
Well, maybe the biggest thing is it’s hard. I joke sometimes with our, our team, like if this were easy, everybody do it

[00:33:53.59] spk_0:
do. We really want to do. It is an important threshold.

[00:36:14.38] spk_2:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s hard because you have to have the ability to entertain two opposing ideas at the same time, right? We need to run an efficient manufacturing business and we also need to deliver on our mission and those two things actually often don’t go together very well. And so being able to both entertain those ideas and acknowledge that perhaps today the business wins, maybe we um the women instead of um spending 30% of today’s time in a class, say financial literacy there on the production for, for the whole day because we have a lot of work to do. But tomorrow, maybe it’s the, it’s reversed and they’re spending the whole day in some sort of training and not making any product at all. And so our job is every day to, to balance that out. Uh And so that’s, I think one of the hardest things is uh is having that ability to understand that if not for the mission, your business doesn’t really exist, but yet your, your business has to be profitable in order for it to make sense and contribute to the mission and, and that, you know, balancing act, you know, is a constant. So that’s part of what makes it hard. I would say another thing is that you, you still have to find all the other. I mentioned this before, all the other market forces still prevail. So if you have a product that nobody wants to buy, you’re not going to have a successful business and there’s no amount of mission that’s gonna forgive that, at least not in the long term. And, you know, at this point, women’s bean project is 32 years old. And I think in a lot of ways, we’ve just been lucky. There was no initial market research that said, you know, being, I think that’s the key to success. No, nobody, nobody did any kind of research at the beginning. Our founder just noticed she was in her late 50s, she’d gone back to school to get her master’s degree in social work. And she noticed a lot of her friends who were around her age were eating bean soup for health reasons. And so she invested $500 of her own money. And bought beans and put two women to work making 10 bean soup. The crazy thing is that still 32 years later our best outing product. Alright.

[00:36:32.19] spk_0:
That’s a terrific story but it’s it’s it’s it’s more or less in what not to do in in determining what, what, what businesses gonna survive because you know you said it, I’m just gonna amplify it. No amount of mission is gonna forgive bad, bad marketing or a bad, bad entry choice or, or any of the, any of the market forces.

[00:36:39.48] spk_2:
Yeah. And I think you also have to have either a product or service that has a decent enough margin margin to sort of forgive the inefficiency. And I also wouldn’t choose food for that reason. Ships sailed for us, but, you know, that’s not the highest margin, um, you know, product category for sure. Right

[00:37:09.12] spk_0:
now food is notoriously low margin. Um, but, you know, you said you gave an example of hiring many more women than you need, then you would, well, maybe then you do need, then you would if you were strictly market driven.

[00:37:15.63] spk_2:
Exactly.

[00:37:23.01] spk_0:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Um, before, before we move on any other advice about the, the opening questions to talk about with your board, with your leadership.

[00:38:57.18] spk_2:
Well, another aspect of balance I think is, um, it is balancing being opportunistic and, and, um, and not being um, so bullish on an idea that you ignore, um, other signs. So as an example, uh years ago, we were approached by somebody who had a whole bunch of equipment for canning and they were willing to give us all the equipment. Let us have access to the facility a whole bunch of things. But what we really had to analyze and I think this happens actually a fair amount to organizations that are thinking of starting businesses. Somebody thinks I’ve got a great idea. I’ll just give this to them. But the thing was we weren’t in the canning business. We are a dry food manufacturer and what it would have meant for us to start, you know, pivot and, and create another business, you know, really wasn’t worth that. What seemed like a super generous donation. Um It was forgive the pun, but it was a whole can of worms that we didn’t necessarily need, need to open. But that’s an example because when you start talking about this, all manner of people are gonna surface who are interested and willing to help. And one of the most important things you might need to do is say no thank you because, you know, sometimes gifts are not always gifts in the, you know, when it really comes down to it, it’s maybe not the best strategy and it’s sometimes hard not to get all, you know, um starry eyed about something that seems like a fantastic gift. And the next thing, you know, you’re in the canning business and you never intended to be in right now. You’re

