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Nonprofit Radio for December 23, 2016: Fundraising and Finance Friendship & Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

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Rich Dietz & Dan Murphy: Fundraising and Finance Friendship

Abila has a study about the challenges between your fundraising and finance folks, and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your nonprofit a happier and more productive organization. In the ring are the study co-authors: Rich Dietz, fighting in the fundraising corner, and Dan Murphy for finance. Can these pugilists make peace? (Originally aired 5/20/16)

Rich Dietz
Dan Murphy

John Fulwider: Your CEO/Board Chair Partnership

How do you cultivate this critical relationship? What should they be asking each other? John Fulwider is a consultant and author of “Better Together.” (Originally aired 4/3/15)

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host we’ve got a listener of the week robin jacobson, she tweeted, i learned about your show from liza dyer. I love what you’re doing lies. It was a show was a guest a couple weeks ago. Liza, thank you very much for sharing this show with robin. Robin, welcome to non-profit radio. So happy that you found us through liza. I love that you love what we’re doing. I thank you very much for that you can you can follow our listener the week she’s at robin ruin r o b i n r o u e n ruin, of course, the city in france. Common knowledge. Robyn. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being with us. Congratulations on being our listener of the week. Robin jacobson. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with blefary denied us if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed today’s show fund-raising and finance friendship abila has a study about the challenges between your fund-raising and finance folks and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your non-profit a happier and more productive place to be in the ring or the study co authors rich dietz fighting in the fund-raising corner and dan murphy for finance. How can these pugilists make peace that originally aired on may twentieth this year and your ceo board chair partnership? How do you cultivate this crucial relationship? What should they be asking each other? John fulwider is a consultant and author of better together and that originally aired on april thirteenth last year on tony’s take two thank you p s that hair we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey e spelling dot com now chek out rich dietz and dan murphy in the ring with fund-raising and finance friendship very pleased to welcome excuse me, rich dietz and dan murphy to the show rich dietz is director of fund-raising strategy for abila he has spent the last twenty years working with and in a wide variety of non-profit political and government organizations, as well as technology companies focused on the nonprofit sector. Dan murphy is product manager for my p fundacao n’t ing at abila. He has an extensive background in financial management with degrees in finance and accounting and over ten years of non-profit accounting experience and he’s aboard treasurer of a non-profit in austin, texas. Rich, welcome back to the show. Dan. Welcome to non-profit radio. Thanks for having me here. Pleasure. I did. I mr pronounce the name of the company that when i was first introducing its abila abila abila that is correct. In case i didn’t say that in the in the opening, that is the correct pronunciation and it’s a b l a. Okay, dan, you’re on the on the finance side, rich on the fund-raising side. Rich let’s, start with you. What was this study about fund-raising and finance all about. Why did you feel it was necessary? Yes, it’s. Kind of interesting, though. You know, as a software company focused on the non profit sector, we have products for fund accountants. You know, for accountant we have products for fundraisers, and dan works mostly on that finance side. I work mostly on the fund-raising side. We we we realized we’re not collaborating amongst ourselves. Even here at the office and then dan and i started talking, and we’re like, hey, we have all this all this anecdotal evidence from our past working at non-profits of this sort of adversarial relationship, and so we thought, hey, let’s, get there, especially get to what’s going on and actually ask non-profits is this, you know, collaboration? Or is it really an adversarial relationship? So we surveyed a fourteen hundred non-profits and we really wanted to dig into what is this perception of collaboration? What’s the biggest challenge is on and maybe some ways that we could, you know, help that that that collaboration actually increase. Yes, dan, a perception of collaboration. It’s it’s, not really all that collaborative, a lot of people feel that’s, right? Yeah, it actually turns out that more than half the fundraisers that we surveyed, as well as almost half of the financial professionals about that their relationship with their respective collaborates other departments was either not collaborative or very little collaboration was happening. So we saw there’s a lot of room for opportunity, both in the actual collaboration processes, as well as the perception of whether collaboration could be a value to the organization that is very glass half full of youto recognize it as an opportunity rather than are these kids? Yuki departments are not talking to each other on and there’s also some very interesting differences across the generations, which will, which we’ll get to you very shortly. Um okay. What? What are what are some of the problems? Let’s us stay with you, daniel what’s. What? What? What’s causing some of this lack of collaboration, sir. I mean, there’s a lot of contributing factors to, you know, why these organizations may not be collaborating as much as they could. They have different reporting metrics that they’re using to evaluate their success and their their progress toward their milestones. Some of them, you know, have very distinctly goes, especially on the financial side. You know, we talked about gap. We talked about cosby and there’s. All these other acronyms that we use that our counterparts and development may not be used to using may not understand very well as well. On the fundrasing side, you know, there’s there’s also the very specific acronyms and, uh, different ways of speaking that maybe a little bit different than what? The finance side of the house. Used to and then just in the Job you know what 1 sector down now? We have joined in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio. So already you the finance trouble guy have ah, you’ve transgressed what you have to tell us what gap and fast b stand for everybody doesn’t know, okay, yeah gases generally accepted accounting principles. So it’s kind of a principal guiding philosophy of accounting in the united states and fast because the financial accounting standards board and their governing agency responsible for regulation of accounting practices. Okay, thank you. So we’re trying to bridget tronvig? Yeah. Okay. We’re trying to bridge the gap here. Let’s not make that right. Let’s not make a warrant and you make it work. So it just in daily activities, the two different development and finance department’s had very different priorities. So, you know, one side of the house is tryingto raise money to make sure that the organization can continue to find its activities and expanded commission on dh. Then, of course, the financial side of the house is wanting to make sure that the resources of the organization are responsibly managed. The finances are adequately classified and reported. The stakeholders so just two different philosophies to see the same mission organizations tryto rich over to you, the even metrics, right? What what metrics the two different sides look at are very different. Yeah, and this is interesting. Dan and i spent a lot of time talking about it because it first, so so we asked the fundraisers and the finance folks what’s your top five challenges and all that stuff and metrics and reporting was in both of their top five, and it was different metrics and reporting at first we were like, oh, wow, that that could be a problem, but then as we dug geever without no that’s, actually, right? I think the fund-raising teams and the finance team should have different metrics and reporting, they’re actually reporting on different things. The problem is when we don’t have common goals and and overarching goals that both of those metrics and reporting feet up into and so when we get into the recommendations in the report, that’s where we really start talking about joint goal setting before you even get to figuring out what you’re going to report on figuring out what the over our goals of the organization are, and then how to both those departments feed into those over our goals. We think that’s going to help overcome a lot of those of those differences that that people are saying a greater understanding way we need to meet in the middle and there’s a lot obviously that’s in common now everybody wants to advance the mission, they wouldn’t be there otherwise, but but let’s let’s find what’s comin and understand what’s outside the common areas for exactly yeah, all right, let’s, go out for a for a quick break and when we come back, the three of us we will we’ll keep talking all have our little ah, we’re going to find out more about the differences across generations. Very interesting. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals. Archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Oppcoll welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Dan, you are ah, product manager for m i p fundez counting at abila now already. This is three acronyms from the finance side. We’ve had none from the fan fund-raising side, so i’m starting to see where the problems lie. What is m i p or mip? I don’t know. It’s micro information processes it’s a name that we’ve had for a significant amount of time. That’s very well recognized in the non-profit finance sector. Okay, very well recognized. The non-profit in the finance sector. Okay. That’s, right? We’re trying to bridge gaps now. Damn, i not break down bridges all right now. Okay. Um ah, rich acquaint us with some of the the difference is this is really interesting across the generations, boomers feel that three things everything’s fine and the millennials are not as content. Yeah, this is really interesting. That’s something we’re doing a lot in our research studies now is we’re kind of breaking out a lot of the answers based on generation, you know, boomer’s, gen xers and millennials, especially because that’s who’s in the work force right now on what we ask the questions about how they felt, you know, did they feel collaborative? We saw the boomers felt pretty collaborative on both the finance and the fund-raising side, fifty seven percent to sixty percent on the finance side. Ah, but the millennials felt way less collaborative on the fund-raising side on dh then and i talked about it. Dan actually had a really interesting theory on this, and i’ll actually kick it over to him so he could talk about that i thought was really interesting and something i think we can address. Okay, let me ask first, though, am i the only baby boomer in this in this conversation born before nineteen sixty four? I believe so. I’m a gen xer. You are. So we have one of each. Okay, dan, your millennial. Is that right? No, i actually fall into genetic. You’re ok. You have a baby face. Okay? Uh, that’s. Too bad. Because i was going to beat up on you as a representative of millennials. Why? Why? The millennials are causing so much havoc in the workplace. Why? They can’t be more content. But go ahead. What is your what is your theory? Well, my theory. Is that if you look at the data, there really seems to be a tendency for the boomers too collaborate together is somewhat, but to communicate definitely directly, but there definitely seems to be a tendency on the finance side of the house for both the djinn xers and the millennials to have more communication and contact with the senior members on the fund-raising side of the house and i suspect, and we’ll probably dig into this a bit more, but it’s most likely because of the, you know, i strive for efficiency and kind of just wanting to get to the the answer is something rather than build relationships focus. So i think a lot of that is probably more driven by the finance side of the house, which is why you can see the collaborators collaboration, sentiment hyre on that side. Unfortunately, i think that means that the millennials connectors on the development side of the house might be kind of circum bennett in some of these conversations on dh left out in some cases. What about personality, too? I’m generalizing here, but i don’t think you’re average finance side person is is as outgoing, you know, the relationship oriented extroverts, aziz, you’ll find on the fund-raising side. So i mean, i think that’s definitely fair to say not to say that accountants are incredibly wake up on and find accounting. I know beating on the accounting and finance side. I know i’m trying not to, but i don’t know that it’s a stereotype, but so, you know, call it that’s what that’s, what i’m doing, but i think fundez sorry, but i think fundraisers arm or, like, extroverted and so they’re seeking mohr collaboration than the people on the finance side of the same age, even well, i think you could also just very clearly make the argument that inherent in the development role is a focus on relationships that is part of that role within the organization that doesn’t exist as much on the finance side. Okay, all right. So you yeah, and so yes, certainly job responsibilities on the way the two the two sides are organized and what their purpose is our butt. And so i think as a result of that, you get personalities that are different in the two different teams. All right? I know you don’t agree with the personality theory. That we agree that degree of that and you’re back in the report when we get into the recommendations, we actually talked about kind of breaking down some of those personality, you know, division’s, like, actually start doing some joint activities, you know? Do you know i’m a big fan of doing something outside of work, a happy hour after work at the finance and fund-raising folks together outside of the workplace, you know, maybe have a drink and start talking about other things besides work went to get to know someone as a person and of course, on the fundraiser saying this because that’s what we did, you know, you go out and you get to know people you learn about their kids, their pets, all that stuff, and it makes that next conversation you have with them at work even easier. So we have to drag the finance people to this happy hour that’s, right, and then stopped them from just talking to each other, right? We have to penetrate their circle. I’m beating up on the, uh, okay, small organizations, let’s get that damn small organizations a lot more potential. Well, depends what you want to describe. It small organizations are a lot more collaborative. That’s, right? Yeah. We found that there’s a significant difference between large organizations and small organizations in the level of collaboration that’s happening. We also theorized that a large contributing factor to this is that in the smaller organizations you have smaller staff, and so people are forced to collaborate, you know, there’s fewer people to get the job done. A lot of organizations, people may wear multiple hats or, you know, play different roles in the organization. So there’s a hot a lot higher level of interaction, there’s, more frequency of interaction on a lot of time. People are, you know, just physically located closer together. And so whether you know it’s a small organization and only has a single office or small office space many times, these finance and development individuals responsible for those roles are physically closer to each other. And so there’s a lot of a lot higher level of interaction that leads to more collaboration. That makes a lot of intuitive sense. But i think it’s important to point out, you define smaller organizations as less than ten million dollars, right? Listen, krauz million annual revenue, so we’re not talking about necessarily tiny shops where it’s two or three people and obviously there more collaborative than bigger organizations. But, you know, a ten million dollar annual revenue that could have dozens of employees that’s, right and that’s a good point there, not there not, you know, five or ten person shops, but at the strategic planning level on the less than ten million dollar organizations we saw a lot hyre interaction in the strategic planning processes and the budgeting process is and, you know, kind of the key processes for each role. And so we also saw smaller staff size, and so their just was a lot higher level of interaction required to get things done. And so, you know, there’s kind of a necessity there for these these rules to interact more and there’s more opportunity for him to do so, as opposed to above ten million. There started to be, you know, significant layers within the organization that lead to inflation. Right? Right. Rich. Anything you want to add about the small versus large organizations? No, i think it’s pretty much what diane said. Where? You know, if you have a smaller office, you’re gonna bump into people in the hallway more and then you know, you’re not you’re not divided by department as much, you know, there’s, not a finance department over on floor four and the fund-raising department on floor three when you’re not even a ten million dollar zorg, you’re probably all in the same office and you beat each other in the break room and everything in those again hi. Always go back to