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Special Episode: POC Underrepresented In Nonprofit Leadership

My Guest:

Sean Thomas-Breitfeld: POC Underrepresented In Nonprofit Leadership

Sean Thomas-Breitfeld

The willingness and skills of people of color aren’t represented in leadership circles. That’s the main message coming out of Building Movement Project’s report, “Race To Lead Revisited.” We visit the report’s conclusions and recommendations with BMP’s co-director, Sean Thomas-Breitfeld.

 

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[00:01:48.24] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. This is a special episode of non profit radio to help you be the change around racism, people of color underrepresented in non profit leadership. That’s the main message coming out of building movement projects Report. Race to Lead Revisited We visit the report’s conclusions and recommendations with BMPs co director Sean Thomas Brett felled, responsive by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot CEO and by dot drives, raise more money, changed more lives for a free demo and free month. It’s my pleasure to welcome to the show. Sean Thomas Bright Felled. He is co director at the Building Moving Building Movement Project. He previously worked in various roles at community change, developing training programs for grassroots leaders and worked in the communications and policy departments where he coordinated online and grassroots advocacy efforts and lobbied on a range of issues including immigration reform, transportation, equity and anti poverty programs. Building movement project is at building movement, or GE, and at B L. D. I N G movement. John Thomas Bright felt Welcome to non profit radio

[00:01:51.64] spk_0:
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:53.33] spk_1:
It’s supposed

[00:01:53.87] spk_0:
to be here with you.

[00:01:54.83] spk_1:
It’s good. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. So why don’t you start by describing the work at Building Movement Project?

[00:02:02.44] spk_0:
Sure, so building movement projects been around for over 20 years, and from our founding we’ve had three main areas of focus. One is what we call movement building, looking at how organizations collaborate, how nonprofit organizations can be part of movements for social change and social justice, and what it takes for organizations and non profit leaders to really be on the forefront of making big leading some big structural changes in our society. We’ve also looked at what we call a non profits and social change or service and social change because we think there is a particular role for human service organizations in bringing about structural and systemic change in our society and that that’s really important to support on. Also encourage organizations like that to get involved in advocacy. Listen to an uplift, the voice and on power of the communities that are being served, and then the third bucket of work has always focused on leadership, so recognizing that leading a nonprofit organization is a very hard job we’ve always looked at What does it take for leaders? But also, what does it take for non profit leadership? Thio really have aligned both the practices of leadership with the values that organizations hold. And so over the last several years, we’ve been particularly focused on issues of race and leadership in non profit organization. That’s what the race to lead work comes out of.

[00:03:41.14] spk_1:
Okay, right? And the This race to lead revisited report is really comparing a 2016 survey for the original race to lead with a 2019 survey for this report. Exactly.

[00:04:04.84] spk_0:
Yeah, so we surveyed people working in the nonprofit sector both in 2016 and 2019 on these issues of race and leadership. So this report race to lead revisited at some comparisons between the findings from 2016 and 2019 to see how the sector’s been evolving

[00:04:55.34] spk_1:
and you did have some new questions as well. We’ll have time to get to some of those, um, you talk about Well, first I got to say, I realize the contrast here I have long white hair and you have short, dark hair. We are. We know in the hair. We are. We’re not similar in hair. My God. Uh, yeah, OK, Sorry I couldn’t help notice. Um, you talk about we’re gonna have fun on non profit radio. I mean, it’s a serious subject, but we have fun nonetheless. So you talk about white advantage in the report versus white privilege? You mentioned white privilege once or twice, but predominantly. Talk about white advantage. What’s the What’s the difference there? What? What? What are you trying to say? A little different than the the more seems more common, you know, white privilege.

[00:05:05.24] spk_0:
Yeah. So what’s the term white advantage? What we’re trying to focus on is some of the structural advantages that accrue to non profit organizations based on, you know, multiple people in positions of power being white. So particularly thinking about the composition of boards and the composition of senior leadership teams. Um, because, you know, I think oftentimes the analysis is very individualistic, right? So, like, there’s an individual white person in the executive director role of the organization that only paints part of the picture on DSO we wanted to have a more complicated and nuanced analysis of what’s actually happened. An organization s O, that it became less about, like, the it one person at the top of organizational hierarchy. And think about it, uh, in a way that encompasses both the board leadership and senior staff.

[00:06:04.44] spk_1:
Okay. And then the structures as well, it seems thio less focused on an individual or individuals and mawr, uh, levers of power and processes policies.

[00:06:27.04] spk_0:
Exactly. And it also became a way thio understand and sort of unpack. Um, how, uh, sort of whiteness of organizations that, like in our sample, right, like, 45% of respondents work for organizations where both more than 75% of the board is white and more than 75% of staff and top leadership are white on. And, you know, I think that for me, that was actually somewhat startling in surprising um, And then we also saw that those organizations tend to have bigger budgets at least was being reported by the staff. Um but then, at the same time, we’re seeing that staff were reporting more negative experiences in those types of organizations compared to organizations with more diverse leadership on both the board and senior staff levels.

[00:07:29.64] spk_1:
And so the overall message that I got from this is that the power remains in boards and at the sea levels of nonprofits, and those are predominantly white. And that and that that really hasn’t changed from 2016 to 2019.

[00:07:35.24] spk_0:
Yeah, that hasn’t well, it’s hard to know because we actually didn’t ask the question in this way back in 2016. But I think that this, um, sort of puts our data in the context of some of the research that board source has done that shows that boards are overwhelmingly the majority of non profit boards are overwhelmingly white

[00:07:59.14] spk_1:
and also not reflecting the communities that they’re serving. Absolutely. Yeah,

[00:08:01.54] spk_0:
yeah, because I think what has happened is that the function of non profit boards very often is less a function of accountability to the organization’s constituency and mission on, because organizations often have a lot of responsibility for fundraising and raising the resource is for the organization to do its work. Um, that as a result of that sort of demand, organizations often have, um, prioritized recruiting from people who holds wealth in their communities and because of racial wealth gaps that tend to be white people

[00:08:41.04] spk_1:
on dhe. That’s recruiting for both leadership and volunteer position board with talking about boards and you make it very clear we’re talking about boards as well as C suite. You know, CEO, executive director level.

[00:08:54.14] spk_0:
Absolutely.

[00:08:56.24] spk_1:
So let’s go into the three. I guess main conclusions that the report identifies first one is that things really haven’t changed that much. We’ve already alluded to it. Things haven’t changed that much in the three years.

[00:09:14.44] spk_0:
Yeah, and you know, I’m not sure how surprising that should be. Um, for our sector. You know, I think the change is often particularly in organizations. When we’re talking about organizations where we’re talking about the composition of the staff, that kind of change is incremental, right? I think that what has shifted is that, particularly in the last year is much more consciousness raising much more awareness on the part of organizations that these imbalances, these inequities exist and needs to be addressed. Um, but recognizing that there is a problem is not the same thing is taking action to address the problem.

[00:10:18.34] spk_1:
So you are seeing mawr alright, consciousness raising awareness. It seems like predominantly because of the diversity equity and inclusion work that Ah lot of organizations have done. But it’s just sort of, you know, I’m I gleaned from the reports, just sort of scratching the surface. I mean, ah, lot of it is trainings that raise awareness, but we’re not seeing much action flowing from that consciousness raising.

[00:10:23.84] spk_0:
Yeah, And so one example of the increased consciousness was that in both 2016 and 2019 we asked survey respondents what impact to their race had had on their career advancement. And, uh, for white respondents back in 2016 roughly half indicated that their race. They recognize that the race had a positive impact on their career advancement. So this sort of classic recognition of white privilege that increased to two thirds of the white sample in 29 so one from half to two thirds. So you know that is e think progress, right? In terms of like people having a recognition and understanding that white privileges riel and that it’s positively the benefits of that privilege are accruing to white people in nonprofit organization. Um however, the same question also revealed that back in 2016 a third roughly of people of color felt that their own race have negatively impacted their career advancement, and that then increased almost basically half off the sample of people of color in 2019. So the increased consciousness is both, you know, I think leading people to recognize the ways that they have been disadvantaged as well as for white people the way that they have been advantaged on DSO. You know, we’re still left with this challenge. This problem. That race is clearly having an impact on people’s advancement. And so it needs to be addressed in organizations in ways that I don’t think training is sufficient. Thio thick

[00:12:04.14] spk_1:
right? But you acknowledge consciousness, raising an awareness that that is the first step. But we have a lot more, a lot, a lot further to go. I mean, you know, it’s just

[00:12:14.61] spk_0:
absolutely

[00:12:50.24] spk_1:
widely recognized that, you know, you don’t just do trainings a couple of trainings over six months and then check your box. You know d e. I is covered. Let’s move on, Thio. Let’s move on to the gala. You know it za process. It’s a journey, you know we’ve had other guests say the same thing. It takes time. Thio, uh, change the policies, the practices, the traditions Even if they’re not written down, that our advantage ing white folks over people of color, This takes time. But you gotta You’ve got to start somewhere.

