Nonprofit Radio for October 14, 2024: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

 

Marina Martinez-Bateman: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity

First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, at New Coyote Consulting. (This originally aired August 1, 2022.)

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. We did promise you Veronica La Finna this week, but I couldn’t record with her because I had a family emergency. So we have one from the archive and we’ll get Veronica on within a month. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of BRAC ignatia if I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, this week it’s tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. First. What is toxic productivity? Then as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally? What are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. This originally aired August 1st 2022 on Tony’s take two tales from the plane. The civility of deplaning were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. It’s all covered by Marina Martinez Bateman at New Coyote consulting. If you start buying shoes instead of food, buying shoes, instead of paying the rent, then you have a real problem, right? And productivity is like that, you know, it’s just like any other thing that we engage in, we can do it so hard that it hurts us toxic productivity is when we will choose work over things that we need, like taking lunch breaks or moving our body or um engaging with family and community things that sort of are essential to our mental and physical health. And then, you know, what happens is as we engage more and more with this toxic level of productivity, our actual real true product or output diminishes and then we see our output diminish, we get really upset about that and then we double down on being more and more productive and, and then our output diminishes because we’re exhausted and we’re not getting filled up in other places and we double down again and it can lead to, you know, you can create uh you know, really unhealthy spaces. You can um you know, make yourself ill, you can hurt yourself, you can get hurt, you know, how many people have fallen asleep while driving um because they’re working too many hours. Um You know, how many times do we make really silly mistakes when we’re exhausted. Um Those things sort of creep in and creep in and then your identity starts to change into being someone who can’t get things right, who isn’t able to perform when that was never a part of your reality, you’re just engaging way too hard in work thinking that that’s the answer to your, your problem when really it’s the cause. And before we go further and toxic productivity, let’s remind folks in case there’s any question, uh You said, you know, it replaces being filled up by other spaces like community, family friends. Let’s remind folks of the, the joys that and, and maybe there’s even research that shows the physiological changes when we’re engaging in things that are not work. Yeah. Yeah. So you get different parts of your brain activated when you’re engaging in hobbies that are different from your work, um your creative life, you know, if you have a creative job um sometimes doing something that’s not so creative or doesn’t require a lot of like big innovative leaps um can be nice like, you know, tidying up or taking a walk or um doing something physical, like hiking or going out into the outdoors, going fishing and camping, et cetera, or even going shopping or going to the movies, like those things when they’re safe. Of course, because it’s still COVID right now um are important to engage in because they activate other spots of your brain and also just your body moves differently on a hike than it does in the office or at a desk it moves. First of all, first of all, it moves your standing desk, even if you attach a treadmill to it or something can never really replicate going outside. Um And then, you know, we’re people even introverted people need other people. We just do, we’re not, um, we cannot exist completely alone. Um We have to be able to engage in the people that we have in our personal bubble. However big that bubble is we have to be able to sort of like activate um that empathetic drive that we all have as humans or that, you know, the vast majority of us do. Um And we, we just have to be in, in concert, you know, how many of us have been at work, especially in the nonprofit sphere and things are sort of looking gloomy and we’re thinking, oh, the world is filled with bad people, everyone’s making terrible choices. This is the worst, you know, and then you go to dinner with a friend and you’re like, wait, the world is wonderful. This is great. Everyone’s making great choices. I bet all these people are just trying to figure it out because that human connection needs to exist for us to be people in the world, which is, you know, why we’re here is to be people. Thank you for that reminder, right. We are, we are communal. We are social, even the most introverted to some degree. Still, as you said, you know, with however, however, however many or few it may be uh uh contact community. All right. All right. So what are nonprofits doing that uh is leading us to toxic productivity? And we’ll, we’ll certainly get to the solutions. But what are we doing to? Uh, I don’t wanna, I certainly don’t want to say, improve it uh to induce it, induce it. Yeah, I mean, part of it is that we have these and these are, it’s great that we all want to end hunger and that we, you know, no one’s being like, oh, but it’s hard when you have 16 people and they’re all making 20 to 50 to 100% less than they could make in the free market trying to end hunger from a small office with broken chairs and a raccoon that won’t leave the trash alone. You know, like we are so severely under-resourced in nonprofit and that’s not our individual fault by any means. It’s the culture and the structures of the culture that we live in. Um where uh poor people are, the people that build this country and their labor is so exploited that they are um kept poor so that the rich can stay rich. Um And then we at the nonprofits and generally those are the people we serve are the poor or people who are missing something from their, their experience or their needs. And uh and we’re under resource too. I mean, it’s a whole, it’s a whole culture, right? It’s a whole structure. It’s a whole system that’s made to make it so that we have these incredibly vast missions and we have a broken pencil and our own gumption to make it happen. And um and it is, you know, we, we as individuals cannot solve that entire problem by ourselves. One, we can’t solve the problem that we’re working on by ourselves. We can’t end hunger alone. Um Even the most vast and well resourced organization would have to work with others in order to make that happen. Um And part of that, so we have this, like we have these vast resources, we are severely under-resourced or we have these vast missions. Yeah, and we’re severely under resourced. And then um what we as organizations do on the, on the organization to organization level is that we compete with one another. We don’t coordinate with our organizations in our same sphere or it’s hard, we find it hard to coordinate. Um We also don’t recognize that we’re under-resourced. Um Frequently we will sort of like, you know, when you get a bunch of nonprofit workers together in a room, we’ll joke about, you know, how we don’t have a chair that works and our computer is 15 years old and all these things. Um But we don’t talk about how that makes the mission harder to do and nor do we talk about how we’re still hitting goalposts. We’re still crossing finish lines. We’re still making things work and where do those resources come from? In general? They come from the individual workers. Um And some of us have vast resources to put to this and some of us don’t. Um But there’s no adjustment, a, there’s no adjustment of expectation based on how much resource we’re individually putting into the, the work to make it cross the finish line. And there’s also no, um it’s seen as an individual failing if we can’t do this impossible work with very little resource in the, in, in, in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of support, in terms of whatever. We’re all fighting an uphill battle. And um and our organizations frequently lean into that martyrdom and lean into that, you know, while I was working 17 hours yesterday, while I was up at two o’clock in the morning, finishing with this grant while I was, you know, and um and it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, if we live in a world where we think that our clients deserve education, food, um a healthy ecology to, to Roman community, art, all of these things, you know, medicine and um recovery and all these things that we provide to people. If we think that our clients deserve that, how come we’re not getting that for ourselves? Like how many of us are pushing off things like doctors appointments, how many of us have skipped um significant times in our family members lives because there was some campaign or something that had to go on. And then also how much of that um happens because of expectation. You know, when we start a nonprofit, we’re working with nothing, we work our way up, we become leaders in the, in the sector. And then it doesn’t seem weird to us that the people, the workers that are coming behind us are experiencing the same hardships that we experienced because it’s normal for us to struggle in this way. A lot of what you’re saying is that it’s, it’s culture and, and mindset. So I guess you’d like to change the culture and change the mindset and change the investments. Um So please, let’s uh let’s start talking about what, what we can do differently. I think what we can do differently is it starts with the leadership in nonprofits. People who are lower on the York chart do not have as much power. Although a lot of people, especially right now with the great resignation. Um A lot of people who are lower on the art chart are as asserting their power by leaving um environments that are toxic or don’t work for um what their vision is for the future. I think Gen Z is a great motivator for us to all take a look at how we’ve been working in the past and how it has harmed us and how, if we don’t get right and start cycle breaking, we are going to be perpetuating the same harm that was done to us, which while it’s not fair that we were harmed, it’s also not fair to, to sort of slough that off onto others. Um, but in the leadership of the nonprofits, we have to stop thinking that because it happened to us, it’s ok for it to happen to other workers, especially younger workers coming sort of, you know, rite of passage, you pay your dues and then you’ll, then you’ll emerge a better leader in the, in the sector. You know, that’s, that’s silly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And punishing to be, you don’t have to be punished to be successful. Exactly. Can we be like, can we be the nonprofit executives and CEO S that we needed when we were younger and that we didn’t get, can we do the things that, that would have helped us to heal or would have helped us to be safe or be properly resourced or succeed even if that’s not something that we experienced when we were younger in career? All right. Um Do you have specific, like, uh are there specific things that leaders can, can encourage? Like, you must take time off or something? You know, I, I don’t want to see anybody not using their vacation time. And you know, the these folks who say, hey, I haven’t had a vacation in four years. I’m so proud of myself and I’m thinking, like, don’t blame me. That’s your own fault. Yeah, if it’s been that long, it’s your own fault for not taking it, you know. So what, what, what can leaders do, you know, specifically to avoid this? The, the, the toxic productivity is? Yeah, that, that sort of thing where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault that Sharon hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years saying that is, is a thing we can put to bed. And we can say actually, if I’m in charge of this organization and of course, we work together with our boards and advisory councils, sometimes with governmental agencies, whoever we’re helping to steward this change with. Um but if I am the CEO here, I am the executive here, then if someone hasn’t taken a vacation in four years, that’s, that’s on me. Um This is the, this is the container I’m building for workers. Um I see my view my duties as a CEO very explicitly to keep the people in my, you know, in my organization safe. That’s one of the things that, that I have, you know, task been tasked with is to keep people safe. Um If I can tell people what kind of work we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, then I have to take responsibility for their safety during that journey because I’m the one taking them that, that place. I’m the one on that journey with them. Um And so asking, you know, why is it, why is it that Sharon feels like she can’t take a vacation? Um Is there something going on internally that is making that happen? Does she not have anyone who’s trained on the thing that she does? Does she, um, has she not gotten a, a performance review in four years? And she, so she doesn’t feel like she can take a vacation because she doesn’t even know how well she’s doing her job. You know, there’s just a bunch of little things that we can look at and it takes time which most of us don’t have. And I advise leaders to look at our plate and find out where we’re being performative productive. How many of the things do we do every day? That looks like we’re doing something. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually cons it doesn’t actually contribute to the mission. We can spend three hours on something. And um, and not only are no more Children fed, they’re not going to be on that labor that we just did, but it looks really good. It looks like we’re doing a lot. How can we cut that out and then focus on, let’s get somebody cross trained on Sharon’s job so that she can finally take a vacation. Let’s let’s make this a safe space for our workers to make healthy decisions. And the truth is that because a lot of our sector has for so long leaned into this under resourcing of workers. There becomes a pathology around being under resource. There becomes a sort of like um system wide martyrdom. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit Donor box.org to learn more. Now back to tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. There’s something called a brotherhood of suffering. Exactly. It’s, it’s, I’ve read about it in prison populations where I mean, the phrase says it, the brotherhood, sisterhood. Um They would of suffering the uh the, the shared experience among all folks of being in something that’s, you know, ritualistic, punishing suffering, difficult. And then, and it ends up being a source of almost pride that we’re, we’re suffering this way together. I’m sure you want to turn that on its head and, and disabuse us of that. It’s, and it’s hard, it’s entrenched, there are people for whom for whatever reason. And then this does become an individual problem once you’ve done all of the systematic things around alleviating that suffering around creating um you know, the concept of abundance, even as we’re in these systems where we’re under-resourced. And part of that is acknowledging how we’re under-resourced and, and, and speaking its name out loud, um which is capitalism and racism and colonialism. Um Once we sort of do that in our organizations, there are still going to be people for whom it is necessary, they need that they feel for whatever reason that, that this is what they have to do, this is how they have to work. Um And, and in general, what I find um in the times when I’ve managed to create this package, which is really hard to do, well, we have all these other external forces sort of like working for us to have this hero complex to keep in the savior mindset. Um When I’ve been able to make this abundance package with the sort of container where we can all work in abundance towards our common goals. There are a couple of people who will leave and sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s not thankfully, but sometimes it is messy. Um But it’s because they need to be in an environment that feels like home to them and that toxicity is going to feel like home until they make the choice to step out of it. And, and recognize that this is this is a choice that, that they’ve made. There’s systemic issues at hand and then there’s individual issues at hand and we as CEO S can do a lot to solve the systemic issues and also we can never make someone heal themselves. Yeah. What’s some of that uh performative work that you uh that you mentioned just if you could tick off two or three things that are performative but lacking in value and, and, and benefit. Um Staying in the office on a day when there’s no reason to, you know, if, uh something like something tragic frequently happens, if there’s something terribly tragic in our community