the human interaction. That human interaction is what really breaks down those silos. Also reporting structures. No smaller organization like that have fewer vice presidents. So teams are more cohesive because they’re clustered together. Yeah, definitely. All right. So we got some problem areas, you know, lying around like goals and priorities. Language, metrics, personalities, let’s. Move to the positive now and start identifying some opportunities for ah, making things, making the world a happier place. So this is not a boxing match between fund-raising and finance. Rich want to stay with you? What? What? What’s. Ah, let’s. Talk about the social ideas first since you already touched on that. Yeah. I mean, definitely social ideas. It’s. You know, finding ways to get more human interaction there. And you’re like you’re saying, you know, dragging the finance folks out the happy hour again. A lot of them may not want to go to that happy hour, so maybe start with a brown bag lunch, you know, has at the office, everyone gets in the same room, bring your own lunch on dh. You know, watch a movie, you know, just talk about something else. Just start to get those interactions to start anyway, that you can do it, andi and you have to keep pushing that, you know, so that that would be not mayan number one tip. Okay? Yes, i like i like the social ideas, too. That’s. Why? I was i was glad you mentioned it, but we could be more formal to some training. Right? Some basic training. Dan that’s, right? Yeah. You can really structure your onboarding process and offer training to, you know, cross training between the two different departments to facilitate the interaction too. You know, in increase that cohesion between the two teams to work toward the joint mission of the organization. And that could be, you know, it’s. Simple as modifying your onboarding processes to have, you know, an explanation and as part of those processes of what the different departments do, what their goals are, kind of what they’re key processes are, and it could even advanced something where there might be a periodic schedule training where one department will train the other one. And you know what they do, how the reporting works, other systems work, or even just a collaborative meeting that’s on the calendar every month or, you know, every other week or however frequently it might be in order to keep each each other aware of what’s going on within your respective department so that you’re kind of synchronized on on what’s going on and what the priorities are across the organization and maybe in in orientation, we can have a day or so, you know, whatever, where the fundraiser goes over to the finance department spend or is at least onboarding by someone in finance, and so from day one, we’re getting a an empathy for what’s happening on the other side, right? And making sure that you understand how your processes are, you know, feed into the processes of the other departments, so for fund-raising maybe that’s gift entry and understanding how you know, downstream that goes into the accounting system and how that kind of goes through the financial reporting process. So you understand what you’re doing, it directly impacts the finance department and the reports that they produce and on the finance department side in accounting, understanding the gift solicitation process and what it takes to get that money in the door and entered into your serum or whatever your dahna records system is on dh, then how that gets to you an accounting. So you understand that full process because it’s, nobody really operates in a vacuum, so we’re really making sure that you connect the dots between the organizational department. Dan was a part of the tension. I thought i read that finance doesn’t understand the need for spending money on relationship building. Yeah, it definitely can be a challenge to understand why you would spend resources on something as abstract as relationships that that’s definitely a story that resonates more with some than it does others for accountants and finance related in, you know oriented individuals you want to be able to show direct outcomes for resource is used for money spent and its hard to quantify. That whenever you’re saying you’re investing in relationship, but you know that, but that is required to cultivate relationships with donors that will ultimately lead revenue in the front door. And so there is a return on that it’s just very hard to quantify that through reports, you know, through the traditional financial reporting process so it can be hard for to rationalize and justify spending funds or resource is in that way. But i think that through collaboration, that story can be told jointly from the department of, you know, development narrating kind of the relationship side of that and helping them finance to quantify what the return on that is and communicate that out. Do either of you know our master’s programs in non-profit management brake, bringing these these two department’s together, and helping people with the finance background understand mohr of fund-raising and vice versa? Do you know if that’s happening at the degree level or certificate level? Okay, i don’t know if it’s happening at the degree level. I do know that there are sort of think it’s available for non-profit management and leadership, that tie kind of the executive roles finance rolls, the development rolls it’s some degree the volunteer roles together for people that are enrolled in that program to give people have a three hundred sixty degree view of the organization. I don’t know that the intention is specifically for collaboration, but it is too kind of enhance the literacy of the participants in the various areas so that they can be effective leaders. Yeah, okay, i mean, i hope that’s going on. We have meteo thie. Only degree i have is a law degree, and i don’t have a certificate on, come on, classically under credential to even host the show. I don’t know what somebody’s looking like in front of me six years ago. I don’t know what happened. All right, a dan you start of ah alluded to this talking about the budget let’s, let’s jump over to rich, we can work together on our budgeting. Yeah, most definitely eye on me. And i touch on this earlier little bit is, you know, we have these different priorities and these different metrics that were that were held accountable for in both departments on and i think instead of starting at that point, which is where most budgets get put together, the fund-raising side says, we need this in the finance side says, well, i got all these departments say that need all this stuff, taking a step back and going to that joint goal setting and budgeting as step one look at the look at the big bucket first, and then break out into your department’s and trying to figure that out. I think some of the frustration we heard a lot in the in the open ended answers of the survey was, you know, fund-raising sango finance just gave us this number to go fund-raising it doesn’t really mean anything. They just pick the number out of the sky it’s not like, and i’m sure finances saying the same thing, you know, who are these fundraisers that are just throwing these numbers at us? You mean? And so if you just take a step back and out of that silo and do that joint gold setting and budgeting, i think that everyone knows where the where the basis is. And then we break and do and figure out our, you know, our specific goals in there, and then come back together again to make sure that those makes sense for everybody. So it is it’s really a three hundred sixty degree? Ah process there and again, just another one. Another way to break us out of those silos. And i think that’s going to increase the collaboration greatly. When you understand what the other side is struggling with, then you do a much better job of making sure your data clean. Making sure your data is getting to them in a way that they need. And then everything just flows better. Have you had any feedback on the survey that it’s stimulated conversations are? We used it as a way to start well, that’s stimulate the conversation or it helped bridge this gap any feedback like that? Way, actually have our vp of marketing test that gerard has some really good friends in the industry. And he talked to one of his fundraiser guys. And he said they took the report with the his counterpart on the thunder on the finance side, and they went out to lunch and just talked about the report. And they said it was one of the best conversations that they’ve ever had in, like, ten years. So we are getting really good anecdotal evidence that it just it gives you something to talk about, something to start with and then go. Okay, so how how do we match against that? Are we doing better? We doing worse? Where can we improve? You know, it’s sometimes easier to have at least something in common that you’re talking about. And then, you know, again, break down those silos. That’s, outstanding that’s, a that’s, a that’s, a grand slam. I hope some listeners will. You know, if you hear this first and then bring it to the people that can help start to start the conversation, you know, listening to this you can get the study at abila dot com slash collaboration study and abila is a b piela abila dot com slash collaboration study? Yeah, i mean, it’s, you know, it’s, great to hear. Okay, glad you got that kind of feedback. Excellent. Um we’ll see what else we can let’s drown. Another opportunity, dan let’s, go to you some some shared terminology we can we can put together, yeah, something that could help. And it can also kind of jointly work with the train and onboarding is to create a reporting in metric, so we call it t cheat and that is just a place where, you know, both apartments can kind of see what the critical metrics for each department are, how they’re being used, that kind of how they’re derived. And then what? The important reports that are being generated for stakeholder consumption for public use, whatever the case may be, basically, what the story of the organization that’s being communicated is through reporting so you could make sure that you’re both on the same page, that you’re being consistent in what’s being reported. And really, i mean both from a practical point of view to make sure that, you know, i don’t boardmember you’re not telling two different stories. To your board and also from a community and mission point of view to make sure that you’re really making the most out of the data that you have out of the stories the organization have, that you’re effectively communicating the missions so that you can raise the most and really, you know, put your best foot forward as an organization for your mission. It sounds like a cz much as the the the outcome of that, that that that deliver herbal will have value just the collaborative process of putting it together together. We’ll have value. Absolutely. We’re gonna work together. We gotta define what are unknown terms are to each other and things like that’s going to start the conversation, right? You have to be able to communicate effectively internally before you can communicate externally. Okay? All right, rich, we’re going to wrap it up, which is just, like, a minute or so. You have some opportunities around software integration. Yeah. Yeah, integration was another one. And, you know, we definitely go deeper into the into the report on that. But we ask, you know, how important was integration, you know, to to the finance and fund-raising quotes. And we saw some interesting things there, including it seemed the younger the person was, the more they wanted integration, which, you know you would would would make sense. Millennials have had their lives integrated online forever, so they’re very much into integration. Some of the older boomers, um, tended to be a little more skeptical of of integration. So there’s definitely some stuff to teo look at their what dan and i found on the integration pieces that there might be some fear around integration about, oh, that’s, our data and i don’t know if i trust, you know, a machine to actually move the data correctly. I’d rather do it myself manually. So i think we need to do a lot of training on dh showing folks that that that software integration, you know, data going from your finance from your fund-raising software to your finance up our can actually save a lot of time can actually save a lot of double entry on and and and keep your data very clean. So i think that’s something that’s going to take a little time for people to get comfortable with it powerthru deeds, director of fund-raising strategy at abila also dann murphy, product manager for was it micro integrated processes fund accounting my p my p my p i got it wrong in other words, okay, we’ll stick with that. Might be also abila, gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you. My pleasure. Your ceo board chair partnership with john fulwider is coming up first pursuant. Check out overcoming the major donor dilemma it’s free as all their researches, they’re so generous with the stuff it’s unbelievable. This one is a ah white paper that will help you identify new major donors, help you engage them and optimize your major donor cultivation all wrapped up in one in one paper says unbelievable, overcoming the major donor dilemma you’ll find it at pursuant dot com quick resource is, and then content papers do it for pete’s sake, we’d be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising your word is shenanigans. Watch the new video and see how the contestants do it’s from a night that raised one hundred ten thousand dollars for hfc, which has helped for children. If you want to have a fun night with stand up comedy, live music, dancing, spelling on raising a ton of money, check out the latest video, please, at we b e spelling dot com now tony’s, take two. My latest video is thank you excuse me. I’m a little scratchy today. Thank you. It didn’t crack though it just broke. It was difficult to crack and break very different. Very different. Do not confuse them. I’m grateful that you are you’re with us, you’ve been with us through twenty sixteen. Thank you so much. We’re up over twelve thousand plus listeners now very often i should i’m hasn’t. You know i’m conservative in these things always say over twelve thousand all the time but it’s very frequent trust me over twelve thousand. So the ten thousand is fading, and i’m so grateful for that whether your loving non-profit radio by listening subscribing wherever you subscriber listen whichever platform, whether its affiliate or podcast or live if you are getting my insider alerts by email every thursday so you know where the guests are each week? You with me on facebook, twitter, youtube, youtube actually, youtube, twitter much better than facebook there’s a lot more going on there. Keep facebook active, but i have more fun on youtube and twitter wherever you are. With me with us with non-profit radio, thank you so much. Thank you, there’s. A ps to that video. That hair my hair is very long. You’ve been watching it grow if you’re with me on youtube and i addressed that issue head on, check out the video at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two and to show my affection of course what comes eyes is only one way to do it live. Listen, love. We’re all over the world today. The uk, seoul, south korea multiple in new york, new york, norway italia, espana, san jose, california, about our china, uh, college station, texas. Killeen, texas. Multiple texas ho chin minh city, vietnam is with us. Okayama, japan i love it. I’m going to dispense with the languages today, you know, i know all the languages. I’m fluent in japanese, chinese, korean, the mexican spanish czech republic i know what you know. Fluent take my word for it affiliate affections they got to go out are am and fm listeners all over the country. Thank you so much for listening through your affiliate station and the podcast pleasantries to the very frequently over twelve thousand listeners. A week. Whatever you’re doing while you’re listening, i thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me in your ear while you’re carrying on your life. Podcast pleasantries to you here’s john fulwider from the april third twenty fifteen show your ceo board chair partnership john fulwider is with me. He helps non-profit chief executives, he combines coaching, teaching and training toe work exclusively with high achieving ceos. I want their leadership teams and boards to row in the same direction. His latest book is better together non-profits ceos and board chairs get happy and fall in love with the mission i hope the book is shorter than the title john he’s at john fulwider dot com and on twitter he’s at john m fulwider welcome john fulwider thanks so much, tony, its honor and pleasure to be here. Thank you. I’m glad and you’re you’re calling from omaha, nebraska. Is that right? Lincoln, nebraska lincoln, nebraska pardon me, i gave you live. Listen love to lincoln pardon me. That’s. Right, lincoln i hope you didn’t take me too seriously when i was admonishing you about requesting live listener love careful, they’re not at all ok, good. Don’t take nobody listens to me, it’s all in good fun. Okay, your book is ah siri’s of questions, which i love, that that ceos and board chairs should be asking each other. What? What shortcomings do you see in this relationship? That you want to be a partnership? You know, i wantto start with the possibilities that you can achieve from a really healthy and successful partnership before i get to the shortcomings. If i could. The possibilities are amazing. Too high achieving, growth oriented, talented, passionate people can really support each other and accomplishing together for themselves, for the organization and for the mission, something they wouldn’t be able to achieve a part. And so it can be a really