[00:12:52.74] spk_0:
Yes, and I think consciousness raising is is an important and legitimate starting point.

[00:13:42.54] spk_1:
Right? And we’re just getting started, okay? It’s time for a break. Turn to communications relationships. The world runs on them. We all know this turn to is led by former journalists. So you get help building relationships with journalists. Those relationships, they’re gonna help you when you want to be heard so that people know you’re a thought leader in your field turn to specializes in working with nonprofits. One of the partners was an editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They know the non profit space they’re at turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to P. O. C. Underrepresented in non profit leadership. Are you going to do this in three years again?

[00:13:45.94] spk_0:
It’s a very good question. You know, it’s hard

[00:13:48.15] spk_1:
to

[00:13:48.28] spk_0:
know, uh, in terms of, like, capacity funding, all of those things um, but yeah, I think that it seems worthwhile to keep revisiting thes issues, given the pace of change. Um, having been pretty slow just in the time that we’ve been collecting this data.

[00:14:24.14] spk_1:
All right, Um, anything else you want to say about you know, how the the findings from 2016 are pretty similar? Uh, yeah. Continue through to 2019 before we go on to the next. Well,

[00:14:24.49] spk_0:
sure. I think the reason that we felt like it was worth restating on pointing out the similarity in in terms of the findings between 2016 and 2019 was because, um, you know, from our perspective, it was really important to state very clearly to the sector. But there are people of color who are in the pipeline that the pipeline is not necessarily the problem. Uh, there’s, I think, different metaphors that people have used unpack and try to understand what the problem is of why we’re not seeing more representative leadership at the top levels of nonprofit organizations. And our view has just been that it’s not a pipeline issue per se. There are people of color who have the skills training credentials to be in those top roles, but they face racialized barriers to actually moving into those top jobs to being hired for those top jobs. And so we just felt like it was important to remind the sector of that finding, Um and sort of not lapse back into, ah narrative that, like we need to train more people of color because somehow people of color are not ready toe lead. People of color are ready to lead, but are often too often not given the opportunity.

[00:15:38.84] spk_1:
Not only have the skill sets already, but are willing to, in fact, what willing Thio want. Thio want to advance the leadership in greater numbers than the and the white respondents?

[00:15:51.94] spk_0:
Absolutely.

[00:15:53.03] spk_1:
E guess. There’s narrative that, you know there’s a lack of interest in in people of color advancing toe leadership. But you’ve dashed that.

[00:16:01.74] spk_0:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that part of the reason that’s important is because if people hold this mental model that who wants to be a leader is, uh, not a person of color, then they’re going to ignore the leadership potential of people of color in their organization.

[00:16:26.64] spk_1:
Yeah, it’s very convenient. Well, you know, the folks of color don’t really aspire to leadership. So no need to consider them. So Okay, so you’ve you’ve dashed that it’s not so in two respects. It’s not a pipeline issue. The skills air there and the willingness Is there a ZX? Well,

[00:16:36.24] spk_0:
absolutely

[00:16:42.44] spk_1:
desire Thio advance and to lead. Okay, Um right. So remember your second main main conclusion, I guess, is there is white advantage. We were talking around it. Now we come right out and say there is white advantage in the nonprofit sector.

[00:18:59.24] spk_0:
There is. And, um, you know, I think that the the white advantage takes multiple forms, right? So I think that there have been over the last several months Mawr written about like, what happened? What’s called now? Philanthropic redlining, right, that organizations that are led by people of color, particularly black led organizations, are don’t get access to the same kind of resource is as the white led organizations focused on or serving in communities of color. And so there’s really interesting research both from organizations like Abssi A ZX, well as echoing green and bridge span that really dug into that funding disadvantage. And I think that our data also showed similar findings, particularly when it comes to, for instance, e. D s of color. And this was reported on Maurin a report from based on the 2016 data but E d s of color feeling like they don’t have, they don’t get grants of comparable size to peer organization or that they don’t have access Thio relationships with funders. And so those kinds of advantages in terms of like, who funders trust who funders will give bigger grants thio all of those benefits than accrue to white led organizations that then create this financial gap between organizations, nonprofit organizations based on who’s in positions of power in that institution. And so other ways that the white advantage showed up were in terms of the sort of composition of organizations and the greater comfort that white people, uh, seem tohave in. Those organizations, for instance, on questions like Do people feel like they have a voice in their organization for people working in white, dominant organizations were both the board and senior staff are more than 75% white. That’s where we saw the biggest gaps between people of color and whites in terms of their their agreement with that statement, right? And that gap decreases as you have mawr diverse organizations. And it’s also interesting to note that the average the mean increases. So both people of color and white respondents are more likely to say they have a. They have a voice in their organizations when they work for POC lead groups. So if you know, funders want to invest in organizations that are cultivating that kind of leader full ecosystem inside of their organization that, you know, make it possible for staff to feel like they have a voice and can help to set the direction for the organization, then you know foundations would be wise to really take a hard look at their own investment and the composition of organizations that they’ve been funding on. DSI. You know, like, are these organizations largely white run or are they POC lead on. And if there are largely white one, they should start investing in more organizations that are POC ledge.

[00:20:06.94] spk_1:
You identify five opportunities which we’ll get to, and one of those is put your money where your mouth is. You just say, put your, uh, you

[00:20:08.83] spk_0:
know, money

[00:20:54.04] spk_1:
where mouth is for sure. Yeah, I mean that’s a critical lever of power is funding for any anyone, whether it’s whether it’s corporate or non profit access to capital access to markets. Um, you know, what I thought was really interesting is, um, when you were identifying whether an organization was white lead or POC lead you, you chose as a threshold for white lead, whether more than 75% whether the Board of Leadership is more than 75% white. But then for for people of color lead, the threshold was just 50%. Is that because there just aren’t enough that are that are at the 75% level? So you had to reduce the yet to reduce the threshold to define it as person of color lead? Was that the reason?

[00:21:02.45] spk_0:
Yes. I mean, I think that it reflects the sort of composition of the sector, right. So 45% of respondents reported working for organizations where more than 75% of the board and senior staff were white on then it only 14% of respondents reporting working for organizations where it was over 50% of board and senior staff where people of color, you know, like it’s

[00:21:30.25] spk_1:
hard to have

[00:21:30.98] spk_0:
a comparison between Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:34.02] spk_1:
75% shoulder, 75% for PFC. Lead was gonna be too small a sample You

[00:21:40.57] spk_0:
a

[00:21:41.99] spk_1:
handful of Okay, uh, e suspected. Okay. Um, yeah. The experience was a little more about the experience. How people experience how people of color experience work in a in a white led organization.

[00:21:58.84] spk_0:
Well, I have to say, this was surprised, Not surprising. But it was interesting that the data was so clear, um, that the these racial gaps were so much larger for respondents working for white run organizations compared toa the POC led groups. And, um, you know, I think that it reflects what we’ve been hearing from the focus groups that we’ve been doing across the country in terms of the frustration, particularly on the part of people of color working in organizations that, um, you know, I think often feel somewhat alienating. And where people feel like they, um their leadership potential is not recognized or supported on dso. It was just a really, uh it was nice to have the data show, uh, and really reflect what we’ve been hearing anecdotally through focus groups and interviews around the country,

[00:22:59.54] spk_1:
You mentioned three organizations that have contributed to this work. One of them was bridge span. And then what were the other to save them. Save them a little slower theater, too.