[00:40:34.02] spk_0:
doing wetsuits instead of, instead of dry suit. That’s a, that’s a huge pivot. Um And yeah, I mean, that’s, and that’s in the nonprofit, the straight uh nonprofit sector as well. You know, there, there are gifts that come sometimes with strings. You know, if you’ll, if you’ll adopt this, create this program or women’s school, but if you start admitting boys, I’ll give you the seven figure gift. You know, that’s, those are the gift size can be transformational, but that doesn’t mean you, you sacrifice your mission and transform your mission to accept a, you know, a million dollar gift. Um So, all right, but you know, interesting, you know, you, you, you evaluated from the nonprofit perspective, but also from the market force perspective, you know, now we’re entering a whole new business. Now we’re going to be competing with uh Campbell’s, you know, Campbell’s and Hunts and Hormel, you know, whoever, wherever the big, whatever the soup manufacturers are. Um Alright, so value, right? Uh Important lessons sometimes the better answer is. No, no, thank a gracious. No. Alright. Alright. Um Advice on types of businesses that that could lend themselves to this.

[00:41:51.05] spk_2:
I’ll start with um service businesses because sometimes those can actually be really great support for um really great social enterprises and supports for human services organizations. Um The nice thing about service businesses is our very localized so you could serve one community and then an example of a service business might be a uh landscaping business or there are several social enterprises around the country that do uh go to business districts and clean up trash and snow removal and leaf removal and those kinds of things. Again, those are very localized. And what’s nice about that is that you could do it in this city and then maybe you pick it up and you do the same thing in another city. Those are really cool ways to be able to employ a lot of people and engage in, in multiple communities. Uh And there are, you know, other businesses um like uh has control is another one where, you know, that’s a pretty expandable business, um cleaning services, especially in offices and things like that. Um So those are some examples of businesses that actually could be really great businesses for people. And, you know, when you’re selling a service, that’s a really different dynamic than say, you know, consumer packaged goods where, you know, you’re competing with marketing dollars from companies, it’s just much more challenging um area to be in. You

[00:42:21.11] spk_0:
also, you also have the advantage of being able to, as you said, start local. So you can say initially the impact of our work is local. And so there’s a, there’s an appeal to an appeal to the mission with your caveat that uh lots of mission is not going to overcome bad, you know, uh not being competitive market, market wise. But you can say that you have that you have that local impact, at least as you’re, you know, as you’re getting started. And then as you’re suggesting, you know, you can expand.

[00:43:31.94] spk_2:
And I think, you know, if you’re making a product, one of the potential challenges is that if you make a product that in our case, our products consumable, so we can have repeat customers, you know, of course, it has to be a, you know, good quality and taste good and all of those things. But we have customers we’ve had for 30 years and who keep coming back over and over again. If you end up making a product that’s not consumable, the challenges that, you know, say you’re making um uh cutting board, there’s only so many cutting boards, somebody needs or only so many gifts you can give, you know, to other people. And so you always have to be finding new customers to be able to grow your business. And that said, there’s, you know, when you start out, your customer base is so small that the, the world really is, you know, is pretty large of possible customers. But there’s a point at which um without spending a lot of marketing dollars or advertising dollars to get noticed that you really sort of tap out the people you can access. And that’s, you know, so that’s an interesting challenge of making a, a product where you could teach some really amazing skills. But at the same time, you know, you might have a limited customer base.

[00:44:07.91] spk_0:
Can I get these, can I get these meals and just add water? Are they, are they that, that simple from women’s bean project

[00:45:06.25] spk_2:
pretty straight forward like that? So, a soup mix, you would add water, you put it in a safe crock pot and let it cook for the day. And at the end, you are 10 bean soup. You just add a can of tomatoes or you could add, you know, vegetables and a whole bunch of other things if that’s what you wanted. But just to finish off the recipe, it would just be adding a can of tomatoes. We also have baking mixes. And so in that case, it’s everything that you need. You, you would add an egg and some oil or butter and you’ve got brownies or cornbread or stones. Um, so it’s a, the nice thing about like a baking mix, for instance is you don’t have to buy a bag of flour and buy a bag of sugar and all of those things and then have them left over. You can use our mix and use the eggs that you have and the butter that you have. And next thing you know, you made these yummy brownies and you look like a total baker And No 1’s The Wiser, Right?