fulfilling effort asked, spend their wanting two, maybe three years of the border chairs leadership term together, really accomplishing something that they could both feel proud of at the end of those years. Okay, um, but i’m still gonna ask my question. Don’t be an anarchist now taking over the show. What? What? What now? I got two shortcomings or what? You know what? What’s typical of the board chair ceo relationship that that you see and when? You build that strong partnership, you can avoid a number of pitfalls. One of them is just failure to develop trust and transparency in your relationship, which was really the bedrock for leading together at the start. Next up, you can sail to communicate often enough, and as a result, neither the board chair nor the chief executive gets what she or he needs in terms of information to even run an effective board meeting, much less provide some really inspiring strategic direction. Two the organization and the last thing that you can do is fail to establish clear expectations of each other. So you’re sort of casting about rudderless, not really knowing who’s. Responsible for what? And that’s not a fun or indeed the filling of productive position for either of the leaders to be. How about that trust the how do people in these positions let’s take it’s? Ah, new relationship. Either the board chair is new, or the ceo is new to the organization. How do we start to build build that trust? You know, it really just begins in conversation, tony change begins in conversation conversation with your most important partner that being your board chair if you’re the chief executive, the chief executive, if you’re the board chair, it’s just a matter of starting off the relationship, right with some open ended kind of deep questions that let you start to develop that trust and transparency from the very start in the book associate in the workbook associated with the book, i have a list of those questions that go from sort of short to medium so long, and you can kind of customize it based on the time you have, and you have them broken down into categories and then within the categories, there are lots of different topic areas, marketing and accountability, and that’s right succession planning. So i really like this question and answer that i mean, i they’re they’re all questions to stimulate conversation and conversation hopefully is going to be honest and open, and that helps us get to trusting partnership. Indeed, it is a virtuous cycle. Okay. All right. Let’s, let’s, talk about some of these questions. I like them so much. Um, you don’t mind if we start with marketing, do you? Would that be okay? No. Let’s, let’s. Go right into it. Ok, so you’re the way. It’s laid out is you give some perspectives, cem quotes for thinking for the people. Tto consider on the subject and then ask your partner and there’s lots of ask your partner questions and, uh, you know that you ask some very basic ones around marketing. What should our message be? Who needs to hear it? Where where does it need to be? Can two people, though sitting in a room together out, answer these, they can begin to answer them, tony and in a way that generates questions for other people, let me let me use one of your previous guests as an example of how this could work. So you have a guest one or two weeks ago talking about your board as brand ambassadors, and there was that there was that question, as i recall about, you know, what does our organization even do in terms of category where we capacity building organization? Or were we making social change organization? I believe your guest said, and and that’s a question that you and your board chair i’m just going to talk from the chief executive’s perspective because those of the clients i work with you can ask your board chair? Well, bored share? What the you how would you categorize our organization and then ask your board chair? How do you think your colleagues on the board would categorise the organization? And that helps the board chair decide? Well, hey, maybe i need to lead a discussion on this at the next board meeting because i’m not sure and i want to find out. So starting a conversation with your board chair starts conversations that she or he has with her or his colleagues. Okay, so these are not going to be questions that we’re going to sit down in a couple of our long meetings, and we’re going to have answers to no, we’re not going to figure it out for ourselves, but we’re going to we’re going to start the conversation. We’re going to use our knowledge at my knowledge as the chief executive of the leadership teams perspective and the board chair her knowledge of her colleagues on the board, their perspectives. We’re going to use it to narrow dance on our information, gathering our question, asking for our colleagues. Okay, by the way, that guessed that you were referring. Teo, your board is brand ambassadors two weeks ago was roger sametz, um, also with the also in one of your marketing questions, looking internally, how good a job are we doing? Getting our message to our own board and staff, you want some introspection here? Yeah, absolutely, i mean, one of the one of the challenges that that i i always here when i’m working with, not for for-profit is the staff in general are pretty dissatisfied with what they perceive as the board’s level of knowledge about and interest in the organization and then what i find when that when when we really examine it, the board tends to have more knowledge and information about the organization, then was the staff perception and so conversations about marketing and branding and the, you know, sort of internal outside perspective on the organization can be sort of a safe and comfortable way for people to get rid of negative assumptions they might have about their colleagues. I’m going to move to one that also i find interesting internal threats to the organiser from, like you ask who is a flight risk on the board who air flight risks on our staff? This is right. This is very, very good. You risked management. I would call it, too. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s it’s something not not every organization really has the time or bandwidth to consider, but it is pretty hard to attract high quality talent. You are not for-profit organizations for various reasons everyone’s familiar with so once we have a really talents and high achieving, competent person on board, we need to take special care to ensure that we retain that person by continuing to challenge her or him offering a clear way up in the organization and so on. That could be the downside of term limits. Indeed it can. On the on the board side and boy, you know, if we get into the question of term limits will get into the question of government governance structures, and this conversation will get too complicated and i will wind up in jargon jail well, but you’re well, i’ll i’ll put your there, i’ll put your but they’re easily so you may end up there anyway, but let’s not let’s, not let’s. Not underestimate the capacity of non-profit radio listeners. Very sophisticated audience. Ah lutely. So i think they’re up for ah governance. Conversation. We may. We may get there, you that’s one of the other topics that you have questions around governance and accountability. But oh, i mean, if i can, if i can address term limits for just seconds under under governance, you know, that’s one of the frustrations of building a partnership with your board chair is that it’s a short term relationship. You could be doing all this work that i recommend. And i recommend doing a lot of work on this relationship on ly to have that person term out of the board chair seat one year from now, maybe two years, probably at the most three years. So term limits are a big deal in this context. Okay, buy-in but as we’re identifying let’s say, you know ah, well, who’s, the who’s a flight risk on the board we should be. Then the next question is going to be, well, what’s our succession plan for for that well, flight risk or, you know, whether it’s term limits or whatever whatever reason president is going to in the position. So how do you how would you feel about having a neg zsystems chair and the planned successor? Whoever that is the vice chair. Whatever the the chair to be named in this conversation, could we do this is a three way. Sure, we definitely could do that. The first thing you need to do is have the two way conversation where you’re building the solid partnership with your board chair. And honestly, if that’s all the two of you have the time, space and bandwidth to do, just stop there because you’ll be ahead of many other people who are in a leadership partnership. But if you can, by all means bring device chair, they’re electing the president elect that sort of thing into your discussions and and talk about how we can keep the strong leadership goodness culture flowing. But then also talk about how we need to customize the relationship to the prospective, the incoming board chair, because the nature of building trust with that person setting expectations, clarifying rolls and the style and manner and frequency of communication. It’s all going to be different for that new person? Yes, customized not not cookie cutter. And yes, not one size fits. All right, right. That’s, that’s offensive to the incoming person. Then you know right. Alright. Loss of trust there. We just have a minute or so before a break. Um, you would also like us under internal threats, to be looking at which of our programs is below par or failing. Sure and and that’s a great conversation. Tio have with your board chair, because you’re bored. Chair isn’t in the organization twenty six hours a day. Thinking about it, like like you are, doesn’t have probably that attachments teo each of the programs, and so can offer and unbiased mohr outside you at what is working and what is not in the organization and honestly, can help you strategize about how to do the influence campaign necessary on your board, and indeed, with your staff, and maybe even your thunders, to eliminate a failing program in order to allocate resources to something that is creating social change. Let’s, take a break. When we come back, john and i are going toe. Keep covering some questions that the ceo on board chair should be asking each other. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that or neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Got lots more live listener love tons of live listeners today serbia is with us live listener love out there. Mccarty in the philippines, mexico city, mexico. I’ll be flying there in october on my way to stop a for opportunity collaboration. Go through mexico city, reservoir, australia, bogota, colombia, seoul, south korea several in seoul not surprised. Always appreciative. Thank you very much on your haserot in japan, kawasaki and tokyo konnichi wa also spire germany, gooden dog amazing let’s, bring it back to the u s, newport news, virginia, omaha, nebraska. John omaha, eyes on and multiple in lincoln, nebraska so you’ve got some family there. I don’t know some people love you in lincoln, nebraska and pflueger ville, texas i love pflueger ville welcome live listener love to each person listening live. John, do you mind if we, since we’ve sort of headed in this direction to look what some succession planning for the for the board chair and for the ceo, we’ll do it that way, okay? Your questions for for those two are pretty similar, so i would just take him in a bunch recognizing that nobody’s going to be in the position forever. What? What skills and qualities do we need in our next chair and our next ceo? Right? The reason i include the succession planning of questions in the book is because it really gives away toe have that conversation about succession planning, which is so sort of inconvenient and awkward and about your own mortality on a regular basis. What i recommend is that people go through this list of twenty four strategic discussion topics with their board share hyre one at a time, actually go through the entire list um, twice a year, so they’re having forty eight weeks of conversations taking four weeks off, but this just brings it up automatic so that it’s not awkward now that’s a that’s. A lot of time to ask. Ah, volunteer to spend is that you have you have clients that are doing that. This is realistic. Ideo i do have clients who were doing that. Okay? And what do we say to the board chair? Who may be reluctant to spend that kind of time? We’re talking about at least an hour a week, right? Sure. I mean, it can go faster or slower than that. What we say to the person is, i value your counsel and your input. And i know you joined the board because you felt like you have something to say. You cared about the mission, and you felt like you had something to say about advancing the mission and getting mohr dunaj for the social change cause that wee boat care about. And so i simply want teo give you the opportunity to be strategic about that as often as possible. And i promise that in our conversations, we’ll try to keep it at the high strategic, interesting and compelling level and away from boring taxable day today as much as possible. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We want to encourage the board to be looking at bigger pictures and not what the office supply budget line should be. How about let’s? Look, a little external. Now, we’ve been in to do a lot of introspection. You have a section on meeting community needs, right? I mean, this, the basic. What does our community need from us on dh? How are we doing in providing it? Yeah, this is this is really a question i like to use, teo, inform strategic planning processes. And so what i what i see this conversation as tony is ah, logical and easy progression from, uh, tapping the strategic thinking capabilities of the chief executive and the board chair and then moving that discussion to the executive committee or the officers of the board and then moving it from there to further board members in, say, a strategic thinking slot on aboard agenda and then moving that all the way to the strategic planning retreat. So strategic conversation are happening constantly at all levels of the organization, but starting at the top it’s kind of like one of those chocolate fountains that you see at wedding receptions and so forth where it’s this yummy, gooey, rich chocolate and it bubbles out of the top, and it flows down to the next layer and the next layer, and then it bubbles back-up from the top strategic thinking happens in organizations the same way, okay, we don’t have to explain it to the person or maybe the people we’re going to have these conversations with as a strategic planning process, dewey, because that has a lot of baggage to it that maybe people aren’t ready to take on or you know what we have, you know, you’re completely you’re completely right, tony, i’m i’m working on a year long strategic planning process with a client right now, and as i’m doing the strategic, the preplanning interviews with the leadership team, they’re being kind enough to tell me, hey, some of us have some trepidation about that. The board says that has as well you do want it to be clear at the board chair level, though, that you have a shared responsibility to, no matter how you phrase it or how you present it. Teo, get strategic thinking happening throughout the organization consistently. It can’t be something you do just once a year, okay? Or once every three years or something, and then it ends up on the show, which would be even worse. Okay, yes, these are that’s true and seen it this way, but these are very good strategic planning questions, even if you don’t want to call it a strategic planning process there. Very good strategic questions, i guess is what i mean. You have a section on external threats. And we just have about a minute left. But so let’s. Just throw out that we should be looking at who’s doing a better job than we are at providing program. Right. And that’s a that’s. A question that your your board chair is especially well suited to help answer she or he may have the answer himself just by being virtue of being a philanthropist in the community, caring about the issue, seeing what others have to say or your board chair main not know the answer himself but can go to other, uh, you know, really connected on that particular issue. People on the board who then can offer some information that again comes from somebody who has that outside. Unbiased, not thinking about the organization, you know, more than twenty four hours a day, like twenty six hours a day, like the chief executive is all right, lots of strategic and thought provoking questions. In the book, you’ll find it at john fulwider dot com. And john is on twitter at john m fulwider. Thank you very much for sharing john there’s. An even better link, tony at better together leadership. Dot com it’s, easier to spell. All right. Thank you very much, john. Thanks, tony. Next week, there’s. No show. However, affiliates you’re covered, you know that you have my best wishes for merry christmas. Happy hanukkah. Happy new year. Lots of good wishes for your holidays and your time off. Take that time for yourself. Take some time for yourself. That’s. A good wishes for the holidays. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, wee bey, e spelling, dot com, our creative producers, clam hyre off. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this great music is by scots. Dine with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent happy new year. Go out and be great! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life, it sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do put money on a situation expected to heal you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for May 20, 2016: Fundraising and Finance Friendship & Your Modern Digital Team