[00:23:03.21] spk_0:
Sure. So a few months ago, bridge span and echoing green partnered on a report that looked at the going echoing green,

[00:23:14.57] spk_1:
echoing green

[00:24:50.44] spk_0:
green. Yeah, they partnered toe look at the funding that had accrued to organization organizational leaders who had gone through echoing Green’s programs. And so they were able to then really track and demonstrate that black leaders compared toa white leaders who had gone through the same kind of leadership development programs were getting very different levels of financial support on So that report came out at, you know, the earlier in the spring and last winter, an organization called Absi, which is the Organization for African Americans in philanthropy. On DSO, the acronym is a B E, and they put out a report looking at what they call the philanthropic redlining, this phenomenon of financial support from foundations accruing to white led organizations rather than to POC lead or black led organizations. So they use this terminology of redlining because it’s evocative of historical policy that led to very dramatic differences in terms of what sort of development and investment was possible, uh, in cities and neighborhoods based on this policy of redlining. And their point is that the imbalances, the inequities and where philanthropic dollars flow leads toa completely different prospects for organizations. And because some organizations grow because they get the funding and other organizations sort of. Whether on the bun

[00:25:06.34] spk_1:
isn’t the large majority of the smaller organizations I think you’re special was under a million dollars aren’t Isn’t the majority of those POC lead?

[00:25:08.44] spk_0:
It was, Yeah, it was striking to see that a much larger share of POC led organizations had budgets under a million

[00:25:30.34] spk_1:
dollars compared to, for instance, what led organizations? And, ah, large, large majority of those are a million dollars or under in funding or annual budget.

[00:25:31.18] spk_0:
Yes, okay, yeah, in terms of the annual budget

[00:26:27.24] spk_1:
annual budget. Okay, time for our last break. Dot drives drives engagement dot drives relationships. Dot drives walks you through donor engagement. It’s a tool that’s simple, affordable and focuses you on building donor relationships and trust. There’s a free demo, and for listeners a free first month. Go to the listener landing page at tony dot Emma slash dot We’ve got but loads more time for POC, underrepresented in non profit leadership. And then the third main point is that d I. Efforts are widespread, you say, and their effectiveness is uncertain, I would say, but but their effectiveness is uncertain. You’re a little more optimistic. Um, so, yeah, we were scratching the surface of this before, but you know, say same or about what’s being done, but what the limitations of it are.

[00:26:35.74] spk_0:
Well, first off, I think it’s important to acknowledge that three quarters of the sample reported that their organizations were doing something related to diversity equity inclusion. And so the ubiquity of D I efforts is, you know, I think good. And I think it’s a relatively new phenomenon, right? Like it’s become the topic at a lot of conferences over the past five years. And so all of which is to say that like organizations are getting started right now, Um, and maybe it’s long overdue, but this is a moment when organizations are getting started. I think that the challenge, the frustration, particularly on the part of people of color. And the younger staff of, you know, diverse diversity of younger staff is that I think for far too often it feels like organizational checklist. It feels like a sort of double. Organizations are saying the right things, but not actually changing anything about their recruitment practices or internal hiring and promotion strategy. So, yeah, I think that that is the the frustrating in that, like the ubiquity does not equal impact.

[00:28:43.94] spk_1:
I just want to remind listeners the report is called Race to Lead Revisited and you can get it at building movement dot or ge. All right, Sean, how do you feel about talking? Oh, there’s there’s a quote. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You You pepper the report with quotes in the margin on Dhe there. Ah, lot of them struck me that. I’m just going to read one that was probably half a dozen or so that, you know, sort of stopped me a little bit. But, uh, Pakistani woman, I don’t believe I’m taking us seriously in the workplace because I am a young woman of color. I often question things which doesn’t always go over well in majority white organizations. I’ve been used as a token brown person that za harsh reality Thio Thio read and for her to admit in a survey that, you know, I’m a token. Um So I thought the quotes were very evocative.

[00:28:55.84] spk_0:
Well, yeah, thanks. I mean, we we really think it’s important to balance the quantitative data with, you know, hundreds upon hundreds of right and responses from survey respondents and then also the focus groups that we do. We also gain a ton of insights from those conversations as well.

[00:29:16.34] spk_1:
You feel OK, go into the five opportunities or is there Is there mawr anything more you wanna bring out about the the report itself? Well, this is part of the report, but about the conclusions, conclusions and findings.

[00:29:40.34] spk_0:
Well, I guess I would just add in terms of the sort of d I and, uh, there’s the both the skepticism, but also the impact, right? I think that, um, there’s, you know, I think there’s a lot of skepticism about training, often times. But our data did show that for reserving respondents that reported that their organization trained on a variety of topics. They had more positive views on the impact of training on their organization. I think that just speaks to the importance and need for organizations have, like, multifaceted well around D. I initiatives so that training is not again, like just the check box on or sort of like. Okay, we did the training on white privilege, and so we’re sort of done that the training is a way of both sparking but also sustaining critical conversations in organizations. And that’s why it’s useful for organizations to do training repeatedly and on a variety of topics.

[00:30:59.64] spk_1:
Yeah, I think it was. It was forearm. Or if organizations had had training on four or more topics than both white, the white respondents and the people, people of color respondents, um, felt it was it was more advantageous. So they got there was more valuable training than if it was three or fewer. Could you just take off a couple of different topics that that folks should be looking to training? I mean, not not exhaustive, but you know, what are some of the some of the topics that people should be thinking about training wise?

[00:31:07.27] spk_0:
Sure, yeah. So eso in terms of the topics that we tested for in the survey people indicated that whether the organization had done training on white privileged, specifically whether they had done training on implicit bias because that is a concept that I think has gained mawr currency in the sector. Structural racism, for instance. Um, like do people think of racism as just about interpersonal dynamics or as or as the result of structural, um, and systemic forces that are being replicated by policy? A. ZX well, as implicitly, um, also racial trauma and healing. I think it’s a training topic that is becoming more popular and developed, so there’s a variety of topics, and I think the important thing is just for organizations to be open to having and doing training on a wide variety of topics.

[00:32:07.74] spk_1:
And again, the more topics, the more valuable people will feel. Three outcomes are, um So let’s go to the opportunities. Then why don’t you once you start us off?

[00:32:19.04] spk_0:
Sure.

[00:32:20.17] spk_1:
I’m sure. Wait. I put you on the spot. Do you know that you may not have him off the top of your head? I have notes I haven’t written down, so I don’t need thio Put you on the spot memorized? I don’t know do you?

[00:32:32.07] spk_0:
Yeah, I’ve got it.

[00:32:33.81] spk_1:
Okay. Okay.

[00:32:47.44] spk_0:
First in the first one was focused on structures as well as the experiences of staff. Right on DSO. You know, I think it’s pretty straightforward, but I think the the reason that we felt felt like it was really important toe lift up lived experience of staff working in organizations is because of what we saw in terms of those experience questions, right? Like, do people feel they have a voice in their organizations or not? Right. We also thought it was important to point out that policies have to actually be in force, right? Like organizations can’t just say this is our policy. But if people don’t see evidence that actual behavior and practices air changing as a result of the policy, um, then you know, I think there are real questions about whether that has real impact.

[00:33:22.08] spk_1:
There is, as

[00:33:23.32] spk_0:
we said earlier,

[00:33:35.84] spk_1:
you’re not walking the talk. Then if you have ah, policy on anti discrimination and someone says something derogatory and it doesn’t get dealt with according to the policy. Yeah, that’s a joke. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:33:39.94] spk_0:
Um, we also thought it was important toe, you know, really, focus on the funding dynamics, so particularly for grantmaking organizations. But put your money where, like your mouth is essentially right. Like there are increasing number of foundations, that air saying that the I is important. Ah, nde sort of signaling to their grantees. But those organizations need to take d. I seriously need to diversify their boards and staff things like that. But if the foundations have not taken similar steps, if the foundations have not to diversify their own or internal institution, or the foundations have not sort of critically examined their portfolio of grants like are there racial disparities in terms of what the amounts of funding, which organizations get access to funding that sort of thing? All of that is about foundations being very serious on reflect about being reflective in terms of their own commitments to D. I.

[00:35:24.04] spk_1:
And you have reflecting reflecting your community, which we touched on a little bit, that that was really striking, how you know it’s intuitive. I mean, I realized it, but to see the numbers of, um, Whitelighter organizations that are serving POC communities, eyes like two thirds or something, I think, um, it’s startling that leadership does not reflect the communities that they’re serving, and that includes the board. I mean, you you wanna have voices from the from the folks you’re serving contributing to your contributing to your you’re you’re major decisions a ZX the board should be doing

[00:35:28.54] spk_0:
Yeah, and again, like, as I said earlier, like, if organizations see the function of the board as about accountability as about setting the direction for the organization, then I think those organizations will see the need and value of having a board that is reflective of the community that’s being served. But if organizations have the sort of rationale for maintaining the board is to have access to people with wealth and connections, and there’s obvious reasons that organizations go that route. Then they’re going to stack. They’re bored with wealthy people in their communities on again because of racism. Those wealthy people are not likely to be people of color from the constituency that’s being served

[00:36:15.53] spk_1:
and your last one responsibility and results.