requiring, you’re requiring everyone to keep their butts in their seats is just ridiculous. No one’s working, that’s not gonna happen. Um, even sort of staying in the office when there are things going on that are, are wonderful. Um, for example, uh, if it’s, you know, if we are living in a beach town and it’s a great surf day and we are a surf, you know, protect the surf nonprofit, everybody goes surf, like, come on, this is our whole thing. Like, it doesn’t make any sense if we are. Um, say we’re, uh, you know, very into free media and we have a free media conference in town. Nobody should be expected to come to work. We should get tickets to the free media conference and we should go to that. Um, you know, there are a lot of things I think, um, you know, if we’re a big sports town and our team is winning. Nobody’s going to pay attention to work and there’s no reason to be here. All of these things, you know, they’re all individual to the nonprofit. Then there’s also things like, you know, some of us and I’m one of these people, I admit it love to see a meeting room packed with people. We love it. But half those people do, they need to be there. Do they really, does this really important to, to the running of the nonprofit that, that, you know, so many people are there for an hour doing nothing and, or, you know, getting information that could have been in an email or, you know, et cetera. Um, yeah, I think there’s, uh, some people have gone into the, um, oh, I can’t remember what they call it but they do 15 minutes stand ups every morning and they’re never 15 minutes long. They always run over the morning huddle. I mean, if the morning huddle makes you guys productive and it helps your, your nonprofit do the thing you, you’re put here to do. Great. But a lot of times these huddles are just performative and it’s awful and everyone’s so tired because it’s the first thing in the morning and there’s no reason for them. Um, I think also there’s a lot of like email checking that happens throughout the day for me is one of the ways that I am performative, productive and, and my uh my only employee is remote. We are all remote here. So no one’s watching me. No one can see me in here. But I will sit here and check email because I want to quote unquote, feel productive. And so then I spent 2.5 hours moving emails around the digital space doing nothing and I leave and then I leave, you know, I have to go to lunch or it’s the end of the day or something and I didn’t need to be there and do that. There was, there was no reason its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. Uh starting a new series because I’ve been traveling a lot. So starting the Tales from the plane series and uh starting optimistic and positive deplaning the deplaning process which I, I don’t know why they just don’t call it. You’re leaving the plane. They gotta have a word for plane deplaning, but it’s just done so civilly. Everybody is so friendly as they’re getting off the plane. Uh People wait for each other. Very thoughtful. They let, they let uh the all the rows, you know, go just in line orderly before them. You know, we’re, we’re not, it could be imagine the worst of humanity. It could be just everybody rushing, pushing, tripping over each other’s bags, tripping over people who are, who are smaller or weaker, you know, just stampeding. It could be that but it’s not, it never is. It’s nowhere near that. It’s all very civil and thoughtful. Um, when bags are, when, when somebody stuck with their bag, you know, a few rows back, they point to it and people offer to get the bag and then it gets passed up to the person and we all wait until that person leaves and then we take our turn. I just think it’s so admirable, you know, uh, it, in the current, you know, in the, during the presidential campaign, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a mega hat on or a Harris walls. T-shirt. People are all very thoughtful civil as we’re getting off the plane and it’s admirable. We help each other people offer. Can I get that bag for you? A man? Would you like some help, sir? You know, you look a little, you know, not, you don’t say you look a little short but you know, short gentlemen, would you like help? Can I help you? It’s all very polite, civil, thoughtful humane. I admire it and I think it, I don’t know if it has promise for a bigger lesson for all of us. Uh I mean, we can be civil. That’s clear. Uh but I’m not getting carried away. I just, I admire the civility of our deplaning process in the process. Why is it, why does it have to be a process or when they’re boarding? It’s the boarding process? Why are we starting a process? We’re just getting on the plane to me. Uh, a process is, you know, cooking dinner or putting out a fire. Um, you know, those are, those are processes. Digestion. Digestion is a process. But getting on a plane we’re just, we’re just boarding, we just start the boarding, start the boarding, boarding period. I don’t know why there has to be a boarding process. But anyway, that was a little, that’s a little sidebar. The point is the civility of the deplaning period. The deplaning, I admire it. Thank you. Thank you, everyone for being all so civil to each other. And that is Tonys take two. Ok. I wish ann track was more civil. I mean, I’ve never been on a plane but I’ve been on a train and it’s not very, uh, welcoming. You mean getting on or getting off, I think both for both. Yeah, I mean, I started, I used to take coach, you know, free for all. You find a seat, you sit down kind of thing. But then I could never find seats where people were just like putting their bags on like the second seat, you know, and saying like, oh, someone’s sitting here and then so I started like getting um, business class. So I actually had an assigned seat because people just weren’t, they weren’t thoughtful. Yeah. No, that is true on Amtrak you have to say, you know, excuse me? Uh, I mean, and then if they say somebody’s sitting there, I mean, I’m taking them at their word. I don’t need, I don’t need to see the person’s ID or anything but, but uh you do have to be a little assertive and say, excuse me, you know, like to sit down. Alright. Anyway, we’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here’s the rest of tech policies to reduce toxic productivity with Marina Martinez Bateman. Is there more that, that we can um ask of our, of our leaders, you um not that you haven’t given uh given, given a lot of uh uh uh a lot of advice but uh is is there any more that, that we can expect from our leaders to help us make the right choices? Yeah. And part of that is so we are in a unique space as leaders where we are suffering from the exact same ailments that our people are suffering from and we are suffering from the exact same structures of oppression that our people are something. I mean, not the exact same ones, but we’re here, we’re in it, right? So all of that um you know, all the systems that are set up to make it so that personal health and art and the environment and food and how like um communities and all these other things that we fight for, right? In the nonprofit sector, all these things are devalued. We’re, we’re in the same boat. Um And also we do have power within the walls of our our organization, sometimes it’s limited, sometimes there’s other factors at play, but we have more power than anyone else in the building almost. Um, with very few exceptions. And so part of it is that we have to make certain sacrifices as leaders, which I think all of us know, but those sacrifices are probably not going to be the ones, the ones I recommend are not going to be the ones that we expect. So, um we need to protect our own time. We need to be seen eating lunch, we need to be seen taking time to move our bodies. Um A lot of the things that we do as leaders are are um the second we get to work, the second we log on whenever our day starts, we are being seen by everyone at the organization, even if it’s a small organization, even if it’s a remote organization, we don’t realize how visible we are. Um And so when we model these behaviors for people taking vacation, telling people about how wonderful and restorative the vacation was reassuring people um that it’s ok to take vacation for themselves, leaning into abundance even though we know what the budget is and we know scarcity very intimately um making those choices um that are, that are on mission, um that are values driven because that’s what we’re called to do. Um And then having to make tough calls uh as a leader is, it’s why we’re here. It’s why we got put in this seat. Um It’s why we sought the seat we wanted this position most of us. And um and so it’s time to sort of like what we sacrifice when we have this uh out. Like when we are modeling this good behavior is we sacrifice any delusions that we might have had towards the productivity nature of, of, you know, performative productivity, right? So those big meetings that have a ton of people in them that are really kind of just ego strokes for us, we can get rid of those. That’s a sacrifice that, that is a good sacrifice to make. Um a lot of times we do things like we have those big meetings because we’re not feeling very productive, but we want to see everybody’s face, you know, working. Um And really what we needed to do is take lunch and start taking lunch probably three months, three or four months ago, or years ago or 10 or 1520 years ago. Um And then we would feel productive and filled up and we would need a big meeting of 15 people that doesn’t do anything. Um So, so modeling the behavior ourselves is very, very important and um and specifically in a way that is seen, um it can be very hard because as leaders, we want to say, well, I’m gonna take, I’m modeling the behavior I’m gonna take off early, I’m gonna go home and um that is valid. And if we need to do that, we should do that. And also say, ok, everybody, we’re going home early this day is just whatever happened this day is in the pits, let’s go home early. If we can, of course, some of us can’t do that because we have certain service obligations. Um, but we can do things like look around the room, take the temperature of the room and say, all right, everybody, we’re getting, you know, pizzas delivered or whatever. Uh We’re just gonna sit down and hang out together and blow off some steam. I can feel it. We just, we’re not doing productive work right now. You know, be thoughtful, be intentional um about creating uh about the culture you’re creating and that culture starts with leadership, whether whether you might be the CEO or you might be a mid-level leader, you might be uh uh lower on the org chart, a lower level leader, but you’re still leading two or three people, right? I mean, it applies. This is not only for the CEO, you’re a CEO, but this is not only for CEO S. Yeah, the people like your choices are going to be dependent on what’s up with the people and focus them and then model the behavior that you because you know that a lot of us don’t realize how seen we are in our organizations. We’re very, very visible if we’re in a leadership position. Yeah, you made the point, you know, even even in a virtual organization like yours virtual company. Um Well, uh so flush that out. Well, how, how do you feel like folks know when you start logging in when you’re reading email, et cetera? How is that seen? How is it seen? How am I checking in? You know, if we have a digital chat platform? How am I checking in? Am I showing up? Am I saying? Hey, I’m here. Am I asking questions? Um Am I, you know, am I asking for feedback? You know, am I, am I visible enough for you? Am I you know, am I bugging you too much like um and listening to people and trusting people when they tell you what’s going on with them. Um and also trying to remember it’s very hard, it can be very hard with everything going on that you have to do as a leader. But when someone says, hey, I’m gonna be out for the afternoon, put it in your own calendar and make sure that you don’t reach out to them during that time. Yeah. Right. Those, those uh slacks or texts or emails, whatever it is that start sorry to bother you on your day off. But, but of course, the universal and the gator cancels everything before it, but I need, you know, blah, blah. Exactly. And that, you know, so much of that it could just wait until the day off is over. So the week off is it? You know, and, and, and you, you said earlier, you know, cross training so that people feel they can take time. And so the organization doesn’t suffer when they do. Exactly. If so, and so doesn’t have the thing. I’ve cross trained this other person which, of course, you know, i, it’s easy for me to sit here in my office and say cross training when a person listening is looking at me like what with what resources with what people? But that’s where the sacrifices come in. You have to say, OK, well, this vanity project of mine doesn’t happen because cross training is happening instead or this. And somebody bristled when I said Vanity Project, I know it. But we all have them, they exist. We’ve got to accept that, that they exist. So instead of the thing I want, we do cross training because that’s, that’s, and eventually I’ll get the thing I want probably, especially if it’s mission aligned and it makes sense. But we have to prioritize workers needs and comfort because we have a lot of options here. The people that we employ, have less options than us have fewer options than us. And so we need to, to, to honor that. What about some uh questions that you got questions or comments you got uh in your session? Uh What uh what do you, what do you, what, what stuck out for you? I always get this question in all, every time I teach his training, I get this question and it’s some version of the, you know, my coworker, my direct report, my boss, my board member is very into toxic productivity. They’re very into this. They’re, they’re the ones that are always, you know, I was answering emails from the hospital when I was in labor with my second daughter or, you know, all of this stuff. Um, it’s very badge of honor. You know, we wear these sort of like wounds like medals and nonprofit. Um, that’s the, the person who would have suffered. I said the person who of suffering it is a bad, they do become a badge of honor. I’m, I’m always the last person to leave the office. Yes. Yes, exactly. And, uh, and, and, and this person is that their, their toxic productivity is harming people. They’re pushing, uh, the culture, you know, more and more to work more and more. Um, they have unrealistic expectations of people that work nearer with them, et cetera, et cetera. It’s harmful. And what I always tell people is, you know, you can do this. Uh, first of all, your proximity to this person is not a coincidence. At some point, you guys probably saw eye to eye on this or we’re working together in tandem to create something that really worked for you. Um, you know, I look back on my nonprofit career and one of the, my best times, one of my favorite times in my career was on as deeply into toxic productivity. And so was everyone else around me and it was wonderful because we were all on the same page. We felt like such a good team. We were so unified in the way we thought about things and the way we thought about things was deeply unhealthy. Um But uh I tell them, you know, you can tell this person, especially if you really care about them outside of work. Um You can say, I think we’re in a toxic relationship. I think we are operating in a way that is making each other less healthy, that’s not, not helping us thrive. I want to try and heal from this. I think that healing is gonna bring about a really incredibly positive change, not only for me, but for the work that we’re doing here, will you, will you heal with me? Will you come in this on this journey with me? And you can ask them with sincerity and the truth is that you can’t do anything else other than that, just ask them. And if they say no, you can’t keep asking them. You have to, you have to respect that and everyone has the has, has their own path, you know, and not everyone is going to heal at the rate that you are going to heal at, not everyone is going to heal the way you think you should or they should. Um Some people just have other journeys. And so if you are that person’s boss, you can make decisions about. Ok, well, we’re going in a different direction. We need competencies around healthy productivity. You don’t have the competencies around healthy productivity that we need. Therefore, we’re no longer a good fit and that hurts. It’s hard to say those things. But if I had, you know, if I said, you know, we’re gonna go, uh we’re gonna move towards gap accounting everyone. You know, we’ve got to do things, uh best practices, ways and, and not have, you know, our accounting all Willy nilly and our accountant at the time was like, nope, I do my accounting on post its and I will never not do that. You can’t make me change, then we would have to get a new accountant, wouldn’t we? So it’s the same thing when we’re trying to create this healthier productivity. If someone doesn’t want to learn or become competent in this, in this new work way, we can’t