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Rich Dietz & Dan Murphy: Fundraising and Finance Friendship

Abila has a study about the challenges between your fundraising and finance folks, and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your nonprofit a happier and more productive organization. In the ring are the study co-authors: Rich Dietz, fighting in the fundraising corner, and Dan Murphy for finance. How do these pugilists make peace?

Rich Dietz
Dan Murphy

Misty McLaughlin & Michelle Egan: Your Modern Digital Team

Misty McLaughlin & Michelle Egan at 16NTC

What does it mean to be a native digital nonprofit and what are the advantages of making the transition? Should you? Misty McLaughlin does organizational development at Jackson River, LLC and Michelle Egan is deputy director for marketing and engagement at NRDC. We talked at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

 

 


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Duitz hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week. Oren louis sample ward, amy sample ward, our social media contributor and her husband, max had a baby or in louis, mom and baby are home. They’re doing great she’s not going to be with us for a few months, but she wolf course will be back. Some people do anything to grow the non-profit radio audience congratulations, amy and max very thrilled for you. Welcome oren lewis, your first major award of your life, our non-profit radio listeners of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me! I’d be stricken with lim fangio and dauthuille yoma! If you floated the lymph idea that you missed today’s show fund-raising and finance friendship abila has a study about the challenges between your fund-raising and finance folks and the opportunities for collaboration that will make your non-profit a happier and more productive organization in the ring are like study co authors rich dietz fighting in the fund-raising corner and dan murphy for finance. How do these pugilists make peace and your modern digital? Team, what does it mean to be a native digital non-profit and what are the advantages of making the transition should you? Mr mclaughlin does organisational development at jackson river llc, and michelle egan is deputy director for marketing and management at the nrdc. We talked at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two our new promo riel we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuing dot com, also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com very pleased to welcome excuse me, rich dietz and dan murphy to the show rich dietz is director of fund-raising strategy for abila he has spent the last twenty years working with and in a wide variety of non-profit political and government organizations, as well as technology companies focused on the nonprofit sector. Dan murphy is product manager for my p fund accounting at abila he has an extensive background in financial management with degrees in finance and accounting, and over ten years of non-profit accounting experience and he’s bored treasurer of a non-profit in austin, texas rich, welcome back. To the show. Dan. Welcome to non-profit radio. Thanks for having me here. Pleasure. I did. I mr pronounce the name of the company that when i was first introducing its abila abila abila that is correct. In case i didn’t say that in the in the opening, that is the correct pronunciation and it’s a b l a. Okay, dan, you’re on the on the finance side, rich on the fund-raising side. Rich let’s, start with you. What was this study about? Fund-raising and finance all about why did you feel it was necessary? Yeah. That’s. Kind of interesting, though. You know, as a software company focused on the non profit sector, we have products for fund accountants. You know, for accountant, we have products for fundraisers, and dan works mostly on that finance side. I work mostly on the fund-raising side, we we we realized we’re not collaborating amongst ourselves, even here at the office. And then dan and i started talking, and we’re like, hey, we have all this all this anecdotal evidence from our past working at non-profits of this sort of adversarial relationship. And so we thought, hey, let’s, get there. Especially get to what’s. Going on and actually ask non-profits is this, you know, collaboration? Or is it really an adversarial relationship? So we surveyed a fourteen hundred non-profits and we really wanted to dig into what is this perception of collaboration what’s the biggest challenges on maybe some way that we could, you know, help that that that collaboration actually increased. Yes, dan, a perception of collaboration. It’s it’s not really all that collaborative, a lot of people feel that’s, right? Yeah, it actually turns out that more than half the fundraisers that we, uh, surveyed, as well as almost half of the financial professionals, thought that their relationship with their respective collaborates other departments was either not collaborative or very little collaboration was happening. So we saw there’s a lot of room for opportunity, both in the actual collaboration processes, as well as the perception of whether collaboration could be a value to the organizations that is very glass, half full of youto recognize it as an opportunity rather than r r these kids are key departments are not talking to each other on and there’s also some very interesting differences across the generations, which will, which we’ll get to you very shortly. Um okay. What? What are what are some of the problems? Let’s us stay with you. Dan knows what’s. What? What’s causing some of this lack of collaboration, sir. I mean, there’s a lot of contributing factors to you know why these organizations may not be collaborating as much as they could. They have different reporting metrics that they’re using to evaluate their success and their their progress toward their milestones. Some of them, you know, have very distinctly goes, especially on the financial side. You know, we talked about gap. We talked about cosby and there’s. All these other acronyms that we use that our counterparts and development may not be used to using may not understand very well as well. On the fundrasing side, you know, there’s there’s also the very specific acronyms and different ways of speaking that maybe a little bit different than what the finance side of the house is used to. And then just in the top. You know what? One sector down. Now we have joined in jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio. So already you, the finance trouble guy have ah, you’ve transgressed. What? What did you have to tell us? What gap and fast b stand for everybody doesn’t know. Okay, yeah. Gases generally accepted accounting principles. So it’s kind of a principal guiding philosophy of accounting in the united states. And fast because the financial accounting standards board and their governing agency responsible for regulation of accounting practices. Okay, thank you. So we’re trying to bridget tronvig? Yeah. Okay. We’re trying to bridge the gap here. That’s, right? Let’s not make a warrant and you make it work. So it just in daily activities that the two different development and finance department have very different priorities. So, you know, one side of the house is tryingto raise money to make sure that the organization can continue to find its activities and expanded commission on dh. Then, of course, the financial side of the house is wanting to make sure that the resources of the organization are responsibly managed. The finances are adequately classified and reported the stakeholders so just two different philosophies to achieve the same mission organizations trying to achieve rich over to you. The even metrics. Right? What? What metrics the two different sides look at are very different. Yeah, and this is interesting. Dan and i spent a lot of time talking about it because it first, so so we asked the fundraisers and the finance folks what’s your top five challenges and all that stuff and metrics and reporting was in both of their tops five and it was different metrics and reporting at first we were like, oh, wow, that that could be a problem, but then as we dug deeper, we thought, no that’s, actually, right? I think the fund-raising teams and the finance team should have different metrics and reporting, they’re actually reporting on different things. The problem is when we don’t have common goals and and overarching goals that both of those metrics and reporting feet up into and so when we get into the recommendations in the report that’s where we really start talking about joint goal setting before you even get to figuring out what you’re going to report on figuring out what the over our goals of the organization are, and then how to both those departments feet into those overall goals, we think that’s going to help overcome a lot of those, those differences that that people are saying a greater understanding way we need to meet. In the middle and there’s a lot obviously that’s in common. Now everybody wants to advance the mission. They wouldn’t be there otherwise, but but let’s let’s find what’s comin and understand what’s outside the common areas for exactly yeah, all right, let’s, go out for a for a quick break and when we come back, the three of us we will we’ll keep talking all have our little ah, we’re going to find out more about the differences across generations. Very interesting. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Then you are ah, product manager for m i p fundez counting at abila now already. This is three acronyms from the finance side we’ve had known from the fan fund-raising side, so i’m starting to see where the problems lie. What is m i p or mip? I don’t know. It’s micro information processes. It’s ah, name that we’ve had for a significant amount of time. That’s very well recognized in the non-profit finance sector. Okay, very well recognized. The non-profit in the finance sector. Okay. That’s, right? We’re trying to bridge gaps now. Damn, i not break down bridges all right now. Okay. Um, s o rich acquaint us with some of the difference is this is really interesting across the generations, boomers feel that three things everything’s fine and the millennials are not as content. Yeah, this is really interesting. And it’s something we’re doing a lot in our research studies now is we’re kind of breaking out a lot of the answers based on generation, you know, boomer’s, gen xers and millennials, especially because that’s who’s in the work force right now and when? We ask the questions about how they felt, you know? Did they feel collaborative? We saw the boomers felt pretty collaborative on both the finance and the fund-raising side, fifty seven percent, two, sixty percent on the fine outside, but the millennials felt way less collaborative on the fund-raising side on dh dan and i talked about it. Dan actually had a really interesting theory on this, so i’ll actually kick it over to him so he could talk about that. I thought it was really interesting and something i think we can address. Okay, let me ask first, though. Am i the only baby boomer in this, uh, in this conversation born before nineteen. Sixty four. I believe that i’m a gen xer. You are. So we have one of each. Okay, dan, your millennial. Is that right? No, i actually fall into genetic. You’re ok. You have a baby face. Okay? Uh, that’s. Too bad. Because i was going to beat up on you as a representative of millennials. Why? Why? The millennials are causing so much havoc in the workplace. Why? They can’t be more content. But go ahead. What is your what is your theory? Well my theory is that if you look at the data, there really seems to be a tendency for the boomers too collaborate together is somewhat, but to communicate definitely directly, but there definitely seems to be a tendency on the finance side of the house for both the djinn xers and the millennials to have more communication in contact with the senior members on the fund-raising side of the house and i suspect, and we’ll probably dig into this a bit more, but it’s most likely because of the, you know, i strive for efficiency and kind of just wanting to get to the the answer of something rather than build relationships focus. So i think a lot of that is probably more driven by the finance side of the house, which is why you can see the collaborators collaboration, sentiment hyre on that side, unfortunately think that means that the millennials into next er’s on the development side of the house might be kind of circum bennett in some of these conversations on dh left out in some cases. What about personality, too? I’m generalizing here, but i don’t think you’re average finance side person is is as outgoing. You know, it’s, you know, relationship oriented extroverts, aziz, you’ll find on the fund-raising side. So i mean, i think that’s definitely fair to say not just say that accountants are incredibly wake up on and find accounting i know beating on their friend, the accounting and finance side i know i’m trying not to, but i don’t know, zo stereotype, but so, you know, call it that’s what that’s, what i’m doing, but i think fundez sorry, but i think fundraisers arm or, like, extroverted and so they’re seeking mohr collaboration than the people on the finance side of the same age, even well, i think you could also just very clearly make the argument that inherent in the development role is a focus on relationships that is part of that role within the organization that doesn’t exist as much on the finance side. Okay, all right. So you yeah, and so yes, certainly job responsibilities on the way the two the two sides are organized and what their purpose is our butt. And so i think as a result of that, you get personalities that are different in the two different teams. All right? I don’t know you. Know you don’t agree with the personality theory now that we agree that degree of that, and you’re back in the report when we get into the recommendations, we actually talked about kind of breaking down some of those personality, you know, division’s, like, actually start doing some joint activities, you know? Do you know i’m a big fan of doing something outside of work, a happy hour after work at the finance and fund-raising folks together outside of the workplace, you know, maybe have a drink and start talking about other things besides work once you get to know someone as a person and of course, on the fundraiser saying this because that’s what we do, you know, you go out and you get to know people you learned about their kids, their pets, all that stuff, and it makes that next conversation you have with them at work even easier. So we have to drag the finance people to this happy hour that’s, right? And then stopped them from just talking to each other, right? We have to penetrate their circle. I’m beating up on the, uh okay, small organizations, let’s give that damn small organizations a lot. More potential well, depends how you want to describe it. Small organizations are a lot more collaborative. That’s, right? Yeah. We found that there’s a significant difference between large organizations and small organizations in the level of collaboration that’s happening. We also theorized that a large contributing factor to this is that in the smaller organizations you have smaller staff, and so people are forced to collaborate, you know, there’s fewer people to get the job done. A lot of organizations, people may wear multiple hats or, you know, play different roles in the organization. So there’s a hot a lot higher level of interaction, there’s, more frequency of interaction on and a lot of time people are, you know, just physically located closer together. And so whether you know, if the small organization and only has a single office or small office space many times, these finance and development individuals responsible for those roles are physically closer to each other. And so there’s a lot of a lot higher level of interaction that leads to more collaboration. That makes a lot of intuitive sense. But i think it’s important to point out, you define smaller organizations as less than ten million dollars, right? Listen, krauz million annual revenue. So we’re not talking about necessarily tiny shops where it’s two or three people, and obviously there more collaborative than bigger organizations. But, you know, a ten million dollar annual revenue that could have dozens of employees that’s, right and that’s a good point there, not there not, you know, five or ten person shops, but at the strategic planning level on the less than ten million dollar organizations we saw a lot hyre interaction in the strategic planning processes and the budgeting process is and, you know, kind of the key processes for each role. And so we also saw smaller staff size, and so their just was a lot higher level of interaction required to get things done. And so, you know, there’s kind of a necessity there for these for these roles to interact more and there’s more opportunity from to do so as opposed to above ten million. There started to be, you know, significant layers within the organization that lead to inflation. Right? Right, rich. Anything you want to add about the small versus large organizations? No, i think it’s pretty much what dan said. Where? You know, if you have a smaller office, you’re gonna bump into people in the hallway more, and then, you know, you’re not you’re not divided by department as much, you know, there’s, not a finance department over on floor four and the fund-raising department on floor three, when you’re not even a ten million dollar zorg, you’re probably all in the same office and you do see each other in the break room and everything in those again hi. Always go back to the human interaction. That human interaction is what really breaks down those silos. Also reporting structures. No smaller organization like that have fewer vice presidents. So teams are more cohesive because they’re clustered together. Yeah. All right. So we got some problem areas, you know, lying around like goals and priorities. Language, metrics, personalities, let’s. Move to the positive now and start identifying some opportunities for ah, making things, making the world a happier place. So this is not a boxing match between fund-raising and finance. Rich want to stay with you? What? What? What’s. Ah, let’s. Talk about the social ideas first since you already touched on that. Yeah, i mean, definitely social ideas. It’s. You know, finding ways to get more human interaction there, and you’re like you’re saying, you know, dragging the finance folks out to happy hour in a lot of them may not want to go to that happy hours. So maybe start with a brown bag lunch, you know, hat at happy office, everyone gets in the same room, bring your own