[00:36:26.79] spk_0:
Yeah, I think our sense was that organizations air pushed to track a lot of things nowadays and so, like what gets measured is often what then matters. And so our sense was that organizations should be very clear about what their commitments are going to be to race equity. And, um, you know, really track those commitments and then track the results of that come out of, like, what kind of organizational change strategies they pursue. And so, you know, if organizations they’re doing like an annual review or annual reports, are they reporting on their goals and objectives around race equity? That is one way to sort of ensure that organizations are staying on track on dhe, that its multiyear commitment

[00:37:13.58] spk_1:
it’s gonna take

[00:37:14.84] spk_0:
multiple years of change.

[00:37:38.03] spk_1:
Uh, you know, just pay attention. You can move the needle on things. If you start paying attention to them, you’re saying, if you measure it, you’ll you’ll you’ll be. You’ll be accountable to it. So high attention to it. If your If your statements say that you value racial equity, then measure it, hold yourself accountable and commit to those years of change.

[00:37:41.23] spk_0:
Yeah, and I think it’s even better if organizations do that. Make that accountability public, eso that they’re the sort of reporting is to their staff. It’s to their board. It’s to their community so that, like the statements of the organizations stand with. For instance, black lives matter, then backed up with organizations being able to say. And here’s how we lived into that commitment. Here are the things that we did over the past year that made that riel,

[00:38:10.82] spk_1:
Sean, anything, anything at all that we didn’t cover that you want to talk about.

[00:38:16.52] spk_0:
Um, no, I think we covered a lot.

[00:38:34.22] spk_1:
Okay, well, we did. You know, it’s not profit radio. We cover a lot of ground, but, you know, we can only scratch the surface. I mean, we cover a lot, but what you want to read the details, So just get the damn thing. Uh, the report again is, um race toe lead racing. No race race, the lead race, the lead be visiting

[00:38:38.27] spk_0:
the lead revisited.

[00:38:49.92] spk_1:
Used to lead you visited. You’ll find it at building movement or GE. That’s where you’ll find building movement project. And Sean Thomas Bright felled. Who is co director, right, Sean, Thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:38:52.07] spk_0:
Thanks so much for having me

[00:39:32.72] spk_1:
absolutely appreciate your time. Thank you. Reminder were sponsored by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. turn hyphen two dot ceo and by dot drives raise more money changed more lives. Tony dot Emma slash dot for a free demo and a free month, Our creative producer is clear, Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our Web guy. This music is by Scott Stein and with me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for May 23, 2014: Into Focus Nonprofit Video Survey & Activating For Fun, Celebrity And Organizing

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Michael Hoffman: Into Focus Nonprofit Video Survey

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Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications, has takeaways from this survey that YouTube contributed data to: What works in video? What doesn’t? How do you measure so you’ll know? Plus he explains why he’s a big fan of Google+ Hangouts on Air. Recorded at NTC in April. df

 

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Matthew Fisher: Activating for Fun, Celebrity and Organizing

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Have fun in your social networks, because fun means viral! Also, identifying the VIPs in your networks and empowering your supporters. Matthew Fisher is chief marketing officer for Fission Strategy. Also from NTC.

