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16NTC Videos: Virtual Orgs & Volunteers + 17NTC + Hair News

New video interviews from #16NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference. And you need to take a look at #17NTC in Washington, D.C. in March. P.S. Hair news. 

Nonprofit Radio for December 9, 2016: Leveraging Expert Or Tech Volunteers & 7 IT Security Pitfalls

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Steve Heye, Erin Dieterich, & Princessa Bourelly: Leveraging Expert Or Tech Volunteers

(L to R) Steve Heye, Erin Dieterich & Princessa Bourelly

We’ve got what you need to know about managing volunteers with special expertise. Where do you find them? What about screening and scoping? Our panel is Steve Heye and Erin Dieterich from NetSuite and Princessa Bourelly from Juma Ventures. (Recorded at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference)

 

 

 

Leon Wilson & Dan Rivas: 7 IT Security Pitfalls

(L to R) Leon Wilson & Dan Rivas at 16NTC

Not sexy but very important. Leon Wilson from The Cleveland Foundation and Dan Rivas from Idealware walk you through bad habits that you need to change so you don’t put your precious data at risk. (Also from the 2016 NTC)

 

 


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Okay. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on the aptly named host we have a listener of the week, young non-profit professionals network of milwaukee hello, milwaukee! They tweeted learning about non-profit excellence listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio end quote excellence love that thank you so much for that. Plus they’re very loyal re tweeters. Thanks for that also, i’m glad you found us. Thanks so much for listening for loving non-profit radio. I’m glad we’re helping your important work. Young non-profit professionals network of milwaukee they’re at and why p n m e congratulations on being our listener of the week. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with bracket nathalia if i had to speak the words you missed today’s show leveraging expert or tech volunteers we’ve got what you need to know about managing volunteers with special expertise. Where do you find them? What about screening and scoping their work? Our panel is steve hi and aaron dietrich from net sweet and princessa bourelly from juma ventures that was recorded at the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Are you signed up for twenty seventeen? You? Need to and seven security pitfalls not sexy but very important leon wilson from the cleveland foundation and dan revis from idealware walk you through bad habits that you need to change so you don’t put your precious data at risk. That’s also from the twenty sixteen and tc. Sign it for twenty seventeen on today’s. Tony, take two your trump challenge reduction director’s cut. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we be spelling dot com here is leveraging expert or tech volunteers from the twenty sixteen and tc. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen auntie si non-profit technology conference in san jose, california. This is also part of ntcdinosaur stations my guests now are steve, hi, aaron dietrich and princessa bourelly let’s meet them. They’re seminar topic is leveraging expert or technical volunteers. Steve is solution consultant for net suite, and next to him is erin aaron dietrich, director of corporate citizenship, and princessa bourelly director of finance at juma ventures. Steve aaron princessa welcome, thank you. You’re very welcome welcome to non-profit radio. Just indulge me for a moment while i highlight our swag item for this interview, which is from black mesh. Everything is in black there’s. A very high gloss notebook with a calendar at the end. And we have a usb drive. Flash driver should tell you flash drive and, uh, upend your basic basic pen. And this goes into our are you our swag pile for the day, which is right here. Awesome. Third for the for the people, for our listeners. Just have audio. Okay. There’s a difference. Hyre let’s. Steve, you explain it off off. Mike let’s, have you explain now, there’s a difference between using experts who are technical and non-technical help us with an overview of this? Sure. So the way we first started, you know, talking about this was, you know, we all have volunteers. We all understand how to work with them when we all have ideas. Part of matthew’s. Um but there is a very fundamental difference between using somebody that just wants to come in for a single day and do a single task versus somebody that has ah, very skill. A very big skillsets and indoors and expert. So you know, with probono the key is they’re coming in and they do legal work for their living, or they do finance work for their living, and they come or technology for their living, and then they want to do that for you, but do it for free. So that kind of volunteer requires a very different relationship with them because you’re allowing them to do work that will have dramatic impact on your organization and is much more critical that you understand what they’re going to be doing, how you’re going to use them and build a relationship with them. All right, erin, is it essential that these technical volunteers be supervised by other people who are technically inclined or who are technicians? So i would say it’s very important that they’re supervised the level of technology knowledge that the person who supervises has will differ at different organizations. And i think the most important thing is just that whoever’s managing thie non-profit ah project and whoever’s, the lead volunteered that they’re on the same page about what the project’s going to be, so as long as they can speak the same language and that’s probably the right skill level. But if you have a volunteer who’s very, very skilled and is speaking a language that you just don’t understand, as they described a project that projects probably not going to go well until you find somebody on your side who can speak the same language and understand what you’re getting involved in, ok, so at least that level of understanding. Okay, now princessa you’re using technical volunteers at juma ventures, we are currently using the probono through net sweet this’s a multi year and the project is going really well, and it is i have been a great experience and opportunity for juma as well as the net sweet probono to come in and offer their experience in what capacity are using technical volunteers, so they are helping us now set up our dash schwartz within the net sweet system, tio take an excel spreadsheet and be able to pull that same information out of net sweet without having to pull all of these different areas together. So it’s going to be sort of easier for us to manage to maintain. So we use their technology expertise to actually do the set up, and i managed the dashboards as well, okay. And do you have some lessons learned to share? Not necessarily. Right now, way. Have another twenty minutes together. But there’s some lessons learned about using technical volunteers. The biggest lesson that i shared today would be for us to be prepared on the non-profit side. Okay, little better preparation. So all right, well, we’ll get there. We’ll get a chance. Talk about that. Andi okay, you have some advice on finding technical volunteers. Erin, you want to start with there, start start stuff. They’re sure one of the things that we shared today in our session was that it’s important to look at who as a non-profit you’re already connected, teo. So you look at who is already, you know, from the corporate side making donations who perhaps is already a partner and look at what their core competencies are as an organization, and see if there is an alignment between their core competencies and what you need help with. If there is, it might be very easy. Next step to go back to them and say, hey, we love working with you, here’s something that were really struggling with do you think that this is something? Your team would wantto look at probono and start the relationship that way. In addition to looking at your corporate kind of connections, there are a lot of really awesome sites out there that can help you find an individual technical volunteer. So we shared a list of resource is today, but among them is the taproot foundation. Catch afire community core volunteermatch linked in latto from empower there’s a bunch community corps for man, power and power and power. Okay, where you could get you could go on there and essentially say, you know, we’ve scoped out this it’s a challenge that organizations having. Perhaps we need a new website and you can go and find volunteers who are taking their personal time after their job to to do that project for you. Okay, i’ve had the catch a fire ceo on rachel chong. Yeah, it was great a couple years, but yes, very true. Okay, is a screening is going to be important eyes? Okay, wait. So we talked a little about finding now we’ve got a prospect pool of whether it’s from real time relationships and partnerships or somewhere we found online screening. We re interview them. Right? I mean, i would think same way you’re interviewing. Ah hyre yeah, so there’s a couple, it varies a little bit. First, the amount of screening, the amount of effort that you’re going to put into the screening process depends on what the type of project that they’re going to be working on. So based on the level of impact of the project was going tohave and the risk that’s involved in this project, you’re going to want a little varying level of screening. So if it’s if it’s a project where they are like princessa talked about, they’re going to be in your financial system. They’re going to be looking at, you know, helping you, you know, adjust you although or if it’s a legal probono where your they’re reviewing contracts or they’re doing that, you’re gonna want to ah, ah, lot more screening a hell of a lot. A proprietary information, proprietary and potentially damaging. Yeah. So you want to make sure it fits in the wrong hands, right? So what do some of those, you know, nondisclosure agreement might be in place or, you know, on actual application, ask him who they worked with before. Do some background checks if it’s needed, but if it’s a vendor that you already have a long term relationship, you’re a customer with them and, you know, maybe then the barriers drop a little bit because you’ve already had a long letter longer relationship with that company and because you’re paying them and they have, you know, are already a setup established program is a little bit different on the type of screening you would do, or if you’re just having somebody build a little widget on your website, that isn’t like mission critical, then you’re screening might be a little lower because it’s it’s not like mission critical it’s not going to blow up the whole world, your world, your mission world and there isn’t a finance proprietary data right involved, but still there still going into your yeah, you still have to ensure that they have a certain level of technical expertise because they are going into the back end of your system, your coding and yeah, so i mean, asking could mess things up, right? Asking for examples of work they’ve done before who they worked with or even asking for their resume or having a full out a sample application there’s a number of things you could do just to get some simple information about them. Okay? Yeah, right to screen him. Princessa any any advice lessons learned on screening volunteers? So going through net sweet, we didn’t have to do the screening. We just we applied we the hardest part is narrowing down from this, you know, these grand scheme of ideas that we need internally narrowing that down for the next week team to then matches teo prose that could come in and have the availability to sort of target our project. Okay, so you potentially could have used more volunteers? Is that what you mean? T to other work for you? The beauty of net suite is that they offer it multiple times per year. So even though we didn’t get to address all of the projects there is, there is a possibility that we could get to it. Okay, okay, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna the errand and steve are both nodding. So i guess you have a shot at this. All right? So instead of talking around, this remains will say, well, let’s, just have aaron, why did you describe the net sweet volunteer technical volunteer program? How this works? Sure so and nets sweet. We donate our software platform to non-profits and social enterprises, and once they start using that platform, they are eligible to apply for probono support from our global employee workforce every quarter, so at the beginning of each quarter and application goes out to non-profits they say, here are the things i need help with. And then internally at the company, we send out an email to all of our employees and say, hey, hear the things that non-profits need help with on the platform. We need your technical skills if you want to get involved, let us know, and then our team actually does the matchmaking. So were the screeners in that instance, we look at all the employees, backgrounds, we look at where they work, what time zone they’re on, what their expertise is and we put together typically teams of two to four employees who we think have the right skills to get that project done. That’s been requested. Okay. How many? How many people on your team princessa there? Ford for max. You got the mac. Okay, now, doesn’t that sweet? Havea probono requirement part of employment is you’ll spend weeks or ten percent of your time or something. Is there anything like that? So, it’s not a requirement, but all of our employees are allowed to spend twenty hours a quarter on a project probono when they get matched up so they could, you know, work it out with their manager that they apply and take on a project every single quarter of the year. But it’s not a requirement. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh, all right. So after screening let’s, see where should we wish we go on starting to manage? We’ve nothing scope. Hoping is that we are right now on twenty martignetti non-profit radio. I have george in jail now think if this was a discussion on on hiking in the in the adirondacks, scoping, you know, would probably be pretty simple thing, understand? But in this conversation, i don’t know what scoping is. So get yourself out of jail, what is scoping? So i think the key teo a big differentiator between using an expert or technical volunteer is they will need something that tells them exactly the challenge you’re having, what you’re hoping to solve and how you want, ok, scope of the project so it’s a scope of the project, meaning that you’re going to just both sit down with a document and agree on what are the what is the challenge? We’re trying to solve one of the goals of the project and then talk through that together to figure out what the actual outcome will be. So you know it usually it starts way too big, and then you scale down into something that’s actually accomplish because that’s, one of the channels we have with expert could also employees only have up to twenty hours per quarter, right? And that zoho almost all probono helped that you get will have some sort of ah, limitation to how much help you’ll get and how long the project can last. So the real key to using a technical volunteer is having a chunk of work. That’s, containable, it’s, describable attainable and it’s something that you can easily pass to someone and have them understand. Princessa was this hard? Teo, define the scope. It was hard to narrow down internal given. I mean, you said there were other things get done, and maybe this project was even bigger than it. It could reasonably be i think i shot for the moon, ok? And they had to bring me back down. All right, so i basically put out our, you know, our primary concerns. They chose a a project that they could actually accomplish within the twenty hours. And so the difficult part is on my end, making sure that i’m providing them with the proper information to make the project six successful. Okay. Yeah. You clearly have responsibilities. Yes, a swell as they do. Okay. Okay. All right. So scoping. Yes, of course. We what do we want to see if the out at the end of this whether you know again, this supplies beyond that’s that’s sweet program, but, uh, you gotta have a scope document. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. It’s hopeful about both sides. Not just for the non-profit, but also for the, you know, the probono person because the probono in person and it knows what’s expected of them. And then is mohr able to know if their skills is the right skills and if they’re able to actually achieve it, or to start to understand if it’s even impossible within the amount of time that they’re given to do it? Okay, and that they have to do to donate. Okay, all right, what comes at right now? Snack it’s, savoury snacks are being served and the announcement is being made. That is not theirs, not god. Not on. I’m diffident, it’s. Just somebody who knows that the savoury snacks are being served. That’s awesome that’s extension of a sense of his omnipotence. Chocolate snacks, including big urns of chocolate milk. Here. Then i see which i don’t know about the rest, but i kind of like talking, but it was weird to see a milk in an urn and you don’t see that very clear that they were armed with a silver top. It looks like a three gallons, three or four gallon earned. It looks like to me. Yeah, and with a little with, you know spigot on it. Okay. Okay. After scoping working with our technical volunteers. Aaron, what comes? Next what i’m really getting into the meat and potatoes of getting the project done and, you know, something that’s important to think about there is project management because sometimes you’ll get a really excited set of volunteers. And if there’s not somebody who’s responsible for keeping the project on track, as with any project you’d work on probono or not, you know, khun, go kind of off the rails or can get delayed, or people can kind of wander away, and it doesn’t get accomplished on the time that you really had set aside for it. So focusing, having that timeline, having a project manager who’s going to lead everybody through the process is really critical. But now we are working with volunteers. So where do you draw the line between? You know, team, this is you’re too slow and okay, team i understand. We understand who will will extend the timeline. You are volunteers and we don’t want to lose you because we’re twenty five percent of the way into this now, right? How did we manage that? Well, it’s a collaboration. So i think that’s one of the most important things about using technical volunteers is that it’s not like you’re saying i want this project done, go do it and let me know when it’s done it’s that you are saying, i’m going to work with you and we’re going to get this project done together, so if it starts getting delayed because of your timeline or their timeline, you’re kind of in that together and you can re adjust expectations vs if you just kind of set it and forget it, then you have no idea what’s going on on the scenes, but if it’s a true collaboration, then you’re both coming to the table. You’re both taking on work in order to get this delivered and the project’s going to be something that really resonates with your organization and that you can continue using for a long time if you were part of the process versus if non-profit volunteered just came in. Did something said, here you go and then left. You might not know how to use that thing in the future, okay? I don’t know, princess is i don’t want to put you on the spot and say that sweet volunteers volunteermatch please there, there, there, there, over budget there, behind time. E, you want to you want to get more out of this so you don’t know anything you want to add to this part of the project management internally, we had to make sure that we were prepared for our meetings, okay? You know, you have periodic meetings face-to-face orwell, skype or whatever virtual virtual once a week, and prior to that meeting on the non-profit side, we had to be prepared in order to get the best benefit from the professionals on get their insight in their feedback. Ok, what do you want to say about preparation? You got to get the right people collaborating internally. So internally we have a great team, you know, working with the accounting team and then also communicating that information to the leadership team for their feedback, and they’re circling back to net sweet just to make sure that they know that things are working that were, you know, also to make sure that we’re on track and to make sure that we’re on pretty much on track to complete the project. Okay, okay, i should have asked you earlier. What is juma ventures work? So junior ventures works too. They’re they’re fighting. The poverty, the poverty cycle by providing education and financial literacy to youth. And they employ the use at the ballpark. Ballpark venues around the area and what’s your area. Where are you? We are end. We’re here in san jose. We’re in san francisco. Where in nor new orleans. We have new york. Venue way are growing. Yes. Yeah. Your central. You’re west. Your east? Yes. Nothing north. The chicago. Detroit? Not yet. Okay, but probably definitely on the on the horizon. Okay. Okay. What’s, the budget there, annual budget. The annual budget is eight million. Yeah. Okay. Now, some people might think, why a million dollar budget? Why do they need probono? How come they couldn’t pay for the help that they need? So with non-profits we use most of that that money to sort of support the mission. And it is it is difficult to be able to provide income for this level of professional, you know, services? Yeah. You’re getting roughly eighty hours of technical help. Which several hundred dollars an hour. I imagine if you had to go out and purchase it. Yes. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Uh, all right. Project management. That seems like a pretty broad topic is there more we could say about strategies for project manager? Upleaf i think the key there is just that collaboration and just trying to have regular scheduled meetings and you even having a regular format to that regular scheduled meeting like, we’re going to start the meeting and we’re going to look at the goal we meet the goal help along. Are we on the timeline? I know there’s not much else to say about the project management, except that it shouldn’t be a, um, attack or, you know, like we didn’t meet the deadline or, you know, managing it that way as much as trying to ensure the both sides are happy with the progress, but i’d say the other big key with that project management that isn’t talked about enough is making sure that the non-profit is in er the probono person is seeing their impact and seeing the progress that is being made and understanding how it is really helpful to the non-profit so the non-profit has sort of has a responsibility to keep sharing back to the volunteer of how appreciative they are from the help and the outcome that it’s going to do and what it’s going to allow that non-profit to do, they couldn’t do without that help. And just because the energy of a probono khun feed over time especially the project, is like three months or, you know that it’s time, you know, when they’re when they first start, they’re not they’re excited, they’re energetic, but then when they get into the weeds and then the problems start or they hit a hiccup part of that project management is keeping that person engaged and excited and reassured. Yeah, there’s value there’s a number of ways to do that of, you know, either to recognition or doing many celebrations of metoo hitting a milestone or doing, you know, small thank you says you go, i think that’s a big part of that project management. Okay, princessa you wantto share what what you’re doing around, sharing the value and encouraging the the probono volunteers? I don’t think i’ve done anything specific, but i think what goes a long way is the fact that they can see that their work is being utilized ized and actually brings value to the organization. How do they see that they don’t see that? During them during the project management phase, so they don’t see it until abila project is finished, right? But during the process, you know the fact that we’re not coming back with a lot of changes, a lot of iterations, you know, a lot of going over the time schedule in the time frame, i think it’s it’s sort of positive reinforcement tio let them know that things are going smoothly and according to plan and will be seen to her through fruition, your work is appreciated, yes, and i think the other thing that she’s maybe down playing a little bit is that she is able princessa did talk about how she was able to share that back-up with our leadership team, and i know that the probono volunteers are seeing the fact that there’s, an investment from the leadership team there’s an engagement through the team and their energy is staying up and excited about it so that just, you know, it plays into it, it doesn’t have to be in actually like a gift or anything like that. It’s just that continued conversation, okay? And i think as the volunteers get the exposure of understanding more and more of what you’re non-profit does they take away a real pride of what they’ve helped you achieve, even if what they were building is, you know, a small widget for your website, they are now kind of feeling a part of the team, and i love when i, you know, ask employees who have done probono projects hey, what kind of a project did you d’oh? What was the organization? And they automatically become the spokesperson for the organization they tell you about they light up there like, oh, and you’re now i donate to them or oh, i just went into the five k run for them and there’s so much more engaged now than they were before, and they kind of feel like they have a real responsibility for that organization because they took on actual technical work for them. That’s wonderful. All right, all right. Are we at project completion? Now? We have. We have a couple minutes left together. We’re okay. Are you anxious to get out of here? I don’t know. I mean, the project. I got to go somewhere way. Chocolate milk. You’re looking really good there in the middle. You can’t leave. Until steve, steve are princessa does okay, what? We’re project completion. Yeah, so i think the big project completion to me then is where we ended our presentation was talking about connecting it back to the mission, so then, you know, the outcome was a great great we created this financial dashboard, but i think taking a minute there and just saying, yeah, you just created a finding dashboard, but now what you’ve done is you’ve eliminated hours of work that i was doing every week in a manual spreadsheet that now i can really spend time analyzing that data and actually changed the way my organization works based on this data and just taking time to celebrate that, connecting it back to the overall goal and of inviting leadership, maybe to come in and talk to thank the volunteers. That could be a real way to wrap up and close the projects that leadership leadership touch again. Yeah, valuable aaron, anything. You know, i think revisiting the project maybe five, six months out is also really important for the volunteers just to hear from you about hey, you know, for six months now, we’ve been using these new dashboards. And here’s, what we’ve seen that’s happened at the organization, i had a probono project that some colleagues were working on a few years ago, where they helped build a social media strategy for a non-profit and a year later, the non-profit came back to them and said, hey, you know, because of that strategy that you helped us build, we want to grant to get a full time social media person on the other hand, it’s like gravel or the amazing, amazing stories, but had that non-profit not come back to the volunteers a year out and told them that they would have never known that we’ve just been happy about the project, but now they felt real prime glee that’s, magnificent. Princessa is your project finished? It is one week away from ove r being done there. Go deliver balls have been sent to us, the dashboards are set up, the reports are active, and it is now on me to actually play around with them and make sure that they’re functioning properly and any changes or anything like that, we would have to communicate back to the team, but we’re pretty close to signing off on that. Okay. This’s is exciting. Time was cool and, uh, what’s planned for the for the for the mark. The occasion of the completion dahna we hadn’t thought that far. That’s only you only got a week left. I got to get to ceo onboard is gonna be some something dramatic. Okay. Okay. Uh, all right. This is wonderful. Lots of great ideas are durney project management tools. Online tools that you you recommend that you like. If not, you could say no, but i think the project management for me, for this kind of a project, it depends on the severity or the scope of the project. But i think keeping it simple, askey, let’s say scope, not severity also. Very. Yeah. Yeah. E i think keeping the tool is simple. A za project. So you know, if it is something something as simple as a google doc just having a quick outline, they’re keeping your mini me meeting minutes. They’re keeping, you know, the record of what happened and what got done. You could do something more complicated now, but i don’t think it really needs to be anything more. Okay. All right. Should we wrap it up there? Hands alright, excellent, great ideas, lovett and that was leveraging expert or technical volunteers with steve hi solution consultant at net sweet also aaron dietrich, director of corporate citizenship at that sweet and princess bourelly director of finance for juma ventures steve princessa thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference thank you for being with us. Seven security pitfalls coming up first pursuant, they have a new content paper for you, it’s free and easy to get overcoming the major donor dilemma. How to identify and engage new major donors and also optimized your cultivation process. You’ll find this paper at pursuing dot com, and we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising are you kicking off millennial engagement in twenty seventeen? You can do it with stand up comedy, live music, dancing and raising money. Check out the video at we b e spelling dot com now, tony steak too you’re trump challenge re ducks director’s cut it’s still up it’s the reduction of the reduction check out to lula, the jack russell terrier. I’m telling you she has great insights into donald trump’s. Potential impact on non-profits and i have minor contributions. Check out the video. The director’s cut. The video is at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two. We got to live listener love. I would do it quickly. And then, of course, the affiliate affections of podcast pleasantries. If you’re listening live love out to you you know who you are you know where you are. Thank you so much for being with me. Podcast pleasantries i still got to check you know i keep saying way we’ve been spiking twelve thousand on some shows. However many there are is way over ten thousand could be his money is twelve or thirteen thousand pleasantries to you, our podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners nationwide, you thought of anything to say throughout the country, but i nationwide affections to you. Let your station know thatyou listen, i’d be grateful for that. Thanks so much for being with us. Here are leon wilson and dan revis from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference seven security pitfalls welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference. We’re in san jose, california, at the conference convention center in san jose. My guest now are leon wilson and dan revis. Leon is chief technology and information officer at the cleveland foundation. And he’s sitting right next to me. And dan revis is managing writer for idealware. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Welcome to non-profit radio. Pleasure to have you. Yeah, a pleasure being here. Your session is seven. Highly risky habits of small to midsize non-profits security pitfalls. That’s great. Leon let’s. Start with you. Why? Why are non-profits just not paying enough attention, teo. Security? Well, a lot of in the whole emphasis behind presentation was just my travels over the last four years of working with small and midsized non-profits and constantly seeing the same challenges that we’re dealing with. Some of it is just naive nous ignorance, complacency, poor slumming that it really doesn’t impact them until it does impact them. So we felt that this session was critically important to just remind them of some of the simple, basic and black lean tackling things. Okay, we’re trying to avoid crises here. Is that right there? That’s? Right? Dahna i mean, how bad can it be? Security, dan, don’t you have an actual example of or just making hypothetical, but how bad could it be? Well, yeah, i don’t have examples. We worked on a report recently where we talked teo security experts and sort of learned from them what are the things that non-profits they’re dealing with? And we found that, you know, non-profits are in an interesting space, as we all know, low budgets, very little time security often gets overlooked, gets neglected, it’s not particularly sexy, no it’s, sort of the vegetables, you know, the non-profit world. We were surprised by how many people came to our session because the reality is it’s the last thing you really want to do, but i think people have seen enough of the data breaches they’ve seen enough of the issues come out like weekly there’s, there’s, data breaches and that’s on the commercial side where they presumably have so much more money toe to throw with us. Absolutely on dh that’s where we see so much of trouble. Yeah, all right arika okay, i mean, it’s pretty simple stuff, i mean, the way you do, i don’t mean the topic metoo details of it, the way you’ve organized seven highly risky habits. Right. So all right, you know, you shouldn’t be sleeping with a bad partner. What? All right, why don’t you start us off? Well, leon, but you bring up anything point, they were all very common sense things that are happening. What we want to do is share with them if you’re going to do these things, but we wanted to educate you on how you can mitigate the risk. For example, one of the first things we talked about wass bring allowing people to use personal computers in the workplace. We know it’s going to happen because for a lot of non-profits it’s the way that they can save money because you don’t have to worry about purchasing a computer for someone. But keep in mind that you have toe put some provisions around that, like making sure that they have the most up to date somewhere running on that computer, making sure they have anti virus running on that computer, otherwise and who’s had who who else has access to the computer when they’re at their homes, their family members, friends, other type of disaster. Exactly. So we know it’s gonna happen. And that’s why we said that? We’re not telling you something that you don’t already know, but what we do want to do is provide you with some wisdoms and some thoughts as far as how can you mitigate, prevent or least contains some of the challenges that you’re going to be dealing with that so that’s a good example right there. Okay, so way need to have policies, i presume they’re absolutely around the use of the personal technology in the workplace. What are some of these policies? Well, i mean, just having a policy thinking ahead of time, what should we allow and what should we not? You know, that’s probably the first most important thing just to think it through. So you’re not doing that at hawk way or that people aren’t sort of making it up as they go along. But then from there, you know, some of the things we talked about our session things that you already know you need anti virus software, you need to make sure it was on your phone that your aps are not downloading something malicious. That’s pulling data from your phone, you know, there they’re things that you have probably all heard somewhere in. Your life. But, you know, in the work context, we sort of forget that, you know, we assume that there’s someone on the and who’s taking care of everything and we forget once we bring it home, you know, it’s up to us now, and so if you as leader of your organization, aren’t making sure your employees, they’re doing those things, they’re helping them do those things, there’s a lot of risk in that we did it, we did it really a straw man pole where we asked a lot of people had about forty or fifty people in our session, and we ask him how many of you have any virus software on your cell phone? I was expecting to see about release half only about maybe six people raise your hands, and i don’t even think most people know that that exists. There you go. So now wear allowing folks to share to sync up their email, sync up their email that context also get access to certain files off their mobile devices, because, again, it’s how we operated these at these days, and it works for a lot of us, but what happens when that smart? Phone gets stolen, lost or if you’re constantly upgrading, you’re a smart phone and you don’t properly clean out here clean out your smartphone well, if you don’t have password protection and also, if you’re not using anti virus software on their, imagine how others can get out that information. Where are we even gonna find auntie? But where do we start to look for anti virus software for our phone? It’s right out there? I mean, if you go out to the iphone store and just search for any virus software, if you go to the google play store and search for anti virus software, it is out there it’s just again. It’s not sexy, it’s, not something you’re downloading, usually downloading games and absent things that nature, you’re not down lee office productivity, our office, productivity, aps as well as in the especially for android phones because they’re not as police. The acts that are not a police there’s a lot of malicious acts that are out there, so you’re downloading what you might think. It’s a free game, the software but it is designed to then go after your contacts, your emails and other type of other types of information that could end work its way into your organization. Leon let’s, stay with you. How did we enforce these policies that both are saying are important on the in this? This this one on the personal technology side? How do we make sure that people are doing with their equipment what we’re asking them to do if they want to use it in the workplace? Great question. And that question came up a couple of times in our talk. Part of it is human police enemy some of it you can, you can you can afford through technology through right, so certain kind of tools, but sometimes it’s just about writing that policy in place, right creating a b y o d policy and and require all your staff members to comply with that were to sign off and understand a lot of his education, and then try to do sometimes basic auditing and checking with people’s equipment. Verify that they have this, that they have, that they’re compliant with those policies. So if you have the luxury of adapting technologies to enforce those rules and some of them are very commonplace with microsoft exchange and often sixty five you could do some of those things, but you you can’t it cost you nothing to write a policy, to put it in place forces, but enforcement. So there is actual verification. We actually going to look at their device and see that they’ve got on it what we are asking them to put. Well, imagine if you’re working for social services organization and you have health and human services information on there that information get lost, would you would you rather not go after and once a year check and verify that they are in compliance with that as opposed to falling prey to a hip, a compliance issue? Okay, okay, then let’s move on to number two are you know what a second? Why don’t mean necessarily in sequence, but what’s another one out of the seven? You know, another one that i think falls in line with it’s a bad habit that people just aren’t really necessarily very aware of is they’re. They’re not always very discerning about which cloud platforms they’re using so often people wanting his drop box. It’s easy. They probably have a personal account already and so, you know, you jump. On dropbox and you’re putting your data files from your organization on there, the reality is that consumer based called services just aren’t as secure as ones that air oriented, more towards business and enterprise type. I’m called service, so you know, people think they’re doing fine, they think they’re doing good, they trust drop box, but they don’t really understand there is a difference between using that and a more business orian commercial. What were some of the more? What are some of the commercial ones? Leon leon for-profit says that well, i mean what again, what we’re talking about rather than using the dropbox to personal version used to run blocks for business or dog bites for team rather than using dahna g dr usedto get a partial use g driver’s part of blue collapse whether than using microsoft one dr that you get for free if you haven’t outlook dot com account, use it as a part of one dr for business on the part of your opposite sixty five you have greater securities, the i t department or whoever is your tech support provider has greater control over containing who has access to that information. Plus you can retrieve that information more efficiently. Imagine it wanted you using your own personal dropbox account and it’s sink to, like five or six other different devices when you leave that organization. How do we get that information back from your personal rot box account? We don’t basic. There you go. So information’s out door now you’re basically are storing your data and everybody’s home when everybody’s personal device you’re probably not a magic. I don’t know how many people have tried to return. Retrieve a lot of information off a dropbox personal account’s been successful at it. Okay. Okay. So you thank you because you let your name three resource is there on top. Your head. Excellent. Ok. Alright. So safe for use of the cloud of cloud services. Okay, what else we got of our seven? Well, the one thing that we always harp on and people get a chuckle out of it. But we have deal with it is proper password management strong password using stronger passwords and insurance, and requiring that your staff members whether they’re using their personal devices or if they’re using company own devices to use strong passwords and not just using one, two, three, four, five, six or password as your password, but also changing that passed were periodically will do with that that’s still out there, we showed a church, we showed her chart and still one, two, three, four, five, six password no past are still the top passwords being used by most folks. So we again we think that we’re past that, but we’re really not and what we’re what we’re doing in our talk is really just reminding folks and educating them of things that they know, but they just need to be reminded of people. Please have a secure password do not use one, two, three, four, five or password, no path, no pan out used you’ll be, you’ll be, you’ll be better than probably two thirds of users if you just eliminate those three things that i don’t use them. What oppcoll yeah again, you’re right. These things were here, but we’re not doing it exactly when i do it, there should be numbers that should be symbols. It should be a word out of a definition of what a lot of people are talking about. It now is maybe using phrases so you can’t you can’t assume you can’t you can’t expect your staff member to come up with a cryptic pass where like a b capital, jay lorts see one, two, three oh, the ampersand sign and all that sort of stuff, but they could come up with a phrase always use the example of it. He used big mac fries but capitalized, obey in the a m and neck and then using empress stand for the a m a that is going to be far harder to increase, to break to crack, then some some more simple password, but you’ll remember it. Or maybe a phrase that’s just known to you or your family or your yeah, yeah it’s in your from your grandparent’s something, and then you choose the first couple of letters of each exactly, exactly, and using symbols and numbers and still those things, too, make it somewhat creek critics still, because really, what? What happens? You know you’re you’re lengthening the time it takes to crack your password, you know, if they if they know there’s a with just twenty six characters a through z, they can do that a lot more quickly than if there’s twenty six. Characters plus, you know, ten digits plus cerini of upper case and symbols. You just magnify the difficulty. Yeah, absolutely exponentially. Okay, okay, give us another one again. Would you throw something else out from our from our seven? Yeah. You know, one that is another pretty basic thing. People aren’t necessarily always backing up their data. They they don’t have a plan for back-up. Yeah. Disaster recovery, you know, not just a disaster. Where, say, a server breaks down or, you know, something gets erased, but like real disasters, what happens if you have a flood and you know, your servers get destroyed? That way, you know, a fire, those sorts of situation, actually, at last, year’s auntie si i interviewed. I remember you could you could search listeners if you want to find this one. Her name was dar geever ca. It was all about you, you know that. You know, you know that, you know, dark. It was all about your disaster disaster recovery plan. So that was just one year ago. But first of all, you gotta have a plan. You’re not the airtight may not be hurricane proof, but i have a plan, right, let’s. Get started well, that’s the key thing, and we were saying that a lot of non-profits have become more mature, smart backing up their data. But david, backing up your data is just one part of it. When you talk about disaster recovery, you’re talking about protecting the entire environment. So if your server crash it’s going to take a lot longer to bring that server back-up depending on how you been, how you been poor, proactive, into that recovery, then just restoring the working files, how long is it going to take for you to get the operating system back-up apply altum security patches and all that sort of stuff and depending on the type of non-profit you are, is that ok or not for you to be dahna day a week, two weeks, so when we talk about disaster recovery we’re talking about you got to go beyond just backing up the data, you’ve got to be concerned with the environment as a whole and what is your strength? What is your what if analysis for if this were to occur, when are we going to do? Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation, pop 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. Dar even went into the possibility that some organizations may need off site places to go. Well, you gotta have some place rented or or have a share agreement for when you needed an emergency for physical location. It is it is conceivable me, obviously, going to the cloud has helped out tremendously as far as people who still itjust dorner information in a cloud using google laps ofthis office. Three, sixty five things that nature there, they have access to their working files, and they could still use things like microsoft office or google docks and things that nature. But if you’re trying to get to your donor zsystems and hopefully that’s in a cloud of swell, but there might be still some things that are on that physical server and what happens if that server was to crash or the building that you’re operating out of two is inaccessible or loses power? Yeah, okay, all right. They’re excellent. What else you guys got? Well, the one of things that we also talked about that we want to touch on was about software management. And this is about basically ensuring that when you’re doing software updates, patch updates and things that nature, that you do it in an intelligent matter-ness not every not every update is a good update. A lot of the hackers thes days are going through the adobes, the job of e ems and things of that nature. So you want to be mindful of that? And you want to make sure that if you’re allowing people to download software and do updates on their own, um what? What are your provisions around that they’re actually downloading malicious software. So we talked about again, more policies the potential the locking down the workstations and required an it person or tech support person, too. Basically white list that particular software patch up days before comes down. Because once you do that, then it help out with on the productivity. Okay. Okay. Anything else, dan, you want to add about the suffering management side? No, i think that covers it that way. Okay. Okay. Don’t want to go through these two fast. No that’s. Quite all right. Okay. So feel free to elaborate. Well, well, i will share that one thing that in the office, when we’re talking, we’re going to talk. That thing that came up a lot of security and especially we start talking about cyber security, and they say, well, leon and dan, if you’re telling us we have to be have stronger passwords if we have to be responsible about where we’re storing our data in mohr business, great cloud storage solutions as opposed to consumer grace clouds store solutions, what does that say for cybersecurity were what are your thoughts on cybersecurity? And what we were sharing with them is that we feel that a lot of the cloud stores a lot, a lot of the cloud vendors are doing a decent job as far as doing that. What we need to start looking at when we start talking about password management is looking to some of the clouds cloud password management solutions out there, because now we’re requiring our staff members to remember five or six or seven different passwords because they log into their computer one way they logged into google app susan another password because we were now no longer have single sign on any more, so they were asking questions regarding that and make it, and we were given recommendations on tools like last past and so forth, okay. Let’s not gloss over this. Yeah, yeah. Last last past a cz one of those clouds on password management solutions and there’s two or three others that are out there if you go out there and google them. But what they allow you to do is is almost like a software it’s. Almost like a password vault. You can upload a key and all your primary passwords. And then you have one master password with some kind of token key that allows you to then log in one time. And then those solutions was analog into your sixty five. Those solutions argument with in laws because they have they have they hold on to your credentials. So as we’re now moving into maur, this hybrid mode where we still have to log into a local network. But we have a lot of our systems out in a cloud. We have to now deal with howie managing our passwords across both in the cloud and on premise. Okay, about dash lane. Either of you familiar with it. Actually. Password management is that you think is in the same camp it’s in that same camp with last pass and so forth. I mean there’s two or three, they’re out there. Octus another one that’s out there that a lot of people are trying to use for a single sign on between their microsoft active directory network as well as in the cloud. So and some of them tie in with things like salesforce. Dot com embraces these kind of things. So the more major players out in the field, the major software vendors are making sure that their cloud management solutions are our being able to be accessible through these cloud password management system. Okay, dash lane, last pass octa okay, and he wasn’t any another one. You want to shout out as worthy? There was another and there’s another incarnation of non-profit radio. So you won passed hyre special one passes another one as well. Ok, very good. What else? But this is in our list of seven. Well, the other thing that we talked about it kind of going to school in size. We are talked about personal computers to introduce it, but i’m going to talk about that. But then, if you want to talk about, we’re talking about the mobile devices and so forth and the issues that come with that mobile, right? So we we talked about bring your own device when your pc or your laptop, you know similar concerns with mobile devices. You know, you need policies in place. I need to make sure that, you know, there’s a reality that people were using their phones or tablets for work. We’re taking our work everywhere now. And so how do you manage that? That’s a there’s a reality there that everyone’s probably living with on some degree. How do you minimize the risk and manage it so that your comfortable with how people using their mobile devices for work? Okay, how do you how do you know? Well, you know, i think some of the things that we’ve already talked about you making sure you have antivirus software on your phone is a really important thing, okay, you’ll be able to manage on some level the device that if someone say, leaves your organization that you can either you know, it’s complicated, potentially, but you potentially could delete some of the information in particular aps you’re not likely probably to be able to delete their whole phone and that’s probably good for everybody, but just having a little bit more control. On how people are using their mobile devices when it comes to work. And, you know, leon mentioned he’s sort of old school, and i think maybe very prudent in the sense that he has his personal device and he has a work device and he keeps those separate, i think, for for an organization, if you could do that, it really is the most prudent approach, because the reality is you can’t control. So what else is device they’re passing around with their family, you know, someone borrows it to look something up or use the phone, you know, that data contract veliz the reality. And so, you know, you have to think about that risk, and if your organization is sort of willing to take that risk, or if it needs to take some steps to kind of minimize the okay, we have time for one more dan you want introduce the last one? Yeah, the last one is the lack of network security, right? So you’re we often using wifi. You have a router. But did you make sure to set a unique password for that round? Or are you just using the factory setting and itjust admin, which is public. Anyone could look that up and get on your router at any time. You know things like that, making sure firewalls are in place. You’re making sure your network is secure altum throughout and i think leon comprise going more. Did you want to have anymore about network security? Yeah, that’s the one thing is it’s a multi layer it’s, a multi layered approach. So you have to have the external penetration protection with your firewall but that’s also where you need to also maybe have a firewall running at the pc level is well along with the a v and malware software. Additionally, what we were talking about, hiss. If you’re providing wifi access within your organization, you definitely want to have a separate wifi space for a guest, contractors, visitors and thea nature versus you definitely want to do that. And you definitely want because again, if you have people just coming in off the street in public and bringing in their laptops, you don’t know what’s running on their laptop you again. It goes back to a lot of the other issues we were talking about it’s, like, bring another personal workstation in there we’ll have to wifi. And exactly you want to have a separate it one where? Even if you give him a password to log again. That password maybe times out after two hours of three hours with boy, they have to re authenticate, separate from your stamp, where they’re always going to be able to go on and have constant access to what? You want to keep it separated. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there. Ok. Cool. So it’s cool, right? They are. Leon wilson, chief technology and information officer at the cleveland foundation, and dan rivas, managing writer for idealware. Gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I have to a highlighter intense wag item. We’re doing that each each interview and i neglected due in the beginning. We have this usb flash from texas, and we had that to the pile of here. You might have thought we just have a message said that’s. Not true. Thean ten swag pile. Very well organized. Cool. See? Very nice. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc sixteen twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thanks. Next week, zombie loyalists. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Kevin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and his great music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Hey! Buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2016: Volunteer Giving & Wounded Warrior and Overhead