lunch. Um and, you know, watch a movie, you know, just talk about something else. Just start to get those interactions to start anyway. That you can do it. Andi, andi, you have to keep pushing that, you know, so that that would be not maya. Number one tip. Okay? Yes, i like. I like the social ideas, too. That’s. Why? I was i was glad you mentioned it, but we could be more formal to some training. Right? Some basic training. Dan that’s, right? Yeah. You can really structure your onboarding process and offer training to, you know, cross training between the two different departments to facilitate the interaction too. You know, in increase that cohesion between the two teams to work toward the joint mission of the organization. And that could be, you know, it’s simple. As modifying our onboarding processes to have, you know, an explanation and as part of those processes of what the different departments do, what their goals are, kind of what they’re key processes are, and it could even advanced something where there might be a periodic schedule training where one department will train the other one. And you know what they do, how the reporting works, how their systems work, or even just a collaborative meeting that’s on the calendar every month or, you know, every other week or however frequently it might be in order to keep each each other aware of what’s going on within your respective department so that you’re kind of synchronized on on what’s going on and what the priorities are across the organization and maybe in in orientation, we can have a day or so, you know, whatever, where the fundraiser goes over to the finance department spend or is at least onboarding by someone in finance, and so from day one we’re getting and empathy for what’s happening on the other side, right? And making sure that you understand how your processes are, you know, feed into the processes of the other departments. So for fund-raising maybe that’s gift entry and understanding how you know, downstream that goes into the accounting system and how that kind of goes through the financial reporting process. So you understand what you’re doing, it directly impacts the finance department and the reports that they produce and on the finance department side an accounting, understanding the gift solicitation process and what it takes to get that money in the door and entered into your c r, m or whatever your dahna records system is on dh, then how that gets to you in accounting. So you understand that full process because nobody really operates in a vacuum, so we’re really making sure that you connect the dots between the organizational department. Dan was a part of the tension i thought i read that finance doesn’t understand the need for spending money on relationship building. Yeah, it definitely can be a challenge to understand why you would spend resource is on something as abstract it’s relationships that that’s definitely a story that resonates more with some than it does others for accountants and finance related in, you know oriented individuals, you want to be able to sew direct outcomes. For resource is use their money spent and its hard to quantify that whenever you’re saying you’re investing in relationships. But you know that. But that is required to cultivate relationships with donors that will ultimately lead revenue in the front door. And so there is a return on that it’s, just very hard to quantify that through report, you know, through the traditional financial reporting process. So it can be hard for to rationalize and justify spending funds or resource is in that way. But i think that through collaboration, that story can be told jointly from the department of, you know, development, narrating kind of the relationship side of that and helping them finance to quantify what the return on that is and communicate that out. Do either of you know our master’s programs in if non-profit management brake, bringing these these two department’s together and helping people with a finance background understand mohr of fund-raising and vice versa? Do you know if that’s happening at the but the degree level or certificate level? I don’t know if it’s happening at the degree level. I do know that there are sort of think it’s available for non-profit management and leadership, that tight kind of the executive roles, the finance rolls, the development rolls, some degree the volunteer roles together for people that are enrolled in that program, to give people kind of three hundred sixty degree view of the organization. I don’t know that the intention is specifically for collaboration, but it is too kind of enhance the literally of the pro dispensing the various areas so that they can be effective leaders. Yeah, okay, i mean, i hope that’s going on we have meteo thie only degree i have is a law degree and i don’t have a certificate on in-kind classically under credential to even host the show. I don’t know what somebody’s looking like in front of me six years ago. I don’t know what happened. Ah, all right. Isa dan, you start of ah alluded to this. Talking about the budget let’s jump over to rich. We can work together on our budgeting. Yeah, most definitely eye on me and i touch on this earlier little bit is, you know we have these different priorities and these different metrics that were that were held accountable for in both departments on and i think, instead of starting at that point, which is where most budgets get put together, the fund-raising side says, we need this in the finance side says, well, i got all these departments say they need all this stuff, taking a step back and going to that joint goal setting and budgeting as step one look at the look at the big bucket first and then break out into your department’s and trying to figure that out. I think some of the frustration we heard a lot in the in the open ended answers of the survey was, you know, fund-raising sango finance just gave us this number to go fund-raising it doesn’t really mean anything. They just pick the number out of the sky, it felt like and i’m sure finances saying the same thing, you know, who are these fundraisers that are just throwing these numbers at us? You mean? And so if you just take a step back and out of that silo and do that joint gold setting and budgeting, i think that everyone knows where the where the basis is, and then we break and do and figure out our, you know, our specific goals from there, and then come back together again to make sure that those makes sense for everybody. So it is it’s really a three hundred sixty degree ah process there on again, just another one. Another way to break us out of those silos. And i think that’s going to increase the collaboration greatly when you understand what the other side is struggling with, then you do a much better job of making sure your data clean, making sure your data is getting to them in a way that they need, and then everything just flows better. Have you had any feedback on the survey that it’s stimulated conversations, or we used it as a way to start? Well, that’s a stimulating conversation, it helped bridge this gap. Any feedback like that way, actually have our vp of marketing test that gerard has some really good friends in the industry, and he talked to one of his fundraiser guys, and he said they took the report with the his counterpart on the thunder on the finance side and they went out to lunch and just talked about the report, and they said it was one of the best conversations that they’ve ever had in, like, ten years. So we are getting really good anecdotal evidence that it just it gives you something to talk about, something to start with and then go. Okay, so how how do we match against that? Are we doing better? We doing worse? Who? Where can we improve? You know, it’s sometimes easier to have at least something in common that you’re talking about. And then, you know, again, break down those by-laws that’s, outstanding that’s, a that’s, a that’s, a grand slam. I hope some listeners will. But, you know, we hear this first and then bring it to the people that can help start to start the conversation. You know, listening to this you can get the study at abila dot com slash collaboration study and abila is a b piela abila dot com slash collaboration study. Yeah, i mean, it’s, you know, it’s, great to hear. Okay. Glad you got that kind of feedback. Excellent. Um we’ll see what else we can let’s drown. Another opportunity, dan let’s, go to you, cem cem, shared terminology we can we can put together, yeah, something that could help, and it can also kind of jointly work with the train and onboarding is to create a reporting in metric, so we called chee cheat, and that is just a place where, you know, both departments can kind of see what the critical metrics for each department are, how they’re being used, kind of how they’re derived and then what? The important reports that are being generated for stakeholder consumption for public use, whatever the case may be, basically, what the story of the organization that’s being communicated is through reporting so you could make sure that you’re both on the same page, that you’re being consistent what’s being reported on dh really, i mean both from a practical point of view to make sure that, you know, i know boardmember you’re not telling two different stories to your board and also from a community and mission point of you to make sure that you’re really making the most out of the data that you have out of the stories the organization have, that you’re effectively communicating the missions so that you can raise the most and really, you know, put your best foot forward as an organization for your mission that sounds like a cz much as the the the outcome of that, that that that deliver a ble will have value just the collaborative process of putting it together together. We’ll have value. Absolutely. We’re gonna work together. We gotta define what are unknown terms are to each other and things like that’s going to start the conversation, right? You have to be able to communicate effectively internally before you can communicate externally. Okay? All right, rich, we’re going to wrap it up, which is just like, a minute or so. You have some opportunities around software integration. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Integration was another one. And, you know, we definitely go deeper into the into the report on that. But we ask, you know, how important was integration, you know, to to the finance and fund-raising quotes and we saw some interesting things there, including it seemed the younger the person was, the more they wanted integration, which, you know, you would would would make sense. Millennials have had their lives integrated online forever, so they’re very much in the integration some of the older boomers, ah tended to be a little more skeptical of of integration. So there’s definitely some stuff to teo look at their what dan and i found on the integration pieces that there might be some fear around integration about, oh, that’s, our data and i don’t know if i trust, you know, a machine to actually move the data correctly. I’d rather do it myself manually. So i think we need to do a lot of training on dh showing folks that that that software integration, you know, data going from your finance from your fund-raising software to your finances are and actually save a lot of time can actually save a lot of double entry on and and and keep your data very clean. So i think that’s something that’s gonna take a little time for people to get comfortable with it. That’s rich dietz, director of fund-raising strategy at abila also dand murphy, product manager for was it micro integrated processes fund accounting and my pea it’s? It might be. Might be. I got it wrong in other words. Okay, we’ll stick with that. Might be also it abila gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you, my pleasure. Coming up next is your modern digital team first, pursuant and crowdster one of pursuance tools is prospector uses your existing data to find high priority potential donors in your data were not goa is now on external scan using the database you’ve already got, and that helps you focus your time on those donors or potential donors who are most likely to upgrade their giving you focus more time you could be more efficient, you’re going to raise more money. That’s, the prospector tool at pursuant dot com crowdster we know them for easy to use peer-to-peer fund-raising sites that you get on crowdster are easy to put up easy for you in your management of the campaign. Easy for your donors to navigate. Easy for the networks that your donors are bringing, too your campaign all very simple to use and also good looking sites, you’re volunteers going to be impressed. So will, what am i trying to say? You’re volunteers going depressed and so are the people that they bring in their friends, their networks that bring into your campaign crowdster dot com now tony’s, take two. I’ve got a new non-profit radio promo riel there there are interview clips and some stand up comedy clips and also how to follow the show. I understand one hundred percent that you don’t need to know how to follow the show, you’re already you’re here, but what’s he talking about i understand that, but you have friends, you have co workers you have colleagues in in either in your office or in other non-profits they need non-profit radio there yearning thirsting, they’re hungry. Please satiate them, feed them, quench their thirst. They need to know non-profit radio please share that promo reel. I’d be grateful. The video is that tony martignetti dot com and it’s also on youtube where my channel israel r e a l tony martignetti thank you that’s tony’s, take two here are mr mclaughlin and michelle egon from non-profit technology conference on your modern digital team. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference. We’re in san jose, california, at the convention center. My guests now are misty mclaughlin and michelle egon. Misty is responsible for organizational development at jackson river llc, and michelle is deputy director for marketing and engagement at the natural resources defense. Council ladies, welcome. Thank you, tony. Thank you. Pleasure. Pleasure to have you before we get to your workshop topic, i have to shout out the ntcdinosaur swag items for the for this interview, which is from every action you’ve got build the world you want lookbook and postcards built the world you want from every action. And one of the postcards defines what it do good or is a dreamer and a doer. So we’re gonna add this to the swag file, which is very well organized. Throwdown. They’re well organized. All right. Okay. Seminar your workshop. Your program was all about the modern digital team bilich digital program. That works show. What are you organisations sometimes not getting quite right about there. Internal digital team. Well, i think for us, we were really struggling with how teo integrate digital into the strategies where we were a very print centric organization, actually. And making that transition teo a digital organization, was it natural for us? When did that sort of start? I joined the n r d c two years ago. I think i think it’s been in the works for a while. Ever since. People have been talking. About digital, but it just wasn’t getting traction until we had a significant leadership support to do it. So that was about two years ago. We talked about the importance of leadership. Yeah, it’s going to trickle down from the top. Well, it’s helpful when they are supporting change happen. Misty. Welcome back. Thank you to non-profit radio. Thank you. What would you like to add, teo? Sort of our overview. What? What, what? Why do we need this session? Well, nrdc is an interesting example. They were sort of a case study that we looked at in detail with michelle. They’re interesting because there are giant organization with a pretty large budget, but they still have the same kinds of challenges in terms of integrating digital. Even in twenty sixteen, even after the web has been around and maturing for the last twenty years, they were having some of the same challenges we see with organizations of all shapes and sizes doing all kinds of work that it’s really hard to transition from a kind of print heavy direct mail program into the new digital era and to adapt to all of the channels and all of the changes. That comes so fast in the way that we work now. All right. And the conversation we’re gonna have about having this high high efficiency digital team applies regardless of how many people are on your team. So it’s just two people or if it’s forty or fifty still applies? Yes, yes. Okay. Excellent cause we got small and midsize shop listening and some may have very large teams, but most probably have pretty small digital teams. Yes, made. And they may have other responsibilities, too, like marketing communications guests, including the print work, perhaps. Okay, where do we start? Well, i think the frame for our session is an interesting one. Of course i say that, but because i think that for a long time, especially at conferences like ntcdinosaur talk about best practices were really we’ve been talking about channels and tactics in tools that when you talk about digital it’s been a lot of, like, what should i do on social media or what are the top ten things that my website needs to do? And with the session, we sort of said, you know, there’s, lots of ways to get strategy, what we really need to be talking about now is a methodology for how you adapt to the changing times. Things are not going to stop changing. At this rate, you’re not going to stop being asked to be responsive, to be integrated across all your channels. Tohave consistent messaging, in fact, going to be pushed to do that more and more so, we talked about a digital of digital first approach to how you do communications, not just your web channels or your social media channels, but all of your communications in an organization really radically changing the way that you do work to be digital first data. Our native digital. Yeah, yeah, so it’s about ways of planning, ways of thinking about what your audience needs, ways of doing listening. So you’re responsive to what you’re actually hearing from your supporters that they want, and you’re kind of taking your messages to them in the places that they are. They are versus where you want them to be. Exactly. Okay, so there’s a lot to break this down. Hyre how do we know what channels will be best for our constituency now? I know that obviously varies from organization. How do we assess? Where is this a listening campaign? When you start with them how we figure out where should wear, we should be putting our focus because that’s where the you want to talk