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Dahna oppcoll 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 it’s, the memorial day show i hope you enjoy your long memorial day weekend, but while you do perhaps keep in mind that many people through the years through the generations have given they ultimate sacrifice so that we could enjoy the freedom that we have today, so saluting all our active duty and veterans and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice remembering them over memorial day, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of dendritic carat itis if i had to see that you had missed today’s show into focus non-profit video survey michael hoffman, ceo of c three communications, has takeaways from this survey that youtube contributed data, too. We’ll talk about what works in video, what doesn’t and how do you know how do you measure? Plus, he explains why he’s, a big fan of google plus hangouts on air that was recorded at the non-profit technology conference in april, also activating for fun, celebrity and organizing have funding your social networks because fun means viral also identifying the vips in your networks and empowering your supporters matthew fisher is chief marketing officer for vision strategy. That interview is also from the non-profit technology conference on tony’s take two, you know, festival del fund-raising that was last week. Here is my interview with michael hoffman talking about thie into focus non-profit video survey welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the non-profit technology conference and t c the hashtag is fourteen ntc we are at the marriott wardman park hotel in washington, d c with me is michael hoffman. He is ceo of c three communications and see three is s e and the numeral three michael hoffman, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you. Thanks for taking time in a busy conference day. Your topic is very interesting and the survey says with e into focus non-profit video report could do for your orc. Tell me about the into focus non-profit video survey. Well, we’ve been working with organizations for many years now around video and non-profits and we always get asked the same questions. What can we do with video? What works with video? How do you do it on? A budget who’s doing the best work with video, all of those kinds of questions, and we realized that there is data about almost everything in the nonprofit world there’s data about e mail and there’s data about social media and there’s data about fund-raising and there was no data about video, and so we went to our partners at youtube. If you’re going to do something with video it’s a good idea to do it with you two is a good it’s, a good name in video, and we went to edelman, which is a a big p r agency, and that works a lot with data and doing reports like this on we got together and we said let’s, find out let’s, find out what people are doing. We did a survey of organizations in north america, we had about five hundred organisations respond. We also got from youtube something they had never released before, which was actual platform data about what non-profits air doing on youtube. So what? Successful there in terms of views and which channels are doing well and all of those things, so we got all of that data. We also did qualitative interviews. We we interviewed lots of folks who are from the executive director position down to the person making videos to the digital managers all about. How are they using video? What did they see working? And we put it all together in this report called into focus, which you can download fromthe sea three website at sea three dot com slash into focus. Okay? And, uh, i presume a lot of what you’re goingto share his lessons fromthe survey, right? What? How should we as we break this down through the categories with survey house, we best approaches for listeners? Well, i think that the, you know, the big question is, you know, do organizations think videos you useful tactic? And, you know, what are they doing with it? And i think overwhelmingly organizations, they’re saying videos important, we need to be doing more but then some interesting gaps because when you ask them, are you budgeting maur? The answer was not know pretty much, you know, that they’re not, and then i think one of the really interesting findings was when you asked them, how do you measure success of video? Seventy three percent on ly measure success anecdotally. Or through views of videos, which is what you see on youtube and, you know what i always tell organizations is views never solved your problem. You’re working to solve views, don’t keep the lights on youse don’t create donation very much a vanity metric, like, like facebook fans, right? Exactly. It’s, it’s, it’s fine to have that kind of metric if it is connected to something that really matters for you. And you understand how it’s connected to that, you know, i think more important than views is whose views you know, are you getting and they lead to other kinds of engagement. So those are the things that the survey revealed when we looked at who’s doing well, we saw that it starts with planning, you know, there’s. So many organizations that say we need to make a video and the question is why? What do you expect to happen? What’s your goals? How is this going to do something for you and the organizations that reported thinking about that and asking those questions? Are the organizations that reported success with video? So the idea that you know why you’re you’re working on it and what your goals? Are is the first step that remarkably many organizations are not you are not taking. Yeah, i think the thinking about the the strategy and the goals that are going to get us there is often i mean, this is not a problem limited tio our shortcoming limited to video, i had guests talked about in terms of campaigns dahna engagement, whether to dio whether to engage in a new social channel or not. All right, i’m seeing this right? We’ve always about not planning shiny object syndrome. You know, it’s, you see, you hear about the newest channel or you think you need something or boardmember tells you that you should be doing something, but it’s not grounded in a strategy, and i think that’s, really what we encourage organizations do is think, what can you do? What should you do, what’s the best way to do that? And to really understand that moving forward to ask the hard questions up front. What advice do you have around the budgeting issue since so few non-profits are aligning budget with their desires around expanding video, right? I like in it too. I feel like we’re in the phase with video. That we were with the web in the mid to late nineties. If you asked organizations you know, in nineteen, ninety six or seven do they need a website? Some would say they have one already. Others would say, oh, yeah, we’ve got to get one because we see this web thing is really taken off but if you told them at the time that they would have a whole department that worked on the web, they would tell you you were crazy. They would say, where in the world could the budget come from to do that that’s impossible that’s a pipe dream and i feel like that’s where we are with video video is eating the web in terms of the amount of content the where people’s attention are the cisco estimates that ninety percent of all internet bandwidth will be video within four years. Oh, my good, really? Yes, on you know, we’re darling, we’re seeing you know the web turn into a interactive tv platform and dahna organisations have to become publishers in the same way, and broadcasters, you know, in the same way that everybody else does on videos a big piece of that and there’s a biggest barrier is a paradigm shifting cultural barrier, which is organizations didn’t grow up needing to do video, so they have no capacity and they’re not. They don’t think that way, and so when they think about video, they think about hiring a firm like ours to make that one big, you know, gala event video or something like that and that’s, not the world we live in, right? The world we live in demands a regular content and so that’s a huge paradigm shift for gin is ations. Oh, you have a bunch of things in mind. What about mobile? As as people are going more mobile? Is that increasing their their affinity for video are decreasing, so they’d rather not see it on a little screen. Oh, actually, the opposite video is the fastest growing mobile service that there is we’re seeing as for g has rolled out across the united states were seeing video. Um, grow incredibly and the other piece about mobile and video is everyone has a high quality video camera in their pocket. That’s remarkable. I mean the quality you see iphone video incorporated into feature films so the quality that you can get from these devices that are in our pockets is amazing and it totally the gates this argument that, you know, we can’t afford to do it it’s really about mind share in time more than it is about we need, you know, big investment dollars to do some video things in addition to having a video production studio in your pocket, you also have a distribution channel in your pocket, right? Exactly. I mean, the revolution of peer-to-peer communications, you know, through social media and the ability to reach people through their social channels and, you know, to be online all the time that way is incredible, it really is. So i’m not saying and, you know, we make great video, so i’m not saying there’s, no need for outside support ever, you know, in videos, but i think of it more like a pyramid, you know, there’s that one great video that’s on your website that explains what you do that you khun keep for five years, it probably makes sense to spend some money and make that really good the day to day content that describes, you know, where you are in a fundraising campaign or trying to get people to be advocates or giving an update about a storm that just happened that you’re working on all of that can happen from your phone from other kinds of equipment that you can have in the office and really should be internal capacity. And so we’re spending more and more time training people about how do you do this and not just camera skills, but really the the strategy piece, which is what should our video strategy be? And how does that make sense? I’ve seen such moving campaigns where the organization asked donors or or even better than donors, people benefiting from the service of the work of the organization. Tell us how you make your own, make your own video turned the turn their cameras to yourself and tell us how our work has improved your life saved your life impacted you enormously. Yeah, i think if you haven’t engaged community video’s a great way to do that, it’s still, for a lot of people, high bar, ask, you know, to produce video, so makoto sharing, for example, is much more popular and easier for people to do than video, but we’re seeing now. With services like vine that allow you to make a six second video or instagram now has a fifteen second video, it becomes much easier toe to do that bond. We’re seeing, you know, cem, entrusting things that general electric. I did a thing about science. They wanted to promote science, which is just connected to their brand. But it’s really kind of a social good thing, and they did something called six second science, and they said, how much science can you do in six seconds? And they invited a community of people you know, publically to do six second videos about science, and then they aggregated those they curated and aggregated those into a youtube video with all these different six second science video and it’s terrific it’s a great way to mobilize your community. I think lots of organizations are are doing that, and many more could be doing that e-giving anything tooting getting thinking. You’re listening to the talking alternative network get in. E-giving cubine do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants, and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services, a guaranteed to lead toe, right, groat. For your business, call us at nine one seven eight three, three, four, eight six. Zero foreign, no obligation. Free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Dahna duitz is email us a growing frontier for for video? Well, we are seeing some new technologies that will allow email video to be played inside email so without clicking a link but emails a great driver for your community in general, i think if you ask organizational people often, how often do you think your your donors or supporters come to your website? They’re usually wildly inflated numbers from the reality because we don’t normal people don’t go backto organizational web sites, you know, unless you’re drawn there for some reason and the most of the time what’s drawing you there is something that was in an email and email is still the number one digital way to connect with people, and we know that when you say there’s, a video to watch the open rates of email goes up and when you say there’s a video to click on, we know that the click through rates go up so video is the content of the type of content delivery that many people want to have and so thinking about how are we using video? And where is it in our stream of