[00:45:08.39] spk_0:
You don’t have, you don’t have four and three quarter pounds of flour

[00:45:11.61] spk_2:
leftover. Yeah.

[00:45:13.14] spk_0:
Okay. A little digression. But I was interested in and how simple the meals are. Okay.

[00:45:26.97] spk_2:
And they do have an instant. We have, yeah, we have instant beans and rice cups also which literally are adding water. Um And then, and we also have some ready to eat snacks. So you know, just keep them in your desk and you know, nosh on them whenever you feel like it. Okay. So we have a pretty wide variety of different products.

[00:45:39.62] spk_0:
Okay. Well, I’m gonna check. Yeah, women’s bean project dot com. Um So yeah, so service businesses, you’re suggesting service businesses, what else, what else could folks consider?

[00:47:21.99] spk_2:
Well, there’s some great social enterprises. Again, these are pretty localized that do screen printing. So, you know, you think about your inner city and you have your screen printing business, you’re able to employ people and, and you’re able to serve all the companies locally for, you know, their employee T shirts or, you know, races or things like that again, very localized but also scalable as well. Um There’s a really awesome social enterprise out of Boston called More than Words and more than words serves youth 16 to 24 who are either aging out of the foster system or justice involved. And they sell books, they sell books have been donated from the community and the the youth learn the skill of, you know, scanning the I S B N number to make sure it’s marketable and they recycle the books that don’t have uh aftermarket value and then they sell the books that do and they sell both online. They have a couple of bookstores. The cool thing is all these youth, um, are, you know, they’re helping them find homes, they’re helping them with their academic goals, helping them sort of adult, you know, into the community. Yet, at the same time, they’re also learning these skills of running a book business. So they have measurable um uh um outcomes that they have to achieve. They have certain sales goals that they have to meet for their various channels. It’s a really amazing business that um that they’re operating and the youth stay with them for a couple of years. It’s called more than words

[00:47:40.07] spk_0:
back on the service side. I’ve seen copy, copy services, copy and print and print shops.

[00:48:45.73] spk_2:
Yeah, a bank of America actually has their own social enterprise that they operate in the house and they serve people with developmental disabilities or they employ people with developmental disabilities, but they do all the printing for their own needs. Um there’s also electronics recycling. Uh you know, the statistic is that people who are on the autism spectrum have an unemployment rate of about 85%. And, and yet they are uniquely talented to disassemble electronics. So there uh there are electronics recycling organizations that employ people on the autism spectrum to just disassemble and um and then they part of, so they’re providing the employment, they’re getting the donations of the electronics. Um, and in some instances they’re being paid by the companies to take the electronics and then they also, they sell the commodities of all the things that out of those electronics, metals, plastics. Yeah. So, you know, when you think about that as a, you know, we use the term triple bottom line, it’s helping society, it’s helping the environment and it’s um you know, it’s, it’s making money. That is a really awesome example of, of a business that hits at every level. Yeah,

[00:49:07.97] spk_0:
excellent, excellent. Another, these are good, another example or category,

[00:49:39.32] spk_2:
well, there are some social enterprises that instead of employing people provide employment services. So there is a social enterprise that here in Denver that specifically helps people who are bilingual, English, Spanish, get jobs in the community with employers who need people who are bilingual, but that could apply to kind of any language or not even be bilingual, you know. So they, and so companies come to them when they need people who, maybe it’s customer service, people who can speak another language other than English. Um And so again, a service business, but not where they are employing people.

[00:49:58.16] spk_0:
Right. Right. And, and so companies pay for the, for the referral for the screening. Yep, the placement, basically they’re paying a placement fee.

[00:50:51.24] spk_2:
Yep. Exactly. But there’s, you know, there’s just so many different kinds there are cafes that’s a fairly popular kind of social enterprise. Um Here in Denver, we have a cafe called um same cafe and same stands for. So all may eat and they, it is a pay what you want model. So you walk in and the menu is listed for the day and you decide how much you’re going to pay. Yes. And, and so you might be sitting down and having, you know, decide that you want to pay $10 for your lunch. But you also might be sitting next to somebody who is, um, experiencing homelessness and didn’t pay anything. And if you decide if you don’t have any money to pay for your lunch, then you work in the kitchen or you clean or, you know, do dishes and, and so again, it’s a really cool concept that serves people all, you know, it’s beneficial to the community at multiple levels.