to arm that’s a great question. So one of the things we really focused on in the session was about becoming a measurement and data driven organization. Do you hear a lot about that? Let’s write a lot about that. How do we become one? How do we? Well, one of the things that digital gives you is a lot of tools for seeing what’s working and what’s not working in the channel that your guardian, we we talked a ton about sprawl. So, michelle, maybe you want to comment on when you got to nrdc, how many digital properties were you dealing with? I’m quite a few like, i think we had collectively over one hundred, like thirty six different microsite, sixty different and our dc twitter handles, so i think the first step that we were talking about is really taking an inventory of what’s happening because i think often times with lack of ah focus strategy mohr is better is what often prevails. And so starting with taking an audit to see how many do you actually have? Seems to be a good first step to getting digital first and making sure that what you’re doing has perfect purpose and could be measured. Okay, how many do you have? All right, that doesn’t take too long. But then how do we start? It depends who you are. Come out there, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. And it’s still emerging. It’s like an amazing archaeology dig for how many properties we have? Because because it’s, an organization that has a lot of funding and lots of passionate people who want to get the message out there and you, khun, start a blogger’s started microsite and capture that work. Ok? And then all of a sudden and argast he’s name is on it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, exactly. But the person who did it leaves and it’s still out there and no one’s taking. Then how do you manage this inventory? Curate your inventory of what you’ve got. How do you decide? What’s what’s. Most important. What? What? Less important and what shouldn’t even be done anymore. How do you do? You make those? Well, i can talk about specifically what we did at n r d c and so what? What we ended up doing as we we collected all of the sights, and we focused down teo. Really? Just the sites that talked about our issues directly and shut down all the other sites that were random brand them sites that were being run by other it’s. Gotta be it’s. Gotta be mission related, right closely. Mission relieved. Right. So that’s the place to start. I mean, not start. But at this stage of the process, yeah, how close is closely related? Is it? Yeah, that was the first. So the two was, is it mission related and how much traffic? How many people are coming to it? And then we looked at that and developed a strategy for how to merge it together and get more focused. Okay, just say anything one at there? Well, one of the things that i think kept coming up and having this conversation is that they’re all these kind of moments in the life cycle its life cycle of an organization that you can do this. So if you’re rolling out a new website, it’s a great time to inventory everything and go from this kind of sprawl approach to your digital ecosystem to something that’s more like planned growth, where you’re rolling things in your consolidating, you take that opportunity to really do it right and to pull in so that you can really align what you’re going to be doing in an ongoing basis with the actual staff and resources and budget that you have to do a few things really well. Okay, where are the other opportune moment website? There are many, so getting new leadership in the organization is a great one in energy sees case it was driven by a rebrand, although, as michelle said, you know, they’re probably better moments a website is a better moment to do that because you can really get into the meat of the issues of the organization and assess what’s really aligned with where we’re going rolling on a strategic plan sometimes it doesn’t even have to be something so giant like you might have a security attack that makes you realize you have all of these websites out there that aren’t being properly maintained and secured. Someone said an adwords campaign, you know, something that worked out really well or a terrible fund-raising year, any of those things can be catalysts for having the conversation about how to pull back on what you’re doing and really see what’s working. Another thing that came up in the session today was even a news moment, so if you’re if you were issue is particularly highlighted in the news. That’s a great time toe look and assess about how how you could do more with that. All right, in the instant you want to be reacting? Yeah. You wanna be seizing that moment right after that? Yeah, exactly if you capitalized on the headlines. Right. Okay. Okay. All right. So those are some opportunities. Where do we go after we we found opportunities. Now that what? Help me along here. It’s. A big process. Yeah. So there are a lot of things that that you want to do over a period of time. One of the things that i think is really useful. Communicate can cream communiqu o p a team a couple. Of years ago did a really thorough study of non-profits non-profit digital models across the spectrum. So large organisation, small organizations, people in a lot of different sectors, and they came up with these four models of digital governance. I won’t go into all of them, but they’re basically ways that digital programs are structured inside of an organisation to keep this sprawl from happening. And there are some model that lead to everyone just going off and doing their own thing, and you get a very, very fragmented brand presence. Where is there other models that were kind of seeing in this digital first world really work well? Toa have some centralized governance and to allow digital to kind of drive a communication strategy, but where you capitalize on the talent and the ideas of people across the organization to contribute to having a really rich digital presence and that’s, what in r d c is trying to implement, right? That was a communiqu, copia, communiqu opiate, yet is a digital teams report. You can actually see it a digital teams dot or ge it’s. A great set of resource is. Let me ask you, michelle, about maybe having to drag some people along who are not accustomed to being digital natives and having communications be that way. How do we get buy-in from the reluctant members of our team and we have had to have a lot of conversations and and education just talking about, you know, how it’s different, why it’s valuable? How it’s going to help their work? How you know, in a digital world just writing something and hitting publishes only the first step. Then you have to figure out how you’re promoting at how you’re getting it out to different audiences and building that engagement lupin, where you’re sending people so it’s it’s ah, we found through conversations has been the way that we can make the most progress and bringing people along now imagine having leadership but leadership buy-in is valuable, right? I mean, if the leaders air involved and engaged, then it’s going be a lot easier to bring your team members along. Yeah, i think i think the leadership is is a very valuable and helping to instigate it and tow help make it happen, but i think that the buy-in really comes. From the people that you’re working with and doing the work so the leadership provides the permission to have the conversations, but then really working with the people in our organization to help thumb understand is the thing that’s actually making the change. Okay, okay, mr let’s, follow on something that michelle just mentioned. What are some of the advantages of doing it this way? What? Why? Why shouldn’t be thinking digital first that’s a great question. I got one out being up thirteen minutes. Excellent, excellent question so there are a lot of advantages. I think that the truth is that digital staff right now at all different kinds of organizations, they are burnt out non-profit people have burned out digital staff are being asked to respond twenty four hours a day, seven days a week in an environment that is always on, and they’re almost all doing it, even it very big organizations, even for nrdc, they’re understaffed, they don’t have the people that they need to be able to operate and as many channels tto learn new channels to be responsive to what they’re hearing, to do the measurement and then to try to go throughout the organization and educate all of the people who really need to be learning from what’s happening online. So the operating in a digital first way kind of gives you a framework for prioritizing for making decisions. For aligning resource is in capacity with the actual budget that you have, and for stopping doing some things which i think is sometimes the biggest challenge, that there’s so much opportunity. It’s really hard to say no. And as internal stakeholders and organizations get smarter, they want more from the digital presence. They want to see themselves able to be reflected in their work, able to be reflected in all of these different places. But there’s, not always the r a y on that, particularly for small budgets. So this gives you a way of kind of going and saying, what should we be doing? How do we invest right in our communications capacity period? Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist market of eco enterprises charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. And of course, we’re talking about digital first doesn’t mean digital only, right? So we’re not abandoning our traditional channel that’s, exactly, right? No, we’re acknowledging that all of those channels work together and they have to work together. Where is if you kind of stick with the old way of communicating something that’s really offline first and digital as an afterthought? You’re never going to align those messages across channels because the channels air so different. Where is the digital gives you the ability to really learn as you’re going along and into informed all of your communications by doing that planning and concert together? Michelle, you’re doing a lot of nodding and teo, anything mr was just, yeah, i just that i agree. And i think because the digital is such a different way of consuming information that if you’re not approaching that first in your thought process for how you’re getting those messages out, then you’re really losing on the opportunity. Yeah, okay, okay. Do we have measures, mr? You brought up? You know, r o i and sometimes how difficult that can be. You mentioned for small organizations, but but even small or not how do? We start to a year later, prove to our teams and our leadership that this transition to digital first has been worth it. Well, i think introduce. He is a great case study in this area. Do you want to mention some of the i’ll set you up, if you want, okay, so michelle worked great team, just like this on the way over here, like you said, okay, now get out of the park. So michelle, i’m going to to michelle’s horns, she doesn’t toot our own horn nearly enough so she’s just gone through a very rigorous two year process, which is which is still very much under way of kind of going top to bottom to align all of the components of the communications program. So starting with a rebrand, then working through a website redesign that was really used to focus in on the issues and to look at all of that digital sprawl and rein it in into a a cohesive set of properties than to look at the social strategy and to kind of make sure that their organizational structure all of their processes, in fact, like all of the relationships inside of the organization, were sort of set up to be able to support the strategy that they were trying to achieve. So we talked about a couple of case studies. One is the website that’s rolling out and some of the early gains that you’ve seen, but also some of the social gains that you’ve seen in the last year just organizing around this model for talking aboutthe work that nrdc does, yeah, so i would say specific to your question, with the metrics so we really just with the content component alone starting teo deliver at consistent stream of content that looked at a narrative arc to make sure that we weren’t just, you know, act on this act on this act on this, but creating a story over a year we grew every social channel and we ing increased our likes and shares buy it over a hundred percent just within facebook. Yeah, so huge just by again, and no advertising dollars spent just really looking at how we were playing our content. Now, aside from the likes of i’m particularly interested in the engagement, the real engagement patrick’s not what? What else should we be? Looking abila engagement way measure that that’s a great question. I feel like that’s the next step for you guys? Yeah. Okay, i’m gonna stop saying your questions. Great. They’re all great time, everyone. Hee, i have to take whatever i get it so it doesn’t come off. You’re being a particular general. No. Okay. Real metrics, not vanity metrics. Yeah, we’re looking well. I think that a year ago you were looking at vanity metrics, right? It was. Like all we could really measure was reach s o it was our people even seeing the stuff in the first place. Now i feel like you’re you’re kind of in the process of moving towards metrics that air about what are people doing with what they see and that the next frontier, in my opinion, is and how? What? How does what they’re doing? Lead teo long term stepped engagement over a period of time, particularly in the fund-raising and an advocacy space. Would you agree with that? Yeah, i agree, you say long term stepped engagement, so people moving from a growing awareness of the issues which education and awareness is actually one of the major components, or what in our dcs trying to do, they’re trying to build environmental awareness across a number of issues so likes and shares are really important for them that’s kind of a cz much as you’re going to get in the way of measuring oppcoll issue awareness. But then there’s how awareness translates into activism and two donations and tio engagement with a particular set of issues. You want to say anything more about that? Yeah, no, i mean, i it’s. Something that we need to develop because i think part of the challenge for us is that we were doing all of these things and very isolated ways and s o our membership, a digital presence was really, you know, it was the fund-raising and it was growing members, but that was different than advocacy for sending out action alerts to sign a petition on something so we’re bringing those together, and i think those softer metrics are we’re seeing a trend, the hypotheses that since those air going up, we’re getting more petition signed, we’re getting more members were increasing our dollars, but we don’t have the concrete percentages yet that, like true engagement metrics to prove it out. So that’s, your next step, okay? Yeah, okay, yeah. You want to say some more, mr ko, yet we still have a few more minutes together. What have we not talked about around you’re building this high performing digital team murcott you have a whole session way have hours of content of that carried away. All right, so i think one of the things that we spend a lot of time on and actually we did a survey in preparation. For for the session, you can see some of the survey results and also some of the q and a that we did. We took questions and we answered them in a narrative format you can look at jackson river dot com will post that they’re after the conference, but people wanted to talk about hiring and recruiting digital staff. And so what we put out there, what we posited in the session, that’s that you know, you need to think about getting those digital capabilities that you need from a mix of in house and vendors and contractors, freelancers, and that everybody needs a pretty wide variety of skills. Twenty years ago, people needed the web master and you were trying to make all website. It didn’t even have to be a good website. We’re not there anymore. You actually need a ton of different roles. You need campaign strategy. You need front and development any back in development. Project management, typically digital director of some sort. And the organization someone playing that role. You need user experience, you need to seo expertise. I could go on and on and on social management. A lot of the time organizations. Are still doing that with one person, but that is an impossible expectation if you do not supplement that those generalised skills with specialist skillsets from outside the organization or you cultivate internal talent that might exist in little pockets and other parts of the organization that can support your program. Aa one person team is just really struggling at this point to do it. Alone’s not realistic, it’s. Not at all realistic. And everyone on the ground knew that. I mean, i think half the people in the audience were digital teams have one it’s, one or two? Yeah, why don’t you really common? But their bosses don’t know that they don’t know that the skills to manage a social property really different from coding and implementing a website. So tell your boss to listen non-profit radio yes, this is too late for them to come. Tc missed your session. They can listen. Tc conversations. They can listen. This episode of non-profit radio bosses are you listening? Pizza? Open your ears. Look in your eyes. Invest in one of two persons. Digital teams are stuffed stuffing their struggle struggle pompel god’s sake hyre no, i think we’re gonna leave. It there, i give myself the last word, but take it. I was only i was only riffing off what you already. Oh, mr mclaughlin deshele, thank you very much. Thank you, thanks durney thing on our property, being back on the radio for misty’s case is ditigal doing organisational development at jackson river llc, where you can go for the resource that she was talking about. Research that led up to this session. Deshele egan, deputy director, marketing and engagement at the natural resources defense council. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us next week. John kazarian and online auctions. If you missed any part of today’s show, i press you find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world? I’m at a crossroads, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com, and by crowdster, online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay crowdster dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and i agree. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealists took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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Nonprofit Radio for June 19, 2015: Smart Donor Engagement & The Right Database