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, chris john’s from burton, michigan he called maria semple are doi n of dirt cheap and free prospect research ideas. You know her well to tell her that her suggestion to use your local library has been helping him because she says that she has that advice often has been helping him a lot to raise money for a dog park playground, movies in the park and other projects. So chris john’s following maria’s advice. Very smart man. Congratulations on being non-profit radios listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer focal segmental glomerulosclerosis if you wasted my time to say you missed today’s show volunteered e-giving when is it okay to ask volunteers to donate? How do you get started? What about objections? Greg cohen is senior associate at cause effective, and he knows the ropes and wounded warrior and overhead. There is such a thing as bad press and wounded warriors, the latest example, they’re under withering criticism for excessive and lavish spending. Jean takagi returns to explain good overhead versus bad overhead and how to avoid this kind of trouble. He’s our legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group on tony’s take two youtube we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay amglobal donation feature. Crowdster dot com welcome and greg cohen back to the show. He’s senior associate itcause effective he’s worked in and consulted for hundreds of non-profits cause effective is the non-profit itself, that is, counsel to non-profits over more than thirty years, they’ve helped over five thousand organizations. They’re at cause effective dot or ge and at cause effective. Welcome back, greg cohen. Thanks really happy to be here. Pleasure. I love cause effective. Tell us more than i was just able to say what the programmes are all about. How you’re helping non-profits i love your work. Sure. Thanks so much. S o we work with me with non-profits in the new york city region. And we are though it’s called in the business a capacity build there. So we teach a man to fish or woman, and we focus on three areas relationship based fund-raising, which is mostly fund-raising from individuals and institutions where there’s a single gate keeper making the donation decision like a family foundation or ah ah, privately held business, strengthening boards for both their governance and stewardship for ditigal thank you for tonight boardmember is confident and effective fundraisers. Everybody needs that in the third area is the strategic use of special events, so not event management, but the bigger questions of what events are right for our strategic objectives and the audiences we can reach what’s a realistic budget, but for revenue and what we’re going to spend and what should be the objectives for our events. Your colleague susan gabriel has been on talking about events and strategic use of anniversaries and events. Yeah, i refer you when when someone comes to me and says, you know, how do we get to the next level? I think of cause effective? Actually, i haven’t. I haven’t been thinking of you only for the new york area. I don’t know if i’ve been making referrals from throughout the country, but you will talk. To anyone but tend to build coaching relationships, which are promoted through face to face contact, so we tend to keep in the new york city area. Um all right, so we’re talking about volunteered e-giving why are volunteers potential good potential donors? So, uh, after staff who knows your program better than those who are coming in and participating in providing your services but your volunteers so if we think about the basis for wanting to contribute to an organization, of course they’re many forms. Ah, yeah, of resource is that you can contribute one of the most valuable, of course his time. Thes air folks who are already your donors, they’re giving you time, not yet money, and we ought to be treating them as donorsearch exactly talk a lot more about that. We’re gonna get there exactly, but they’ve already shown a deep commitment to your work. They haven’t understanding it’s logical that out of the context of what they know about your work, that you could make a strong case for them providing monetary support as well. And it’s well documented that volunteers are among the most ready to make a monetary contribution on top of time. Ok, now i notice you say you say valentine, you almost say valentine’s, there was volunteers where you from, what part of country? From i’m from connecticut. I don’t know why i’m hearing, right? Yeah, it sounds like a look. Volunteers right now now made yourself kind of guy. I’m sorry. No it’s. Okay, but it’s essential that all that you’re going to volunteer, valentine and i should say that, um, i’m drawing upon more than my cause effective experience and talking about this prior to cause effective. I was executive director of the youth development group based in a public high school, and i had a stable of over one hundred volunteer tutors. Ah, so i interacted with a large number of very committed volunteers overtime. So most of my ideas actually have grown from that experience because they became very generous financial contributors as well as givers of their time. Our volunteers are seeing the need every time they’re they’re they’re working with our our staff for our program beneficiaries. I mean, they see the needs day in, day out. They name you know, it’s. Too bad. This is too bad they don’t have morgan is more. Money to do this because we could be doing this so much better. I mean, they’re living their living it exactly, although often, and this happened in my own organization where i had boardmember sze, who started as volunteer tutors and then became board members. They were very hesitant for us to ask for money because they felt it was intruding on the generosity that was already being shown by people giving their yeah, that’s, where i want to go next, actually overcoming these objections, but i think, you know, if you’re careful not to minimize the volunteering right on dh, just recommending the e-giving but let’s, talk about overcoming these objections. Boardmember tze mei say, oh, no, no, you know, they’re giving enough, you know, which is kind of contradictory because five thousand dollars donorsearch e-giving enough, but they could be giving ten or fifty we don’t know until we ask, right? But so overcoming objections, right? Well, so the first thing is to make sure that you’ve got the basics, as you say, of treating your volunteers in a steaming them well for what they’re already giving, so you wouldn’t want to jump into asking for money if you aren’t already treating the donation of time as something of great value, and and you want us to do this? Not just at the time were asking for a monetary gift from day one on so in walks in and says i’d like to give you my time. I would like to treat it as if they took out the check book and said, i’d liketo make a donation you have to treat, in fact, it’s harder these days for people to give time than write a check. I had so many donors who said i’m sorry, all i can do is give you money. I wish i could i’m in and give some time like and they actually envy the volunteers, so it starts with a steaming volunteers for what they’re already giving. If you haven’t done that, then don’t move on, okay, asking for donations and so let’s let’s spend ah, little time on that. How can we buildup that that culture within our organization, that volunteers are donors are communications? You know? How could we be doing this right? So one way is to make sure that volunteers have a holistic view of your organization and understand how you operate, so it starts right when you orient volunteers when they come in. Of course, you’re oriented to the specific work that they’re doing in the case of two djing with students and exams they face. But you also want to explain here’s the context in which the organization operates ah here’s, where we get our funding, these air, the different programs that pays for there’s, a big role for donations to help cover it so that they have a mental model that it operates. That was particularly important for my organization because people, when they first came in, assume that we were part of the department of education and that we were one hundred there are funded by state government indeed, we had a million dollars of funding all private, so when they heard oh, my goodness, you raise a million dollars privately all of a sudden there they were attuned to thinking about what role could they play in helping bring in that money? We’re raising awareness of the importance of individual giving exact to our to our revenue right before we’re asking were telling stories argast orientation, this is about the organization, all right? He’s got to go away for a break, okay, we come back, greg and i going to keep talking about volunteered giving stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti, dot com that’s t i g e n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Dahna xero welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Greg cohen and i talking about volunteer e-giving okay, so we’re starting this process at orientation and training of board members, and we’re making this ah, clear to them that individual giving is important from the beginning. That’s right? Okay, okay, if we’ve laid the groundwork, um, we have some other ideas, like communications, like sending send your your volunteers, your donor communications. Exactly. So some of the rules that apply to donors again, you’re treating that time as a donation. So you’re profiling volunteers. You’re helping communicate to them the connection between their work and the outcomes for the beneficiaries of their tutoring and generally including volunteers as valued members of the community. So already before you’ve asked him there feeling very connected to the mission and to the other people who are doing the same work. Okay, now we have boardmember zoho are going to object and say, this is it’s, not appropriate. Volunteers are doing enough. How do we overcome? And maybe not only board members? I’m picking on bouchard’s. But how do we overcome these objections? Wherever they come from? So it caused effective we love to answer questions by actually asking them of the people who are going to be affected. So one of the most defective things is talk to some volunteers who say yes, i’d be open to contributing or who may already be contributing on their own initiative. Have them come in and talk to the board members, have the board members have the chance to ask them, what does it feel like when you asked, do you take offense, what’s the nature of an ass that feels comfortable and respond to their legitimate concerns about being too pushy with people who are already giving and let them hear it from the horse’s mouth? I think that would be my my primary oppress, ok, that’s. Very simple. Yes invite volunteers to the board members or to have a conversation with the board members or there or wherever it is that subjecting right? Interestingly, for the board members who put up resistance. In my case, we’re very generous donors themselves, but they weren’t ah, recognizing that there were other, maybe less affluent volunteers who would be as happy to give us their do you see much objection among the volunteer managers? Or directors, you know, are on staff, is that does that come up? It doesn’t usually because they know the volunteers best, and they recognize the generous spirit of the volunteers. And also, if a volunteer says, how come you you don’t have this, you know, study guides or whatever, then the answer is, we can’t afford it. They hear from the volunteers will let me help their interest, and we had some incredibly generous offers from volunteers even before we’re soliciting buy-in laptops for their students and in other ways, making material available to there, to the students they were working with and and other tutors and not surprising. I mean, they’re already committed, like you say they’re giving something so precious their time, and they see the need and they would like the need to be minimized or eliminated, right? So they fill the gap exactly so thie other thing is that many volunteers for us came through corporate programs and the culture of those corporate volunteer programs. Ah, encourage them both to give time and it’s. There are incentives for them to give money often a matching grant from the corporation if you’re a volunteer in an organization you give money will match it in a larger proportion than no. What for? For just a normal that donation donation by not volunteer and there’s even broken mohr of incentive if you’re on the board of an organisation for some corporations. All right, so if we’ve we’ve laid the groundwork, we have the right culture. We’ve overcome our objections. How should we get started? So i think one of the most effective ways for soliciting donations from anyone is to encourage up here of the types of people you want to donate to be your solicitor. So i would form a little asking group of people who are volunteers who are already e-giving and work with them to say, would you appeal to other volunteers to use the most powerful words? And fund-raising would you join me in supporting this organization as a fellow volunteer? So that would be a first step, which is to gather some folks around me who are already committed in that way to both give time and money. Alright suppose we just have maybe half a dozen volunteers from small organization. You know, if we recruit yes, a committee that’s half the volunteers. I mean, i guess we could do two or three on the committee latto recruit the other flavour for if you have six volunteers, i would still try to recruit one to be really ask her the other five, okay, at least in partnership with me, not alone, necessarily, but because, in fact, if you don’t get stumped by these questions, overviewing you’ve seen it all. This is not okay. We’re going into actually our thirty fifth year. So we’re at about five thousand organs at your web sites that they always pushing thirty five. All right, all right, all right. Um that’s great. I mean, that’s. Why, that’s? Why i refer refer people to you. Um okay, so we have a little volunteer committee do some training for that, the way we would sure help everybody has to learn to ask it’s not a natural thing. So some training. And then the other thing to think about is what are we explaining? We need the money for and as you pointed out, if we can connect it to providing resource, is that a line with the work they’re doing? Is volunteers it’s going to make a natural connection between the synapse in the heads of the volunteers. You don’t necessarily have to do that, because most individual donors will make a gift and trust this staff to put the money where it’s most needed. But if there are clear needs within the realm of volunteering that you can meet that’s, a powerful connection toe offer to broker between the money they donate and strengthening the program that they were here, it seems like a grand slam. Okay, okay. Uh, let’s, um, let’s see about knowing, you know, getting to know your volunteers mean, you have ah, bigger organization would have a volunteer director, i guess, but you’re lucky enough. Yeah, ok, but if not maybe it’s the executive directorate or, you know, maybe the director development, right? You want to i mean, this is a relationship fund-raising if we’re asking peer-to-peer ass right, you want to know the people you’re talking to exactly and in fact, that’s one of the precursors toe asking, which is do i know my volunteers why they’re volunteering, what their life stories are, what their interests are, and if you haven’t created enough of a relationship for them to exit to be known in front of you and seen, you’re probably not ready to ask. So building that personal relationship between that someone on the staff and the volunteers is another important step before asking. Okay? And again, you know, parallel, tow your monetary donors, you get to know them before you ask, right? This is a colt cultivation process, right? So we’re doing something parallel. We’re just working with volunteers, and another thing that comes from getting to know someone is from a technical point of view. You can assess how large your ask i should be. So i’ll give an example of a long time volunteer who i was in a conversation with who told me that he had lost his daughter tragically early in her life, and he had been with us for a long time and ah, i was able to say, peter, would you? I knew he was interested in kids being able to go on to college. That was one of hiss. Ah, personal motivations for tutoring. I said, would you be interested in creating a little scholarship fund to memorialize your daughter? And indeed, he he created that fund and annually funded it, but it came from me understanding he was retired. He was pretty well to do. Then when he told me that story, i was able to connect something he was very interested in to an important personal fact, which is is the memory of his daughter. And in a way, i think he connected his work with those young people with with her life. Yeah, yeah. Was she roughly the age of of the time? Wand, don’t you don’t ok, ok, the other the other natural thing to connect, to which we saw a lot of which is volunteers tend to associate ah good part of their identity with their volunteering, and so it’s known in their families that they are connected there going i’m telling their friends today is my day at the center is actually talking about the kids, the people at the soup kitchen, they’re coming back and sharing those stories and it’s because it’s part of who they are as people, so a very natural thing is to suggest to people, you know, to the couple that has everything, uh, if an occasion comes up, when people want to give you a gift, you could suggest making a gift in honor of the anniversary, the birthday to the non-profit in place of buying a present and that very volunteers, i love that idea, and i had a whole siri’s of people who gave regularly to honor the work of volunteers, including, actually i was in this public school. There were two teachers who were lived together for a long time and then decided to tie the knot after twenty five years of living together. Of course they didn’t need any toasters or blenders? So they said to all the guests, please make a contribution to the school’s. Non-profit and not only did people make gifts at the time of the wedding, but because we were good at communicating what we were doing, even though the bulk of the guests came from minnesota, where both the couple had grown up. Some of continued to be significant donors years afterwards, because now they felt a connection to the organization through our communications with them. Brilliant. I mean, that’s, that’s, another grand slam. You guys are good. You know what you’re doing? Something that you were just you said it’s just a couple minutes ago rings true. I was just having dinner with my mom and dad and, um my dad had just met an organization that he got connected to. That is, they don’t have shelters for young, young single moms, but they have day programs and referrals and counseling and education programs. And andi came, you know, he came home motivated by about this and my mother and he goes to the kitchen. My mother whispers under breath. There goes another day nobody’s boasting alright, has even started. He brought a donation of ah, gifts in-kind he had bicycles for the for their children and things like that. Um, but, yeah, you know, he’s boasting already has he really gotten started? But people like to talk about their volunteer time, right? And come father’s day there’s a chance for you to honor his service by making a gift in his honor to that organization. Thank you very much. Let’s. Not get carried away. I’ll get your good work. You’re too good. Now five, fifty four years old. I’m living at home, but it’s only temporary that’s. Only temporary. I’m in transition. Please. I’m in transition. Sabat. Okay, well, i guess we’ve talked about well, when we started every really covered, like when is the right time to ask? You gotta know them very well, right on they they have to be well embedded as a volunteer, so they have to have spent some time with you and built that sense of affiliation. Um, and then i think any time after you see, people are comfortable and in the routine and understand your work and you’ve oriented them and you know their story a little bit it’s appropriate to ask and then every organization has its own rhythm of program. So schools june graduation time. Ah, organizations that work with young mothers. Mothers day, of course, the holiday season for programs that work with underprivileged families. Those air kind of natural times to be asking are carrying out simple appeals to volunteers to participate. Do you find that volunteers become sustaining, you know, regular committed donors arm? Or just ah, one time when as and no and absolutely committed donors and and even if their schedules change and they and no longer volunteers? If they started a regular pattern of giving you money annually, they’re likely to continue mohr than other donors. Wow! After volunteers, as in cool, cool. Um, let’s. See, what about? We kind of covered, you know, who’s. Best to ask about how much? How much should you be? Right? Well, so that’s ah, that’s that’s always a tough question for any kind of fund-raising so partly its by talking to people sing are they generous with other causes? Find out a little bit about their other terrible involvement. You’re going toe in time. Learn more about the socioeconomic status of your volunteers through conversations and then you bring some of the same rules of judging how much to ask, but i’d say for the first gift, the most important thing is that they become a donor rather than the amount so it’s, just two to get that person to becoming donors of both time and money. In the first instance, i wouldn’t worry much about the size of the gift. And then over time, you can work on increasing the size of the gift. Then, of course, we love for the average doner to become a monthly sustainers because that’s going to last longer, and they tend to give maura’s an ad average gift than people give once. Here arika, um, let’s, talk a little more about treating your volunteers as donors. Um, you know, we talked a little about communications events. I mean, they should be invited as donors are let’s. Talk more about that. Uh, sure. So my philosophy is time should be treated in the same way. Money is, as i say, if in most of our lives it’s a more precious commodity than money. It’s hard to give time for things. So i would definitely include volunteers in all the activities that you include for financial donors, you indeed can have volunteers who are helping you run those events, for instance, and one way actually, it can work in reverse, which is if you have donors, one way to increase their affiliation with your group is to invite them to volunteer. S o there’s very good, some back and forth in that. Yeah, yeah, cool. Um, would you ah, if you have a aa, an expensive annual gala or some kind of an event, would you offer a reduced price for your volunteers? We’re getting carried away. Well, i’m going to go. Yes, and now i’m going to channel my colleague susan and say, if your primary objective for the event is raising money, then you don’t want to discount too many seats. Ah, but if i start with the objective, i want to celebrate my volunteers work that i’m going to create an event specifically to celebrate the volunteers so oh, and not worry about how much money i’m raising. If my primary objective is make those volunteers feel good there’s going to be some overlap because some of your volunteers, they’re going to become significant donors and you can move into those events that have fund-raising as their primary objective, but i’d be careful about crossing the tooth objectives of raising a lot of money and celebrating, yeah, ok on this would be susan’s more, but have have a cultivation event for earth a celebration for years. For your volunteers, you must be having volunteermatch condition events if you could bring in volunteers can’t save all your events just for those who are expensive tickets. What about volunteers at at board meetings that we, you know, we mentioned having them talk about their experience in giving to overcome that objection, but but just, you know, as a way for board members to relate to the what’s going on in the program areas, having volunteers, come talk to the board, i think it’s a great idea if you’ve got a significant volunteer program it’s a way of the board understanding the dynamic of that program and to check in on it the other important thing i mentioned some of my best boardmember tze had started as valentin ears and then became board members so it’s another aspect of the volunteer pool, which is it becomes ah farm team for discovering people who have skills and talents who ah, our perspective boardmember zoho all right, we just have about a minute and