[00:51:24.99] spk_0:
Um So, all right. So we talked about services, some, some product. I love the recycling example too. Any anything else before we, before we move on to organizing these, these entities?

[00:52:56.39] spk_2:
Um, well, the last one I’ll mention is one that’s been around for a long, long time, like women’s bean project. It’s called Grace and Bakery there out of Yonkers, New York. And they make the brownies for Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. So a big, the bulk of their business is brownies for Ben and Jerry’s. They also have now gotten into doing some retail sales and corporate sales. So you might see your, your listeners might have seen them in some, for instance, Whole Foods at sort of a point of sale or point of purchase with a little brownie. And it says these brownies changed lives, but Grayson is a for profit company. So this is a nice segue into the next part of our conversation. They are actually a B Corp, a benefit corporation and they, they have an open hiring model. So instead of specifically going out and trying to recruit people experiencing chronic unemployment, like we do, they are always accepting applications and when they have an opening, they just hire the next person on the list. So they hire, they don’t, you know, interview or, you know, look at qualifications, they just hire the next person and, uh and you know, so they will have more turnover than a normal company would, but they’re also within that community in Yonkers. They’re, they’re really changing people’s lives give by giving them an opportunity for employment that they might not otherwise have had.

[00:53:42.47] spk_0:
Okay. That’s interesting. Now, first that’s Grayson Bakery. These brownies save lives. Okay. So listeners, we might, we might see those at, at checkout sounds like point of sale places. Okay. Um But then, you know, there’s the issue of, you know, giving a job versus teaching job skills in addition, like, like, like women’s being project is doing, it seems to me that the, the uh the training beyond the skills for the job is more empowering than then giving a job and, and just giving a job.

[00:54:13.22] spk_2:
Well, I think that’s consistent with our philosophy at women’s being project that there are because we acknowledge that there are lots of things that get in the way of somebody being able to um get and keep the, and keep, I think is the important part, right? Like, you know, we prior to the pandemic and I think we’re back to a um there’s a lot of jobs but um and so you could go from job to job to job in an environment where there are lots of jobs. But the important thing is, are you going to a job where you are a contributor where there’s opportunity for advancement and benefits and all the things that make it more of a career than just a job? That’s what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to change the are the women we serve, that’s the trajectory we want them to be on when they finish.

[00:54:41.79] spk_0:
All right. So, you know, of course, different missions just like nonprofits that Grayson has uh has a different model but, but their, their generously hiring, they just hire the next person on the

[00:54:49.63] spk_2:
list.

[00:54:53.20] spk_0:
So, alright, so yeah, as you suggested, and I want to talk about the, how to organize and structure these, we know what’s the relationship listeners already are in non profits? Most of our listeners are, uh you know, how would, what would that relationship look like if they did start a social enterprise? Well,

[00:55:11.40] spk_2:
I know as, um as the interviewer here, you, you will hate to hear this answer but it depends.

[00:55:18.35] spk_0:
Listen. Now, don’t hold back on, don’t, don’t, don’t tell listeners of nonprofit radio What you think they want to hear? It’s an educated self selected group. So, yes. So it’s nuanced answers are, are very