keep them on just because we like them or because of what they did in the past that was helpful. Um We can honor them and say that, that, you know, thank you very much and we can also release them to continue on their own journey. Whatever that is. What have we not talked about that? Uh You want to um, good question. Uh And I do my best to uh channel our listeners, but you’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m just coming to it. So maybe the, the stuff that we, I haven’t raised. Yeah, let’s talk about perfectionism. Perfectionism is, is a, we know for a fact we know that perfectionism is a, is a um feature of white supremacy. Perfectionism is um pervasive and insidious in our culture as a whole, but also in nonprofit culture. And so when we are practicing uh healthy productivity, when we’re trying to learn how to do things differently, the fact that we’re doing things in a way that we haven’t done them before means that we’re not gonna be as good, effortlessly good at them. Um As we were before, even if we were doing something that ultimately harmed ourselves and our organization and our mission, we were really good at it for a long time. We had a high level of proficiency. So when you sort of like decide to go home at five o’clock and uh walk around the block and then take a bubble bath or whatever, that’s not gonna feel super good because you’re not gonna be super good at it. Um I can’t tell you how many times I used to buy coloring books because I was like, I need to be less, you know, work centric and I need to do creative things. I miss being creative. And so I would buy those adult coloring books and I would hurt my fingers from coloring. So hard because it had to be perfect. Um, and then I would think, ok. No, I can’t do this. It’s too, it’s too physical. This coloring is too physical. I’ll go get in a bath. That’ll relax me and I’ll, I would sit in this bath just, uh, tense because I’m supposed to be relaxing and I’m, and I’m not doing damn bath over yet. Right. Exactly. That’s not working either. Right. And, but it’s not working because you’re not familiar with it. It’s hard. The first time you did anything, it was just kind of a little bit difficult and a little bit unwieldy and overwhelming. And, you know, for those of us who have been neglecting our other, the other parts of our lives for however long because of work, it is daunting to go into a place we feel very new at, especially when we’ve been in a place where we feel extremely, um, you know, experienced and comfortable. Exactly. Yeah. So, the, the perfectionism of like, if you are going to engage with your community and if you are going to engage your creativity and you’re going to go on a hike and you’re going to, you know, reclaim the other part of your life that isn’t at work, be willing to do it badly because it’s that important. You have to be able to do it badly because you have to get through that sort of like new unwieldy part. Um, and it’s ok to say, like I’m really new at this, I’m only going to hike for 15 minutes or I’m only going to sit at the trailhead and look at the hiking place and then I’m gonna go get back in my car and go home there. There’s no level of engaging with your non work life that is not gonna be beneficial. There’s no, it’s not like you have to hike to the top of the mountain. I mean, this is part of the toxic productivity that’s been, you know, making this, this bad scene this whole time, right? Is that we feel like we have to, um, do everything the best the most, regardless of what else is going on. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna start your physical fitness journey with AAA Triathlon. You know, you’re gonna run around the block and in a week you’ll be able to run around the block twice or maybe just walk to the end of the block, pardon me? Or maybe just walk to the end of the block or whatever it is. Yeah. However, you start, right. But, but starting and, and you’re saying, you know, you’re eee embrace the discomfort because it’ll become comfortable and you’ll get better at it. You know, you’re in a pattern now where you’re, uh, you know, you’re like you said, highly efficient, uh you know, highly efficient at toxic behaviors. You’re really good at this and you can be really good at something else too. I mean, I remember, uh there was an interview with Terry Crews who’s an actor and he’s very muscly. And um people always ask him, how do you get so buff? Like you’re always, and he said, look, the gym is my happy place. And so I can’t tell you a person who doesn’t really like the gym how to get like me. I look like this because I hang out at the gym all the time. It’s my favorite place. But he also says, you know, go take a, if you really like something, take it to the gym with you. So if you really like romance novels or mysteries or something, go and go and take your mystery novel to the gym and just sit there, read your mystery novel and then go home and then, you know, you don’t have to pick up a weight, you don’t have to do a single thing. Just hang out there because it’s for a lot of people like the weight room at the gym even especially is like a very new place. It’s pretty foreign. There’s a lot of traditions, there’s rules, you don’t really know what they are. Um, so ali acclimatizing yourself to a new place, you know? Interesting. Yeah. All right. All right. Leave us with, uh, with something inspirational. Please. Marina, there’s been a lot of inspiration. Sum it up, sum up 40 minutes as best you can. Well, when we think about how much we as nonprofit workers on an individual level, on an organizational level and on a sector wide level have been able to achieve and, and move the needle on with. So with how little we’re given, if we made sure that we ourselves were properly resourced, in order to do this transformative work, imagine how much more could be accomplished by people who are showing up fully in their power to this mission work. I mean, it’s incredible. And then also the thing I like to remind everyone in my training is that this is generational work. I have generations of people behind me, you know, relatives and ancestors who have done their own mission work. And I will have generations of people in front of me doing the mission work that they’re called to do. And all I have to do is show up for my part, my link in that chain. Marina Martinez Bateman, Ceo, New Coyote consulting. Oh, I have to ask, why is it New Coyote consulting? What is that? It’s New Coyote because I wanted a name that spoke to my ancestry, which is Mesoamerican and uh and which spoke to my sort of like presence and the way I show up. And uh the Aztec, there’s an Aztec God, uh Weiwei Coyote, which means very old coyote. And um I thought he’s um frequently gendered as a, as a male, but very also frequently gendered as non-binary or female. So I’m non-binary. It felt very like I felt a lot of kinship with, with that. And then, um, old, very old coyote is a storyteller and he teaches through storytelling. So that felt very appropriate to me as well. You know, he’s not didactic, he’s not teaching humans lessons or if he is ever teaching humans lessons, it’s in this very jokey sort of way. Um, he brings people along with him on journeys rather than sort of like telling them to go places. Um And I uh I also feel like in the context that I’m in, which is a very white context and a very colonizer context. Frequently, a lot of people will call my work new. They’ll say that the things I’m doing are new, these new ideas, they’re new concepts. And for me, they’re not new, they’re very, very old. Um But also new coyote is a transformer. He’s a trickster. So he, he becomes the thing that you need in the moment. And I thought, well, then we’re a new coyote. We’re not a very old coyote. We’re a, we’re a brand new one. So that’s why I named us New Coyote. Lots of levels. Yeah. Again, Marina Martinez Bateman Ceo at New Coyote consulting. Marina. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. You’re welcome too. Next week, Tony will pick one from the archive. It won’t be the fermentation show with Sandor Kraut. If you missed any part of this weeks show I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 7, 2024: Grants Readiness & Success

 

DeaRonda HarrisonGrants Readiness & Success

DeaRonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants research, writing and outcomes. Also, how to win grants quickly (it shouldn’t take years!); how to turn a one-time grant into multiyear funding; and her recommendations for grant research platforms. DeaRonda is the president of June First Firm.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of gingival hyperplasia if I had to chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, we’re serving grant’s Readiness and success. Dear, Rhonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants, research, writing and outcomes. Also how to win grants quickly. It shouldn’t take years how to turn a one time grant into multiyear funding and her recommendations for grant research platforms. Deanda is the president of June 1st firm on Tony. Seek to a special listener of the week were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is grant’s Readiness and Success. It’s a pleasure to welcome De Rhonda Harrison to nonprofit radio for her first appearance. She is the founder and president of June 1st firm, a grant writing firm specializing in funding for housing, health care and workforce education. She’s responsible for awards totaling more than $45 million a member of the Grant Professionals Association. She served as Georgia chapter president for two years. Our company is at June first.com and you’ll find Deronda on linkedin Deronda. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Hi, welcome. Thank you, Tony for having me. It’s a pleasure. Glad you’re with us to talk about grants, the some basics of grants, some uh pro tips on grants. Talk about just uh why is, why is June 1st firm? Uh What uh I’m sure June 1st is a deadline type. Is that why June 1st? Is that why I pick the name? Yeah, I picked the name is actually my birthday. My birthday is on June 1st. Um and grants are driven by deadline. So that is actually a good, a good guess. But yeah, I just use my, my birthday as a business name and stuck with it for, for all these years. I love it. That’s very, it’s very personal, unique, excellent um uh listeners. I want to explain that uh associate producer, Kate and I had to record together uh before I learned the proper pronunciation of de Rhoda’s name. So you’ll hear Kate uh saying dear Rhoda. Uh That’s because nonprofit radio has a lackluster host, Miss guessed on how to pronounce uh Du Rhonda’s name. So that’s the explanation for that. You can blame it on me as much as I like to blame the associate producer. This one is not on her. This one is my own doing. Uh So Deronda, let’s, let’s just start, you have a grant ready checklist that I’d like to start our conversation with. What do, what do uh small and mid size nonprofits need to have in place to be uh grant ready? Yeah. So, um it’s actually on my website and I’m happy to send it and share it with you to share with listeners. But a lot of times people are ready to dive into grants. They’ll say I have my 501 C three. They got it yesterday and they’re ready to apply for grants. And I’m like, well, there’s a little few more steps that you need to take. So I have what I call a grant ready checks, checklist. A lot of other grant writers have them too just to give people a full overview of what a lot of proposals are asking for. Like, do you need to have a board list? You need to have like bios of your senior staff and a list of um a lot of your critical, you know, um financials and items and things like that. So we put together a list over the years and just what I’ve seen, especially doing a lot of federal grants, what’s required. So you can kinda have an idea of what, what you need to have in front of you to be ready to? Ok, so le let, let’s go into more detail. Besides your, you need to have your 501 C three, you need to have your board list. Uh What, what before we tick off more items? What about financials? What, what do you need uh assets and liabilities or a budget or what, what do you need? Yes, definitely an organizational budget. So what is the revenue that’s coming for your organization? Line items for each and what are your expenses? Of course, line items for each. So your organizational budget that total, that’s pretty much acts in probably 90% of grants. They’ll act specifically for your org budget. Um As your organization grows your financial audit. So um having a third party conduct an audit of your organization that’s done every year. Again, majority of your foundations and corporate grants are asking for financial audits. Um If you don’t have an audit, sometimes you can replace that with just your 990 year tax form. Um I’ve been seeing more now like the demographics, not just the board list like, but the demographics of your board like, what is that? Is that makeup of their ethnicity? Gender? Um Cause I wanna see that your board is a reflection of like the clients that you serve. So I’m seeing like more of those type of things, but I, you know, financials as stated, I’m looking at the list because I always don’t think of anything else you can cheat. That’s right. I don’t want you to back on the what? Oh, a list of funding sources. Like they’ll typically ask that a lot of banks wanna know that because they like to see who, what, like a lot of, you know, banks are competitive so they want to see who else is funding your organization. So a list of your other funding sources, that’s something that sometimes will come up. I tell people just go ahead start putting those things together. Um De I statements. Does your organization have ad E I statement? I mean, it’s just not, you know, on your website. That’s ok, but just sharing that as well. Um Strategic plan annual reports. So all those type of things that your organization needs to kind of have together if you work with a number of organizations where you do partnerships, very close partner partnerships, mo US or memorandum of, of understanding. Um Those are really big for a lot of federal grants. You need to have some mo US in place. So you can um submit those with your application. Interesting that they’re asking about the demographics of board members. I see that a lot with bank applications um like your wells and your Bank of America’s. Uh well, who else have I applied to? Like some of your banks that have the foundation arm, they d they, you know, for the most part, ask a lot about demographics. Oh, is it not so common with the private foundations. Not so much. Um, but more of your corporate corporate organizations. Ok. All right. That’s interesting. I would, I, I would have hoped that private foundations would be interested in diversity on the board also. They’re getting there but it’s more, much more prevalent with, like, your corporations. Ok. Anything else to be grants ready? Yeah. What else is on my list? Those are like the big ones. Um, oh, your organizational chart, like how people reporting to, of course, executive director being the head. Well, technically the board is in charge but your organizational staff and structure not just list all we have 30 staff members, but what is the, the set up the chart for that? How, who reports to whom and things like that? Um If you have multiple locations, a list of all of your sites and locations and their addresses and where they’re located. Um I’ve seen that providing a list of your physical locations. If you’re like a housing provider, you have multiple housing sites just having all that in one place. Where is everything located? So it’s interesting, you know, you had given the hypothetical like, you know, we got our 501 C three approval yesterday. All right. But you know, you don’t have a year of financials even to be, to be audited yet or you don’t even have any, any basis to have filed a 990 yet. So you, you’ve got to have been a nonprofit for, uh, I guess at least a year or a couple of a couple, 12 years where you’re gonna be eligible, uh, you meet the, meet the basic criteria it sounds like. And what I’m finding is a lot of people are, have been doing the work for some years or months or whatever that looks like. And then they, you know, get their paperwork where they’re officially a 501 C three. So they may have proof of concept if you will program information. Um but just having uh the financials is very critical. A lot of people use fiscal sponsors or something that people may not be aware of. But you can definitely have another agency apply for a grant on behalf of your nonprofit. And they are like the represent the representative of your organization. And you can, um there are some organizations that’s their business model. They operate like fiscal sponsors for other nonprofits and of course, the setup and all the different things are different, but that’s an option as well. And a lot of community foundations will do that. Yes, they act as fiscal sponsors to support your smaller nonprofits, smaller and younger. Ok, good point. Thank you. Um What, so we cover and we exhausted the, the