a half left tell me what you love about the work you do show him a nosy person and every non-profit represents a distinct subcultures, so i don’t feel so bad about asking where you’re frightened. No, not at all on dh with every client, they have wonderful missions and it’s fascinating to see who they’ve grouped around them and then personally satisfying to give them the tools to further that mission and see them grow and become more sustainable. You wantto give a shout out to an organization that you’re working with now comes to mind, or even if you don’t want to say the name just some. So i’m going filling here to ah wonderful organization called i challenge myself that challenges high school kids who maybe never rode a bicycle, too, participate in a health and fitness program and write a hundred miles by the time they they finish school in the spring, i challenged myself excellent, we should be challenging ourselves. Great life lesson, greg cohen, senior associate at cause effective there at cause effective dot or ge and at caused effective. Thanks so much, greg. My pleasure school. Thank you for sharing. Ah, wounded warrior and overhead with jean takagi coming up first. Pursuant you have a problem, you have a pain point, you need to raise more money. Pursuing is your solution one of your solutions? They have online tools like velocity for managing fund-raising ah, another tool is prospector to find your donors who are upgrade ready that five thousand dollar donors that could be giving ten thousand or that five hundred, dollar donors who could be giving fifteen hundred all helping you raise more money. They are data driven technology enabled. You hear me say that and that’s their tagline what i find interesting is they’re they’re smart technologies using your data, it’s analyzing and organizing your data to make you smarter and better at fund-raising you’re going, you’ll raise more money. I can’t make it any simpler pursuant dot com and also crowdster with their new one of a kind apple pay mobile donation feature, so they’re lengthy people can pay through ah, through their their their iphone increases mobile donations again. You raise more money there, they build campaign sites because it’s crowdfunding, crowdfunding sight so they build the campaign sites that you used? They’re simple for your donors, they are savvy on the back end, so your administration is not difficult. Easy for donors to navigate. Easier for you to navigate and they are crowdster dot com now, tony steak too. Have you checked out non-profit radio on youtube? My channel israel? Tony martignetti some clown stole my name before i could claim it on youtube fraudster, in fact, trust me, if a dude, if you want to steal my identity, go ahead, it’ll get you absolutely nowhere. I mean, i have my social security number on my credit card numbers on my website. Go ahead, help yourself have at it my date of birth it’s on my lincoln. Good luck, i have a credit score it’s not negative. It’s imaginary ivan imaginary number of credit score! It doesn’t exist, so you want to steal my identity on youtube? Go ahead, real tony martignetti i’ve got over two hundred videos from conference interviews, i’ve got some tv appearances and some stand up comedy bits are also there, so my stand up comedy gigs lots of interviews with lots of smart. Guests from the many conferences have been at the past five years. The link to youtube is that tony martignetti dot com. And while you’re there, you can pick up my social security number. That’s tony’s take two. Jean takagi he’s back. I love when he’s back he’s, managing editor of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he is at gi tak gt a k jean takaaki. How you doing out there in san francisco? I’m doing great. How are you, tony? Terrifically. Well, you sound you sound brighton loud and wait. Sam’s turning it down till time down. Sam, he sounds great. Sound good. You’re calling from the same phone you always call from? I think so, it’s. Just a funny in san francisco. And we’re all waiting for the super bowl this week. Oh, yes, yes. Super bowl weekend. Oh, yes. Is that the one with the, uh, with the three point shots from the from the outer rim? Is that is that football i have? Well, we got the warriors here do that. We’re going to enjoy them, too. Okay. I’m crossing over in my sports. All right, let’s. See? Okay, we you got the warriors got wounded. Warrior, the wounded warrior project gene is is not in the news for good reasons. And i’m gonna i’m gonna venture that most listeners are well aware, but why don’t you just acquaint us with some of the bad press? They’re getting around some of their spending? Sure. Well, it started last week, and cbs news and the new york times both ran some articles that were highly critical of wounded warrior project and most importantly, on how wounded warrior project spent its money. So the wounded warriors project for just in case for people who don’t know is a very prominent veterans organization whose mission is toe honor and empower wounded warriors. They’re pretty big. The total revenues are three hundred forty two million for for the last year they reported on the nine, ninety, which ended fiscal year september thirty two thousand fourteen, three hundred forty two million dollar organization, big organization. But the what, you know, the most critical, i guess. Aspects of the spending that were alleged by both cbs and the new york times is based dahna charities ratings organization that said that wounded warrior project spent sixty percent of its total expenses on programs which kind of infers an overhead ratio of about forty percent. And that didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Yes, and the press continued, cbs had aranha siri’s. The new york times jumped on, um, rating agencies jumped in a little bit. Yes. So it’s, it’s, it’s gotten unattractive? Um, we’re not goingto dissect wounded warriors spending and and nine, ninety and their balance sheet because that’s not fair and it’s it’s not appropriate, but i did want to use it as sort of a leading to another discussion that we’ve say another because we’ve talked about this before, but it was a couple of years ago, um, to be exact, it was september sixth of twenty thirteen, so i think it is bears repeating and then review good overhead vs versus bad overhead and i think i want to start with just you need to be aware of perception. Yeah, that’s so true, tony. And just before we leave wounded warriors project, let me say that while charity are charity, ratings organizations might have said that there was a sixty percent program kind of ratio program service expenditure ratio wounded warrior provoc project says that figure is really eighty one percent. So let me just add that there’s a dispute over how how you characterize income and that comes to perception. Tony on dh what one of the documents that you mentioned the form nine ninety, which is the annual information return to the irs on dh you’ve had a show on this before it’s, a really important document because it really tells the public, because it’s a public document, uh, about what the organization has been doing all year, and when you put in numbers and descriptions of your activities in that document, the public is going to read it for what it is on dh if you don’t explain some of the nuances behind it and just using wounded warrior project as an example in this time they, you know, wrote in that they had twenty, six hundred twenty six million dollars in expenditures and conferences and meetings, but without explaining that any further that just leaves it opened. Teo misinterpretation, perhaps misinterpretation. The conferences and meetings were really to benefit the veterans and the beneficiaries of the organization rather than to reflect. You know what some people might think, which would be, like kind of staff training and staff parties on dh sort of morale boosting events and that’s, you know, there’s a huge difference between those things and, uh, not anticipating that can really be problematic for organizations. And they could end up spending tons of money on crisis management and dealing with all of the perceptions and misperceptions later on. Yeah, it feels like the wounded warrior project nine ninety was not artfully completed on the show you’re alluding to i don’t have the date of it, but the guest was named eat. Oh, tsh tomb. So if you go to tony martignetti dot com and you search his name, which is why i g t yeah, you’ll find the shows that he was on hey was on. And then i replayed it once, and the subject was your nine. Ninety as a marketing document. And indeed, you know, if if they spent twenty six million dollars of wounded warrior on conferences, but ah, big part of that was a big, big part of that was scholarships for for for the beneficiaries, the wounded. Service people, then that the nine ninety would’ve been a perfect place to say that and, you know, maybe they maybe they shouldn’t have put it in that category. You know, we could argue about whether that’s appropriate to put that number in that line on that line item anyway, but but, you know, you could explain things basically using your nine, ninety as a marketing document because it’s so pervasive, it’s, it’s, it’s, so easy to get it should be on your own site. And it’s it’s definitely a guide star and the i r s and state attorneys general sites. And, yes, it has a lot of uses. And that’s, the first place charity ratings organizations and journalists who are writing investigative pieces about charity’s often run for something bad that’s the first place they go on. So when organizations reviewed in nine, ninety and i’m probably reiterating what your former guests, it said, but when the review is, you have to think not only of it is a marketing tool for good purposes, but also for defensive marketing, because if it’s misinterpreted or leads to easy, miss miss perceptions of what the organization is doing with their money that’s totally avoidable by explaining it further. Yeah, and then you have a goodwill problem in a public relations crisis and that’s what wounded warrior project is mired in right now? And i’m glad. It’s, you know, it was very timely because it’s all just broke last week. Um all right, you know, so we could refer back to them if if if you think that’s valuable but let’s, let’s talk about some of the categories of good overhead. And i know one that you believe in is education for board and employees. Yeah, i think that’s a really important one. You know, you and you want invest in education for a few reasons, but the first one is to make sure the organization is run effectively and efficiently, not just on the administrative side but on the programmatic side as well. So you want dahna sufficiently informed boardmember executive staff and volunteers who can deliver programs in the best way possible for their intended beneficiaries. And if you want to be innovative, if you want to just sort of raised the bar to providing services in a better way, you’ve got to invest in that and you got to make sure your staff is prepared on well educated and sufficiently equipped to deliver those services. So investing in education, i’m just a very strong proponent of that and that so that’s professional development like conferences and, you know, travel and meals and things like that could have been aboard retreat mean there’s value in that? Yeah, absolutely there is, and they can be misused some of those things and, you know, again how you frame that in your nine, ninety or on your web outside about what you’re investing in when you when you make certain expenditures, is really important to say you’re investing in your team so you could deliver the best programs possible to the most people possible in the most effective way possible, looking for innovative ways to do things better. That’s what you have to say, all right? And now lets you know i’m going to get into splitting hairs a little bit, but, you know, if you have the wherewithal toe, have your onboarding treat or your staff retreat at a at a nice place, i mean, there’s, nothing wrong with being, you know and like, ah, hilton hotel or a western or you know, is there, but but maybe you don’t need to go to ritz carlton. Yeah, i think that’s a good point and that’s kind of like whether you’re goingto pay for everybody to travel in first class, business class or coach and it may depend in part on what type of organization you are. So if you’re an anti poverty organization, it’s a little bit sometimes problematic if you’re if you’re celebrating kind of an event at a five star hotel, although if it’s really based on, you know, training on doing things better, there could be an exception to that. So it really depends upon again what purposes you have for putting it in tow kind of that luxury category if you are with with, you know, veterans organizations where there’s always not enough resources to provide tio some of our most who we say, our some of our most valued citizens of our country and you know, but we don’t always act that way in terms of providing services that there’s some sensitivity there a ce toe how how luxurious their lavish your stack retreats or board retreats or your travel expenses should be yeah, yeah, you know, but sort of on the other side or, you know, it’s really related it’s, um, you know, smaller organizations, teo can’t be as effective as, you know, ah, wounded warrior project type organization with with the three hundred forty two million dollars that they raise the last year that we know, you know, even i don’t know it feels like even if it’s only sixty percent, which does seem low, but even if it’s only sixty percent of sixty percent of such a large number, you know, a smaller organization with a half a million dollar budget if they’re spending ninety percent on program who i’m having a hard time gene, i mean, who’s doing more for vets? Yeah, i mean, let’s talk about fund-raising good overhead they think that’s near endeared tio what you do as well. And, you know, i think there’s their legitimate issues there, and i think, you know, investing and fund-raising is really important, but i think there are limits as well. So, you know, the question might be, is it worth spending or investing? I should say ten cents to make an extra dollar, and i think most of us would just say you know, yeah, of course it would be, then there’s a question about whether it would be worth investing ninety cents to make an extra dollars. So you only netting ten, ten cents for for programs there on dh on dh, then that’s, maybe more questionable. Now there, times when you’re just starting a brand new fund-raising program and in the first year where it maybe that’s what it takes to develop this new structure because you want to do it properly, you want to do it legally. You want to make sure everybody’s up to speed and doing it, and it takes time to develop these relationships and donor engagement. So maybe you’re one ninety, ninety percent fund-raising expenses. Okay, but year after year, i think most of us would be upset by that number. So how you invest in fund-raising? Depends on what type of organization ur depends on what stage you are in with that fund-raising campaign or solicitation early stages you got invest more later stages. Is it’s more mature? You don’t expect that high high ratio again. So is it’s it’s nuanced? For sure? What do you think, tony? Yeah, i think we ought to. Take a break, but we’re going. I’m not going to ignore your question, but i agree with you. Let’s, go away and jean, i’ll come back. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m jonah helper, author of date your donors and you’re listening to tony martignetti, not non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. It’s time for live listener love did you think i forgot? Perish the thought live listener love going out cozza dero, california! Chicago, illinois st louis, missouri! Maplewood, new jersey. I’m hanging out in new jersey these days. New bern, north carolina. I’ll be hanging out more there. Ah, not too far. Mag adore ohio live listener love let’s stay in the u s new york, new york cool! Thank you, new york and philadelphia p a i love it, let’s! Go abroad! Mexico city, mexico live listener love, locate al uh, good afternoon, bonem bonem start is tokyo is with us and kyoto. Konnichi wa iran is with us. I love we can’t see your city, iran, but we know you’re there live listener loved to iran, italy, pesaro labbate lots of live listeners today and there’s more to it. We got o sole and young son in south korea on your haserot thank you, jeanne, for that indulgence. Oh, wait, i’m sorry, jean. I’ve got to do podcast pleasantries. How could i forget? Perish the thought over ten thousand listeners podcast, whatever time, whatever place, whatever device pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country am and fm stations squeezing non-profit radio into their weekly timetable whenever it is affections out to the am and fm affiliate listeners. Thank you, jean it’s. Important tio recognize our our listener donors? Uh, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for that indulgence. Okay, so you asked me a question. What do i think about this? Um, yeah, i agree. I think it’s very fact sensitive. And i go back to if you’re if you think you might have trouble, explain it on your nine. Ninety, i guess. That’s that’s the best i can do. Yeah. Or your website, but definitely give us some context that we just don’t openly criticize it. Yeah, yeah, on dh. We don’t. Right, because if you don’t, if you don’t explain it, then people will have to draw their own conclusions. Witness what’s happening at wounded warrior. Okay. Let’s, let’s. Ah, delve into another good overhead area that you’ve got for us. What else you like? Sure. Well, i like paying employees a decent wage. That obviously hot topic these days. And, you know, even if that might be higher than the market forces dictates. So you know if it’s above minimum wage and those employees might be hired, you know, for minimum wage anyway, well, maybe that’s not the right thing to do especially, you know, depending upon the type of organization you are, maybe just paying a livable wage is really important and consistent with your mission and very important in terms of recruitment and retention. So in the long run, when we talk about wages and determining what a reasonable wages under those circumstances, you’ve got to be mission focused as well, and not just martignetti just let market forces determine where you set your wages, and if you are concerned about executive compensation, gene and i, jean, you and i have talked about this. You can you could search for executive compensation at tony martignetti dot com. We can also pick my social security number. Is there? Um, good luck with it and and you’ll find where jean and i talked about the executive calm because there’s all kinds of there’s, a there’s, a rebuttable presumption and things you can do to make sure that your executive comp is fair and appropriate. Raging yeah, absolutely. And maybe one one. No two wounded warriors. Well, when you’re talking about executive comp position of a huge, massive sized organization, you can’t equate that teo executive compensation in a tiny organization, so there has to be some reasonable understanding of that, and we have to educate everybody about that as well. Yeah, yeah, i saw the wounded warrior ceo is paid roughly half a million dollars a year. I think that maybe that was twenty fourteen. And to me, that doesn’t seem bad. I mean, he’s managing a five hundred person, three hundred forty million dollars a year organization. But but there have to be things in place too, too, that the board has done to justify that salary compensation for the ceo. And jean and i covered those on that show. You could search for executive compensation. Um, i like technology, gene, technology, infrastructure. Do you have to keep up and you do maybe not wood like the latest iphones for all your staff. But you have to, you know, be aware that old technology khun lied to inefficiencies on the lack of innovation and in a new technology, could allow for more effective and efficient ways to deliver services and engage in advocacy measure. Impact we talk a lot about measuring impact now, but you know, some some old forms of doing things that don’t lead easily to being ableto monitor those things without an extensive amount of paperwork and old system. So i mean new technologies you fund-raising and communicating with donors and engaging supporters and finding new donors, staying up with technology and investing in technology is very, very important. And as you invest in technology and get more data data protection, that is also going to be important, and you don’t want to invest in one without the other, okay, um, there’s another category that ah, i want to talk about building engagement and collaboration among employees, volunteers. Boardmember yeah, i think that’s also really important again for recruitment and retention. That’s important mint internally for collaborations outside, i think so many non-profits get told, you know you’ve got to collaborate more because that will help us, you know, gaugin and get collective impact that’s a hot button term that’s that’s been used over the last couple years, and collaboration really isn’t port knowing what your allies and competitors, if you will in the market are doing and the best way. To do that is to invest in that because those things don’t just bubble up by chance and what they really need investment. So it’s like any relationship, tony, i guess, uh, you know, when two people want to develop a relationship with each other, it’s not just sort of overnight, and you don’t invest anything in helping each other and listening to each other, you’ve got to put time and resource is into it and that’s very true for organizations that are wishing to collaborate on dh i think in terms of, you know, engagement with employees, i think the quality of your work place, you know, you want to have people, you know, they don’t want the desks don’t have to all be donated. And, you know, you should have a nice workplace professional that people come to day in and day out. Yeah, and i think that’s the education and training actually it’s helpful as well for creating job satisfaction and again, recruitment and retention are affected by that, and that ultimately effects on how well you deliver services so that’s all tied together. So when we talk about overhead and you’ve had shows on the overhead myth as well i’m just a strong proponent that overhead is a very, very bad way to assess whether an organization is doing well or not. You alluded to that earlier this program as well. There there are better ways that teo assessing organization and while overhead ratio is may be an important factor. The most important factors impact like you said, so if an organization like wounded warriors project is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars helping veterans, even though its program ratio might not be as high as some people like that impact may be important and not easily replaceable. But doing gino, we just have a minute left and actually forbade overhead. I’m going to refer listeners if you want to get the categories of bad overhead. Gene and i talked about that on the september six twenty thirteen show i’m selecting toe just deal with good overhead, and we just have about another like thirty seconds or so genes. Can you say a little about risk management in about thirty seconds? Sure. So i think i’ll summarize it by saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Are the old saying that our parents, our grandparents, had told us and that’s what risk management is all about it on the board level, it’s creating policies and on the management level, it may be implementing and enforcing policies because it’s no good, i have a policy and with you enforce it. So make sure you’ve got directions, rules and guidelines for your staff and your volunteers and anybody that’s, that’s, you know, helping you further your mission. Jean takagi, managing editor, managing attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group you’ll find him on twitter at g tak gt a k thank you so much, gene. Thanks, sonny. Wonderful to talk with pleasure. Thank you. Next week. Do you know the-whiny-donor on twitter she’s at the-whiny-donor and she’s. Going to be with me. Plus, amy sample ward returns. She returns willingly. No whining by amy if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Where in the world else would you go? And i’m still not sure about that. For twenty sixteen. Responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay mobile donation feature. Crowdster dot com. Our creative producers, claire miree off sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. The show’s social media is by dina russell, and our music is by scott stein. Thank you for that affirmation, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of nasco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for August 7, 2015: Labor Law & IRS Helps Your Marketing