[00:58:28.78] spk_2:
welcome. Well, it, it does depend and it depends on what you want to do and how you might want to structure it and, and honestly tolerance, risk, tolerance of your board and you know, of your team. So, um women’s Bean project is a 501 c three. A big reason for that is because we were founded in 1989. And if you wanted to do good, that was the choice, right? That’s all you had. Um Today, there are lots of different structures you could or opportunities, you could be a for profit company. Um and, and become a benefit corporation B Corp, you could be a subsidiary of a nonprofit. Um You could be an LLC, you know, there are just so many different ways. And so generally what I tell people is first figure out what you wanna do, then figure out what the corporate structure makes the most sense. What I will tell you is that I wouldn’t necessarily change our corporate structure because we’ve made it work for ourselves. Our, the way we have structured ourselves by having sort of everything under one roof. The huge job and the being job is that we’ve, what that’s done is that it has allowed us to have a mixed revenue, uh pie, so to speak. So, about 60% 60% of our operating budget comes from our product sales. What that does is it supports the business, it supports women’s time while they’re working in the business. And it’s, you know, gives us the ability by the beans and the flour and all those things and makes a small contribution to our program operations. And then we fundraise to SAPO program operations because again, when a woman is in a financial literacy class or working on a resume or even in job search looking for the next job we’re paying her still. So we fundraise to both support those classes but also to be able to pay her and, and because we’re 501 C three, we have the ability to do that. It also probably gives us a little bit of wiggle room in terms of our inefficiency. You know, I would, if we were, if, if all of our revenue had to come from our product sales, we would probably have to compromise the mission a little bit and hire fewer women because we have to run, you know, a business with much better margin than we currently do. Yeah, but I will also say that there are plenty of situations where the a board of a nonprofit, they might be interested in this idea of having revenue, that’s basically unrestricted revenue. But they don’t want to risk the larger organization or they do or they wanna just sort of run it on the side as sort of a separate entity and maybe not have it be a distraction within their main business, so to speak. There, there are risks in that as well though. I’ve seen lots of uh non profit big human services organizations that run social enterprises and they sort of treat them like the red headed step child and, and look at them like, what have you done for me lately? Little, you know, business. Why are you not contributing more when the reality is they’re kind of stifling the growth of that, that business? Um And, and perhaps, um you know, causing it to, you know, not prosper um

[00:58:55.69] spk_0:
like a mistaken, well, not only organization but just in, in culture, you think that the way board members and I guess the organization collectively thinks about its, its social enterprise as, you know, as, as uh the ugly step

[00:59:22.60] spk_2:
child. Yeah. And that’s the risk, right? If of creating a structure where you sort of set it off to the side, I mean, I understand that sometimes that’s done to avoid risk, but sometimes it creates more risk for the survival of the business one of the things I worry about having been in this field for a long time is that, you know, uh, we’ve now come to a point where social enterprise is kind of cool. It’s kind of come into its own. I joke that it’s like women’s bean project has been wearing a velour tracksuit for 30 years and now suddenly velour track suits are in. But, you know, so, yeah, exactly.

[00:59:49.52] spk_0:
Long enough they’ll come, they’ll come, my dozen bell bottom suit will come back.

[01:00:16.43] spk_2:
It turns out that’s happening for social enterprise. But what I worry is that organizations will start a business and do that and sort of cut it off at its knees and not even maybe recognize that and it won’t survive and then they’ll look back later and say, yeah, we tried that. It didn’t work. But I, I can tell you that if it’s not always because it’s a bad idea that it doesn’t, it could be because you just didn’t give it the opportunity to flourish. We in the nonprofit world are notoriously risk averse. That’s not a news flash to anybody. I know. And, and so the challenge is to be willing to take some risk and balance that risk. You know, it’s a risk reward ratio in the business and balance that risk a little bit. Um With um with what the benefit could be long term,

[01:00:44.61] spk_0:
You started to transition again. I love it the way you segue easily uh, lessons, you know, lessons learned things to look out, for things to be sure. You, you’ve considered, you’ve been doing this for 30, what, 32 years? 32