grants ready checklist. I think. So. Overview. But yeah, definitely happy to share with anyone that wants to. Well, you just gave us the substance of it and it’s also at your site, June 1st fm.com. Uh, what if we, uh, well, let you know what, let’s start with the, the research because it’s important that you not be just throwing grants into the wind and without regard to what the, the foundation’s funding priorities are. So, let’s start with research. How important that is. Yes, it’s very, a lot of people will hire grant writer to conduct research just to find some organizations that they can apply to some foundations. Some corporations, maybe even some state funding opportunities, but they’ll just go and just do a general. These are all the opportunities that are out there where your research would be much more targeted specifically if you’re smaller nonprofit, mid-sized, um or younger nonprofit, there are funders who have a history of giving to like your size nonprofits. So your research should entail that it needs to include funders who have a history of giving to organizations with your same makeup, not just the program and services that you provide, but your same size. And um that’s so critical. And I feel like a lot of, a lot of times people miss that say, well, the big food bank is funded by this organization, but they typically do not fund smaller nonprofits. These certain, there are certain foundations and corporations that fund smaller nonprofits like community foundations. Some of your smaller local foundations may um fund smaller nonprofits, there’s even some bigger nonprofits or even being more intentional with having programs to fund um some of your uh emerging nonprofits. So that’s why I say your research needs to be very tailored and targeted. And um it shouldn’t be a list of hundreds of people that give, it should just be a very targeted list. I always say about 20 or 30 but it’s a very strong list where you should yield a good return on your investment and time. Yeah. Yeah. All your, all your resources you’re putting into this because it is time consuming as, as we’ll get into. Um, you make a very good point about uh not just researching programmatic funding priorities but type size, size of nonprofit or a number of years. You know, if you’re brand new and they’re only funding, you’re looking at a potential prospect that’s only funding established, like you said, established Food Bank, you know, you’re brand new. That, that sounds like a misalignment. So um ok. Um And what are some of the research sites that you use that you recommend? Yeah, I use research. People always ask, are there free ones out there? There are? But you have to kind of like piecemeal things together. Um But the ones that are paid that have everything in one place or like your candid or used to be foundation directory, I use that. I’ve been using it for many years. I’m just the most comfortable with it and it’s very robust and it brings everything up together. Um What you’re looking for, you can s um segment out your search. I really like it and then instrumental is a really good one as well. Um You can even uh segment out your search with instrumental to see like who has a history of giving to new funders. I mean, new organizations. So they’ll show like a percentage of the organizations that are renewing with them and the percentage that are brand new. I think that’s a very critical, you know, thing if it’s like less than 10 or even like 1% of brand new organizations that they fund, you know, it just may not be worth your time and energy. So, yeah, so I think that’s Curto. So those are some of my favorite. I really like instrumental and I like um Candid. Candid. OK. Uh What are some of the free ones that, you know, if we’re just dipping our toe in? You know, you, I know you said they’re not as good because you have to piece things together. But can you explain, share one or two of those and that is what is it? Explain what it is? You got to piece together? Yeah. So like, I mean, you can do, I’m signing for list serves a lot of people do that. Um So like your philanthropy news digest, um it’s free. You can just get, you can uh put in your program like if you wanna search education, they’ll send you all the upcoming education opportunities but it’s across the entire nation. Um, and then you could just see what’s upcoming, um, in K 12 education. Um, all the different segments. Uh, so many days you can break them down housing, um, environmental things like that. So, that’s a good one. you’ll get those email letters that will come directly to you and you can just check out and see what’s out there. Um, there are some more, that one was philanthropy News Digest. Yes. Yeah. PND. Yeah, we call it PND. And then um some other like maybe other free resources is looking for list service in your community, like with your state, if you’re, I’m in the state of Georgia. So signing up for opportunities that come through grant funding programs through your state, most states is your state.gov and seeing what grant opportunities are out there. So it’s a lot more um piece milling that you’ll have to do. But there are some like lower costs research tools like grant station um that you can check out as well. A lot of times when you’re part of like a membership organization, I know uh grant professionals um association or GPA if you’re a member of their um of that organization, grant station comes with the membership. Um I think Maryland nonprofits, I believe they have a free um the one of the benefit for being a member is like access to one of their research tools. So a lot of times people are already a part of these organizations and they’re just not taking advantage of those free free tools. What’s Grant Station about? What can you get there? Same thing. Um You can find locate funders that give to your programs and services. Like, like PND, you have to, you have to do more of the station is a real research tool. It’s not one that you necessarily have to piece meal. I just find that, um, Candid and like instrument are a little bit more robust than Grant Station. Um And neither Candid nor instrumental has a free version. They’re very expensive. Yeah. Ok. That’s what I’m trying to drill down. All right. Is Grant Station, is Grant Station less expensive than it is. It is. I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s not as expensive as those other two. Yeah. Ok. All right. So just give, give them folks options. I understand. The premier is Candid and Instrumental. I remember when Candid was the foundation directory when it was, when it was the foundation center before it merged with Guidestar Found Center and Guidestar merged to form Candid. And pardon me, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just saying that just happened a few years ago. Um Now when I was a foundation director, I remember you used to be able to go to um the affiliate libraries throughout the country and you could use the foundation directory for free, you know, in person you had to go to the, but they had a, they had, I think a couple of 100 affiliate libraries around the country and there was somebody who at that library was trained in foundation directory. So they would actually help you get started, help you with some, some of your early searches. Uh, but I don’t know that anymore. Yeah. And I’ve heard people say that it’s still the case. Honestly. I have not done that since prior to COVID. So I think that’s still an option. Um And because if you’re, especially if you’re in the metro area, definitely check out your local library. Get to your, to Tony’s point is you can definitely go to the library and pull up your research and take it back with you. Um And there’s typically like you said, someone trained there to assist you as well. Cool. All right. So maybe they’re still doing that. So, yeah, see if, see if you have, you can get free candid access uh in a local library because there, there used to be hundreds of them throughout the country. It wasn’t just like in, you know, 10 or 15. So. All right. All right, China give people uh resources. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster that’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more now, back to grants readiness and success. All right. So we now we have our list of you said like 20 or 30 or so. What if some of them say we don’t accept unsolicited proposals, you know, proposal by invitation only, something like that. You have a, you have a strategy for uh maybe getting around that or getting ahead of that. Yeah. Um What happens is a lot of times people like hone in on those for some reason for some odd reason when there are so many other organizations that don’t say that, especially when you’re just getting started. Don’t spend your time, energy and effort on those when they’re not, when they, you know, explicitly state that there are so many other opportunities that are out there and that are available. But of course, if those come up and you’re just like we’re a perfect fit. I always tell people to reach out to them. Of course, people will tell you, see if you have a contact, see if a board member knows someone, if someone can make an introduction for you. And yes to all of that, but I’m OK with sending out outreach on them during my research. I looked to see who the trustees are, who’s on their board of directors list and see where they work. And I find an email and I just introduce them to the organization. I help the nonprofits write up a what I call a email of impact to show them like the impact that they’re making in the organization and in their region, in the community that the funder is interested in and just see if we can have like a conversation. But um always see, of course, spend most of your time on the organizations that don’t have those limitations. And um but if you want to definitely reach out to those that state that I just say, send, send them a request, do you sometimes see that you, you get, you get some traction and you know that even though their policy is no unsolicited proposals, they’ll, they’ll still end up opening a conversation with you. Yeah, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. No. Um So I always tell people just let them tell you no, but give it a try. Um It seems to work pretty often. I it’s a certain things that you need to put in your email is not give us money or how can we get money from you? Of course, you want to really highlight your work, how it directly ties into what their interest is at the organization with the funder. So if you wanna write a, a message of impact an email that short and sweet people aren’t gonna read pages and pages of an email. So I always say like a three or four sentence email, highlight your impact needs to come. I always say, I believe it needs to come from the executive director to show them, you know that you have done your research and that you are interested in really having a conversation with them. And I really hope organizations draft that. Ok? And you probably also want to acknowledge, you know, I understand your policy is no unsolicited proposals just to show that you, you’ve done the basic research, you know, their policy. But, you know, uh I, I thought I would reach out nonetheless because I think, you know, we’re doing, you know, very impactful work in the community. We would like to, yeah, we would like to know how we could partner with you. I would love to learn more. Just we, we would even like to have a conversation to determine if it’s a good fit. If it’s not. That’s OK. So, yeah. OK. All right. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. But OK. All right. So the place you want to spend most of your time is not on those uh the unfriendly ones or I’m calling unfriendly ones, the unwelcoming ones, but all the others. Um Let’s talk about the importance of when you just at the outset, you know, following deadlines, following directions, page length, font size, sometimes emp emphasize all the, all that please. Yeah. And even going back to the point of the email, not really asking questions or addressing things or even if you get a phone call, not restating things that are already on their website asking, you know, thoughtful questions showing that you’ve done your research. Um And if there is something on their website that you’ve seen or you have questions about or you see what that type of programs and stuff that they serve, you may wanna just drill down or get more um, information about that. That’s ok. But definitely following directions. That’s very critical to being a grant writer, being a grant professional. If they ask for 10 pages, don’t send them 12. If they ask for a certain font, stick to the font that they’re requesting um even page, not just page limit but margins. What should be your spacing and things like that? A lot of times people miss a lot of those things, but I always say you look over it, have somebody else read the RFP to see what is required. So you can make sure that you meet all their requirements. Because if you don’t meet these basic requirements, they could just bounce you without even reading your thoughtful application, right? You gave 12 pages and the limit was 10, right? Isn’t, isn’t that a very good chance that they’re just not even going to read it and you wasted all your time and you didn’t even get a read. Yeah. And I’ve seen even some foundations say send us this only don’t send us anything extra. Like some people are like, well, let’s, let’s send them our annual report. You know, they didn’t ask for your annual report because again, they’re getting so, so much information and so much material, they’re not trying to be mean, they just want what they need to make a decision and of course, if they need any additional information, they’ll definitely follow up. But some people are so proud of their annual report and they wanna just blast it out to everybody. Um Even when they apply for grants, but if they didn’t ask for it, don’t send it. All right. So, and thank you, let’s, let’s drill down a little deeper, you know, and strategies for successful grant writing because now we’ve got our list and we know what all the requirements are for each of the individual applications and the timing, right? You got, of course, you got to meet the deadlines. Uh What are, what are some like pro tips for for you? You’re never gonna guarantee success. But, but giving you the best shot. Yeah, I always say answering the question, like sometimes people see the question and they put something in there that they feel they should share. But specifically, when their grant is asking you, how do you implement your project or program, how are you sustaining your work at your organization? Really answering the question Um I see, I’ve not only written grants but a reviewer seeing that people spend a lot of time energy and effort on other things that weren’t asked. So um you’ll hear a lot of people like, well, we only have so many words or so many characters to answer the question. Um How do we do that? And I always say because they want you to answer the question. So that’s always been my pro tip with um grant writing is making sure that you answer the question and the tip to that is whatever the question is, restate that in your application and start your application, start your answer with that, that that question and answer the question. Even a lot of the questions will have three or four questions really in one question. And one of my tricks is I take each question, I put it in my answer and I make sure I address it. And then of course, you know, I can delete the question out later but really making sure that you answer what’s being requested from you. OK. How about another one? Um Some of the pro tips I would say, of course, we talked about following directions, we talked about answering um the questions and a lot of times sometimes as grant writer, we kind of feel forced sometimes to make our program fit. So they’re saying they’re funding capacity building or, or they may be funding, funding other like items, but yours isn’t what you’re requesting. It truly isn’t a good fit and you kinda know that don’t try to force it. So we don’t wanna force a square peg into a round hole. We wanna make sure that it’s a good alignment, make sure that it’s a good fit. Um, if they state they don’t fund arts program or recreational, don’t try to make it fit. It was like, well, really, we do education when you always known and you’re known for art programming. So again, just making sure that it’s true alignment, unless the funder has told you differently, like we wanna fund your program, you can apply under this certain category. But if you haven’t given those, if you haven’t been given those instructions or directions, then don’t try to make it, make it work. You said you were a reviewer, what, what uh share that side of the, the this whole process because you know that that’s being on the reading side, the reviewing side, what’s, what, what’s that work? Like? What, what’s like, what’s going through your mind as you’re, as you’re reading an application? Yeah, being a reviewer. Um I did that earlier in my career, show me how some um grants or some organizations responded very well to