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Tom Wassel: Labor Law

Tom Wassel

Attorney Thomas Wassel, partner at Cullen and Dykman, says nonprofits often make mistakes around employee versus independent contractor (it’s not enough to pay them by invoice!) and when bringing in volunteers and interns. We’ll keep you on the right side of the law. (Originally broadcast on June 6, 2014)

 

 

Yigit Uctum: IRS Helps Your Marketing

Yigit Uctum

Yigit Uctum is a CPA with Wegner CPAs. He’s got ideas for using your IRS Form 990 in your marketing. See, it does have a purpose. (Originally broadcast on September 12, 2014)

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d grow a ganglion cyst if you handed me the thought that you missed today’s show labor law attorney thomas was cell partner at cullen and eichmann says non-profits often make mistakes around employee versus independent contractor it’s not enough to be paying them buy-in voice and when bringing in volunteers and interns, we’ll keep you on the right side of the law. This was originally broadcast on june sixth last year, and iris helps your marketing heat coach. Tomb is a c p a with wagner cpas. He’s got ideas for using your form? Uh nine ninety in your marketing. It does have a purpose that was originally broadcast on september twelfth. Twenty fourteen so today, it’s law and taxes which on non-profit radio are never boring on tony’s take two. Start your plan e-giving here responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising you need more prospects, they’re smart technology will find them pursuing dot com here is tom marcel and labor law. I’m very glad that subject of labor law for non-profit springs tom will sell to the studio. He’s, a partner in the law firm cullen and dyckman in garden city, new york. And in new york city, he’s been advising employers on a wide range of labor and employment law matters since nineteen eighty three. He is president elect of the long island, new york chapter of the labor and employment relations association. Thomas l welcome to the studio. Nice to nice to be in your studio, tony. Good to see you here. I’m glad we could do it face to face. So employees versus independent contractor, it turns out, is not enough to just pay somebody buy-in voice. And then, while love they’re they’re an independent contractor. That’s absolutely enough if you want to get into trouble. But it’s not enough if you want to do it right. Okay, basically, whenever one person is performing services for another person or another company, the presumption is that there are an employee and that with everything that that entails, including federal taxes, state taxes, worker’s compensation benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, employee health benefits, things like that in order for them to be classified properly as an independent contract that there’s a number of tests that they need to meet and if they don’t meet those tests and accompany miss classifies employees big trouble with the department of labor. Okay, we’ll talk about the misclassification ramifications, and so now we’re talking about federal and state, the the where where is this test? This test is from the i r s and then and then well, is that the eleven points is that from the irs? Absolutely the irs the internal revenue service has an eleven point test, which is used for determining whether or not you have to take out taxes from people’s wages, okay, but every state also has its own version of the test. They’re they’re pretty similar, but in terms of whether or not you need to contribute for worker’s compensation benefits or unemployment insurance benefits, and they all apply pretty much the same type of tests to determine the employee status. Okay, so it sounds like you’re in pretty good shape if you’re following the irs test, which we’re going to talk about, but you still need to enquire at the state level or or you’re not, because you’re not a hundred percent safe if you’re doing. Following just the irs that’s, that’s absolutely true in other words, each state can have its own rules and merely complying with the federal law that that’s fine in terms of federal taxation. But certain states have have stricter rules with regard to treating people as independent contractors versus employees. So you need to see counsel in the state in which you practice. I practice in new york, so you know, my comments about any law would be limited to anything in new york state and federal law. Okay, we’ll stick with the federal with the caveat that you should check the state level, but you’re on your you’re well, on your way if you’re if you’re complying with the irs regs, i imagine, absolutely okay, okay, so are we these these eleven items? Eyes is basically around the relationship between the employed, the non-profit and the person doing the work. Absolutely the key elements in the test without without trying to go over check checklist abila talk on some of them were good, some of it’s, a degree of control that thie and i’m going to go. I’m going to use the term employer here, even though we may. Say it’s a contractual relationship, okay, but no, we’ll say or the employer of the company, the relationship between the company and the person performing the service is in an employment relationship. For example, the company tells the employees where to work, what time to show up what their duties are? Ah, and what do they report to who they’re going to supervise if they’re going to supervise anybody? Things like that in a relationship like that that’s that tends towards the employer employee relationship as opposed to an independent contractor for an independent contractor, you basically say here’s the job, here’s here’s, what i want you to accomplish, maybe cem general guidelines do it when you think it’s appropriate, although there may be deadlines set, but i’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m not going to supervise you on a day to day basis. I’m not going to provide you with the materials to do it. You do it on your own and i’m simply going to pay you a fee, which is another important distinction there the fee basis versus an hourly or salary type basis? Okay, we’ll get to that. You you touched. On something that i want to explore a little bit, the place where the work is done. So you you can’t have the person always coming to your office to perform the work, know that you can’t have the person doing the work in your office. But it really that would depend on the nature of the work. For example, if, if you if you have employees doing the same work, and now you’re going to bring in somebody else from the outside to sit alongside your employees and do the same work, well, that’s an indicator not not it’s, not a single point test but it’s, an indicator of an employer employee relationship. Now, if this person has his or her own business on the outside, has business cards may work from more than one company at the same time, or one after another on it, since you’re simply hiring that outside company to perform services for a limited period of time, well, that it tends to lean more towards the independent contractor relationship. How do we balance these eleven? Which we’ll get into some detail about some of the others too? But is it ah, like majority, if you have, if you have six out of the eleven year okay, andi it’s going to go one way or the other based on a majority? Or how does it work? Well, there is no bright line test. Those lawyers like to say, i think to some extent you apply the duck test if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck it’s very fact specific and a trier of fact, whether it would be through the department of labor or worker’s compensation board or in a court of law would look at all of these factors and say, well, okay, the control factor tends to lean towards employees, but the independent company factor tends to lean towards independent contractor and way all of these factors together, and then come up with an answer. Okay, so these eleven points are are the things that iris is going to consider? This is what they’re going to look at, and they’re going to put it all together. And they’re going to make a decision. Absolutely. Okay. And i guess it would work similarly at the state level. Like when you mention department of labor. We’re talking about the state department of labor could be state of the state or the united states department of labor. There’s both and and they’re very interested because independent contractors aren’t entitled to overtime or minimum wage or anything like that. You you pay them a fee or you pay them. You pay a company a fee to do something and that’s. Fine. But if their employees and they work more than forty hours in a week, they’re entitled to overtime. Yeah, we may have time to get more into that. Right. Okay. Um, i think we will. Actually, um, what are some of the other side? The other factors in these in these eleven points? Well, as i mentioned it’s the ah it’s. How people are paid. Yeah. That’s a good one. Sorry. Let’s. Talk about that one. The fee versus fee versus salary. Right. Well, typically, an employee may get an hourly wage. May get a weekly salary. It’s generally, the relationship is often not always but often sort of. Open ended that is to say, we’re going to hire you, not necessarily for two week barrier or until you finish this job, but we’re going to hire you as an employee and keep you on, but we pay you on a pay check. Ah, as opposed to an independent contractor who would normally be paid through some voucher system or through through ah, obviously issuing a ten, ninety nine, which is the tax form for independent contractors and might be in a lump sum. It might be in regular payments, but it’s not based on number of hours worked or anything like that that again, depending on how you structure the deal, that would tend to lean more towards employees or more towards independent contractor. What about? I think you mentioned giving someone the tools to do the work so you shouldn’t be giving them ah, laptop tto do the work or or other things or certainly office space dedicated in the office? I mean, that’s tending to look like employment, right? When you’re giving them that stuff? Absolutely. If i say, come into my place of business and i’m going to give you everything you need to do. The job and you don’t have toe put anything on the table other than what i give you that’s the hallmark of an employee, as opposed to an independent contractor who brings their own knowledge, skills and tools to the table and does the job that you’re paying them to do. We’ll go out for a short break, and when we come back, tell marcel and i’m going to keep talking about this and then we’ll get into volunteers and interns, and then i believe we will have time to for overtime for employees you’re supposed be paying your employees overtime. Do you maybe want to turn this off? If you’re listening in the office on monday, only the bosses want to hear this. We’ll get into all that stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. 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You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Dahna welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s, send some live listener love arco, idaho and orlando, florida live listener love to you very glad you with us let’s, go abroad! Seoul, korea manu haserot, islamabad, pakistan i’m sorry. I don’t know how to greet you in, uh in is it pasha pashtun? Passion is that i’m not sure what, but live listener love to you in islamabad, irrespective of how i would say it in your in your tongue, in your language bonem changing china, always welcoming the chinese lots of listeners. Ni hao, nagoya and tokyo, japan sending you konnichi wa and there are others we’ll get to them kuwait also, i wanted to get to kuwait. Um attorney thomas l let’s see if you’re if you’re the person who’s doing the work is getting their income from a bunch of different places. Is that that’s that’s? One of the factors, isn’t it that’s, clearly one of the factors, and and that would certainly militate or tend towards a finding of an independent contractor relationship? If you hire a company, the company may have its own letterhead may have its own invoices may have its own business cards may have an ad in the yellow pages for those of us who still actually use paper yellow pages or maybe a gn internet list thing nowadays. So if you hold yourself out as an independent company and maybe even filed company tax returns on have a company workers compensation policy, things like that that again would lean towards the independent contractor relationship rather than employees. If you are ah found by the irs to have misclassified people doing the work, would you expect that the irs is going to report to your state department of labor that they’ve found a misclassification? That’s, that’s a really good question, and i get asked that those kinds of questions a lot from lots of different employers, i tend to represent employers, and my understanding is no, they don’t necessarily do that. That particularly if you settle the case, the words that come to you and say you messed up, you need to pay x amount, and if you settle it voluntarily, they’re not going to go broadcasting it to the world so that there could be more agencies to come and knock on your door, because that would discourage you from settling in the first place that’s not to say that other agencies won’t find out about it. And certainly if the case were public, if you would have to go to court, which is a public record and other agencies saw that they could be knocking on your door as well, where do you see employers messing up? Well, it’s again, it’s the any of any of these factors will any or any role these factors? I have clients, and obviously i’m not going to mention names. Uh, i brought you for so it’s um, provocative, the name dropping. All right, i thought i’d like to keep practising law for a few more you’re not retired, they yeah, i have i have clients that have they’ll bring people in and they treat them as independent contractors and they say, well, they’re only going to be here for two months. I’m hiring them for a special project and i say yes, hiring see, that was the key word there on it doesn’t matter if you’re hyre it is a temporary employee or a permanent employee that’s one factor, but not not controlling temporary employees, their employees, so you have to treat them as contractors, and i’ve had a number of audits fromthe state workers compensation, border unemployment insurance division that come in and say you’re not paying premiums to these people because you’re not treating them as employees. Pay up. What? What are the penalties let’s talk about the federal level? What would you expect from the irs if ur misclassifying? Well again? In most cases, if if you own up to the to the mistake, you’ll certainly have to pay what’s owed but safe for the i r s not only will you have to pay what the employers share of the taxes wouldn’t really be, and they also have to pay the employees share of the tactics so security taxes that should have been paid exactly pay both the employer and the employee because the employer messes up, the irs isn’t going to go to the employees and say, by the way, some of that money you got, we want you to give some of it back. It’s, the employer’s responsibility to properly pay the employees. Okay, so the back taxes that were owed, what else? What else might be expect? Well, there, there could be civil penalties involved to or if it was done knowingly over a long period of time, with no knowing that you were violating the law usually second or third offenders, there could be some more severe penalties involved as well, you’re always welcome teo disagree with young arrests, right on contest there, their belief that you’re misclassifying absolutely, you know, just just cause the irs says so doesn’t make it so. But the presumption is that these people are employees, right, and it’s up to the employer to prove based on the law that these people are actually independent contractors. So if you if you want to fight them, you better have a pretty good case. Let’s move teo volunteers and interns what? What are what are non-profits often getting wrong around these? Well, the good news for not for not-for-profits we call them not-for-profits in new york, but non-profits same, the good news for non-profits is that you’re allowed tohave volunteers in the in the in the in the for-profit sector, you basically can’t have volunteers. Anybody who does work for you has to be paid, but in the in the nonprofit sector, you can’t have volunteers, but there are some rules about that as well. The work that’s being volunteered for can’t be the same kind of work that’s otherwise being done. In other words, you can’t have a paid clerical person sitting at a desk and then have somebody else come in and say, well, i’m going to volunteer and i’m going to do the same work sitting side by side the paid pearl really? All right, so let’s, let’s taken example of that suppose closed. You have employees that are preparing mailings. You’ve got a five thousand piece mailing going out and you don’t hyre ah, male house, you’re doing it inside and you’ve got people stuffing in printing, stuffing envelopes, putting stamps on, and then you bring some volunteers in to do that same work side by side with employees. That’s that’s, not a volunteer. I’d be very concerned about that. If i was the employer and i if i was their attorney, i would be tell saying we need to take a long, hard look at this because again, people sitting side by side, some people are being paid. Some people are, quote, unquote, volunteering very dangerous situation, even if the volunteers volunteered. I mean, even if they walked in and they love the mission, they’ve said, i want to help you. How can i help? And you said, well, we could use ten hours on, you know, over the weekend to put this mailing together well not-for-profits tend to be generally charitable, religious or religious organizations and the servant public purpose and that’s why they’re allowed tohave volunteers to some extent, but to the extent that you’re basically just doing the same work as other employees and saying, i don’t want to get paid for it, the law doesn’t really sanction such things. Oh, my, okay, i got to take a little tension because you mentioned for-profit companies, and i’m interested in that on the intern side. What about all the unpaid internships that are coming right now? It’s, it’s, summertime, what about those? Well, and you read about them all the time in the paper about the irs or the part you read about them in the new york journal? I don’t not seeing it in the where i’m seeing in popular, more more general press well, you get for-profit ce are allowed to have interns, but not that you can’t just but but i had on somebody and say, hi, you’re an intern, you’re going to work for me and you’re not going to get paid that would be violating the minimum wage laws for, among other things, but somebody can provide an internship if under certain circumstances, if they’re getting some sort of academic credit from an outside institution, if they are getting some sort of actual training from you that’s not specifically tailored to your organisation, but but taylor to their field of study, if they understand from the outset that they’re not going to get paid and that’s an internship also, it has to be a relationship where i understand from the outset otherwise it’s indentured servitude you tell them you’re getting gonna get paid, then they don’t they don’t see a paycheck. That’s ah, there’s got okay. That’s clearly got to be rolled. Believe it or not that’s that’s what? I passed that spelled out there. They have to understand that somebody’s done it. Yeah, all right, on. And also, they’re supposed to actually, because they’re an intern and learning from you, they’re supposed to be, if if anything, and impediments to the business not ah. Bonus to the business. In other words, if the business says we’re going to hyre fifty interns to do all sorts of work for us and make money for us that’s not really a bona fide internship, the purpose of the internship, the primary purpose is to give training to the intern, not to make money for the company. And if it’s really a benefit to the company that’s one of the factors that will be looked at to say these air not truly entrance. Okay, thank you for taking little digression in tow. For-profit i love it, you know, you you have these answers on top, your head man xero no notes, which i admire, i don’t like i don’t like notes, really? I have notes, but it is just off the top percent wonderful. I’ve been doing it for thirty plus years. I know you start to learn it if that helps. Yeah, yeah. So let’s go back to the non-profit side there are so the general rule is that you can’t have unpaid work as volunteers, but then there are these exceptions that we were starting to get into right if it’s a bona fide organization charitable. Organization and people are truly coming and say, i want to lend a hand to do you were having were having a blood drive or we’re having a a special event, and i’m a community member i’m going to come in and volunteer to give some of my time to help you that’s a true volunteer, but again, if if they’re volunteering simply to do work that the company not-for-profits would otherwise be paying for that’s a problem, employees of the not-for-profits basically can’t volunteer to give away free work. That’s interesting. I wonder if that comes up much. I don’t know. Well, if you see it well, i haven’t seen it, but it’s addressed in a number of decisions or regulations where somebody’s tried it. Yeah, obviously what’s in there? Yeah, right. That’s. Interesting. Okay, if you haven’t, i’d say you have an employee working for enough for-profit and and and there’s some child care. You’re going to sit with some child kind of simple. I don’t want to use the term baby sitting because that sounds majority, but some sort of ah monitoring situation, which is not within the normal scope of that employees work. That might be okay for a volunteer for the employees, but certainly the employees can volunteer to do additional work that employees already getting paid for. And where do you see non-profits making mistakes around the volunteer and in turn, well, i get calls from from some of my not non-profits and so, you know, we’ve got we’ve got all these people are in here and, you know, they’re here for, you know, ten or fifteen hours a week doing all this stuff, and i say, really, what’s your first question was where something well, i say, well, what are they doing? Art? Do you have other people that you’re paying to do the same work? And they’re working side by side? Are there are these people already employed by you? Because if they are that’s major red flag on dh again, if they’re duplicating or substituting their substituting for paid employees, that’s, that’s a problem? We’ve got somebody who’s out on a totally leave elearning leave a family medical leave act type of leave, so they’re gonna be out for twelve weeks, so we’re gonna have a volunteer filling for twelve weeks, okay? Do you have a sound of a klaxon in? Here or, you know piela only like that. But that’s just my voice is all we have is scary enough. Thrill enough weak enough as it is. That’s very bad. So paternity leave maternity leave. You can’t have a volunteer filling in. You’re basically saying, i’m going to have somebody do the same work as a paid employee, but i’m not going to pay them. No lost don’t let you do that. All right? I think that’s very interesting. All right, so what