communications? Overall is a n’importe n’t strategic. Question that organizations need to ask compelling moving video doesn’t have tohave high production values are being particularly expensive. Teo in production, right? No, i mean, there are a lot of the videos that get shared that are wonderful and moving our high production value video eliminated, you know, no question, but no, i mean, i think story trumps production that’s what i always say so, you know, if you have that moving story and, you know, you can tell it straight to camera and it’s going to be moving, and we saw that, you know, we see that all the time, really, where there’s things that are just telling the story and organizations have that, and i think one of the demands of being able to do that is for the communicators and organizations to be more connected to those stories within their own organizations, because it’s often not the communicators who are on the ground doing the work that connects them to those stories so they need toe open up the idea that everyone in our organization needs to be a storyteller. So that becomes, again part of this cultural shift that’s going to create, you know, and have an organization thinking of themselves like their media company. They’re they’re a broadcast of publisher where our stories. How are we finding them? How did they float up to our communications folks? How do we decide what make videos about? That path is not articulated very often in organisations, particularly smaller ones. So i think, you know, it starts with just having that conversation and that’s goingto do a lot. But google plus hangouts on air to me that seems like google is giving you the tools to create a a network you, khun broadcast on dh, put your message and and but but not follow the tv model because it’s enormously interactive, you see, promise, i think that’s. Absolutely, absolutely. I think that’s a great point. So when we look at youtube channels, for example, most organizations in ninety nine percent actually one hundred percent of organism growing because i haven’t seen one that’s doing anything different yet they treat their youtube channel like a repository for everything that every video they make, right. So you make a video for a campaign. You make a video for the web site, you stick it on youtube. So you two just a dumping ground for a lot of videos, every channel on youtube that’s really successful, the ones with millions of subscribers and millions of views, and they don’t treat you tube like that as a dumping ground. They treat you too, as ah broadcast channel that needs to have regular content toe build audience, just like your radio show needs to have a schedule and a regular way for people to find it for audience to grow for people to share it. Same thing with non-profit video hangouts on air give you an easy way to create regular content. So the idea that you could do, for example, a show using a hangout where you interview people from the field or experts or donors or whatever it could be ten minutes long. But if you post that every thursday at five o’clock, you’re gonna have an opportunity to build engagement and build audience if you’re putting a video once in a while, whenever you happen to have one on youtube, you have no opportunity to build audience. So i think the hangouts to me is connected to that question of how do we create mohr and regular content you know among the content we created and how, how can a non-profit use youtube in that way to the extent that it allows it’s not as robust is hangouts on here, but you alluded to the most successful youtube channels doing regular distribution have done well, you know, the most successful youtube channels are often individuals who are making videos themselves. I mean, with no crew, no, nothing, they’re they’re shooting themselves with video, they’re editing it themselves and their, you know, and what is it about them? They’re engaging people within? You know, they’re funny or they’re engaging or they’re doing something, and i think organizations need to think about, well, who in our world has that personality? People with personality is exactly the workers on our side. I mean, it’s like into the cooking show people don’t watch cooking shows about because it’s about cooking, they watch it because about personalities or competition or other things. So where is where those people who were those people in your organization? Among your donor’s among your supporters among your clients. Hoo, you go, that guy should have his own show, or that woman should have her own show, those are the people you want to figure out, okay, how do we get them? And hangouts on air is a great free way to start you khun do alive thing and it’s recorded and you don’t have to edit anything, and it goes right on your youtube channel. So that’s an easy way to start, but it takes a commitment, teo, you know, begin doing that, and i think that this there’s so many other benefits to doing that for an organization, right, they’re going to hear more stories that they can use in other places they’re going toe, you know, they’re going to create a certain kinds of internal communications is going to be helpful for them to do an initiative like that and empowering people who don’t think of themselves bad enough that the organization doesn’t think of itself as content creation and producers, but empowering people within the organization, individuals who don’t think of themselves as frontline communicators, teo to, in fact be such exactly. And i think this is connected to the bigger trends that we see around social media. You know, the old model of communications is corporate brand voice, you know, the voice of god. Talking in a hub hub and spoke model, right? So this corporate voice produces content and pushes it out and tries to interrupt people with it. You know, a new model is individuals communicating with each other and it’s a two it’s more than a two way conversation. And so that means that you have to have these channels where people can talk back to you and you engage with them, whether it’s video or whether it’s, facebook or whether it’s any other channel and then also people don’t want to hear from corporate brands. I don’t want to hear from your logo, i want to hear from people. So who are those people? So you need toe pig peek behind the curtain is what i say. I don’t want to see oz, the great and powerful wizard, i want to see the guy behind the curtain, and so we’re seeing he was a hell of a lot more charming and and fund then then the video projection of his of his image. So exactly, and we’re starting to see it. I mean, i saw something recently with a big ngo hyre, you know, had a of some videos at dealing with a storm and instead of saying, you know, we big organization need you to do x, you know, they said here’s, we want to take you inside our war room, about what’s going on and how our planning and so you see all these people who have been up all night, you know, working on maps and all kinds of things happening and and you, as the viewer feel like, wow, they’re people behind this and they’re giving of themselves for it, and i can be part of that and that’s very different kind of communication and, you know, it’s related to ah reduction of trust in brands and maura peer-to-peer communications in general and organisations need to be there or they’re not going to succeed this morning at the opening session of ntcdinosaur wasn’t there, but i know you were there you have the do gooder awards wanted to share with listeners with what that was about? Sure, about eight years ago we started to do gooder awards because we knew with broadband that video revolution was coming, it was definitely coming, and we wanted to take the few organizations that we’re really doing it and jumping. In and doing it well and hold them up as examples to try to encourage everybody else to do it on dh. So we created the doolittle awards a few years ago, youtube came to us and said, can we adopt these awards to become the official wards of the non-profits on youtube? And we said, yeah, you could do that on dso ever since we partner with them, we’ve had wonderful sponsors and partners and ten eyes, one of them and cisco is another and dot sub this year, and nickelodeon and and and other terrific sponsors. And, um, every year at the ntc, we announced the winners. And so any organization that’s on youtube in the non-profit program, i can submit their videos. We have different categories, the four categories that we have our youth media categories. So we’re having young people who are making videos, we have an impact ex category durney that’s sponsored by cisco and that’s. Really about what did that video do so it’s? Not just about is it a good video, but it’s about did it have impact and that those groups have to submit a statement of what the impact wass then? We have a funny for good category because we’ve seen time and time again, the videos that move people to action that move people to share are funny, and we wanted to call those out and they’re fun to watch, and then we have best overall video on dh we can put the links up to these videos, i think we’re on dh point people, but buy-in, you know, they were terrific and, you know, literally the audience today they laughed and they cried and you confined the video’s, all of it, it youtube dot com slash do gooder easy enough, share one of the really poignant moving out, you know, i’m sorry, one of those sort of heart string videos that it sounds like there were a couple of, well, the winning overall video was partners and mental health from canada and a video about teen suicide, and it was the thirty second piece, and the video shows teens very angry at their parents and then slamming the door like running into their room and slamming the door and slamming the door and slamming the door. And then the last time the doors slam it’s actually the mom on. The other side of the door in the room and it says it’s, hard to live with a with a team, you know, with depression, it’s, harder to live without one it’s, a very intense and, you know, packed a tremendous amount of emotion into a very small, you know, time frame. And the funny for good video was also canadian. Remarkably, the canadians have been doing doing great and that’s, actually from the canadian cancer society, and it was about testicular cancer, and it was about checking your nuts. It’s hilarious. And so i definitely recommend you. You go to see it because it’s just it’s funny and it’s taking something that is a serious issue and it’s educating people through humor and i think that’s great. And so, you know, there’s, no issue, really, that you can’t find some humor, and i think it was that a longer one. I would need more than thirty seconds. I was, ah, a minute and a half that would be about my speech all right night. I need a little more than thirty seconds. Let’s leave with listeners with a couple of tips that come from the survey, but how they can be mohr i’ll just say generally effective, and you can choose whether that’s in production or distribution, right? Go ahead. What can we leave? Well, i think that, you know, the one takeaway i would i would want to leave people with is the idea of mohr you need mohr content, you know, we’re in theirs, you have many more channels to put content in. You have social media, you have your website, you can’t rely on a single video anymore, you have to be thinking about more now, more can come from occasionally using professionals to produce videos, but more should also come from being able to grow your capabilities around production as well. And this is important, especially for small organizations. Mork uncomfortable curating videos made by other people. So for example, if somebody was working on the storm in the philippines and they said, we’ve got to go shoot the destruction footage there and it’s gonna cost, you know, all kinds of money, i’d say, well, why would you do that on youtube? There’s a thousand videos that show that really, really well and guess what? All of them allow you to embed those videos on your website and so you can take a video that somebody else made, and you can wrap it in your own wrapper on your website with your own calls, action and utilize something that costs could have cost hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in particular with documentary film trailers, for example, really high quality stuff on almost any issue is there for the taking, and i would say two organizations make playlists on youtube, which fills out your channel with other people’s video use this video on your website shared in your social media with your calls to action and be wrapped in the halo of somebody else’s great work, excellent! Thank you very much, michael. Thank you. Michael hoffman is ceo of c three communications and how come people follow you on twitter? I met michael underscore hoffman on twitter. All right, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntcdinosaur profit technology conference. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you very much again. Michael hoffman. Generosity. Siri’s supports non-profit radio. You’ve heard me talk about them. Sponsor’s like them. Help me to travel to conferences like ntcdinosaur last april, and obviously that helps me bring interviews to share with you generosity. Siri’s hosts multi charity peer-to-peer runs and walks, they do all the back end work that you’ve heard me talk about also. And of course, they have the charity support team that helps you to get participants for your five k run or walk, and then also helps you with the fund-raising you mean that’s the whole purpose? So that’s why they have the charity support team. The whole purpose of these things is to get money for your charity. The statistic that they share is that first year generosity siri’s fund-raising exceeds average thirty year fund-raising for charities that do their own events, do all this work and host the thing all on their own so you can skip years wanting to jump right to third year fund-raising they have events coming up in new jersey, miami, atlanta, new york city, philadelphia, toronto, those air all this year, you can talk to them by picking up the phone. David linn, l i n n is the ceo at generosity siri’s and he’s at seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven and of course they are on the web at generosity. Siri’s dot com very grateful for their sponsorship. Last week i was at festival del fund-raising in italy. It was amazing. It was terrific. Great fun to be with about seven hundred italian fundraisers from throughout the country. My session was on planned e-giving which they call legacy e-giving in italy. Very grateful to the festival. President valerio manda rally for inviting me and just everybody’s there was you know what? What italy has as its reputation. Warm, friendly, delicious food and the closing night was a terrific party. There is a video on my on my site. I got some video from the opening night and also from that closing night party that is at tony martignetti dot com many thanks to festival del fund-raising and that’s tony’s take two for friday twenty third of may the twenty first show of the year here’s my interview with matthew fisher of vision strategy from the non-profit technology conference. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference twenty fourteen we’re at the marriott wardman park hotel in washington d c i guess. Now is matthew fisher. He is chief marketing officer for vision strategy. The workshop topic is activating your organization’s social network for fun, celebrity and self organizing. Matthew fisher, welcome to the show. Thank you, tony it’s a pleasure. I’m glad you’re here. Thank you. Invite your welcome. Thank you for taking time. Um, okay, we’re ah, we’re going. We’re going to activate our our constituents are social network for fun, celebrity and self organizing. What? What? What is the need around? What do you see that non-profits could be doing better that they’re not doing so so well? Yeah, it’s a big topic in it, you know, fun and celebrity, you’re certainly very different from thie organizing piece that i think most non-profits air, you know, on a daily basis engaged in and, you know, we sort of look at it is taking a new approach to engaging with those advocates and supporters. You know, we’re very versed in sort of the organizing concepts, but we also want to push towards making things fun because ultimately fund means viral and with viral, then we start to see things that you get a halo effect, for instance, when you start engaging celebrities ah lot of folks don’t believe celebrities, you know will engage on social media and there’s numerous examples where that’s not true, but, you know, for us we look at it is, you know, fun is more likely to be shared. It certainly is when when you get into the technicalities of facebook, you know, a drink goes up and certainly your clout creds scores as an influence or go up as things become fun because those are ultimately what we share online. So for the non-profits we really want them, and this is the lesson we want to resonate. We want to think about fun and celebrity in terms ofthe activating these guys to help your cause. Okay, well, let’s, let’s, let’s not get out, celebrity, we’ll come to it. We’ll spend a little time, but thie audience is small and midsize non-profits and and i think the likelihood of getting celebrity is kind of small. Sure. So let’s. Focus on fun and we’ll have a little time on maybe recruiting a celebrity for your cause but on the fun side how do we, uh i mean, how do we identify? What do we know? What’s going? To be fun for our, for our constituents to play with. Well, i think here we have to look at examples that air, you know, have been out in the marketplace and certainly there’s no definition of fun. Yeah, you know, but i think memorable and unexpected are to sort of elements of that recipe. I’m sure a number of people i’ve seen talks by youtube and they talk about what actually makes ah, video fun or viral on they have sort of three core principles there one is thiss unexpectedness and an example they uses, gentlemen, is riding his bike down in new york city and the bike lanes and he’s actually calling attention to a very serious issue, which is construction and hazards and so it’s it’s ah, sort of a monty python play where he’s running into construction trucks and taxis. And so this is something they show is, you know, something that touched in a core issue in new york city and ultimate lead to twenty million plus views of that video? Sort of. The next piece is something they call tastemakers i’ll use the word influences because i think that’s more relevant for us, but you know, touching and getting into something that will allow those influences and tastemakers to call attention to your your cause. And in this case, with videos, they used the example of somebody has shot a double rainbow in the backyard and sort of sat there and and yelled and screamed and couldn’t believe it. Oh, and it had been on youtube for six months and really had less than five hundred thousand views, probably extended family and friends. Yeah, and so but what happened was jimmy kimmel showed it on one of his late night shows, and almost immediately, of course it went viral. And so the key there was not the dennis lee pushed it towards jimmy kimmel, but it caught his eye, and so it really had nothing in it of it, other than sort of a fun, emotional response that we typically see and then the third is ultimately is the copycats that is ultimately what we see with buy-in viral and fun, um example, that is there’s a square cat that an animated story they’ve been going through on youtube on and really only had a couple hundred thousand views. But then as people started copying and reproducing this animated cat with different clothes on different nationalities, different holidays. And so we saw a replication of that. And so we think, sort of that unexpectedness the tastemakers. Oh, and ultimately copycats tragic can work in social media of all types, for fun. Because ultimately, you know, we believe once it gets fun, we have a balance of messaging betweens a serious issue on something that’s. More lighthearted. Yeah, wand. Your examples are well, certainly the bicycle you’re bringing you bring something that’s, light hearted. Teo, as you said, you know, a serious issue in new york city is hazards for for bike riders. So it’s got to relate back to what your charitable mission is all about. Exactly. It’s it’s gotta be it’s. Gotta be somewhat tangential to your issue. You know, the sort of the technicality behind fun or pulling it off actually, obviously is a little bit more difficult, creative. But, you know, the first part of it is, you know, we had vision and attentively are our email based platform. So we we love e mail and we see email is sort of the third leg of that social strategy and the reason is because certainly over the first two legs, certainly the first two legs are, you know, the social media platforms of facebook and twitter, they’re the big beasts, they’re the ones that have the most online time, the most phone usage time on they’ve dominated, obviously, but email has been in, you know, for the last decade has been a major source for online organizing and fund-raising still very important still very, very importantly, open rates. Well, you know, that’s that’s, the challenges that those those open rates in this click rates and those donate rates are dropping because we just have more, more email coming in and are they dropping overall? Absolutely okay, absolutely all right. And so, you know, as part of that third leg, you know, we believe that you know, you’ve gotta activate your full supporter base and there’s a number of people on your email database who our supporters, but not necessarily liking you or tweeting you. And so we really encourage people to look at that because generally speaking, you’ll have fifty times your audience in that email database. Then you will on your social media platforms now, if you get a celebrity a celebrity typically might be someone that we define as a clout score forty and hyre they might have an audience a total audience of three point two million on the reason is because they might have fifty or hundred thousand followers to start, and then they have a high enough credit score that it actually propagates through to their friends and family. But if you take your email database and you actually segmented out and look through there generally three to five percent of your email database actually can outperform one celebrity and the reason you know let’s say more about that, and the reason is because when you take your database, you generally have people who care about your cause and there’ll be a number of people in there who don’t necessarily have the huge following is saying and curry and on what she was able to do in two thousand ten with their her haiti tweet was tweeted the year, but what they are able to do is these are people who have already your message is resonating with them. They may have already donated, and what you see is a sort of one hundred twenty times. Effect and the idea being that if only if you have let’s, say, fifty thousand e mail addresses, you might actually still have an audience of roughly four million because of that effect. But how do you find these three to five percent to are the key influencers or the motivators? So, you know, certainly for smaller email list, you might just be able to visually go through and sort of figure it out manually by looking at their pages or another another way is to use platform’s like attentively, and certainly i’m sure there are others, but the idea being that it actually will match up those e mail addresses to all their social profiles and then scan those posts and pulling all those scores and the idea being that you can actually identify who those folks are and they may not be household names they made, you know, they’re not i mean, we’re down. We’re not talking about celebrity. Yeah, you know, i guarantee you that down at the washington post, there’s, probably forty or fifty journalists who have clouds scores over forty on who we would, we would certainly locally believe a sort of local celebrities, but have that reach because of obviously who they work for, who they are. Okay on, once you’ve identified these, these the top key influencers, what is it you’re asking them to do? How do you do, then approach them? Once you’ve identified, we think approaches that ultimately you’re going to, and this goes back to the engagement issue and challenge with the supporters and donors, when you start to find those people, they’re generally your vips are influencers. And so what you want to do obviously, is, you know, as the title here suggests, you need activate and the way we recognize that is we say that i’m looking at those vips, we actually want to start a segment them down into different groups based on the topics they’re talking about. And so you might have some of your supporters talking about climate change, and they may not follow you, but you might care about climate change and so weak suggests maybe take a baby step and start to follow them or reach out to them via email and say, you know, we’re talking about the same causes here. You want to join our effort, you could like us, you can also retweet some of our issues there and it’s very powerful, because when you’re looking at three to five percent it’s, not a huge number might be only thirty or forty people depending on the size that email list. But again, they still have that reach to get to three or four million people. So it’s it’s quite effective and it’s also something that it’s sort of buried inside your your database or your email platform or your syrian platform. We haven’t mentioned the blogging. I mean, they might maybe they don’t have a huge twitter following, for instance, but but their site gets a lot of hits, absolutely blogging is just as important, and, you know the challenge with blogging of courses, you know, it’s, even maurin structured content just like sort of the posts on facebook and twitter, but you, khun, obviously segment them down based on topics or terms and start to put them in a group. Let me give an example so that you know it, it makes a little bit more sense, but, you know, we typically look and work with non-profits and, you know, their databases aren’t necessarily large, you know, varies we have some customers that have very large databases, but let’s, certainly with the small ones that we want to focus on our listeners. Yes, mom, but