[01:03:17.35] spk_2:
years. Well, I, I often say we have 32 years worth of mistakes. We could totally help somebody else avoid and leave them free to make all their own mistakes. Um, you know, it’s, it’s, I would say the lessons learned are consistent with what I’ve been saying, which is you really do. Um If you want a social enterprise to survive, you really do have to embrace it as, as being a means through which you’re going to deliver on your mission and not set it on the side and say, well, you know, someday you’re gonna make me some money and I’ll be able to use that money to advance my mission. They have to be interwoven. Um So, you know, we don’t exist to make bean soup yet we can’t exist without it. And that idea that the two are inextricable um is the probably the most important thing. And the most important, honestly, lesson that I’ve seen, I, I watched a social enterprise um be formed out of an organism um that was providing initially providing the same service for free. And then they formed the social enterprise to monetize the service, but yet they kept offering the service. So they had this business and they kept offering the service for free. So yes, and um and then eventually decided that the social enterprise wasn’t working and the, the problem I thought, you know, it’s, it’s easy. Monday morning quarterback, admittedly, but um you know, was that they set it up to be, you know, be its own competition. So of course, it was, there was always going to be that tension and that conflict. You’ve got enough tension and conflict just trying to advance your mission and advance your business without setting yourself up for failure. So um you know, that’s another lesson which is be prepared for there to be tension between the business and the mission, but be okay with that because that’s part of what you’re doing is you’re, you’re trying to change the world by using market forces. Uh And you know, we are, we’re a country of consumers. So let’s take advantage of the fact that we are a country of consumers. Everybody needs to buy products and services. So what a great opportunity to um to to for lack of a better word, exploit that

[01:03:32.91] spk_0:
I love the way you say you’re working to change the world by using market forces. Um Alright. Any anything else you wanna, you wanna leave folks with anything that we didn’t talk about that you feel is is important. Anything I didn’t ask about,

[01:04:43.97] spk_2:
you know, I would say that the last thing would be that if you are thinking about um starting a social enterprise, start looking at other models and seeing what other groups are doing and especially if they’re localized, there’s, you know, there’s no reason to that, that you wouldn’t be able to learn from their mistakes. Um So, you know, we have, I’ve been asked often whether or not we would expand women’s bean project out of Denver across the country. What we have chosen instead is to be more open source where we look forward to sharing the things that we’ve learned. Because I think ultimately, if we want to lift up the whole field, not just, you know, a grand eyes, women’s bean project, that’s not our goal. Our goal really is to help other organizations create or prosper with their social enterprises, not just, you know, have us get bigger and bigger. There’s enough need to go around. What

[01:04:46.67] spk_0:
about social enterprise Alliance? Is that a resource for

[01:05:01.69] spk_2:
folks? It absolutely is. And that might be a great place to start to figure out what is out there. They have um Social enterprise Alliance has uh you know, members all over the country who are involved at various levels of social enterprise. So they might be running social enterprises that they might be consultants. So social enterprise, um if you need an attorney to talk with, for instance, about what your corporate structure might be, there are resources there. Um But the nice thing about that is if you’re in the initial stages of just doing research is a great place to start.

[01:05:31.38] spk_0:
Okay. Good value. You can have conversations with folks. You can, you can, it’s a good place to start your research and, and, and grow. If you decide to mean, you might start your research and decide it’s not really, you know, you can’t tolerate the risk or the tension. Uh It’s just something you don’t want to take on, but at least you do it, make that decision informed.

[01:06:43.52] spk_2:
Yeah, I always think that fear is not a reason not to do something, right? Like you can acknowledge the fear and sort of do the things that, that you need to do to um to try to overcome or, you know, address the fear. But um staying noticed something just because you’re afraid, it’s maybe not the best reason. Um And I think also, you know, we have a tendency to sit at the, at the starting line and try to anticipate all the problems we’re gonna have and, and I guarantee, first of all, we’ll be wrong about what problems we think we’re gonna have and, and whatever solution we decide is gonna not be appropriate for whatever problem you end up having. And so ultimately, you just gotta start and, and have faith that you have gathered the resources and the expertise enough that you can address the problems as they come up. But I think that that tends to be and in my experience just going to lots of, you know, speaking on lots of panels and talking with lots of organizations that are thinking about starting social enterprises is they, they often get stuck at that starting line and have a hard time pulling the trigger. Um The reality is it might not work. But think about, I, I think you learn more from failure than you do successful. A lot of times.

[01:08:06.92] spk_0:
Yeah. Too much ready aim, aim, aim and, and, and no firing. All right. Outstanding. Thank you, Tamara. Thank you very much. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing the women’s bean project story and and beyond. Uh Tomorrow Ryan Ceo women’s bean project. It’s at women’s bean project dot com. You want to look at their dried foods and other products, especially now around the holidays. And Tamara is at Tamara Ryan. Thanks so much Tamara. Next week, Rio Wang with Money Mindset. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is Claire 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 affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.