do we do, teo? To remedy this. So when your clients are then calling and there, then finding out in this call that they’re they’re running afoul, what do we do next? Well, i tell them aside, i’m obligated to do as an attorney. You should change this and you should start treating people correctly going forward because every day that you’re in violation of the labor laws or the or the tax code is is a new problem. If you change things today or tomorrow and start treating people properly, pay them, then you don’t really have a problem. And by the way, all you have to do to comply with most laws is pay minimum. Wage and you know you don’t you could have people have clerical people making fifteen dollars an hour. I need somebody to fill in, and i’m just going to pay the minimum wage. You can do that, you just can’t pay him nothing. You can’t have them volunteer if they’re not truly bona fide volunteers, can you work out some alternate form of compensation besides, besides money? Like maybe they get some benefits of services from the organization, i guess sort of a barter arrangements, but i’m thing thinking of is that is that possible barter arrangements are legal, but their taxable i don’t represent any barter companies, but i happen to have a close friend who’s involved in a bartering company, and i know that when party a’s trading goods or services with party be, both sides are issued ten, ninety nines and and the company, the bartering company, will report that to the irs. So if you just say instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour, which is the federal minimum wage, it’s hyre in new york state and a lot of other states, but instead of paying you seven twenty five an hour for forty hours, which is with two, two hundred ninety eight dollars a week. I’m going to give you two hundred ninety dollars, worth of free food, that’s that’s a taxable event and frankly, it doesn’t comply with the law. The fair labor standards act, which is the federal law that requires people get paid, requires that you get paid in cash or the equivalent of cash, not in goods and services they’re certain deductions allowed, but not completely excellent. Now we’re talking about federal and state law here, a cz well around the volunteers and interns, absolutely okay, so we’re talking mostly federal, but with the same qualification you need to check about check what the standards are in in your state are you? Are you still pretty well on your way to compliance? If you’re if you’re complying with what the irs requires, like like we said over on the independent contractor side e, i would say, you know, qualified lee, if that’s a word, if you’re complying with the federal rules, you are more than likely quality complying with state rules, but i certainly can’t give that as a guarantee without taking a look at the state rules, understand? Okay, let’s, spend a little a little time. We’re just a couple more minutes on overtime for employees. What is the problem here that you see? Big problem is that certain employees aren’t being paid overtime because employers think they don’t have to. And the biggest fallacy, the biggest myth that i see is and and employers and employees both believed this is that if you paid a salary, you don’t get overtime that’s not true, you need to be paid a salary in order to be considered exempt from overtime, but on ly, certain employees performing certain duties are exempt from overtime the main ones. I don’t talk about those one of those executives, administrators or administrative xero and professionals, so if you’re ah not for-profit ifyou’re ah, counselor, a psychologist, psychiatrist, a professional you’re not in your pay and you’re paid on a salary you’re not entitled to overtime, but you may be a highly highly paid administrative person who works closely with management. You may be exempt from overtime, but if you are a lower levels let’s, say, clerical person lower simply on the orc chart. Not in terms of your worth, but and you’re you don’t. Have it a lot of discretion and control doesn’t matter if you paid on a salary you’re entitled to overtime. If you work more than forty hours in a work week and that’s not waivable, you can’t agree not to take it. You can’t enter into a contract dipped in blood notarized doesn’t matter. You have to get paid for all hours worked at time and a half and not less than time and a half. Pay attention to the labor law. Thomas l, a partner in the law firm of cullen c u l l e n and die kayman d y k m a n in garden city, new york and also in new york city. Thomas l thank you very, very much in my pleasure mine as well. Tony’s take two and irs helps your marketing coming up first. Pursuant, they do full service fund-raising from web based tools for most of our audience small and midsize non-profits two on site campaign counsel for organizations that need that pursuance ah, prospector platform finds donors in your database who are ready for upgrade these are the people who may be giving you twenty dollars a month, and they’re ready to give one hundred a month, or the twenty dollars, a year. You know they’re in there, but they’re not so easy to find. Prospector platform does that it finds thes upgradeable donors so that you’re focused on the people that you should be spending the most time with not people who aren’t willing and able teo upgrade. Therefore you raise more money. You find your upgrade prospects who are hiding in plain sight. Prospector platform is at pursuant dot com my video this week is start your plans giving program here there are lots of reasons why charitable bequests, which our gift in wills are the most popular planned gift. Ah, i tick off a bunch of reasons that make request marketing the way to start your plan giving program and for a small shop that may be where you stop perfectly respectable it’s all in the video and that is at tony martignetti dot com that’s tony’s take two for friday, seventh of august thirty first show of the year here is heat, coach, tomb and irs helps your marketing you touch tomb he’s, a senior manager at wagner cps, he has his mba master of accountancy and is a certified public accountant. He’s also a certified fraud examiner, he works exclusively with tax exempt organizations and oversees the firm’s form nine ninety nationwide preparation practice eat manages wagner’s, new york city office they’re at wagner cps dot com he’s here in the studio to talk about the irs and how it helps your marketing. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. My pleasure, it’s. Cool. Glad you’re in studio um, the form nine ninety this is i thought this was strictly a burden and something to be not avoid it. We can’t avoid it, but there’s something to be done and kind of put in the closet. You don’t think so well, you’re right. A lot ofthe organization leaders thinks that it’s a burden and actually it’s it’s a great opportunity for organizations to show the world that all the good things that they’ve done in the in the year, and then it’s also a good opportunity for them. Um, tell the words how validate their run and in the past this forest scene, justus the farm files it tires and on ly to be shown ah potential donors or anybody coming to your office and basically asking for it. And now it’s vital they available on the web, especially the most common is the guide star. And because it’s out there it it gives an opportunity for organization to the marketing tool ok, and not only guide store, but state attorneys general, a lot of them have them. Can a lot of organizations put the nine ninety on their site themselves? Yes, it’s a sort of transparency, for example, in new york every not-for-profits lee, just with new york that files annual report with the state off new york they’re nine ninety, along with their financial statements, are on their website. So your advice is to think of this as a marketing tool it’s an opportunity? Yes, so if you see it as just a burden, and as most organizations currently do and don’t get enough attention, it can potentially hurt you. So i think about is some organizations for some, organ says is true that the nine nineties seen more than they’ll annual report, but they spent all the time and energy on the annual report make it perfect, but they only spent maybe a fraction off the time to get the nine ninety ready for filing, and we’re gonna have some. Time to talk about this. But you even suggest that people beyond accountant’s contribute to the nine. Ninety their final way. We’ll have a chance to talk about that. That’s. I love that advice. Okay, let’s. Just make sure that everybody understands what we mean. Nine, ninety, there are there are three nine nineties and you’re the expert. So when were you acquainted with the three? Yeah, the. Depending on the size ofthe organization, the organizations can file three different ninety forms. If they are under fifty thousand dollars in revenue. What they can do is they can file a form called nine ninety and which is also known as the postcard return and it’s, just basic information and a statement saying that the revenues were less than fifty thousand dollars. Okay, and with some states like new york, if you are over twenty five, then you have to file the night. Nineties eve, which is the next step. So organizations that are in revenues under two hundred thousand and in assets under five hundred thousand, they can file this form nine ninety easy, which is a shorter form. And the larger organization about the threshold can fire. They have. To file the form nine. Ninety, which is longer so just like we have individual ten forties and ten. Forty easy. Exactly. Nine. Ninety and nine. Ninety easy and then also the nine. Ninety n write really small for the under fifty thousand dollars in revenue. Right? But you raise an interesting point. Sometimes. It’s state regulations that govern which nine. Ninety you have to submit is that is that right? Could you mention new york? Yeah, a certain threshold for the easy. Right. So you have to look to your state and also to the i r s exactly. Okay, exactly. We’re not talking about the nine, ninety filing requirements here. Just i digressed a little bit. We have talked about the nine, ninety in the past. Especially with with jean takagi. So you could find those shows in the past. But we want to focus on the nine, ninety as a marketing tool. And part of your advice is that even if you’re able teo file the shorter form, you might want to do one that’s the next level up. Exactly. It depends on the purpose ofthe how you’re going to use it. For example, if you are a small organization under fifty thousand dollars. You may want to file the nine. Ninety easy to get your nine ninety on guidestar. So or ah, a lot of foundations, for example. They would like you to stop mitt at nine. Ninety easy or a nine. Ninety with grant applications. And, um, that’s. Another reason why you may wanna files piled the longer form in this case. And if you are ah going after donors and even if you are a small organization, if you can show that guarding all these good covenant practices and all these other things is just like, well, run is a large organization. I think it’s also helps it, but it’s getting funds. But if you do not have a purpose, i think it always cost more time and money to file the longer form. So i think it has to be ah, i violated in for individual circumstances. Fair enough, but something to consider. And i just love the different perspective is what i wanted to have you on the show. Different perspective of the nine. Ninety that it’s, you know, as we said, it’s not just no longer just buried anymore, but to look at it as a zoo marketing tool and therefore has to be consistent with all your other the what is the traditional marketing tools, right? Exactly? Yeah, for example, you don’t want to confused the word with sending mixed messages if your annual report is saying one thing and if you’re ninety saying another thing than it confuses people. So that’s one ofthe reasons why certain parts ofthe the nine ninety should not be done prepared by the countenance. It should be prepared by people who is also preparing other other marketing materials. Excellent. Okay, so let’s, get into some of the different place is in the form nine. Ninety, where you see marketing opportunities, what’s the you like thea program service. Accomplishments? Yeah. Where? Where is that? Where will people find that? On the night that could be on the second page off for my love. I love that you’re a nine. Ninety expert. You he doesn’t. He does not have the nine, ninety here in front of him. Which is what, like seventeen pages or something leaves twelve o on the schedule. And then the school was one of my many more starita he does not have a nine. Ninety here in studio with me is so when i asked him, like, what section is it? Andi knows the page, so i okay, you have the expert here, all of that. All right. So, um, you know, your your practices nine nineties. I love it all right. To the program. Service accomplishments. Your program serves accomplished. Mons to page two. Part three. It’s beautiful. Basically, organisations get the chance here. This is like the free marketing or pretended to tell the world the all the great things that you have accomplished in the in the past year and latto off times despite tires. Instructions. This is one place iris helps you market, as you mentioned, is in the instructions i response you to be specific. They want you to use non financial data, but a lot of organizations just they see there’s a burden. So year after year, they repeat the same thing. And the and the nine ninety preparation is buried in their finance department or of the outside consultant who’s doing it right. And they just want to know when it’s done exactly what you can’t fill. You need a number for page four line. Ninety three i don’t know, like, you know, you probably rolling your eyes. Oh, my god, what an amateur question ninety three’s not on page four, for christ sake, but that’s just the thing is just buried until it’s ready for signature basically right? It’s? Not so who? So we can have program officers doing the program service accomplishment section or something like that, right? So basic, the its funding to say this take like a food pantry. It’s one thing to say that you have served meals to low income people in the community and it’s another thing toe give some more specific you can say piela, sir, different fifty thousand different people eighty thousand meals during the years, so it gives more, more basically more impact. And people are seeing this on guide star and on your website. And of course, it needs to be consistent with your other marketing material. Exactly. School what? What else? What other opportunities to see in that section? So i’ll give you another example of that because, like, if you’re a membership organization, try to use it to recruit members and you fear with conferences wanting to say you spent hundred thousand dollars in this conference is another thing to say. Our conference was attended by twelve hundred people. We had sixty different sessions. You can name some off the station, including x y z. And we also had to networking opportunities again like this is anything you can tell tow people join you as a member for a membership organization. And can anything that you see that would attract donors are whoever you are trying to calm me. It’s like. All right, cool. Very good governance. There’s the governance section is this the section on the nine. Ninety relieve the governance? Yeah. There’s a section on ninety nine on the nine. Ninety deaths as out ofthe questions about the governor inspection number part part six off your nine nine beautiful love, the basically in that part, it’s asking out ofthe question some of these questions, such as, um, whistle blower policy and document destruction policy. These can be mandated by others. Other ah um pre-tax sarbanes oxley. Examples on the other set is dahna lorts state law, right? And new york will start mandating certain certain policies there as well. And some off thes policies are very easy to add up. So their templates out there it’s not a huge burden, and i encourage every every organization, if do they do not have a policy out there, just go look for a sample adapted and checked the box yes to show that they’re they’re well, well run and well covered and thiss foot reduced the potential all at risk and it’s also important to use that affection toe basically solicit new board members because one off the users off this maybe perspective what members looking at your nine ninety to see if this is our organs and joe, i want to join this organization, are they so they know what they’re thinking? It might be exposed to any risk by joining terms. All right, we gotta go out for a break. You’re gonna do some more live listener love there’s so much i got to squeeze him in tuscaloosa, alabama welcome live. Listen, i’d love to you. I don’t think you’ve been with us before tuscaloosa welcome and jersey city, new jersey it’s, the birthplace of my my dad. He was born in greenville hospital, jersey city, new jersey, and langley, bilich british columbia. You’re back with us live listener left. All of you. We got some or stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. If you have big dreams in a small budget tune into tony martin. Any non-profit radio ideo. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s, go abroad with live listener love belgium children, we can’t see your city! I thought that was a pretty open society. They’re belgium, but you’re you’re blocked but welcome live listen love to you, let’s, go to china, where i send ni hao to shanghai, chengdu, korea, multiple listeners in korea, as always, including soul, anya, haserot and japan, multiple listeners tokyo, akashi and others konnichiwa and, of course, podcast pleasantries to those of you listening in the time shift wherever you may be, ninety five hundred of you podcast pleasantries to you yeah, let’s, let’s keep talking about the governance section is that this is not a free form narrative section like the program service accomplishments, it it certain parts ofthe it are free form, for example, one off the question there is, like what’s. Your policy is to review the night ninety so in there you can explain, like how what process off leaving tonight ninety like does every boardmember sees the nine ninety who who looks at it, who prepares its who reviews it and how it gets wild, the other free form part. Is the conflict of interest policy. You can have different types. And who’s who’s monitoring. It goes who’s looking at it. And another part is the determination off the executive compensation. So what’s the policy around that looking at comparables like, do you have independent comity? Looking at it and documenting this decision? There are some some freeform parts over then within governments. Governance? Of course. Right. And we have talked about, i think, all those subjects that you just mentioned with with jean takagi when we’ve spent time on the appropriate governance and oversight. So this is a perfect dovetail. Um, how about you have something about the statement of functional expenses? Where will we find that? If we if we want to go into the nine ninety, um, that would be now little people. Nine off the ninety basically and, um, statement functional expenses. I believe you covered overhead. Mitt in in your previous shows, we have the we had the three signers of the overhead myth. That was on september sixteenth. The ceos of charity navigator, guidestar and better business bureau wise giving alliance. Yeah. So basically, i want to refer to that which is a great point they made and ah, out ofthe not-for-profits are too worried about their program service percentage and that, um, that they want to put like, as they reflect, i guess, everything they can in the program, and they should know that if it’s correct, so but sometimes like it gets to a point where they wanna look at things which is more like gray and, you know, they have the natural incentive to put more into program and not in management, general fund-raising and that doesn’t necessarily reflect the truth and ah, that’s area um, it’s sophisticated donor-centric e-giving and i ninety can tell that certain things are not correct there because certain things such as an audit, it has to be a hundred percent management general, accounting and audit is that, um so i think, it’s another point important here is that that schedule is done correctly so that a potential donor funders looking at it shouldn’t question anything accurate, so get on dh that one is the key. That was the whole message of the overhead myth letter is don’t feel you have to devote everything to to program at the expense of overhead, which can be very very important. Tisbury. So you have sophisticated people looking at your nine ninety, and you’re thinking of it as marketing. Keep that. Keep that in mind. We have to. We have just a couple minutes left. There’s a part of the nine. Ninety that you call a playground? Yes, that is that. That would be schedule. Oh, that’s a place where you can put anything that an organization can beat anything they want in there, so ah, i would use it as a, um what is it called? What is schedule? Oh, called, huh? I think it’s just called a schedule a it’s, like a supplementary information thinkit’s supplementary in formation. And basically, i would encourage organizations toe explain anything that might look unusual on the on the on the nine. Nineteen. Okay, for example, let’s say if they are starting a capital campaign and in that initial year they wouldn’t necessarily have to revenue yet, but they have all these fund-raising expenses. So if they’re fund-raising expense ratio is unusually high and this might be a place to explain that they’re going through the skips, the campaign and that they they’re also informing the public that they’re doing this. So it’s another place toe to use that for that. So outstanding, really interesting perspective on form nine ninety thank you very much. Thank you for my pleasure. You duitz doom senior manager at wagner cpas manager of their new york city office there at wagner cpas dot com next week will mccaskill, author of doing good? Well, no, i’m sorry. Doing well better now doing good, better that’s the book doing good better he’ll be on for the hour if you missed any part of today’s show finding on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go? I did not forget live listen love all the live listeners who are out there can’t name you by city and state were pre recorded today, obviously, but you know the love is going out to live listeners podcast pleasantries, everybody listening in the time shift over ten thousand of you so glad you’re with us and it was very important affiliate affections to our affiliate listeners in stations throughout the country affections out to the affiliate listeners pursuant, find your upgrade prospects with prospector platform you’ll raise boatloads more money, and i’m not talking rowboats or kayaks. Or doory skiffs. We’re talking three masted schooners full of money. Pursuant dot com. Our creative producer was claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Shows social media is by susan chavez at susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and degree. Buy-in what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah, insights or presentation or anything people don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine am or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card? It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony. Martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way, way.