so they might only have five, ten, fifty thousand emails, and it might be past donors. Or it might be people who showed up at rallies or somebody just signed up for the newsletter, but fifty thousands of good number, because it’s actually not that hard to get to, you know, in terms of what let’s, let’s, let’s, divide that by ten. Ok, for our for our listeners, i want to deal with something that’s manageable by most ultra z even just use five thousand as our example. Okay, so in the five thousand example, they might have five thousand, but there may be only three hundred there that are actually very active on social media and have that cloud score we talked about. And so they’re sort of your influence or group. Obviously, for three hundred, you can send very easily consent individualized message to them, you know, sort of expressing your your want for them to retweet some of their stuff and on their platforms you can also then put them into segments. And so this is one of our non-profit clients did is they started looking at who’s, mentioning some of the key words that they follow. I used the example of climate change, it might be elections. It might be a variety of terms, and so they put them in a segment called supporter no, and they actually sent him a bumper sticker. And so they’re actually trying to actually build some sort of relationship. They’re more than just sort of this mass mutual, like, yeah, especially before you’re asking for some kind of called action, you know, get to know the people start having a conversation about the fact that you know you’re sympathetic to our cause, and we notice, you know, we know you’re spending a lot of time on climate change in your example, and we’d like to get to know you better. I mean, you’re trying to build a relationship before you start asking you and we’re going to follow you and you’re gonna follow us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. And so then you can start scanning their posts as you go forward. Oh, and ultimately, if they retweet you or retweet something that you think is on message with one of your issues, then they become an ambassador. They’re literally in a new segment inside the database on then that will shoot off. An email is you brought a called action, you know, for a little donation, and the idea is that, you know, we think it resonates better when you’ve built that relationship, however small it might be, and you take it off line and the example here, you know, we start to see engagement really jump because most most organizations non-profits don’t have time to do anything other than sort of a monthly blast here we start to see opens increased to two hundred forty four percent of what they normally see, which is twenty, thirty percent open rates are generally what we see because it’s personalized it’s, individualized and it’s triggered on a behavior that just happened it’s right there, the recall is immediate because they’re getting it immediately, and we also see one hundred sixty one percent increase generally in the cliques. So you’re getting that called action and you’re starting to see ultimately revenue lift or donation left here generally of three to six times of what you’d see on a regular email blast. And so, you know, it’s it’s something that no matter how small your list is, you can get a lot more effective using that third leg of sort of activating now the facebook, twitter and ultimately email to really make it a lot more powerful. Um, and we’ve got obviously hundreds of clients that are doing this in a variety different areas, but i thought that example was most apra poto what we’re doing here because of i’m sort of building that relationship, okay, part of the workshop title is for ah, activating for self organizing. So what do you mean by self organizing? So i think with self organizing, i think it’s similar to the example and that, you know, you’re calling on people that maybe are sort of like minded to you and you have to identify them. They may not know about your organization, but you you’ve been able to scan through either their posts or their tweets and understand that maybe there aligned with your organisation. And so you can do things like not just call for donations, but ultimately call for action. Real action, there’s. A number of clients that i work with capitol hill, and, obviously, their causes, and not a sign a full lobbying effort. But a call to action. It might be something that triggers a kn e mail or fax to senator based on certain votes that are coming up. And so, you know, those those air sort of the more traditional cause actions that we see in the self organizing, you know, and we think that, you know, platforms that involved. Obviously, social media, as well as email, can be more effective, similar to what we saw in terms of engagement and ultimately converting them to that call of action called action in self organizing. Okay. Let’s ah, spend a little time on celebrity a couple minutes left. What? How do we identify the celebrities that that may be appropriate for us to reach out to on? Do keep in mind our listeners are small and midsize shop, so we’re not a list that there’s not a list non-profits oh, and maybe not not even pursuing a list. Celebrities necessarily mean there are lesser known celebrities who could still bring a considerable following. Uh, so but how do we how do we identify? And every celebrity is not not open about the causes? Andi, you know what? A lot of times if they are open, they may already be allied with a charity. So prods of them coming to us, it seemed kind of small. How are we going to find the right people with knowing all that? Well, you highlighted a couple of issues. One is obviously identifying, but the other is sort of weighing the risk. And so, you know, once you take on a celebrity, take on the full persona from yesterday and tomorrow, right, way unknown tomorrow we can’t predict tomorrow, but what we do see with celebrities is that they do. Have ultimately that immediate reach. You know, in one of the earliest examples we talked about, they have the halo effect in the immediate reach and they tend to have, you know, even celebrities with relatively low cloud scores, they can still reach a million plus in a roughly about eighteen minutes that’s generally the life span of the tweets and celebrity world. Okay, so you don’t have a lot of long term promotional effect there, but what we do see is that it does activate people who maybe weren’t even close to your cause, and it also is something that we see cross platform, so it might be a tweet that ends up on a variety of different social networks because of who that person is particularly it’s funny, you know? And the other thing is, celebrities really help with the search engine optimization, and we won’t go into the reasons why, but identifying the celebrity is actually not that difficult part of where i’d like to start on part of it is this where the process starts? That’s right is picking the right one’s a part of it is sort of looking off line. Which one do you? Think you identify with your organization does do they care about the issues that you care about? Are they on the right or the left? Those are things that you certainly you care about in terms of aligning your message because you don’t want to have a celebrity activate and help you, and then all of a sudden be off message two weeks later it’s part of that risk one way you can do it certainly is toe look at what’s in the popular press and gather a lot of what some of the comments are in the popular press you can use platforms that scan similar to what we do with the donor databases and supporters. You can put a celebrity’s email address in there, most of them know one or two and identify some of the social networks they’re on and see what the types of things that they care about. You can also approach them privately, and we’ve found certainly an example. Tomorrow on the panel will be the will be goldberg example, it’ll be the pluses and minuses of this strategy, but, you know, they literally just tweeted out to them on the site on her. Her profile and we’ll be then retweeted it, and it was something that there was there was no deal backroom deal. There was no phone calls, there was no rep agents, but it was actually something that they thought she she actually cared about, and they were right, and you’ll see that an example tomorrow well, in more detail, but our listeners won’t be there so what’s right? What was the cause on? So for her, the cause was it related to her love for for animals, and i won’t go into specifically because it’s something that’s being presented, but i will give you another one that that we’re talking about two more. Another was ann curry tweet from two thousand ten it was actually the twit of the year, and she had actually been contacted by doctors out borders to help them get into haiti after that disaster, the air force is blocking the planes that were allowing some of these crucial supporters in there, and and curry saw an opportunity there to retweet to get them to help planned those doctors. Obviously, and this is an example of someone who really only had fifty thousand supporters, but our followers, but it immediately got retweeted to the point where it reached over four, point three million people in that eighteen minute span. And so, you know, there are timely causes, too. You have to take advantage of events in the news and again, if you’re scanning posts of what your supporters we’re talking about, you’ll catch a lot of those things that are in the news, locally and regionally, that may not be in the national news, and you could take advantage of that. And so, you know, we we certainly believe, you know, a celebrity can help, but we also think that the influences that are already in your database can help you just as much because they really care about what you have to say. They’ve already proven it by their interaction or their donation or their activism, and they can’t have that same reach and that’s what generally we say is take baby steps, okay? They also you know, so i don’t have that dance. You minimize your potential downside risk, that’s, right? And what the celebrities gonna be doing or saying as you, you know, tomorrow and the day after, yeah, it’s, it’s similar to putting all your money into one stock, yeah, way don’t know what the future may hold, and we certainly don’t know if that type of celebrity will, you know, have the staying power. But certainly your supporter bases it’s a much broader base, and certainly they have the same influence with their followers on their social media networks and and they can certainly broadcast to their audience with the same type of general volume that you would see. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you very much. Matthew fisher, chief marketing officer for fishing strategy. Thanks so much, matthew. Thank you. I appreciate it, tony. And my pleasure. I look forward to speaking again sometime in the future. All right, all right. Thank you very much for joining us. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of non-profit technology conference two thousand fourteen. I’m grateful to everybody at the non-profit technology conference and at and ten, the ones who hosted the non-profit technology network. Always great fun, tio have be to be with that crowd. And next week, the ceo of inten will be returning that’s, amy sample ward, our social media contributor and also alison fine returns next week. To continue our discussion on matter-ness had to show people that they matter to your organization. If you missed any part of today’s show, you can find it at tony martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Sure, social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules will be with me next month to do fund-raising day. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternative network to get you thinking. Things. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun, shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re going invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com, you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking. Come on.

What Troubles You The Most?

 

Results from my professional development survey (now closed): 

Donor Retention:
Dan’s Donor Retention Ideas, interview with Dan Blakemore, director of development for International House

Donor Retention, interview with Jay Love, CEO of Bloomerang

Getting Your Donors To Fall In Love With You, video from Farra Trompeter at Big Duck

Social Media Strategy:
Beth Kanter: Real Online Engagement & Measurement, video interview; Beth’s blog

A Conversation With Amy Sample Ward, Part Deux; interview about her book, Social Change Anytime Everywhere (which I strongly recommend for strategy and tactics)

Followship, interview with Allison Fine, co-author of The Networked Nonprofit

How To Use Social Media In Year-End Drives, Fundraising Fundamentals interview with Natalie Stamer at St. Baldrick’s Foundation

Creative Thank You’s:
Thank You’s For Year-End Giving (with lots of ideas that work anytime), video interview with Claire Axelrad

The short version: 10-minute Fundraising Fundamentals podcast with Claire and Julia Wilson of OneJustice

Generosity Series:
GenEvents site

The national tour, Generation Series