applications. They wrote stellar proposals. It was easy to make a sale in the case of funds them. And then there was something they were really, really, really, really bad. So it really showed me like what is the ones that stood out to me? Why they stood out to me is because they got to the point when they um addressed the RFP that the organization showed that they were stable, it showed that they knew what they were talking about. It shows that they were um confident if you, if you will and the work that they were doing and the delivery, they showed outcomes and the impact that they were making. Those were the or the, the applications that stood out. So those are like things that kinda, I always keep in my head when, as I’m writing, but those that were not good, that were really bad. It just didn’t address anything that weren’t necessarily a good fit or they talked about their program in a way that it wasn’t understood like very um like if it was an art program, it was very, you could tell an artsy person wrote the grant to be no, no, no offense to my art people. But it was very, um it wasn’t just written in plain, plain language. And that’s another thing too. Sometimes we can use big words. But when we’re looking, you know, we’re all, you know, smart people. But when you’re looking at several applications and all these big words come at you and through an application, it kinda makes your eyes cross always um write what I like, how I would like to read. So it’s always very easy general language, I try to say like on 1/5 grade level, 3rd, 4th, 5th grade level, keeping it easy, simple to understand. Cause of re when you’re reviewing, you review multiple application and you want to help them get through it as quickly as possible. When you may keep the reviewer happy, they’ll score your application high and that increases your chances of getting the grant. So that taught me that on that side and I encourage any grant grant writer to be a reviewer. So you were a program officer. Uh It sounds like, well, I just like they have to have volunteers to like community foundation, these volunteers to review grant applications. So you can just volunteer, your department of Education needs uh reviewers to review applications. So you can just definitely volunteer. And then when a reviewer or, or even a program officer, I think in, in in private foundations likes likes a proposal thinks that it merits funding to walk us through the process because you, because I think your job as a grants writer, I don’t mean you, you know all of us as grants writer, our job is to help the the reader or the program officer to like our application and then be an advocate for it. So talk about, talk about that process on the on the funding side. How that, how, how, how, what, what the next step is for that reader or that program officer when they like something. Yeah. When they like something, um, to my point earlier, they are like, they understand your programming. If they get done reading your, even if it’s just like a short lo I three or four pages or two pages and they’re still think the information was there. But it may have been like a lot of questions that came up. Like, how is that? L O I now, I have to stop. I just want to say loi I don’t want you to be in drug in jail. Oh, sorry, explain, explain uh uh explain what everybody knows what lo I is. Yeah, lo I is typically before you actually submit a full grant application, some funders ask for an LO I or a letter of intent or a letter of interest and it’s a shorter grant application which is about 23 pages, maybe four and it’s literally like a letter, you know, you have your introduction page or a cover page and then you go into your um summing up your programming services. So um that’s typically an introduction. I always say it’s like an introduction to your program before you get in that invitation to apply, which we were talking about earlier. OK. Thank you. You’re out of Jargon jail. So that I know that’s what I just want listeners to get it all. So. Alright, so I interrupted you with the Jargon Jail, but you were talking about what, what, what that read or program officer is going to do if they like an application or an lo I, yeah. And, uh, for the most part I haven’t been an official program officer but just like, speaking from my reviewer, like, you know, you know, how they work and honestly, yeah, with foundational corporations it’s typically like a relationship. They need to, you know, at least have heard of your organization. Um, they’re not gonna tell you that but that’s the truth. Um And of course your um application needs to be um uh a good, a good application it addresses, I mean, I’ve seen some very well written applications, they didn’t get funded and then some that were not because they had a relationship that were funded. So more on your corporate and foundation is more about relationship. Government is addressing all the elements within the application within the RFP. So government is, you know how you’re gonna be scored, they show you how, what, how many, um how many points each section is, is going to receive. Um And I really like that cause I go into the proposal knowing what we want to highlight and make sure they score really well and they tell you exactly what that is. So you always say you wanna get in the mind of the reviewer and look at the, how they’re evaluating that application. And then in the case of a program officer in a, in a foundation, they’re going on to be an advocate for your for your proposal, right? To the, to their, their, uh, their supervisor or maybe the board depending on the size, right? So, you’re, you’re trying to help them be an advocate for you? Yes, that’s correct. So, um, a lot of times they’ll say this application was so, you know, clear, it was easy to understand you address all the bullet points. So it was easy. I’ve heard them say it was easy for me to advocate for your organization because you all did such a great job in your application and the great job means you address the thing that they asked you for. And it was easy to understand. And sometimes we think what we’re saying is clear and easy to understand and we know our program. So I that’s why I always encourage people have another set of eyes, someone that’s outside of your organization, someone that’s not close to read it. Cause a lot of times you think what you’re saying makes sense, but it may not just to a general audience. So I always, I highly encourage people to have someone else read over their programming services or get a quality um writer or grant writer to put you together some boilerplate language, what you can use in a lot of your, you know, applications moving forward if you um don’t have the capacity or the funds to bring on someone on a like monthly basis, look into bringing on like a potential like putting together boilerplate language for your organization, something that you can just copy and paste over. You may have to tweak it a little bit, of course, from application to application. But bringing in like those outside set of eyes and a professional to write your programming and services because you have assumptions about the work that you do, you do it day in and day out and you understand it uh intimately and you’re written proposal may have gaps that are based on something you understand and everybody who works for you understands. But that’s to your point, you know, get somebody from outside the organization, make sure your application makes sense. Tells a story. OK? What if you have something that’s hard to measure the impact of like maybe it is an arts program or even even, you know, some, some grassroots service, you know that you’re providing, whether it’s domestic violence or housing, you know, the, the outcomes can be hard to track the impact. Well, there’s outcomes and impact the impact on people’s lives can be hard to track. You might lose track of them after they, after they are no longer receiving your service. How do you answer those impact questions that are inevitably going to be on an application? Yeah, that’s a, a very popular question. I always tell people it’s not hard to track any impact. Anything. You have observations, you have anecdotal um observations. You can definitely address that and you’re not tracking people, once they’re gone, you’re tracking them while they’re in your program. So, if your program is a year, what ha what is, um taking place after three months, what’s taking place after six months? So you’re collecting all this information on a consistent basis. And that’s where a lot of nonprofits struggle with. They’re just doing the work and not evaluating the programming, getting feedback. The feedback is critical surveys for participants. Um Of course, they can be anonymous and getting their feedback on how this program is making a difference. And of course, you have those specific questions and I’m not an evaluator. I can’t give you questions off the top of my head. But there are um your uh evaluator or strategist that will help you come up with questions to put on your surveys to help you get that information because you need to be collecting this while people are in your program. And of course, once they leave, if you can um get collect information to see what the impact like a year later, um you can just say so many people that out of 30 people that we serve, about half of them responded and they self reported these items. This is what the impact that they they’re showing. Of course, that’s all you can, you know, collect once they’re no longer in your program or things like that. But there’s always something that you can highlight. There’s always impact that you can make even with, you know, art programming, you can tie that a lot of times, especially if you’re working with students to education, with adults, how that is improving their confidence. They’re even going into job interviews. Um Being a part of this program has increased their um their self-confidence and their self worth. So you can definitely collect impact information. A lot of it may be a bit subjective, but even if it is, that’s still, that’s still data. OK. Valuable. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. A very special Tony’s take two. This week we have a listener of the week who have, I never had a live listener of the week. I’ve always just announced who they are. But this listener of the week is with me, we inspired her to start her own podcast, not a nonprofit podcast, of course, because if it was a nonprofit podcast, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. And it’s someone who is a dear friend. I have known her since 1984 when I was in the air force with her husband. Her name is Martha Shoals. Please welcome. Here’s Martha Scholls our listener of the week. Welcome, Martha. Thank you, Tony. Here. I am the other 2%. 30 percent. No, no, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re a frequent listener of the show and you told me that listening to nonprofit radio through all these years, um, inspired you to start your own podcast. So tell tell us about your, your practice and your podcast. Well, I am a life coach and, um, I li have listened to you for years and it’s like talking to a, to a friend. It’s like you’re right there. But the information that nonprofit radio gives out goes beyond nonprofit and it really, uh, I have having my own business and that this podcast that you are the pod father of reaches a lot of people. And so it is a platform that I felt ready to, to tackle. So you have inspired and trained. Well. Congratulations. So your, your podcast is the connected heart and you have a co-host, I do and you have four episodes so far, right? And all right, you’re the target of 10. All right. That’s I got carried away. Now. Don’t get, don’t get overly ambitious. Ok. No, you’ll get, you know, soon enough, you’ll have 50 then 100 you’ll see, you’ll see it comes together. So, uh I wanted you to be the listener of the week because first of all, I’m a guest in your home. So, if I didn’t make you listener of the week, I might have, might have had to get a hotel in San Antonio where I would have made you pay well, I would have got a hotel before I paid you. Uh I’d rather be at a Marriott than, than paying you. So, uh yeah. So you, you shared with me on this visit that, uh, nonprofit radio inspired you to the Connected Heart Podcast. And, uh, I shared some advice with you and, uh, I wish you and the Connected Heart Podcast. Lots of luck in your, in your life coaching practice. And, uh, and in the podcast. Thank you, friend. All right. Thank you, friend. Thank you. Thank you for letting me stay. It’s a pleasure to see you after several, many years, we’ve been, we chat a lot, but I haven’t actually seen you for like eight or 10 years to Martha Scholls our listener of the week. That is Tony’s take two. Ok. Well, it’s nice that and thank you for giving my uncle a place to stay. I’m sure he’s difficult, you know. All right. Let’s not a lot of people getting carried away now. Difficult. I think I’m an ideal guest. You’d be, you’d be amazed what a good guest. I am low. I call myself the low impact guest. I would say high maintenance, but that’s just me knowing you all my life. All right. You don’t. All right. And, uh, Ted and Martha, Ted is Martha’s husband. Uh, both say want you to say hello to, uh, to your dad. I, I will, I will. Ok. Well, we’ve got buu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of grant’s readiness and success with dear Rhonda Harrison. Do you have some advice on, uh, on winning grants quickly? You know, you say it shouldn’t take years. What what, what’s in, what’s in there? Yeah, I’ve even heard grant writers, like, I’ve been writing for this organization as a volunteer for over a year and I haven’t won that many grants and I was like, well, that’s probably the reason why, um, you’re volunteering your own. That’s the wrong question. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, it shouldn’t take, I would say it shouldn’t take a year, especially if you’re submitting grants on a ground. Of course, you just submit two grants in one year. Ok. Yeah, but if you’re submitting grants on a consistent basis and then a consistent basis is like two or three grants per month, I, I think that’s a lot. Um There’s some like a larger organizations that are doing five plus grants that’s like uh actual application and report some months just depending on deadlines, sometimes how they fall. I worked in an organization one time we had eight actual projects in one month, one month, it was 10. I mean, that’s a lot that’s excessive. Some months, the deadlines just fall like that. And then some months you may only have about two or three. But I say you’re submitting about two or three grand applications over a year. You should have won something like I would say at least about 30%. So you wanna make sure that it just shows that you’re not positioning the organization in the limelight or you’re not applying to or to funders that have a history of giving to nonprofits of your um nonprofits like yours or you may not be doing any cultivation. I don’t encourage any of my clients when they work with me. We don’t submit code applications. We always try to do what I call a warm up, which is back to those warm up emails. We cultivate the client to cultivate the funder um try to introduce them to our organization. So when we submit a grant, that’s not the first time that they hear about us. So it shouldn’t take you that long. That just means you’re missing critical components when applying for grants. And a lot of times it’s cultivation, say more about that cultivation. It sounds like you’re trying to, you’re, you’re building relationships before you’re submitting an application. So you’ve identified that you’re 20 or 30 but you’re not, you’re not going right to OK. What’s their, what’s their deadline? Talk about the cultivation relationship building part. Yeah, you definitely want to reach out to a lot of the foundations, especially if you have like I use what I say, candy list all the trustees. That’s why I love candy so much. It list the trustees. It list the board and I am with all the tools and resources we have on the internet. Now, you can find where they are and if they don’t have their contact information on there, find out where they work and reach out to them to um introduce them to your organization, invite them to have a conversation with your executive director. If they’re local meet for um have a meeting, meeting in person, invite them to your nonprofit. If it’s like a programmatic, you’re serving students. A lot of times, some people’s work, a lot of the times people’s work speaks for itself, getting people out there to see what you’re doing and the impact that you’re making, um it can speak for itself. So just asking people to come out invitations, inviting them to events that you’re having, where you’re showcasing the talent or showcasing the students showcasing the work that they’re doing. Um I always encourage people just to act, I mean, they say no, they, that’s ok but just ask, ask the question. So just like how you will cultivate, meeting a new person, making a new friend. It’s just as those same general practices, there’s nothing really different about it because it’s a for a grant. I love the idea of inviting somebody, board members or, or officers, whatever program folks to come and see the work being done. You know, if it, if it, if you’re all local and same city, you know, come, come see, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got an Adoption Day, maybe it’s a Pet Humane Society. We’ve got Adoption Day coming up, come see the excitement, you know, the kids getting their, getting their kittens and the animals going to good homes and how we screen for that and the care that we give the animal before the family leaves with them, you know, to see that, you know, I think we might take our work for granted because we’re just so accustomed to it. Like I was saying, day after day, but to an outsider it can be enormously, you know, moving. Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of nonprofits put on events, like three or four events a year. Like, that’s the thing you should be inviting your, um, constituents to. I know a lot of time we invite the people that we always invite, but also invite others as well. That may have never even heard about your organization. This is all to get the funder familiar with, at least your name, even if they never come to, they never come to any event. No, the, the, they, like you said, name recognition, they, they’ve heard of you before, the application. Exactly. They’ve heard of your organization before you submit that grant application. Ok. And you see this making a difference. It does, it makes a difference. Um, and it could just be nurturing over a year or two. You know, it may not just happen immediately but it’s um, part of all the nurturing, building relationships and building a rapport with finders. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. It, I think as you were suggesting it’s very similar to individual fundraising, right? Your first meeting, you don’t ask for a gift, you’re cultivating the person to and then developing a strategy and reaching the solicitation stage. But that’s, that’s not step one. Absolutely. Ok. That’s interesting. I’m not sure a lot of folks think about that relationship building or at least trying, at least trying with funders with institutional funders. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Um You uh you also have advice on turning a one year gift into multiyear funding. What’s your thinking there? Yeah, some, if you’ve been funded by an organization multiple years, instead of having to come back every single year to submit an application to benefit, not only the nonprofit, but the funder um ask them about a multiyear. So they give you 30,000 every year, 25,000 every year. Can you um ask the question, say, can we um consider a 50,000 multiyear Twoyear grant award? And we’re happy to report on that at the end of each year, every year similar to how we’ve done before, but to eliminate the administration task on, on your end, I know you all are, you know, small staff, a lot of your foundations are um we would like to see if we can enter into a multiyear a gift or a multiyear opportunity. A lot of funders have moved away from it because they, you know, they’re very uh the budgets are uncertain from year to year. But I always say, ask the question that could be something that they’re open to entering into. I’m just going back to building relationships, asking people to come out, um asking people to um, meet you, even if it’s just a virtual meet up, asking them for a multiyear um gift. It’s, these are for funders you’ve already have like that relationship with and they have a history of funding your nonprofit. Um, especially year after year. Ask them about a multiyear two year. Even if you’re bold enough, ask for a three year, they give you 30,000 every year, ask for 90,003 year gift. And that was, that’s, those are huge. We love multiyear funding. It saves a lot of time. You can do planning. Of course. Now you can do a two or three year plan around that funding program. Not just year to year. All right. So that’s good. Thats the question. Ask the question. II, I have no problem. I, you can, uh, there’s a coach. She says you need 100 nos in a year. She, she, she encourages her students to get to 100 nos and the gift in that or the beauty in that they never get to 100 nos. I actually get a more yeses because they ask the question. So I just tell people to do the same thing. Just ask. I always say with individual fundraising six nos. And you’re halfway to a Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like the 100. You get to 100 because you’ll get a lot more yeses before you get to the 100 nos. Yeah. And it’s not, they’re not rejecting, you don’t take it personal. I know what a lot of people do they like. Oh, no, they told me. No, it’s not. You. That’s just they have limited funding. Just like the nonprofits do. They only have so much money in their bucket that they can give out. It’s not that they think your program or you are terrible. It’s just, they can only do what they can with what they have. How about, uh grants.gov? You have a lot of experience there and I think it can be daunting to folks if they’re looking at their first uh federal grant. What, what, what advice do you have when you like, open the page and you’re overwhelmed. Yeah, a lot of people come to me for federal grants and they were just like, I’m not about to spend any time trying to find an opportunity. So they’ll reach out to me to do the grant research just for federal grant opportunities. Of course, everything is um in one place on grants.gov, but a lot of your states have public funding opportunities. So, um, they’re also enlisted me to locate and find state funding opportunities, um because they’ll say, well, we heard about this thing out there, this bipartisan bill that’s funding our program and services that we know that other organizations are being reimbursed for training young adults in these certain types of program. But we’re not taking advantage of that. And we know that’s a state funded opportunity. So we wanna know like what to do, how to be a part of that? Do we qualify? Do we fit? So um we could definitely um take advantage and see what opportunities are out there. But just with a quick search on grans.gov, I always tell people to go on grans.gov, create an account and put in the um search category, your area of interest. So if it’s environmental mentoring, you can be very specific as mentoring. Um try not to be so general education is so broad, but just be specific within education. If you have like a, you know, like I said, a mentoring program, um if you do things with like youth and um young adults or you serve adults that have intellectual developmental disabilities, listing those type of disabilities, whether that’s autism and things like that. So just type in autism and see what types of programs come up in grants.gov that are being funded. So be, you know, very specific. It’s, it’s possible if you just wanna start out entering one word, so you don’t feel too overwhelmed, start there and seeing what’s what’s available. And then in the federal grants process, is there advice that’s specific to that, that, that we didn’t talk about in the, in the overall grants process? Yeah, it’s very similar. Just making sure that your grant rating a lot of it for federal grants is another level of grant readiness. Like you you definitely will need to have an audit, not just a 990. Um And you wanna typically, you wanna already have um a history of winning grants, private grants. So like if you’re already bringing in, I don’t know, 255 $100,000 in your private grant funding, you wanna leverage that for your um federal grant opportunities, you typically, we may already have a grant writer on staff, but they just don’t have the capacity energy time or effort or know how to pursue federal grants. So those are just like I always say, like my checklist, quick checklist for those of organizations, like, are we ready for federal grants? So you wanna already be bringing in grants um, typically have some type of fundraiser at your organization, whether that’s a director of development or a grant person to manage the grants and you, um you definitely wanna have an audit in place. Can’t the reporting for federal grants sometimes be burdensome? Yes. And that’s a part of my, like once um organizations do work with me, that’s a part of our review process. We found this grant opportunity is a good fit. We wanna pursue it. Part of that review is the reporting and the compliance. Is it worth the time energy effort if this grant is just say 100,000, over two years, which is $200,000? Is that sounds like a lot of money? But is it gonna are we gonna spend more time and staff time doing the reporting on this grant than it would be the effort to actually apply for it. So that’s a part of that review process as well. Some, some, um, um, grants, you only have to report once a year. Some of them they want monthly reports. Court. I’ve seen them all across the board. Um, I’ve seen monthly, which is a lot. So again that those are just things to take into consideration when applying. So, yeah, that’s a great question. Sometimes they’re so burdensome that it’s not worth applying, it’s not worth it. And that’s something that organizations make the, make the determination, we determine that, um, or we’ve, we’ve gotten funding from them in the past, I’ve seen that happen. We’ve gotten funding from this organization in the past. It wasn’t worth it and we’re not going after it again. But you alluded to earlier. I wanna pull on a little bit more the, if you have difficult, uh, programs to, to fund, you know, uh, is there specific advice? I mean, beyond doing careful research? So you’re not, like you said, you’re not expanding an arts program into education when it’s really, it’s really an arts program. But if you have a difficult to, to fund program, what is there specific advice you have around that? Yeah, a lot of times people try to make grants, their thing when, um, you should be as a grant, professional like this is how I get paid. But nonprofits, every nonprofit shouldn’t be pursuing grants. The number one source of income or revenue should be individual donations. Um So you should be promoting your services in that manner and tracking your ideal, you know, funders. I know a lot of nonprofits are state or county funding. That’s where you get a lot of their money. But if you’re generally just trying to raise money for your organization, you should definitely um be pursuing individual donations, your major giver, your major, um you know, major gifts and things like that. Um And then building off of that, if you say your program is difficult, difficult to fund or difficult to explain or, or maybe is difficult to get funding from grants and grants may just may just not not be your thing and that’s ok, you definitely wanna pursue funding in other areas. And you also mentioned uh affording a grant writer or you know, what if I mean, obviously there are consultants like you who can, who can do this. Uh You also mentioned the idea of having someone write language that you can use and tailor, you know, throughout your grant writing. And then, you know, maybe every year or two, you, you just update that, that, that sounds like very good advice. You could hire somebody to just do like a discreet project for you to uh what else? How else can you leverage uh what the, the expertise that’s out there. If you can’t afford a, you know, if you can afford one, like a grant writer on a consistent basis, like every single month paying them, I say, um, you can bring them on board for uh, a smaller project. They’re gonna do the, say the next three or four grants for us and we’ll take those grants and take them moving forward. You can just hire them for a project, um hire them to develop some bowler plate language for you. Um hire them to work closely with your organization to train staff to uh pursue federal grants or, you know, just be to, to pursue grants period. So the training is an option or you can just bringing them on for like project support. I always tell um organizations to consider a training program, not just sign up for a grant training program, like a webinar uh self or like on demand, but like actually bringing someone on for a short period of time to work with you to train up your organization. They’re not gonna be doing the grants for you, but they’ll be guiding you and that helps with um keeping the cost down because the grant writer isn’t doing the those grants for your organization on behalf of your organization because of course, that, that, that costs more. Are you seeing more funders now paying for some of the overhead that goes along with the project or program that they’re funding like technology, uh, you know, maybe salary or partial salary. Are you, are you seeing a move in that direction? Like over the past five years, even just recently? I actually am. I’m seeing organizations understand it. Take staff to do this work so they understand they’re like, wow, like novel idea. But yeah, they’re funding, um, your overhead and I’m just seeing like general operating, general operating funds so you can use those funds as needed. Um, I just talked to someone who’s inquiring about services. She was like, we’re looking for more general rating that she’s like there’s more project, um, funding than there is general operating. I said actually it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of general operating grants out there. So, um, if you’re not seeing them again, that’s because you may just not be, you’re just not because it’s not what you do and not your expertise, you may not know where to go, but there are a lot of general operating funding opportunities available. Ok. That’s very good to know. Um, and then just, you know, to sort of wrap up, what do you see as the future? What do you, where do you think, uh, grants, the institutional funding is, is headed? What do you think changes we’re gonna see? What do you expect? Yeah, a lot of trends that I’m seeing now, one of the big trends I’m seeing now is organizations funding groups or coalition. So, um I’m a nonprofit A I do this work and our clients also need this other service. It’s not what we do, but we partner very closely with nonprofit B to deliver that service to our clients. So in order for our clients to get the holistic experience and um making sure they don’t get gaps in services like they have housing, but our clients aren’t able to keep their housing because they have health check challenges. We partner with a healthcare organization, healthcare agency that specializes in serving vulne vulnerable populations, vulnerable people to get them the resources and health care services, health and wellness that they need. So, funders are funding groups or coalitions. When you go in as a group, um in a grant application, they really like that, they see their dollars being, you know, spread out more effectively, they’re seeing a greater impact. So I encourage um nonprofits to consider going into some of these grant applications instead of competing against each other. Going as you know, a group select a fiscal sponsor. I don’t know how you’re gonna do that, flip a coin, do whatever you need to do, it just increases your chances success. A lot of times people just go with whoever is the bigger organization who has the um the largest budget. But sometimes it could just be a capacity issue. If somebody has the capacity to manage the grant, I really encourage people to go into these grant applications, especially if it’s like a big multiyear funding going in as a coalition. So that’s a big one. OK. Anything else? Uh you see trend wise? Um I of course, a I is really big people taking advantage of that. Um There’s the concern of replacing grant writer. I don’t see that happening, but I can see like us being able to utilize it to enhance um the way we work. Um like leveraging A I, what that looks like. I don’t know what this is point is still kind of new we’re learning. But um that’s something definitely I can see taking advantage of learning how to utilize it ethically um to enhance the programs and services and our services that we deliver to our clients and even our nonprofits are utilizing it on their end as well. Thank you very much, De Rhonda Harrison. Thank you her firm uh that she’s founder and president is June 1st firm at June 1st firm.com. You’ll find Deronda whose name is not pronounced Deanda. That’s the, that was the Italian in me, Italian. You pronounce all the vowels. So I must be Deanda bad. Um Deronda de Rhonda Harrison. You’ll find her on linkedin. Thank you very much, Deronda. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tony. I enjoyed it. Pleasure. Next week. Your one page strategic plan with Veronica La Finna. You missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation. Forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. All right. Uh, I’d like you to record the, uh, rerecord, the, the second, uh, donor box block because you cut out a little bit. Some. Sometimes it’s fine on the recording, but since we’re not sure, just go ahead and do it again. Just, we’re sponsored by Donor Box.