Nonprofit Radio for April 24, 2015: On Your Tech Horizon & Volunteer Issues

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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

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Amy Sample WardOn Your Tech Horizon

Picture of Amy Sample WardThere are two trends you need to be ahead of: The web is becoming mobile-first and donations are coming in digital currency. Amy Sample Ward is our social media contributor and the CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

 

 

 

Gene TakagiVolunteer Issues

Gene TakagiYou love your volunteers. But they have issues. Gene Takagi shares his concerns around liability; qualifying and training; using employees; and driving. Plus, we’ll talk about the issues around Sweet Briar College’s closing. Gene is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I developed biliary calculus if i got stoned by the idea that you missed today’s show on your tech horizon, there are two trends you need to be away aware of and ahead of the web is becoming mobile first and donations air coming in digital currency. Amy sample ward is our social media contributor and the ceo of and ten non-profit technology network and volunteer issues. You love your volunteers, but they have issues. Jean takagi shares his concerns around liability, qualifying and training using employees as volunteers and driving. Plus, we’ll talk about the issues around sweet briar college is closing, genes are legal contributor and principle of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group you got antenna and neo and both on the west coast on tony’s take two thank you. Responsive by opportunity collaboration, the working meeting on poverty reduction that ruins you for every other conference i love having amy several word back on the show and here she is she’s the ceo hello, how are you good? I’m not used to getting to be on the first half. I know. I know that. Let me give you a proper introduction because we want people to know that your most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement and that your block is that amy sample war dot org’s and that on twitter you’re at amy r s ward for ah, ours for rene. Hey. Hello there. Hi. Yes. Congratulations on a very successful non-profit technology conference. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being part of it again this year. I was thrilled. I loved it. And we haven’t played your interview yet from there, but but we will. It’s coming up. I had twenty five great great interviews from ntcdinosaur just last month. Right? Early march? Yeah, early martignetti i know. Oh, you cut out a little bit there. Are you on a regular ah, landline. I am on a regular phone. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah. Okay. You just cut out a couple of syllables, okay? No problem. Um, let’s. See? So we’re concerned about google paying muchmore attention now, too. Mobile friendly sites. What? What is this? About well, i think we’ve all you know, we’ve talked on the show before you and i about way’s tio recognize in all of your different channels where folks are coming from and google as one of the probably main observers of where people are coming from was using the web has also noticed, of course, that you know a lot a lot of web traffic weather, that two things we would consider social media, like twitter and facebook for just general web surfing looking things up on websites is coming from mobile devices. That doesn’t just mean somebody smart phone, it could be a tablet, you know they’re not sitting at the at their desk on a full computer, and the experience of using the web on a smaller device, especially when you don’t have a full keyboard can be unpleasant, to say the least. You imagine trying tio apply for a job or fill in a donation form or, you know, even write more than couple sentences on a lot of websites. It’s really tough to dio? Yes way! We’ve all had that frustration. Yeah, and google has already made adjustments in their algorithm and in other pieces. Of how you experience the web to try and support the best experience you can have. And this week they also added into their algorithm, teo help support search result rankings whether or not the content was mobile simply so if you were doing a search on your smartphone for something you probably want tohave prioritized for you, content that you will be able to read once you click through on that search result, right? So it isn’t necessarily saying that if you if you don’t have the most beautiful, mobile friendly website, that you will no longer show up in search results there or anything like that, it’s, just helping people on other devices hopefully find content. They can read easily on the device they’re using. And google says on their, uh, their blah ge. And i’ll include the linked to their announcement of this in the takeaways on the facebook page that this is going to be a quote, a significant impact in our in our search results. Yes, so this’s something that yes, you and i have talked about it. But now, because google search is changing its algorithm, it’s become quite a bit more urgent. Yeah, i think it’s become more urgent, and i think it also, um, you know, it will certainly impact what people think about when they’re thinking about search engine optimization. Ceo a phrase that anybody who’s ever tried toe look up, you know, how do i make my sight? Hyre in search results, how do i make my sight easier to find? Seo search engine optimization is the term that they would have come across and traditionally best practices around ceo were things like, you know, making sure that your titles had a title tag so that search engines could find what the title of that page was easily and, you know, you spell out people’s names that aaron photos so that they’re, you know, linked and associated with that page, things that were about the text and about what would be called the metadata behind the page, the things that maybe don’t show up but that a search engine can still read and tell what’s on that page and you know, at least this is being transparent and everyone’s being told exactly what they can d’oh, which is great, but it just means that when you’re thinking about search engine optimization, it isn’t just content and metadata is also how accessible that content is for people that might want to read it. And this this only applies in terms of the google search results. They will only be hyre analyzing for hours or or indexing for mobile friendly sites if you’re doing your search from some summer night mobile device, right? Like you said, phone or tablet cetera. Okay, okay, now it may not be for everybody. I mean, maybe maybe there are sites that don’t have very many visitors coming to their site from a mobile device. That’s true, i think everyone should be checking their analytics on your web site c see what portion of web traffic you already have from from mobile devices. I know at and ten we have a lot. We have around a third of our visitors, especially when you drill down into people who visited the site by clicking through from one of our emails when we send out an e mail for example, our monthly connect newsletter, which is a compilation of guest articles from the months a lot of people reading that and clicking through our reading on a mobile device. So for us, we knew that was really important to make sure the site was accessible in that way. But i know there are plenty of organizations who haven’t made made updating their website to be more mobile friendly a big priority, because when they look at their analytics, they see so few people coming that’s kind of ah, catch twenty two argument, of course, if your site is just impossible to read, well, people aren’t had come or there at least not going to stay on the site, so then you won’t have those hyre numbers, but if you do know your audience and or you know you’re content, maybe the content you you have is something that inherently is for people who are on a computer looking it up. You know, i recognize there’s, some nuance, that argument, but i think for most organizations, it is something that we need to work on doesn’t mean you have to drop everything you’re doing and make sure you have a mobile friendly website by monday morning, but i think recognizing that it is important and will only become more important going forward anyway, we can start making certain changes priorities now and build out for more complete mobile friendly websites. Overtime. Okay, thank you and thank you for keeping this all in perspective. And that was why i pointed out that it’s just search results that air from mobile devices. So while you may be impinged, you’re not going to be lost in certain google search results, okay? Let’s keep things in perspective, especially single, especially since my sight was flagged by beth cantor as being non mobile friendly when she was if you block this issue and she was talking about you being on the show, and she pointed out that tony martignetti dot com is not mobile friendly. Thank youfor, yeah, she called it right out, but what i would say and this isn’t a biased opinion because i’m on your show. I think that there are a few different kinds of web sites when it comes to qualifying for being not mobile friendly, so their websites that you click through and of course it looks just like it does on the web on your phone, which is how the tony martignetti site look, but when i’m looking at your site on the web, it’s also pretty straight forward, right? There’s a big main section of posts of content and then a sidebar. So if you are on a mobile device, it’s easier to just tap that main column and view that content, then say, if you were on, i mean, we can even use the antenna website. Our home page looks just like yours that you know you’re going to see the full thing just zoomed down into a tiny device, but because our home pages and designed like yours where they’re just kind of one column of content and then a sidebar it’s difficult to know how to drill down how to tap and scroll in because it’s just so big. So i would say for you at least, even though it isn’t necessarily passing all of the tests and getting all the green check boxes by google’s mobile test, it is still something that i could functionally access. Where, as you know, we definitely don’t think that the inten website if you hit the home page, at least, is easy to navigate by trying to come in. Okay. And we’re gonna, we’re gonna go out for a break. And then we’ll talk about where there’s mobile friendly test site is. So that people contest their own sites and will keep, continue keeping this in perspective. And we’re gonna talk about bitcoin and digital currency. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked. And levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have for her. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s do some live listener lovelace start abroad this time today in korea, we’ve got young sun, young, jean and soul all checking in korea on your haserot japan, only only tokyo today maybe others will check in, but a couple in tokyo can eat you are and also brooklyn now i’m sorry, that’s not very nice. Brooklyn, new york thank you for listening. Brooklyn that’s unkind sorry, you’re united arab emirates, you a even with us three, four times or so welcome from the united arab emirates we cannot see your city, but we know that you’re with us live, listener love always podcast pleasantries to people on the time shift, wherever you are, whatever device you’re listening on. I know it’s, i know we’re mobile abila optimized for podcast purposes, so you could be listening on the tablet or mobile or other or phone whatever you’ve got netbook we are ah, we’re optimized for that on the audio side, so podcast pleasantries and, of course, affiliate affections and i’m going to give a special shout out to our affiliate km jozy in the mid willamette valley. Because we’ve got amy amy on right now we’ve got the mid willamette valley around the portland and kaiser area non-profit radio for the capital and kaiser affiliate affections toe everybody throughout the country listening and one of the affiliate stations. Okay, i’m jozy have you ever been down there to visit them in? Ah, in portland and kaiser? Amy, i’ve never visited the station, but i’ve certainly been tio most everywhere in their service area. Have you ok, you’ve been down to the mid willamette valley? Oh, yes, ok, i’m hoping to get there and on the west coast trip after you have to let them know this mobile friendly test site that my sight failed. This’s what you were referring, teo green check boxes, green checks and little or you get red x is it’s i think if you just search mobile friendly test site and google, you’ll you’ll get it instantly. I also tweeted it already while we were talking on the non-profit radio hashtag that’s from the general you are if you’re listening and you’re really quick and you’ve got your browser open, you could just type in. Google dot com slash web masters flash tools flash mobile dash friendly. And it all take you to the test. Okay. All right. That’s. Very multi-channel of you. Thank you. I got red x is for, um, uh, text is too small. Lynx too close together and ah, there’s something else and was content wider than the screen. Um, yes. Yeah, that may. That may have been the third one that there were three things and i only wrote down two for somebody. Yeah, may be content to what? Yeah, something like that. That’s, right? That’s, right? All right, but we’re gonna work on it. We’re going to first look at the percentage of people who come from a mobile device. I would say, though, that my podcast in defense but the podcast site where people go to actually listen. If you’re not subscribed, we gotto listen. That is mobile friendly. So i passed one out of two sites is good. Exactly. And i think that’s a great segue way, whether you mentioned is that or not too how to think about what you should do with your life. Folks that are listening are also getting those red xs and failing failing the test you don’t necessarily overnight. And like i said before monday morning, you don’t need to come into the office with a whole new site that’s totally mobile friendly, but if you know that there are specific pieces of content, parts of your website, certain actions that you’re regularly promoting make those the top priority for being mobile friendly for you. Tony, you know that you’re not necessarily telling people every day on twitter say hey, go read every part of my website you’re telling people to go listen to the show live or or go download the podcast and listen, you know, on their commute home and that pathway that clicking through from twitter over to the listen side and browsing whichever episode they want to listen to. That experience is mobile friendly on dh that’s i think what really matters right now for your content, you can work overtime to optimize the rest of your site, but the pieces you’re regularly promoting and the pieces of content people would probably want to access from all different kinds of devices you have made accessible school. All right, i feel all right about that. Yeah, things keep things in perspective. Exactly. Exactly. I mean on the other side, you know, i’ve i’ve said the inten website also failed those tests, you know don’t feel bad about that, but we knew that, you know, over a year ago when we started and is part of why we started our website redesign and have definitely made accessibility a central part of the redesign. So, you know, we didn’t know that april twenty first, when google was changing that over was coming, but our site a launch next month, the new site. But in the meantime, you know those pieces where we know people are trying to visit from all different kinds of devices we have made mobile friendly, you know, from the very beginning and that’s been the case since we launched those different tools. So the conference website, you know, when your live at the mtc and you want to look up the schedule, that experience has been mobile friendly from the beginning, our community platform where people are, you know, participating in online discussions, things like that, that pathway, you know, getting an email notification that somebody replied to you and log him in and, you know, participating there that those processes are mobile friendly. Even though hitting the home page of intend that organ, at least for one more months is not all right. Well, very sensible on dh planned out. Okay, i see sam. Sam just went to the site and he’s checking the double diamond and talking alternative sites that we both passed. Sam, no talking alternative did not did not. All right, well, he’s, keeping it in perspective again. All right, set a four times already. Anything else you wanna say about this mobile friendly issue before we moved to digital currency and bitcoin? I guess the last thing that i would say is if you’re going on tio, you’re going online where and running the test. Checking out your sight know that on the google site where you’re doing these tests, they have also included some really helpful overviews of what to do, depending on what kind of site you have. So you can get tips specific to the type of website you have if you’re using droop a laure, wordpress or tumbler or you know, whatever, however your side is built, they’ve anticipated that and those questions and there are some some really easy to follow steps on you. Know potential ways to make your sight mobile friendly without having to do an entire website redesign. Excellent. Thank you, bitcoin. Now i first got introduced on while the show to bitcoin from non-profit technology conference last year twenty fourteen there were a couple of guests from canada holly, holly, wag was one and jason shimatsu, holly wagon, jason, jim and jason especially was talking a good deal about bitcoin, but it’s becoming now, and i’m probably just in the past year, it’s becoming a lot more popular. Wall street journal had an article, so you thought it made sense to talk about yeah, attention has definitely been bitcoin proponent in the end ten community and i think this year at the mtc, he and david neff and a few others had facilitated a conversation during one of the connect sessions as well. So if folks are interested in talking more theirs definitely a contingent in the end ten community that is happy to answer questions that already taking that coin as donations that they’re non-profits i’m happy to get folks connected. Is that conversations they want tohave after today? Outstanding thank you. And of course, you don’t have to. Be an intend member toe get a lot of the benefits on dh participation at intent, but you should be a member because it’s really a great value, but you don’t have to be so let’s acquaint people with bitcoin this this digital currency? Can you do that? Yes. So i think you know there’s, at least in my conversations with organizations there’s two pieces to try to conceptualize one is the actual currency bit he like what? What does that mean? Like a kind of money that i can’t put in my wallet? So that’s just how it’s going to be you know you can’t request that it turns into a money you can put in your wallet, but it is a digital currency totally operated and administered online. The the record of you know how many bitcoins honey you have versus how many i have is is part of the public record and administration of the currency online, so at any time you can go online and see what the what what it’s valued at what a single bitcoin is value that and how much bitcoin is in circulation and where the other part that i definitely hear. From organizations when we’re talking about bitcoin is how how does that translate? Like, how would we touch that as a non profit organization? And i think one way to think about it is, you know, when we when organization started accepting donations on line one one kind of action that a lot of organizations are very familiar with now was setting up a paypal account, right? So we set up that account, we connected it probably to our organization’s bank account for direct deposit and everything. And then we just put on our website that button, right that’s the button that donate by paypal that’s basically the same experience you khun offer now to people you can sign up with a bitcoin processor bit pay is probably the most prominent and it’s the same thing you’d get you set up your account so it’s connected to your bank account, because in the end you really will be getting bitcoins converted by bit pay into direct cash donations, so your end of the equation will still be that same experience where it’s cash that’s being donated and you’re sending off that email that thanks for your donation of you know x amount of dollars and here’s, our charitable information, you know, for your tax violence? Yes, it helps quite a your enough. They’re so bit pays managing. Okay, somebody on, you know and tens website click the button i you know, bit pays taking the donations of those bitcoins, converting them in there current, you know, real value into cash and putting that into our accounts. Yes. So it it’s worth having a processor so that you are dealing with u s dollars or canadian dollars or whatever your currency you might be british. Don’t imagine there’s many non-profit who want to unnecessarily be accepting bitcoin donations as bitcoin. Managing them is bitcoin and then looking for opportunities tio use that bitcoin is a currency where their pay, you know, be accepted these donations we’re keeping it as bitcoin. And then we’re changing this out and that’s for two reasons. One now you’re an organization who’s got, you know your bank account and most of your money on your financials all managed. And then over here you have this one. Probably very tiny pool of a totally different currency, which is just a difficult administration process, right? But the other part of that is that last year, the us government said bitcoin is actually considered for taxable purposes as property and not his currency, so that means you would need to be men, you know, managing and eligible to be paying a gains and all of that, you probably don’t want todo, right? Yeah, the easiest way to think about that the implication of that part of it is if you were trading in securities, it’s it’s treated luxuries like property, which is security is stocks and bonds we’re talking about, not like, like currency or cash, and you don’t want to be dealing in that and in that and having to worry about fluctuations and exactly like you just said capital gains and losses, and so, um, especially because bitcoin for organizations who are now accepting donations is bitcoin, you know what they’re actually getting in, that donation is similar to, you know, maybe other kind of alternative online donation campaigns where what you’re getting is a donation of three dollars or ten dollars, you know at a time so the idea that you would be getting all of these kind of small little chunks of bitcoin that you’re having tio account for and track and voter henschel li pai against capital gains and losses like, oh my