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Opportunity Collaboration: This working meeting on poverty reduction is unlike any other event you have attended. No plenary speeches, no panels, no PowerPoints. I was there last year and I’m going this year. It will ruin you for every other conference! October 11-16, Ixtapa, Mexico.

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My Guests:

Rich DietzSmart Donor Engagement

Compare what you’re doing with takeaways from Abila‘s study of how donors want to be engaged and how nonprofits engage them. Some methods are on target; others miss. Rich Dietz is Abila’s director of fundraising strategy.

 

 

Michelle ChaplinThe Right Database

What are the steps to select the right database for your organization? Michelle Chaplin is senior manager of online fundraising at PBS. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference hosted by NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, we have a grand to affiliate. Welcome katie artie ninety five point seven fm davis, california while non-profit radio was on the road past two and a half weeks, i stopped by davis. I’m a program director. Jeff executive director autumn i toured the studio and i thank you very much for hosting me. Jeff in autumn and this is the california announcement that i’ve been teasing you about, and there will be another california affiliate coming but for today. Welcome, katie. Artie davis so very glad you’re with us, our newest affiliate. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of encephalomyelitis ridiculous if i had to think about the mere idea of you missing today’s show smart donorsearch gauge mint compare what you’re doing with takeaways from a bill, a study of how donors want to be engaged and how non-profits actually engaged them. Some methods are on target. Others miss rich dietz isabella’s, director of fund-raising strategy also the right database. What are the steps to select the right database for your organization michelle chaplain is senior manager of online fund-raising at pbs, we talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference, hosted by intend the non-profit technology network on tony’s take two, a tribute to rochelle shoretz responsive by opportunity collaboration, that working meeting that unconference on poverty reduction that will ruin you for every other conference. I’m very glad to welcome rich dietz he’s, director of fund-raising strategy at abila he began his non-profit career as director of a youth mentoring program in college. For twenty years, he’s been working in and with a wide variety of non-profit political and government organizations, as well as tech companies, focused on the nonprofit sector. The company is at abila dot com, and he is at rich deets on twitter. Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot, tony. Glad to hear you’re. I’m very glad that you are. Where you calling from college? You’re in austin. All right. Austin is awesome. We just had and to see their non-profit technology conference where you were you there? I was definitely there. It was right in our backyard and actually found it harder to go to the conference when it was in my own backyard than when traveling, decide to drive in every day in austin traffic with us a month. I’m so yeah, i’m sorry. We didn’t meet there, though, but i met a bilich there, but i didn’t see you personally, but next year, you’re going to be there. You think in twenty sixteen? Most definitely okay. That’s san jose, i believe, isn’t it? Yes. I’m very excited because california from california originally lived in the bay area for quite a few years. I’m very excited that i just spent ah, weekend half moon bay. Beautiful. Yes. Very nice round the coast. Very, very nice community. Okay, rich, this donor engagement study. Why? Why do we need such a study? Well, we we did the study for a couple reasons. One we were looking at the industry and we seen way saw a bunch of other studies out there that talk to donors or maybe talked organizations and was trying to get this whole idea of why donors give you know what? What motivates them to give what makes them feel engaged? And we found that there was a lot of studies that looked at one or the other. But there weren’t studies that looked at both groups as a whole and then compared them to see if there was any differences, overlap, commonalities or actually holes in that and some of our concerns around that was, you know, fifty seven percent of donors each year are leaving organizations, you know, donor attrition, you know, we also see seventy four percent of non-profits admits that they don’t use donordigital to make program decisions on dh, that sort of, you know, concerns us a little bit, so we wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that. So we created the study, the donor engagement study, it was a survey of both donors, a cz well, as non-profit organizations we ask them a number of questions to find out preferences on engagement, so we asked the non-profit how do you think not, you know, donors want to be engaged with, and then we asked the donor’s, how do you actually want to be engaged with and then compared those and found some really interesting commonalities and some very, very interesting differences that attrition rate that you mentioned that we’ve had the other guest mentioned that seventy four, seventy five percent of donors leave an organization. Each year that’s, that’s startling it is startling in striking and and the way i usually tell people how startling it is. Let’s say you had one hundred, donors donate today in five years on ly one of those donors is still donating the organization that should scare you. And that should keep you up at night. Ninety nine percent over five years. Well, no, no, i’m saying it is the year over year, seventy four percent every year you’re leaving? Yes, yes. So after five years on ly one of those hundred still still don’t. Okay, so we could call that ninety nine percent attrition over five years over, but yeah, my gosh, yeah, alright, neverthought about it longer than okay on dh. How did you select the non-profits and donors to survey? We actually went to a research firm called ed research stuff just to make sure that we weren’t biased and how we we don’t want to just select our clients or just not our client. So we went to aa research company called research on and they did it all using, you know, the highest statistical standards. Ninety five percent plus confidence all of that fancy. Stuff that i don’t understand everything about. But, you know, i i leave that for smarter people, okay? Confidence intervals. I remember those confident from college statistics, like if you had ninety six percent confidence that’s, actually not very good, as i recall from i don’t know what i’m saying if no, no, i didn’t mean if this study had ninety six percent. I mean, in general, if one has ninety six percent confidence, as i recall from college statistics that’s not even very high, you want to be like ninety eight or ninety nine percent? I’m not imputing the abila study way haven’t gotten into yet there’s nothing to impute. All right, so you have some excellent takeaways, which we want to leave listeners with remember our our audience is small and midsize non-profits and they are certainly struggling with that kind of attrition, and we’re interested in the the commonalities, but also the misalignments in the disconnects between what donors are saying they would like or believe they’ve got and what non-profits believe they are doing or believe they ought to do so that that’s where we want to, we want to focus on these your your your first takeaway is that basics and fundamentals are very, very important most definitely in this is this was one of just one of the findings i was very excited about because i’ve been preaching the fundamentals and getting back to the basics for many, many years, as i’ve been consulting and teaching and training across the way, in fact, i have a master’s in social work, so i’m a social worker by trade and something we learnt about social work school is mathos hierarchy of needs, which which i’m sure most people on the caller are very familiar with and massive marchenese says, you know, you have to have your basic needs met before you can move up into higher level things, you have to have food and water before you even care about friendship or, you know, confidence or or anything like that. And when i found working with non-profits is it was very similar in that they need to focus on the basics first and then move up the ladder there and see what i mean by that is you need to focus on your website, email marketing your donor process. You know how you move a donor? From an email all the way through the donation process, actually becoming a donor, and you need to focus on that first before you get into things like peer-to-peer fund-raising and social media and and all of that stuff on so we found in the study is going back and really focusing on those fundamentals and what do we mean by those fundamentals? The number one thing is thinking through that donor flow, thinking through what it is like to be a donor to go through your entire process of a fundraising campaign, and that is from that email they receive to the length they click on to the page, they land on to the donation form and and all the way through the thank you. And then, of course, the follow-up follow-up is so is so important. And so the way we’ve been trying to talking about now, instead of thinking of a holistic donorsearch experience where we’re calling it a holistic donorsearch donor experience because you not only need to think about the entire process, but also the actual individual that is going through that process, i’m going to get much deeper into this when we get into the segmentation, but thinking about who’s doing it is it a major donor is in a major donor who likes polar bears, and that gives you a very different process that you may want to do than a fifty dollar donor-centric frogs it, and we’ll get much more into that as well as a cz we go through another really important thing on the on the fundamentals is showing impact you’ve probably heard other people talk about how important it is to show impact and that the work that you’re doing is meaningful and making a difference will in our survey, we found that the number one thing donors wanted to know about was is the money being used wisely? They also wanted to know if their support is making a difference was another top three concern of theirs on dso. By showing the impact you can do that, the best way to show that impact, of course, is stories story is going to be the best way to show that impact on and that’s again going back to the basics, really crafting some beautiful stories and if you can bring in that visual storytelling on dh, what we mean? By that is, using video using pictures to really tell a great story. Okay, which study done by cloudgood yes, i wanted to point out that the going back a little bit you your premise was that people started that pipeline through an email, but they’re actually maybe multiple ways. They may have found you first on one of the social networks, or they may have found you first through hearing about you from a friend. So even just that entry into the pipeline is going to vary across people. Definitely definitely andi and channel preference is something that would be talking about some of the later findings as well. But that’s that’s, a great point is actually tailoring how they found you in that messaging and in those stories and how you communicate with them is also very important. Yes, okay, thanks, rich. We need to take a break on when we come back. Of course, you and i’ll keep talking about a billa’s donorsearch exgagement study. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. What are the latest travel trains? How khun travel. Be a part of your overall health and wellness plans. This’s william paris, lifestyle travel consultant and your host foreign travel and wellness today. Join me on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time. For travel chat, travel tips and travel news. Update that’s on thursdays at twelve noon eastern time on talk radio dot n y c. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future. You dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight. Three backs to one to seven to one eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping huntress people be better business people. Talking dot com. Hyre welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I can’t send live listener love, spy city and state today because we’re pre recorded by a day it’s a it’s a day before the live show. But of course, live listener love to each person who is, in fact listening live podcast pleasantries so there’s over ten thousand listening and the time shift, wherever it is, whatever device, whatever you’re doing, maybe washing dishes. That was the latest i’ve heard podcast pleasantries to everybody in the park in the podcast and listening that way and our affiliate affections love our affiliates, those am and fm and online stations throughout the country, whatever day, whatever time they they play it and their schedule affections to all our affiliate listeners. And, of course, katy art being our newest affiliate in davis. Richard you from davis or davis area, by any chance you said you said i am not out from from her down the beach, california, down south. But i lived in san francisco for about seven years, okay? Yeah, you did mention bay area. Okay. All right. So moving on, we have we have some disconnect, but between donors and non-profits around frequency of communication. Yeah, and this was one of more controversial aspects of the study. We had a couple people come up to this on this, we actually had somebody accused of malpractice, quote unquote, talking about communication frequency and think they read it slightly wrong, so what we found is non-profit professionals were ten times more likely than donors to feel that they were not communicating enough, so the organization’s felt they should be communicating more donors were saying, you’re doing it just about right? So there’s a disconnect there so some folks thought were saying, don’t communicate as much. Don’t email as much don’t do as many facebook post and that’s, not really what we’re saying, what we’re saying is actually bringing in the next key finding with this one is critical content is more important than frequency or channel, so what we’re saying is it’s not how much you communicate it, how you’re communicating, one is communicating with really good content, so that is giving them the stories the thank you’s showing the impact, the accomplishments that you’ve made that’s, the content that they want, that’s, the content that they don’t mind if. You email mohr of it. The other thing is to customize your content, you’re now non-profits are now being compared to amazon and zappos and these for-profit who are really customizing and tailoring their content and donors air at home going well, if amazon knows that i like books about weaving, why can’t my non-profit know what i’m interested in about the organization wanted? They know that i’m interested in the girls after school program, how come they can’t taylor that content? So we’re saying better content and a little more taylor to the organs to the individual donor, you have some findings on different channels that donors would like to see frequency manage differently on? Yes, definitely, and that was some of the interesting fundez while there was some surprises in there and some things that we have come to expect as any particular ones you’re interested in tony yeah, well, let’s start with email. What, what, what, what? What donors feel about the email channel? What i found about email, what i was actually very happy to see and something i’ve been preaching for a while is that email is actually pretty solid across all groups, andi also way also had at abila we also slice the, uh, the the data by generation, so we slice it out by millennials, gen xers, boomers and matures on, and we found something like email was actually solid across all of those generations, in fact, that matures, which air, you know, sixty five over sixty nine percent of them said that email was a fine way to communicate with them. So when people say that the older folks aren’t on e mail or they don’t like getting their email, we’re definitely seeing a shift change there. Yeah, i don’t agree with that matures or olders how boomers boomers matures don’t like email. I think in a lot of cases you would have the individual would have given their email address to the to the organization. So you’re you’re expressing your preference for that channel that way. Ok. What about direct mail? Us paper mail? What? Your findings on that? Yeah. There’s. Actually. Interesting finding on that. And i definitely want to dig deeper. But we found that, of course. You know, you would expect boomers and matures. About eighty percent of them are saying direct mail’s fine. Ah, funny. That was a little surprising as millennials, eighty four percent of them said direct mail’s fine and my my running theory right now, i don’t have any evidence to back this up yet, but that millennials aren’t getting a lot of mail, so getting something in the mail is kind of a cool thing to them, you know, maybe direct mail might work with millennials. Okay, it’s gonna be something that we looked at a little deeper. I see why you were chuckling when when i ask you about that. All right? They’re not getting enough. Those j crew catalogues on the american apparel catalogs. Just not sufficient. Exactly. Okay, um, all right? Interesting. And then all right, so then, sort of related to that is that people do want content that they believe that that is relevant to them most definitely most definitely, and it really gets into the segmentation. Yes. Okay. And we’re going, we’re going to get teo. We’re gonna get the segmentation. Well, i guess we could, you know, means it doesn’t have to be in the sequence that you and i have been thinking about since we’ve teased it a couple times. Now what? What do we know about segmentation well, other than it’s not really being done quite as well as it ought to be. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And i think if if if you talk to non-profits their pride pretty honest about this in fact, fifty two percent of non-profits felt like they really weren’t using, you know, segmentation as well as they could, and we found surprising. Well, not surprisingly, fifty two percent of donors felt like organizations weren’t taking their preferences into account. And so when i talk about segmentation, that’s what i’m really talking about his donor preferences, how can you build an experience that the donor feels that you have taken their preferences in account that you have taken their interests into account? Remember, like i said earlier, you are being non-profit are being compared to amazon and zappos and all of that now, so they’re getting highly segmented in some of their emails and some of their communications that they’re getting on, and they’re not being segmented and talked to in a very specific way from the non-profits so we really need to do a better job at that that when we found his most non-profits felt that they were using donation amounts as a source of segmentation, but it really dropped off drastically when we started looking at other ways to teo segment. And so what i’d like to suggest to my non-profits is to start with donation amount because, you know, you’re already doing that and then try to add in one or two more other data point, andi, you know, a really easy one to do would be interested. Um, what are they interested in? What have they shown any sort of interest in and a lot of non-profits have this data already on hand, and they might not even know about it. You can go to your email marketing software and look at what links did they click on that they click on a link for the girls after school program? Then they’re probably interested in women’s issues, girls issues, or maybe they even have girls, you know, did they click on red eyed tree frog? And they did click on polar bears so you can actually pull out some of that interest data. So they’re telling you in many ways, on dh, then you can segment further down from there, okay, so we we’ve talked. About age and interest communications channels. What else? Ah well, we mentioned giving him out that’s that’s very standards. That seems very, very standard method of segmenting what else? What else can you recommend? Another interesting one to think about his location on? And i think this one is particularly good for national organisations, organisations that are that are fund-raising or doing things across the country. And the best example that i’ve seen of this in recent years has been the obama campaign. During the last obama campaign, there was a window. There was a new york times reporter. I believe they did it interesting study where he went, and he signed up for all the candidates emails, but he signed up from different parts of the country. And so for the obama campaign, when he signed up in portland, oregon, he got very different emails than when he signed up in south carolina. Portland, oregon. He got emails about forestry, about labor issues down in south carolina. He got very different communications, so just buy the location that somebody’s ass that they signed up for. You can actually start segmenting based on that and making educated guesses on what? Their interest might be, and then you look to your email statistics that they continue to click on those things that you think they’re interested in. Then yes, they are. If not, then you, then you can try something else. Signing up from portland, i would add, thai food should be added to that interest because i had i had the most delicious thing in cycles are really big in portland. Oh, are they? I didn’t see that, but i didn’t see i didn’t see any use cyclists miss that, but i had the most delicious us thai food that i’ve had since i’ve been to thailand and i live in new york city and supposedly we have good restaurants here. But, uh, i have to shout since you mentioned portland pock pocket pook, pook, best thai food i’ve had. It was in portland best us tie i’ve ever had, so i would add thai food to the forestry to the forestry interests in portland. Okay, yeah. What? What about agent? Which, if we don’t have a gin our database wait, how do we get out that that that that is an interest one and that one’s going to be a little bit of a challenge? But i have some ideas that i think might might help broke down, so it is an important one, and we really do want to highlight the age since we did look at this data and we did, you know, at abila we slice it up into the different age groups, you know, millennials gen xers matures, baby what’s up, we found that only three percent of non-profits said that they’re really looking at age on a frequent basis in order to segment, and we saw, as you saw in the channel preference and all that there are some big differences in there. So when you’re looking at age, i think there’s some ways you can get this data, some of this data non-profits may already have if a non-profit has done a walk or a ride or a run or any sort of event like that, they probably asked for a gin order to put them into their age brackets and so that can help get that data right there. Look at any of your past registration on and see if you have that that age data on do you know it could already be there? The other thing is to do a donorsearch on and there’s a lot of good reasons to do. It donorsearch not just for ages, but to actually get into your preferences. I say all the time that you know, when we talk about best practices, a best practice is really just a starting point. You still need to test it and try it out within the organization because you might have very different donorsearch mints than what we’re talking about here. And so by doing a donorsearch way, you can dig deeper into what their bread, you can ask them their channels reference, you can have them. You know how they want to be communicated with how frequently they want to be, commute whatever you want to do in there now. The big problem is surveys of getting people to turn them in. You’ve got to come up with some incentives for them to turn in those surveys, you know you can obviously, give away some chock keys, a t shirt or a bumper sticker or, you know, a discount to your gala, something like that. But in a new idea that i’m seeing a few started to experiment with now is doing some sort of matching grants or matching gift with service. So get of one of your major donors to say anyone who turns in the donorsearch ve i’m going to donate one dollars, two to the organization and letting the donor’s know why you’re asking for this data. The reason you’re asking for the data is so you can communicate with them in the way that they want to be communicated with, you know, letting them know that you know, that they’re overwhelmed with emails and overwhelmed with with direct mail and all that stuff, and you only want to be sending him the communications that they actually wanted, that would be their incentive for filling it out as well. I love that donor dahna contribution match for ah, for each survey we have a donor who will donate a certain dollar amount. That’s outstanding that’s it that’s it gets a cool idea. Haven’t heard that. Excellent. Excellent. Um all right, well, any other, any other suggestion about getting at age for an organization that doesn’t have it? It’s not well, we can. We can move on anything else you got? Yeah, you know that. I mean that i think something is going to develop over over the next six to ten months if any listeners out there come up with some good ideas, please send him in, send amar away because i’m looking for new things to test and try on defy could find new ones. I will let you know as well. Okay. And i’ll remind listeners ah, that you are at rich dietz d i e t z at ridge detail on twitter um, okay, let’s, let’s, move, move on then some other takeaways people love giving right makes them feel very good. It actually makes them feel very good on. And this is one of the interesting ones is the number one way that they felt engaged and connected to an organization was through the act of giving. Volunteering came in a fairly close second on attending events, and doing things like that really had started fell off dramatically. From there people