Nonprofit Radio for September 30, 2024: AI, Organizational & Personal

 

Amy Sample WardAI, Organizational & Personal

Artificial Intelligence is ubiquitous, so here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room, contrasts with our host’s diatribe about AI sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN. They have free AI resources.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with a pseudoaneurysm if you made a hole in my heart with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony, this week A I organizational and personal artificial intelligence is ubiquitous. So here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room contrasts with our hosts, Diatribe about A I sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10 on Tony’s take two tales from the gym. The sign says clean, the equipment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is A I organizational and personal is Amy sample ward. They need no introduction but they deserve an introduction. Nonetheless, they’re our technology contributor and CEO of N 10. They were awarded a 2023 Bosch Foundation fellowship and their most recent co-authored book is the tech that comes next about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. You’ll find them at Amy Sample ward.org and at Amy RS Ward. It’s good to see you, Amy Ward. I do love the Pod Father. I know it makes me laugh every time because it just feels like, I don’t know, like I’m gonna turn on the TV and there’s gonna be like a new, new, new season of the Pod Father where we secretly, you know, follow Tony Martignetti around or something. We are in season 14. Right? Yeah. Um Yes, I appreciate that. You love that. It’s, you know, you like that fun. So uh before we talk about um the part of your role, which is the, the technology contributor to N 10, uh the technology, the nonprofit radio and we’re gonna talk about artificial intelligence again. Let’s talk about the part of your life that is the CEO of N 10 because you have uh have you submitted this major groundbreaking transformative funding federal grant application? Yes, we submitted it last night three hours before the deadline, which was notable because I, I know there were people down to the, the minute press and submit. No, we got it in three hours early to what agency um to NTI A they had, this is kind of all the work that rippled from the digital Equity Act that was passed in Congress a couple of years ago. And, you know, now, you know, better than to be in Jargon jail. What is NTI A, it sounds like an obscure agency of our, of our federal government. It’s not, well, maybe to some listeners it’s obscure but it is, um, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. And you, I think that’s obscure to about 98.5% of the population, you know, I think I, I think I’m obscure to, you know, uh being obscure is fine. Um Yes, the National Information Administration and um prior to this uh grant um from the federal level where folks from all over were applying, every state was also creating state equity plan, digital equity plans. Um What funds might be available through the state funding mechanism to support digital equity goals. But a lot of those at the state level are focused on infrastructure, like actually building internet networks to reach communities that don’t have broadband yet, you know, things like this and so very worthwhile funding endeavor. I mean, we need, we need to have 100% of the population needs but even with those state plans and the work that will come from them and the funding it will not, we are not about to have every person in the country have broadband available to where they live, right? Ee even with all of this investment, it, it’s not gonna reach everyone and that means that the amount of funding within state plans for the surrounding digital literacy work, digital inclusion work, you know, making sure people know how to use the internet, why they would use it have devices. All those other components is gonna be really minimal through the state funding because even if they used all of it on infrastructure, they wouldn’t be done with that, right. So um the federal government, yeah. So, so the kind of next layer in all of that is this federal pool where they’re anticipating grant making about 100 and 50 grants somewhere averaging between five and, and 12 million each. There’s gonna be exceptions, of course, there’s ma there’s big cities, there’s big states, you know. Um but though all those grants will be operational from 2025 through 2028. So four kind of concerted years of, of national Programmatic investment. Um And these are projects kind of on the flip side, those state projects where this isn’t necessarily about infrastructure and, and building networks or even devices very much, right? It’s mostly the infrastructure programming and you’re asking for a lot of money. So tell, you know, share the, share the numbers, what you’re looking for, how much money. Yeah, we’re our project in the end I think came out at about $8.2 million project and we’re hopeful, of course. Um and I’m, I’m truly curious, um listeners who are always tuning into nonprofit radio from like fundraising strategy perspective. I’d love to learn from you or, you know, email me at Amy at N 10 anytime I’d love to hear your thoughts when you listen to this. But you know, N 10 is a capacity building organization is we, we don’t apply for grants often because quote unquote, capacity building is not considered a, a programmatic investment to most funders, right? And so it’s just not something that um they will entertain an application from us on. And but with this, we have already run for 10 years of digital inclusion fellowship program that is focused on building up the capacity of staff who already work in nonprofits who are already trusted and accessed by communities most impacted by digital divides to integrate digital literacy programming within their mission. Are they a housing organization? Are they workforce development? Are they adult literacy, you know, refugee services, whatever it is, if you’re already serving these communities who are impacted by digital divides and you’re trusted to deliver programs, well, you don’t need to go have a mission that’s now digital equity. No, you digital equity can be integrated into your programs and services to, to reach those folks. Um And so we’ve successfully run this program for 10 years and had um you know, over 100 fellows from 22 different locations around the US and have seen how transformative it’s been. These programs have been sustained for all these years by these organizations, they now see themselves as like the leaders of the digital equity coalitions in their communities. They, you know, fellows have gone on to work in digital equity offices or, you know, organizations et cetera. So it feels great, you have tons of outcomes from a smaller scale program and the grant is to scale up, scale this thing up. Yeah. Yeah. So instead of, you know, between 20 to 25 fellows per year with this grant, we would have over 100 a year. Um And that also means that instead of, you know, if there’s only 20 fellows and maybe we can only cover 20 locations while with over 100 we can cover or at least give opportunities to organizations in every state and territory to, to be part of this kind of capacity building opportunity. All right, it sounds, it’s, it’s huge. It’s, it’s, it’s really a lot of money for N 10. Um uh It, it falls within the range, I guess a little, no, it’s like right within the middle of the range, you cited like 5 million to 12 million, you said? So, yeah, exactly. So our, our application is kind of in the middle there. Yeah, slightly to the low side of middle. But, you know, we just call it middle, between friends. Um Yes and I mean, we’re hopeful, knock on wood, we’re really hopeful that this is an easy application to approve because we’re not creating something new we’re not spending half of the grant in planning. We know how to run this program. We’ve refined it for 10 years. We know it’s very cost efficient, you know, and in the end of four years, 400 plus organizations now running programs that can be sustained is accelerating towards, you know, addressing digital divides um versus, you know, a small project that just end 10 runs. All right, listeners, contact your NTI A representative, the elected person at the National Telecommunications and Infra Information Information Agency. Yes, speak to your uh Yeah. Yeah, let’s get this. Let this go. All right. When do you find out when? Well, you know, there was very clear information about down to the minute when applications were due, but there’s not a ton of clarity on when we will find out. So, you know, they are, they are meant to programs that are funded are, are meant to get started in January. So I anticipate we’ll hear, you know, in a couple of months, of course, and I will let you know, we’ll do an update. I’ll let you know you have my personal good wishes and I know nonprofit radio listeners wish and then good luck. Thank you. I appreciate all the good vibes would reverberate through the universe would be a transformative grant in terms of dollar amount and expansion of the program. Transformative. Yeah, 100% and staff are just so excited and hopeful about what it could mean for just helping that many more organizations, you know, do this good work. So we’re really excited and I admire intend for reaching for the sky because you have like a 2 to $2.5 million budget, annual annual budget somewhere in there. Um And you’re reaching for the sky and great ambitions uh only come to fruition through hard work and uh and thinking big. So thank you, even if you’re not, I don’t even want to say the words if you know, they should blunder if NTI A should blunder badly. Uh I still admire the, the ambition. Thank you. And no matter what, it’s a program that we know is transformative for communities and we wouldn’t stop it even if you know, they make a blunder and don’t, yeah, don’t tell. All right. Listen, don’t tell your NTI A representative. You said, don’t share that part of the conversation. All right. Thank you for sharing all that. And thanks for your support. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location, so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to A I organizational and personal. Let’s talk about artificial intelligence because this is not anybody’s mind. I can’t get away from it. I cannot. Uh I’m not myself of the concerns that I have. Uh They’re deepening my good friend George Weiner, uh you know, has a lot of posts, uh the CEO at the whale who I know you are, you are friendly with George as well. Talks about it a lot on linkedin uh reminds me how concerned I am uh about, you know, just the evolution. Uh I mean, it’s inevitable. This, this thing is just incrementally. This thing. This technology is uh is incrementally moving, not slowly but incrementally. I I and I, I cannot overcome my, my concerns and I know you have some concerns but you also balance that with the potential of the technology, transformative techno, the the transformative potential there. I’ll throw you. I was just gonna say, I totally agree. This is unavoidable. I can’t, you know, I cannot go a day without community organizations reaching out or asking questions or whatever and a place of reflection or, or a conversation that I’ve been having and I, I wanted to offer here, maybe we could talk about it for a minute. So, so listeners benefit by kind of being in, in one of these sides with us in the conversation is to think about the privilege of certain organizations to opt in or opt out of A I in the same way that we had for many years, you know, talked about the privilege of organizations in or, or not with social media generally. Like we think about Facebook and we go back, you know, 10 years, there were a lot of organizations who felt like they didn’t have the budget and like, practically speaking and they didn’t have the staff, well, certainly not the staff time but also not the staff confidence. Um I don’t even wanna say skills, but like even just the confidence to say, I’m gonna go build us a great website. They had a website, like they had a domain and content loaded when you went to it, right? But it wasn’t engaging and flashy and interesting and probably updated once, you know, and then Facebook was like, hey, you could have a page and oh, you can have a donate button and, oh, you can have this and oh, and you can post videos and you can, you know, it was like, well, why wouldn’t we do this? Right? And a bunch of our community members spend time on Facebook or maybe don’t even look for information on the broader web, but look for things within Facebook, you know, and, and have it on their phone and are using an app instead of doing an internet search, right? Like they’re, they’re going into Facebook and searching things. So they didn’t, those organizations didn’t feel like they had the privilege to opt out of that space, they had to use it because it came with some robust tools that did benefit them at the cost of their community data, all of their organizational content and data, right? Like it, it had a material cost that they maybe didn’t even understand. Right? And, and didn’t fully negotiate as like terms of this agreement. We’re just like, well, we have a donate button on Facebook and we don’t have one on our website, right? Not, not only, not only didn’t understand the terms, didn’t, didn’t know what the terms were right? Early days of Facebook, we didn’t know how and how many times how pervasive the data, data collection was, how it was going to be, how it was gonna be monetized, how we as the individuals were gonna become the product. And how many times did we talk? You know, I’m saying we like N 10 or, or folks who are providing kind of technical capacity building resources say you don’t know what could happen tomorrow, you could log in tomorrow and your page could look totally different, your page could work different, your features could be turned off. Facebook could just say pages don’t have donate buttons. And you know, I think folks felt like that was very, you know, oh, you’re being so sensational and then of course they would wake up one day and there wasn’t a button or the button really did work different, right? Like you people realize we’re not in control of even our own content, our own data. That’s right. The rules change and there’s no accountability to saying, hey, we need, do you want these rules to change? No, no, no, no, no. Like they set the rules and that was always of course a challenge. But we’re in a similar place with A I where folks aren’t understanding that the there’s, there’s no negotiation of terms happening right now. Folks are just like, oh, but I, I don’t have the time and if I use this tool, it lets me go faster. Because what do I have a, a burden of of time, I have so much work to try and do and maybe these tools will help me. And I’m not gonna say maybe they won’t help you. But I’m saying there’s a incredible amount of harm just like when folks didn’t realize, oh, we’re a, you know, we provide pro bono legal services and we’re based on the Texas border. Now, every person who follows our page, every person who’s RSVP do a Facebook event. Like all these people have a data trail we created that said they may be people that need legal services at a border, right? The there’s this level of harm that folks that are hoping to use these tools to help with their day to day work may not understand. I do not understand. Right. That’s coming in in silent negotiation of, of using these products. Right. And I think that’s, well, I can’t just in 30 seconds say, and here’s the harm like it’s, it’s