gosh, that just sounds like work you don’t want to dio so using processor that will just convert that at that moment of donation into the cash on your end and give you that donation, you know, you send your your e mail receipt to that donor and you’re done standard process i think it’s so much more realistic we have ah, we have run out of time, so i’m just going to say this that another advantage to bitcoin is that the the processing fees are lower than credit card fees on dh, of course. Well, in many cases, there isn’t a b okay. Ah, and we’ll have ah links on the facebook page takeaways amy sample ward on twitter at amy rs ward. Thank you very much, amy, thanks so much for having me. My pleasure as always. Thank you, tony’s. Take two and volunteer issues coming up. First opportunity collaboration. This is the annual unconference in x stop a mexico. It was last october was my first time going again this october. The subject is poverty alleviation in all its different forms, and there were people working around social justice or working directly with the poor. There were people doing health and sanitation. I met people doing water projects, for instance, whatever it is that you’re doing in a poverty region to alleviate, and ideally reduce well should, say, eliminate, ideally, eliminate the poverty. Um, if it’s, if that’s the type of work that you’re doing, then opportunity, collaboration is something that i suggest you check out. Amy sample ward is going to be there actually, this year, they are at opportunity, collaboration, dot net. If you’re at work, is it all related to poverty reduction? I was honored by hermandad last night. The organization that does water projects brings fresh water, too poor parts of the dominican republic. And you were with me. You really did make it a double honor because non-profit radio listeners stepped up and i thank you very much. I’ll have details next week, after all the gifts have come in. Ah, and i’ll do the video, etcetera, but i’ll have a little more for us next week. But at this point, thank you very much. That’s tony’s, take two for friday, twenty fourth of april sixteenth show of the year. And i’m very pleased that our other west coast contributors here that’s jean takagi he’s, managing editor, managing attorney of neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he’s at g tak e ta ke welcome back, jean. Hi, tony. Great to be back. Oh, thank you. Great to have you back. Um, we’re talking today about volunteers. There’s there could be issues that non-profits maybe overlooking and they may think just because it’s a good hearted volunteer and they’re non-profit doing good charitable work that there won’t be any legal problems. Yeah. It’s an interesting thing. I want to say that volunteers are really the life blood of many, many the vast majority of non-profit. So we really love volunteers. But we want to think about protecting our organizations and protecting our volunteers as well. So i think we at least have to consider some of the possible liabilities that might be created by the acts of volunteers. And in some circumstances, they could be considered employees. Yeah, volunteers could be considered employees if you decide you want to pay for their services. So sometimes that that seems pretty obvious. If you pay somebody there, they’re probably either an employee or an independent contractor. But a lot of people think, well, if i pay somebody who used to be a volunteer, maybe i can keep them on volunteer status. As long as i call that payment a stipend. That may not be true. It all okay. That’s. That’s? Yeah. That’s just doesn’t smell good either. No. Okay, so what are what are some of our, uh, issues as we as we drill down some of the potential liability? Well, i just think about if you if you hired a volunteer and you decided that you were going to go, you know, you had a summer camping program supervising children, and you brought in a volunteer. And that volunteer ended up doing something terrible that got one of the children hurt. Now, what type of responsibility should the non-profit have, you know, would respect protecting that child, who, whose parents decided to send them to that summer cap and trusted the vault, the non-profit teo, to protect that child. So that’s sort of just opens up the the sort of kan, if you will, or pandora’s box of all of the potential issues that might be involved with bringing in a volunteer. Okay, that’s, ah, that’s, a cool example. The the recruitment right or the or the hiring of volunteers, for instance, right? So, i mean, if you if you hired in that example, if you hired somebody that had a criminal record of sexual abuse and predatory behavior again, children, my gosh, you know, you should be held responsible for not not doing some level of screening when when allowing that an employee or volunteer teo interact and possibly supervised kids in those situations for employees, oftentimes you must screen them. You must do a background check by law. In many cases, when they’re working with children with volunteers, they might not fit under the same category in terms of the, uh, legal protections for the children. But it really is up to the non-profit to create some polish he’s to make sure that when they’re recruiting, when they’re hiring, that they’re doing so without negligence and doing so with reasonable care under the circumstances. Yeah, you’re also concerned about how much authority of volunteer has yeah, you know, so, you know, we can imagine again if we put that volunteer, and maybe we did screen that person, so there is no criminal problem in no predatory behavior. But the person has never actually worked with children before, and now all of a sudden there’s a fight between the kids or, you know, kid has an allergic reaction to food, and he doesn’t know or she doesn’t know what to do and so clearly delegating authority, providing some sort of supervision, some sort of training for that person, probably limiting their authority, especially in the beginning so that you’ve got somebody who knows what to do it in, you know, totally foreseeable circumstances when you’re working with children or when you’re working in whatever environment the volunteer is going to be working, it is really important you just don’t want to throw the volunteer out there and say, do this, and you’re on, you’re on your own, you know, in this conversation, a lot of what we’re talking about just sounds like it’s perfectly parallel with the the way you bring on ah, new employees, i think so. So the more responsibility of volunteer has and it’s close to ninety percent of all organizations that are completely run by volunteers. So that’s really a lot of non-profits that that really dependent on their volunteers and of the other? You know, ten to fifteen percent, a lot of the programmatic work is aided by the assistance of volunteers, so we’ve got to be very careful if they’re really taking on the rolls, even though they’re doing it out of the, you know, goodness of their heart if they’re taking on the rules of responsibilities, of running a program, supervising other individuals, supervising children, you know, and doing whatever work that needs to be done that you’re going to rely on is the non-profit that it’s going to be okay? You’ve got to make sure that you pick the right people and that you adequately equipped and trained them so that they could do the job they were set out to do so then also following this parallel than discipline do write an evaluation, yes, just the same way you might hyre volunteer, especially if they’re going to be working a lot of hours, or they have a lot of supervisory authority or just a lot of the individual autonomy and doing what they’re doing without a lot of direct oversight, you’re going to also hold them to your, you know, code of conduct, which is something i would recommend. That organization tack for their volunteers? Certainly a job description that’s very clear in terms of what is expected, who that person supervisor is and, you know, the statement that they must take the direction of that supervisor who’s in charge, and if they’re not following that code of honor, or if they’re in subordinate t the supervision, i think you’ve got to be ableto have some disciplinary procedures similar to an employee, but of course they’re not they don’t get the employees protection that employee’s house. So, you know, if if you feel like there’s just an unsafe or very bad environment caused by a volunteer, you have to be prepared to terminate that volunteer should there be a contract with volunteers or something that they signed that’s not legally binding as a contract? Yeah. And, um, really good showing your legal back-up sarrantonio agreement might might not be binding on a volunteer that’s entering into a contract for providing free services to the non-profit it may or may not be binding, depending upon how you phrase it, i think most non-profits don’t necessarily want it have legal, you know, lawsuits resulting from a breach of contract by a volunteer who failed to do their duties. But some sort of informal, maybe non binding agreement or memorandum of understanding for the volunteer, i think is great. So even if we call it a volunteer agreement just specifying what their duties are what’s expected of them and what type of disciplinary actions might follow if they’re unable to perform their jobs or unwilling to perform theirjob, i think all of that is a good idea. Okay, um, we’ve been talking about protecting the non-profit. How about protections for the volunteers? I mean, there is something called a volunteer protection act. Yeah, and i think for a lot of volunteers, many of them serve on the board of organizations. I know i served on a few boards, and i would like to know that i’m protected in case something i do in the scope of my duties for that organization result in a lawsuit coming and perhaps the lawsuit that that hyre where the lawsuit alleges that both the organization and the volunteer director are defendants, the volunteer director will be looking for some sort of protection in that case if here she was totally acting reasonably in the scope of their duties. But if their suit, personally, some money might have to come out from their personal countess organization doesn’t have the money to indemnify the director, even though the organization may be required to understate laws. So we’ve got this federal volunteer protection act that’s out there that says that volunteers generally aren’t liable for simple negligence if the actor within the scope of the volunteers responsibility, but that’s another good reason for having some sort of written agreement that actually spells out the volunteers responsibilities so that’s actually very clear and that would be protected for the volunteer is well, in that case, i should let you know that that limited protection is contingent on many things, and if somebody that got hurt said that the director or other volunteer was grossly negligent and simply negligent, then the volunteer at protection act may not protect that. Volunteer it all, so insurance becomes a very important thing to protect volunteers. And for the organization itself, toe have adequate insurance of for liability for directors and officers, which often cover other employees and agents and volunteers. That would be important. Finally, i think the protection that volunteers have to worry about is what if the volunteer themselves gets hurt in the scope of the duty so they’re volunteer at the summer camp, who in this case is perfectly doing a great job in his excellent is wonderful for the children, but he trips over a log on a hiking path and breaks his arm. Who pays for that? And if the non-profit is goingto, you know, have to pay for that. Dino coverage will not will not cover that, probably volunteer accident insurance at the non-profit might consider getting to protect their volunteers. In case that happens, guys, the volunteers may be personally responsible for paying their own medical costs, even though they were acting completely in the scope of the responsibilities for the non-profit the d a know that you mentioned the directors and officers insurance, you and i have talked a good bit about that when we’ve talked about board generally bored issues and protections, and we have talked about to the you just mentioned the potential for personal liability of board members as as fiduciaries to the organization, but now you were talking broader, and that could be personal liability for non board members. If volunteers are going outside the scope of their responsibilities, it sounds like yeah, so if they’re going outside of the scope of the responsibility, volunteers could certainly be held liable and non-profits or small and don’t have a lot of money and the non-profit doesn’t have any insurance. Well, then the person that got hurt might say, you know, i don’t really want to do it, but i’ve got to sue you because you’ve got the deeper pockets than this non-profit that has no money, no, you’re going to have to pay for my medical costs because you had me on this hiking trail and i tripped and it was dangerous, and i didn’t sign a waiver of liability, which may be something else we could talk about, so, you know, i’m gonna have to sue you, and you’re gonna have to pay for it and there’s no insurance to cover that, then, you know, wait, we just have a couple of minutes. Before a break, and then we’re gonna move on to ah sametz use around the sweet briar college closing, but the the volunteer does always have the possibility of just saying that they don’t want to do something, just say no, yeah, that’s sometimes got to be the best volunteer tre tek shin and the non-profits have to make sure that the volunteers feel comfortable of saying, i don’t have the skills or the background or the experience to do what you’re asking of me, so you can either train me and i could get up to speed on that or you’ve got to find somebody else. Those volunteers field pressured into doing something that they can’t handle that’s going to look really bad on the non-profit well, maybe i’m not qualified. Teo, be the range official on the shooting at the shooting range or the archery range. Yeah example, and there was a lawsuit filed where somebody was instructing on scuba diving ono instructed, and it wasn’t a certified scuba divers. Oh, no, don’t well, i was i was a lifeguard at the town pool when i was sixteen. All right, all right, i think what? Let’s, go out. A little early for our break. When we come back, jean and i, i’ll have a little more live. Listen, love domestic this time, and jean and i are going to move to the sweet briar college closing. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to retweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guest directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. If you have big dreams in a small budget tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio, i d’oh. I’m adam braun, founder of pencils of promise. Let’s do domestic live listener love and i want to give a shout out to brooklyn, new york. I feel bad that i was mean to them. Brooklyn, new york love you love you. Thank you for being with us. Woodbridge, new jersey, seattle, washington, oregon. We can’t see that i don’t know what town, but oregon is with us st louis, missouri, san francisco, california and multiple san francisco’s not only gene altum pandu jersey welcome live listener love going out to all our domestic live listeners. And then we joined a couple of a couple joined us from abroad. Denmark i am not going to offend you by attempting to pronounce the name of your city in denmark. But we see you denmark and we see loads in poland live listener love jean sweet briar college is having some trouble getting a lot of popular press because they’re closing. Andi just have, you know, like five minutes or so teo sort of summarized there’s a possibility that the court in in california may substitute its judgment for the board and determining whether sweet prior should close. Yeah, i think it’s in virginia, virginia, i’m sorry. That’s right. Sweet. Bar virginia, you’re absolutely right. Thank you. Yes, it’s, you know, woman’s college in virginia and the board decided that it’s going to close down shut down the non-profit after the summer session and they said basically, they’ve got insurmountable financial challenges. Um and, you know, boards generally have the authority where there isn’t a voting membership structures, so not a voting member ship structure like a union or a homeowner’s association, but most non-profits just are run by their boards, and when there isn’t this voting member substructure board generally have the authority to close down the organization if they think that the best way to advance the mission uh, it is to close down because other organizations just khun khun operate mohr effectively and more efficiently, and they no longer had the capacity to do so. But in this case, the a lot of, you know, teachers, faculty, duitz i’m nam and i write, you know, we’re saying this is ridiculous, you know, this is maybe just a failure of this board and this president to be able to turn this college around, um and they even convinced the county’s er attorney to file a suit on behalf. Of virginia seeking to block that closing and force the removal of the board and the president. But the judge said that, you know, the county didn’t, you know, not quite have the right to sue on charitable trust grounds, but did have the right to say that, you know, to sue at least there was no decision made on this, but did have the right to sue on violating the charitable solicitation laws, which basically say, if you’ve given money to support the advancement of the mission of the school that may be closing, the school is not in the advancement of the mission, so you can start to use money you raised recently that where were you already knew you were going to close the school and use that money to close the school so that’s basically the limited judgment that that the judge has made and now a whole bunch of other lawsuits, all looking at all these different legal theories are sort of popping up. And so this goes to the er intended purpose of the gifts no one gave to sweet briar with the intention of the money being used to close the college right? I right now that i think they’re proceeding with the closing, the board and the president, but they’re using unrestricted funds now there’s a question about even if we didn’t specify that this fund was specifically or, you know, a professor or one part of it wasn’t designated, but yeah, even argast resonated, but we don’t think you could use it to close down the non-profit now, personally, i don’t think that argument is goingto work because, again sometimes advancing the non-profits mission is not necessarily keeping it afloat if it’s just bleeding money and not doing a very good job purse during the mission, there has to be some discretion if if the board is in charge of the organization to be able to close down and i don’t know sweet briars like sort of specific governance issue’s on whether the board has really tried that, and it is somewhat problematic that they didn’t actually go out and seek some help from the alumni and students and faculties and donors and supporters about what they were doing and that they continued to generally fund-raising when they already you made the decision to close down, i think those are all problematic statement, but i do find it difficult to have a court come in and say that no, you can’t shut down the non-profit all, you have to keep operating. So you feel that the undesignated unrestricted gif ts to a non-profit really are to be used at the discretion of the board and the trustees. Yeah, but they’re held up toe a fiduciary duty, you know, to work in the best interest of the organization. And in that case, you know, really in the best interest of the organization’s mission of how well it can advance the mission and it’s interesting you you opened with the best way to advance the mission may be to close the institution. Yeah, in some cases it is and, you know, no institution lives forever, you know, every institution that we know of has some life. Okay? Okay, um, the we still have a couple of minutes left. There’s the issue of i wasn’t sure we’d have time for this, but the standing, whether whether alumni have the right to sue a college, help us understand that he has i mean, i think that would be the case of any non-profit organization do. Other people apart from the board members have the right to sue the non-profit because they feel like the non-profit isn’t doing a good job. Well, if that was the case, they would probably see the non-profit and the board members. And if that was the case, i don’t think you’ll find very many people deciding to volunteers, board members. Mmm. So some people that do have standing in this case are voting members again, you know, typically you see those in, like, labor unions, homeowner’s association’s, professional associations where members actually elect the board members and you might get the proxy notice just like a shareholder has for-profit corporation to vote for who you want on the way ported nineteen members are like shareholders and have the right to suit the organization and the board, but if they don’t have voting members, we probably don’t want people in the general public to be able to sue a non-profit because they don’t think the non-profit is doing a good job, and they may not see any of the, you know, the things that the board members see in terms of understanding what non-profit is actually going through it’s, not you. Know, they may not know anything else about the non-profit that back-up, you know that it provided the service that they want benefited from, and they don’t want it to stop. Even though we asked donors to invest in our organization, the law is not seeing them as investors, shareholders. The way, ah, shareholder, that that allex board members is seen in the law. We have to write, so they fired all the contribution that i make to a charity doesn’t give me the right to sue the charity, because i don’t like what they do. We gotta leave it there. Gene takagi, thank you so much. Managing attorney of neo and it’s, the non-profit law, blawg dot com and is at gi tak on twitter. Thank you very much, gene. Next week, we have two ntcdinosaur views, multi-channel storytelling and your disaster recovery plan, one’s, uplifting and the others potential crisis. If you’re not managing things right, if you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com, where in the world else would you go? I don’t really sing that very well. Where in the world else would you go? We’ll drop this shortly. Don’t worry, opportunity, collaboration, the world convenes for poverty reduction, it’s, an outstanding unconference it will ruin you for every other conference, really that’s, true opportunity, collaboration, dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, susan chavez, dot com and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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