people felt like attending an event wasn’t as engaging as, you know, volunteering or actually donate and on the surface you’re like, okay, that is totally obvious, right? But there’s a couple of key points, you’re one, i try to use this to help non-profits feel more comfortable and asking for money people want to donate, and when they do, they feel really, really good, so you’re actually helping people to feel good, so you’re doing a service for them, you’re not taking their money, you’re giving them good feelings is the way i like to tell us, why not? Provoc dahna very good, very good love that. Okay on you have now there’s a difference among millennials? The number one and two are swapped. Yes, it is, and that was really interesting for us. So millennials number one is volunteering and number two is donating and what’s interesting is this aligns really well with some other research and other discussions i’ve had with folks that air that air looking at millennials is millennials have a very different process, one on how they evaluate an organization and how they engaged with an organization. What they’ll do is they’ll go teo and organizations social. Media profiles to learn a little bit more about them they want to see that you’re really people, they want to see that you’re human. If you have the same sort of corporate speak that you have on your website, they’re they’re they’re probably gone. They’re not even going to engage with me any longer, but if they like what you’re saying on social media, then they’re going to come in and volunteer. If the volunteering goes well, then they will make that donation decision, so it is a very different way on dh really, organizations should be looking at getting millennials volunteering well before they even asked them for for a money which which makes sense if you think about it, our wonder of millennials are telling us that they have they have more money than the rest of us, and their time is scarcer, which would well, i don’t mind their time being scarcer, but if they have more money than the rest of us that’s annoying the hell out of me, that’s what they’re saying way have just like a minute and a half before we have teo to wrap up so let’s uh, let’s just flush. Out a little bit more. We’ve already very touched on this a fair amount, but the differences in engagement around age and generation. Yeah, so that you know what i would recommend for folks to a download the study. And they could do that at abila dot com a b o l a dot com forward slash donorsearch gauge mint study on dh there they conceal the charts and dig deeper into the data. But we did find those very interesting differences and, you know, like i said, you know, you’ve got to take everything like this, aziz, a starting point on, and then you need to test it and try it within your own organisation. Weii brought up a lot of the ones earlier about direct mail and all that. But another one i found really interesting on the differences was on, uh, gifts where’s that i’m looking at my date right here. Rich, we have two that’s. Okay, we have to wrap it up. But you’ve told people where the where the study is and if they want more through, they could get you on twitter at rich dietz which, thank you very, very much. Thank you so much. All right, thanks. My pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Tony steak to and the right database air coming up. First opportunity collaboration. It was a terrific experience. It really kicked us up to the next level. We built out a fund on site, and we have raised two and a half million dollars toward a target first close of five million dollars from delegates at the twenty thirteen collaboration that’s from russ baird, executive director of village capital yusa. There are funders at opportunity, collaboration and the rolls and impact investors, as well as lots of smart people from non-profits opportunity collaboration, a weeklong unconference in x top of mexico for everyone who is working in or around poverty alleviation, lots of people who can help you get your work done. And there’s plenty of free time built in to meet those people, make friends and figure out how you’re able to help each other. I was there last year. I’m going this year. Every session is in a circle. It’s very collaborative. No power points, no plenary speakers. Three hundred fifty people from around the world collaborating. If your work is related to poverty, check it out. Opportunity collaboration, dot net. We had a death in the non-profit radio family. Rochelle shoretz the first guest on non-profit radio to die deshele founded sharks share it, a support network for breast cancer survivors and very sadly, she’s no longer a survivor. It was june first when she died. She was on the august thirty first, two thousand twelve show, and we talked about storytelling and deshele very generously shared her story and story of lots of people that share share. It has helped and worked with my thoughts go out to her family and shark share it and those tens of thousands of women and men that her work has touched. Oh, and i have a tribute video with a link to the show on also the new york times obituaries at tony martignetti dot com and that’s tony’s take two for friday, nineteenth of june twenty fifth show of twenty fifteen here is the next segment, which is also from well from ntcdinosaur as many have been lately. Excellent stuff from the non-profit technology conference here is the right database. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference twenty fifteen were hosted by intend the non-profit technology network in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guest is michelle chaplain, she is senior manager for online fund-raising at pbs and her workshop topic is how to choose the right database for your organization. Deshele welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you thank you for taking time on a busy conference day. Let’s uh, let’s, start with a threshold question how do we know if our existing database needs to be changed? Yeah, absolutely that’s a great question, and i think the first thing is you have to sort of go through the process as if you’re looking to change your database. So first you wantto look att all your current users and what their needs are, what they’re trying to get out of the database and what it is doesn’t do that they wanted to dio, and then you need to bring all of those questions to your current vendor and asked them like, is this something that database really can’t do? Or is this an add on feature that we can pay for? Or is this you know, a custom ization that we can get or do we actually have access to this all along? And we just didn’t realize it. And then you went away like the costs of adding those features to your current database to the cost of switching and implementing a brand new database, which is substantial when you taken implementation, cost training cause and just the time it’s going to take for your staff to learn a new system. How do we filter out when we’re asking these questions in our organization between people just complaining about the database and really having a genuine need that isn’t being fulfilled because lots of people have complaints absolutely way filter out the yeah, the mere complaints on dh sort them out from the woods. Isa really write well and i think it’s really helpful to build requirements document, which is just a family non-technical word for need tohave list and a nice hot list. So you take all of the various rants and complaints and things they want, the database tohave and you divided into things that are real deal breakers like your database is not gonna work. Your users are not going to get what they want without these. Things. And then the nice to have things which, you know, might help you increase adoption. It might make a few people happier, but it’s not going to make or break your database and that’s going to help you kind of narrow down your options. Okay, so people will become more rational if we asked them to categorize between needs and needs and desires. Exactly. Okay, we’re trying to insert some rationality into this whole process, right? Be a lot more strategic and sophisticated. Okay. So then, if we have our we have our requirements document, uh, most vendors are going to be willing to review this with us. Yeah. And generally, when you ask a vendor to present there their database or their system to you, they probably have, like, a put together power point presentation. And i would say, just send them your requirements. Ask them point blank, like, does your system me all of these requirements? If not, then they don’t need to waste their time presenting or your time, you know, giving you this presentation. And when they present to you, ask them tio just do open up a kn example of their database and go through the steps that you, your users, will go through. So you can see what your user experience is. Rather than just getting kind of their standard sales pitch. That’ll save you both a lot of time. Let’s. Take a step backward when you’re talking to your existing provider. How do you sort of position it so that they don’t feel like they’re being threatened, not threatened, but so that they don’t just become defensive and you know, but you, you know, you didn’t identify that is a need years ago, we didn’t understand that that was a requirement of yours, you know, he’s trying to cut through that stuff and just can we get our can we get our needs met, right? Yeah, and i think it’s it’s a matter of, you know, acknowledging the fact that this process you’re going through is a process that you’ve just started and you’re looking at a database and you’re looking what people didn’t need to get out of it, and you’re asking them, like, is this something i could do with the database? You know, because this is a new, like me that has come up or this is a new requirement that we’ve identified that’s goingto be necessary in the future and, you know, most vendors will work very hard and if it’s at all possible to keep your business going your way, you’re asking exactly and understand, and, you know, if they can’t do it, then it’s sort of, you know, it’s self explanatory, why? Why you need to move on? And i think they understand that, like most vendors aren’t going to throw a fit over, you know, you making a reasonable, logical choice that this isn’t the right fit free. Okay, okay, um, so let’s, let’s jump back to dark metoo new potential vendors, are you ah, fan of r f piece for this process or some people are, and some people think they’re overblown and don’t really accomplish very much. I’m i’m a fan of a super simple r f k and what i do is my request for proposal are here my requirements? This is my requirements document the list of need tohave nice toe have stuff. And if your database could do all of my need to have in some of my nice to have that i want to hear from you, okay before exactly pretty simple or yes, compared to many that we’ve all seen exactly. Yeah, because most vendors, they already have their standard product. They’re not going to take the timeto, you know, answer. Accustom are for every single line. Okay, that’s, the that’s, the other side of one of one of the other disadvantages is you’re going not here from a lot of potential vendors who just won’t spend the time answering a lengthy are exactly okay. All right, so what’s, our next step? Well, how do we proceed in this in this process? Yes. So once you kind of have your short list of vendors and you’ve seen their presentation, then you really want to dig in and evaluate those, you know, top three or four vendors. Teo really ascertain whether or not they meet your needs and if if they all meet your needs. Like what nice tohave requirements do they also meat that will help you further narrow your list down. Andi, i for this part, i recommend, like, actually doing trials of everything. And if a vendor won’t let you try out their product and go in and mess around, i would be a little bit wary of that, because then you’re like buying. You know, you’re buying a car without giving it a test drive. So what do you migrate? Just a part of your database into the into each platform that you want to test. Yeah, you can just create some sample data. Are a lot of databases ifyou’re doing their trial portion? They even would come with sample data so you can just play around with the way it exists and just go through a few of your processes, you know, there doesn’t have to be, you know, huge reports generated or anything useful, it’s just you need to be able to see if your users were going to be able to get what they need to get out of it. All right? Dahna no, please, no more. Oh, so then after that, you can just sort of rate the different the different options based on your criteria. So your needs to have obviously, if they don’t meet any of the needs to have that’s a deal breaker, you can stop right there, throw him out and take him off your list. They wasted your time because you’re you asked him that originally exactly hyre they more points they lose right for squandering time? Alright, who’s involved in this process from the organization now that we’re out to the outside potential vendors. So i mean, i think there needs to be like a point person or a project manager who’s doing the implementation. And really, that depends, like, if it’s a small organisation, it could be just somebody with the title of project manager or executive assistant or you, you know, it might be the ceo doing all of this by themselves and then buy-in bigger organizations, they probably have, like, a database implementation manager or an administrator who’s in charge of all the databases who can kind of oversee. So it depends on the size of the organization, but really, one person should take ownership of it, and then they can lease and manage all the relationships with the key decision makers like the cfo, the ceo were actually, you know, signing the checks and then all of the different types of users, the power users who are going in and, you know, stretching the database to its limits every day, the people who maybe, like volunteers using it every so often and then all of the managers and and other people of the organizations who may not ever use the database but need information from it. So, like, your finance officers might need financial reports out of your database, but they don’t actually go in and generate the reports, so we need to talk to them. Tio, do you think the board has a role here or not? Really, i think it really depends on the board and the scope of the project that you’re working on. So if it’s a large like, if it’s your like a financial management database and the board, you know, is looking at the finances of recorder, hopefully and is generating the reports that i think including them in, you know what they want to see in terms of those reports and make making sure that the database meets their needs in that respect on dh then on the other hand, if they’re key decision makers in terms of this, this could be a very large purchase, and they’re, you know, key decision makers in terms of purchase decisions, then you need to be able to show them like this is the best option for organization and why and having that, having that documentation of like this so these air need tohave nice to have criteria and how every single option rates and you’ll get sort of like a clear picture of this is the winner and it’s something that’s easy for them to. Digest and easy for you to sell that yes on dh in large part because you’re showing that you’ve done your due diligence when you can document the process that you’ve been through. Exactly. Okay, thank you for that aggression we were at the stage where we’re testing, we’ve got we’ve got sample data yet, and we’re testing a few alternatives exactly, and then it’s just about going down your requirements document and checking off like every every process you go through everything that it khun dio, you know, all the little nice to have stuff that you’re users may want, but it’s not necessary and, you know, grading those and using those two just rate, you’re different options and again, that’s going to give you a clear winner in fact, there’s a really cool excel spreadsheet, which allows you to do like waiting of your different options, and you’re different criteria, and it gives you a new miracle score for each of the vendors. So you can say whoever has the highest score wins and has the advantage of waiting, so everything is not equal. Exactly because in reality, it’s not all right, what’s our next step now we’ve we’ve selected one, i presume we have a stage where we’ve we’ve chosen one, the chosen one, you’ve hopefully chosen wisely and everyone’s on board because you can straight that you did your own work and and then it’s time to make a plan like this isn’t the end really it’s the beginning of what goes in our plan? S o i like transition plan exactly the implementation plan on dh. I like to start with kind of the end date. So when we want all the users to be able teo, log onto the database and use it that’s the kind of what i start with, and then i work backwards from that until they get to today. So maybe, you know, three to four weeks before the end will be, like the soft launch where our power your users can go in and play with stuff and look at it and maybe, like a month or two before we’ll do that data migration on dh, you know, you just map it out and going backwards until you have today. We’re it’s like that. Everything you have to do right now. Okay. Okay. Let’s. Spend a little time on migration, because that could be very, very messy. We should expect a lot of support from the new vendor in migrating data. So that’s going to be something that you have to consider in your requirements document is how much support do you need to migrate your data? Do you have a lot of in house expertise or you’re going to need full support? And is this new database something that you know your i t team are your in house database experts can figure out and migrate your data into. Or is it a proprietary software that the vendor has to do themselves so that’s definitely something you want to consider while you’re looking at different vendors, what your need is in that respect, another option would be hiring a third party or an external consultant to come and look at your current data, clean up your database and migrated over for you. Yeah, this could be an opportunity to clean up your data. Exactly. Okay, up. Maybe you can include cleanup in the migration support that you get from the from the new vendor. Absolutely. Build that in. Yeah. I mean, just like every time you move your house. You kind of clean out your closet. Every time you migrate your data, you want to think about cleaning it up. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m rob mitchell, ceo of atlas, of giving. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll we need to be very specific. I would think about what’s going to be included in the in the implementation plan that it be in the contract with the new vendor. Yes, absolutely. And most vendors will build that in usually it’s in like a number of hours that they’ll offer in certain packages to work on dahna migration on training, on support on dh, they’re all you know, most vendors will negotiate that with you depending on your organization’s needs. Okay, what’s, our next step now we we’re past the time line. Where are we now? We’ll hopefully you do everything on time, right? If your implementation over schedule, of course it doesn’t. But it’s a it’s an aspiration exactly off the goal. We’re talking in hypotheticals waken weakened dream. But even if not, you know and plan for that in your timeline to, like plan for what happens if everything falls apart and we don’t launch, you know the database on october first if we do it november first. Like how much of a catastrophe is that? What about december first? You know if it’s a cr m and you’re doing your in giving do you really want? Your database to launch on december first so, you know, planning for contingencies like that. But once you’ve gone through the timeline, once you’ve migrated your data over, you’ve gotten your staff trained on it, you know, your users air doing it, you’re getting good user adoption and really including them in the entire process, asking them what they want is going to be a big help to you and getting user adoption. Then you know it’s about just maintaining your database and keeping the support going and keeping your users engaged in using it and making sure it’s still doing what you’re doing is there much of a difference? And you’re free to tell me that it’s obviously the way whether the new vendor train’s just the power users like train the trainers, or whether they should be training all the users does that matter? I think, and and then the trainers would train the lower level users, right? Your internal trainer, i think there’s something to be said with training the trainers. You just want to make sure that you have enough to support your kind of lower level users so they can all get training quickly and also, one of one of your trainers leaves. Do you have another trainer? Do you have a program for keeping that knowledge and house, or will the vendor continue to train people on an ad hoc basis afterwards? So, you know, it’s, just the benefits and risks of having some stuff done in house versus everything done by the vendor, okay? And then, of course, ongoing support critical. Well, it really depends on again your in house expertise and how complicated the databases that i always think of smaller and mid size non-profit because that’s, what our audience is right, they they’re they’re less likely, and certainly they could, but less likely that they’ll have a lot of in house expertise around. Yeah, third base administration and day to day issues. So support is important. Yes, definitely. We still have a couple minutes left. What do you want to share that i haven’t asked you about? Goodness? Or more detail on something immediately, even if we talked about it. But any more detail? Yeah, i mean, i think one thing that we didn’t really have a chance to go into in depth is the idea of hiring a consultant to do all this with you, especially if you are a small organization or even a medium sized organization. You might not have a staff person with the time to do all of this research and, you know, talked all the vendors and go through all the trial periods, and you know, the advantages if you do it with the consultant, you have them come in, they assess all your needs one time, you know, they talked to all your respective users bundle that they already have a really good knowledge of all the different you know, database is out there and how they would fit so they’ll know which vendors to go to, which are the best options, probably in the first in the first place, and be able to pull it in and it’s assess it so you can kind of skip over the decision making their research part and go right into your short list. Where? You know you work with a consultant, teo, analyze the, you know, the top three best fits and they can make, like, a spreadsheet and analyze it and make it so you can, you know, defend it to your board and show that, like there’s, you know, research and due diligence was done on that, you know, it’s more expensive, but it’s off your plate and it’s off your staff’s plate. You could also be value in the consultant evaluating the state of your data. Someone objective who’s not likely to say. Oh, well, you know, there’s this problem in the data, but yeah, we figured out how to work around that. So it’s not a big deal when really, it is a big deal because you have faulty data. You’ve just developed a workaround. Exactly. Yeah, and then they can also come up with strategies for cleaning the data or people you may cos you may want to engage to help you clean your dad up. So it works for you the way you needed tio what’s been the pbs experience. Have have you done database change? We actually went through thiss process about a year ago. We were looking at changing our email marketing system and way kind of went through the first update our needs assessment talked to all the users, went back to our vendor, and they actually made a lot of changes in custom is asians to our existing system so it would meet our needs and, you know, and now there are just a really strong partner, and they’re consistently checking in with us to make sure that databases still meeting their needs. So it it is it really, you know, we didn’t end up changing databases, which saved me a lot of headache personally, and it gave us, like a really strong relationship with our current vendor. Have you had your session yet? No it’s tomorrow at three, ok? Because i was going to ask if you heard of any disaster stories that do you know of any migrations that went badly? Conversions went badly. We know of so many so many. I mean it’s. One of the reasons that i proposed this session is because migrations often happen too fast without enough thought and they end up just blowing up in people’s faces nobody’s happy with the end result and they end up, you know, a year later, after hobbling along with their new database, either switching back-up watching something different into a completely s o i am looking forward to hearing a lot of horse stories tomorrow you expect you expect to hear a good bit, but we could do this all much more strategically and smartly if we have this plan and process that we just talked about? Absolutely. And avoid the heart. Avoid being the next horror story of ntc twenty sixteen. Exactly. All right. Thank you very much. Michelle. Thank you. Michelle chapman, chaplain. Pardon me. Michelle chaplain is senior manager for online fund-raising at pbs. And this is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference. Twenty fifteen. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks to everybody at antenna non-profit technology network loved being at ntc this year. Next week get your emails delivered and did you know that there’s a job called emailed deliver ability specialist also the open movement. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com opportunity collaboration. The world convenes for poverty alleviation. That outstanding unconference that’ll ruin you for every other. Conference opportunity collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Janice taylor is today’s line producer shows. Social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. 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