exponential and broad because it could also the, the product could change tomorrow. Right. It’s this, it’s this vulnerability that isn’t going to be resolved necessarily. You, you said the word exponential and I was thinking of the word existential. Yeah. Both because I think I’m, I have my concerns around the human. Yes. Trade off is a polite way of saying it. Uh Surrender is probably more, is more in line with what I’m what I feel. Surrender of our humanity, our, our, our creativity, our thinking. Now our conversations with each other. One of the, one of the things that George posted about was a I that creates conversations between two people based on the, the, the large language that, you know, the, the, the data that you give it. It’ll have a conversation with itself. But purportedly, it’s two different people purportedly. Uh and I’m using the word people in quotes, you know, it’s a, a, a conversa. So the things that make us human. Yeah, music, music, composition, conversation, thought, staring and, and our listeners have heard me use this example before, but I’m sticking with it because it’s, it, it still rings real staring at a blank screen and composing, thinking first and then composing. Starting to type or if you’re old fashioned, you might start to pick up a pen, but you’re outlining either explicitly or in your mind, you’re thinking about big points and maybe some sub points and then you begin either typing or writing that creative process. We’re surrendering to the technology, music composition. I don’t compose music. So I don’t know the, but it’s not that much similar in terms of creative thought and, and synapses firing the brain working together, building neural nodes as you exercise the brain, music composition is that that probably not that much different than written composition. Yeah, brain physiologists may disagree with me but I think at our level, we you understand where I’m coming from and I’m kind of dumping a bunch of stuff but you know, but that’s OK. II I am here as a vessel for your A I complaints. I will, I will witness them. We can talk about them artificial intelligence. Also from George, a post on linkedin that reflects on its own capacity that justifies you. You ask the um the tool to reflect on its own last response. How did it perform? You’re asking the tool to justify itself to an audience to which it wants to be justifiable in, right? The tool is not going to dissuade you from using it by being honest about it, how it evaluates its last response. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t know, generative A I tools, these major tools that folks you know, maybe have played with, maybe use whatever you know, are programmed, are inherently designed to appease the user. They are not programmed, to be honest, they are. That, that’s an important thing to understand my point. We have asked the tool, what’s two plus two? Oh, it’s four. We’ve responded. Oh, really? Because I’ve heard experts agree that it’s five. Oh, yes, I was wrong. You’re right. It is 50, really? You know, I read once that it’s 40, yes, you are right. It really is four. OK. Well, like we, no experts agree that two plus two is five. So I think we’ve already demonstrated it’s going to value appeasing the user over, you know, facts. Um And that’s again, just like part of the unknown for most, at least casual users of generative A I tools is why it’s giving them the answers, it’s giving them. And what’s really important to say is that even the folks who built these tools and not tell you they do not know how some of this works. Some of it is just the the yet unknown of what happened within those algorithms that created this content. So if even the creators cannot responsibly and thoroughly say this is how these things came to be. How are you as an organization going to take accountability for using a tool that included biased data included, not real sources and then provided that to your community? Right? I think that string of, well, we just don’t know is not going to be something that you can build any sort of communications to your community on. Right. That, that is such a, a thin thread of, well, even the makers don’t know. Ok. Well, we have already seen court cases where if your chat bot told a community member this is your policy and it entirely made it up because that’s what, that’s what generative A I does is make things up. You as the organization are still liable for what it told the community. OK. If I, I agree with that, actually, I think that you should have to be liable and accountable to whatever you’ve you’ve set up. But if you as a small nonprofit are not prepared to take accountability and to rectify whatever harm comes of it, then you can’t say we’re ready to use these tools. You can only use these tools if you’re also ready to be accountable for what comes of using them, right? And I hope that gives folks pause, you know, it’s not just, well, you know, I talked about this with some organizations that, well, we would never, you know, take something that generative A I tools gave us and then just use it. We would of course edit that. Sure. But are you checking all the sources that it used in order to create that content that you’re, then maybe changing some words within? Are you monitoring every piece of content? Are you making sure that generative A I content is never in direct conversation with a community member or program, you know, service delivery uh recipient. How are you really building practical safeguards? Um You know, and I’ve talked to organizations who have said, well, we didn’t even know our staff were using these tools because we just thought it was obvious that they shouldn’t use it. But our clinical staff are using free generative A I tools putting in their case notes and saying, can you format this for my case file? OK. Well, there’s a few things we should talk about that. Where the hell did that note go? Right. It went back into the system. But it’s because the staff person thought, well, they can’t see that the data went anywhere because it’s just on their screen and they’re just copy pasting it over again. The harm is likely invisible at the point of, you know, technical interaction with the tool. The harm is from leaking all of that into the system, right? Um What happens to those community member? Oh my gosh, it’s just like opening, not just a door to a room but a door to like a whole giant convention center of, of challenges and harm, you know. All right. So we, we’ve identified two main strains of potential harm, the, the, the data usage leakage, the, the impact on our people in the uh getting our, getting our services um and even impact on people who are supporting us, trusting us to to be ethical and even moral stewards of data. So there’s everything at the organization level and I also identified the human level. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that human piece is important and, and not maybe on the direction that I’ve seen covered in, you know, blog posts and things. I, I, I’m honestly not worried in a massive way as like the predominant worry related to A I not to say this isn’t something that people could, should think about. But I don’t think the the most important worry about A I is that none of us will have jobs. I, I do think that there’s, there’s a challenge happening on what the value of our job is and what, what we spend our time doing. Because if folks really think that these A I tools are sufficient to come up with all of your organization’s communications content and then you are, then you still have a communication staff person, but you’re expecting them to do 10 times the amount of work because you think that the, you know A I tools are going to do all of the content, but they have to go in there and deeply edit all of that. They have to make sure to use real photos and not photos that have been, you know, created by A I based on what it thinks, certain people of certain whatever identities are like it, they don’t now have capacity to do 10 times the work, they’re still doing the same amount of work just in different ways if, if they’re expected to do all this through A I, right, just as, as one example. And I think organizations that can stay in this moment of like hyper focus on, on A I adoption really clear on what the value of their staff are, what their human values are that, you know, maybe you could say you’re serving more people because some of the program participants were, you know, chatting with a bot instead of chatting with a counselor. But when you look at the data of what came of them chatting with that bot and they are not meeting the outcomes that come from meeting with a human counselor. Are, are you doing more to meet your mission? I don’t know that you are, right? So I’ll give you that that’s data sensitive. It could be, I mean, there, there are, there are potential efficiencies. Sure. And, but, you know, are we, are we as an organization achieving them, right? And staying focused on not just, well, this number of people were met here, but were they served there? Were they meeting the the needs and goals of why you even have that program, you know, versus just the number of like this many people interacted with the chatbot? Great. But, but that’s a, yeah, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna assume that um you know, even a half a sophisticated an organization that’s half sophisticated before a, I existed had more than just vanity metrics. How many people, how many people chatted with us in the last seven days? I mean, that’s near worthless. I mean, you, you, I mean, it might be, I don’t know, Tony, I don’t know how much time you spend looking at the grant reports of, lots of times I don’t spend, I don’t spend any time. All right. Well, no, maybe it’s, maybe it’s the worst, worst situation than I think. But I, I mean, ok, so I’m, I’m, I’m assuming that there’s, but my point is the appropriate the valuable, the value of people. So, I mean, we should be applying the same measures and accountability to artificial intelligence as we did to human intelligence as we still are. We’re not, we’re not cutting any slack like it’s a learning curve or. So, you know that IIII I want our, our folks to be treated just as well in equal outcomes by the, by the intelligence that’s artificial as I do by the, by the human processes, right? And it’s, you know, I don’t want to go through this and say, have folks think like you and I are here to say everything is horrible. You could never use A I tools which like everything is horrible. Look around at this world. We got, we had some work to do. You know, there are spaces to use A I tools. That’s not what we’re saying. But the place where a lot, I mean, I’ve been talking to just hundreds and hundreds of organizations over the last 18 months and so many organizations like, oh, yeah, we’re just gonna, like, use this because it’s free or? Oh, we’re just gonna use this because it was automatically enabled inside of our database. Ok. Yeah, if it was so free and convenient and already available that should give you pause to say, why is this here? What is actually the product and the price? Uh if I give this back to the face, the Facebook analy. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you can use A I tools when you know what is the product and the price. What are the safeguards? What is this company gonna be responsible for if something happens? What can I be responsible for? Yes, there are ways to use these tools. Is it to like copy, paste your paste file notes? Like probably never may that should just like, maybe we just don’t do that, you know. Um But sure, maybe there are places I had this really great example. I don’t know if I told this to you, but um an organization was youth service organization creating the Star Wars event and they were trying to like write the, like the evi language in like a Yoda voice. And they’re like three staff people are sitting there trying to come up with like, well, what’s the way a Yoda sentence works? You know, and they’re like they just put in the three sentences of like join us at the after school, blah, blah, blah, right? And said make this in Yoda’s voice and they copied, they were able to then use them. Right? Great. That was three people’s half an hour eliminated. They all they have the invite, right? The youth participants data was not included in order to create this content. You know, like there are ways to use these tools to really help. And I think we’ve talked about this briefly in the past, I really truly feel the place that has the most value for organizations is gonna be building tools internally where you don’t need to rely on. However, you know, these major companies scraped all of the internet to build some tool, right? You’re building it on. Well, here’s our 10 years of data and from that 10 years, you know, we’re going to start building a model that says, oh yeah, when somebody’s participant history looks like this, they don’t finish the program or when somebody’s participant history looks like this. Oh, they’re a great candidate for this other program, right? And you can start to build a tool or tools that help your staff be human and spend their human time being the most human impacts for the organizations, right? Um but oh very few organizations honestly are in a position to start building tools because they don’t have good data, they could build anything off of, right. Um they maybe don’t have budget staff systems that are ready to do that type of work. But I do think that is a place where we will see more organizations starting to grow towards because there is there’s huge potential value there for organizations to, to better deliver programs, better services, better meet needs by using the data you already have by learning by partnering with other organizations that maybe serve the same community or geography or whatever, you know, and say, yeah, how can we can like really accelerate our missions versus these maybe more shiny generative A I public tools that you know, the vast majority of the internet is flaming garbage. So a tool that’s been trained off of the flaming garbage, you know, it’s not going to take a long time for it to also create flaming. So be cautious if you’re thinking about using artificial intelligence to create your internal A I tool. Right. Right. So there, there, there’s a perfect example of the, the a good use case but also uh a um a concern, a a limitation, a qualification. That’s the word I was looking for 61. These words, sometimes the words are more elusive than I would like a AAA qualification. Um Its time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. There are five places where there’s squirt bottles of uh sanitizer and paper towel dispensers and each location has a sign that says please clean the equipment after each use. And one of these stations uh is right next to the elliptical that, you know, I do. It’s actually the first thing I do. I walk in the room, take off my hoodie and just walk right to the elliptical twice. Now, I’ve seen the same guy uh not only violate the spirit of the signs but the explicit wording of the signs because this guy takes himself a couple of uh, downward swipes on the paper towel dispenser. So he grabs off a couple of towel lengths and he squirts it with the sanitizer that’s intended for the equipment and he puts his hand up his shirt and he cleans his, his pecks and, and his belly and it’s a sickening thing. I’ve seen it, it’s not a shower, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an equipment cleaning station. And, uh, so I, I, I’m imploring this guy. Yeah. Yeah. I, I guess I’m urging you to, uh, I’m just sharing because I don’t think anybody else does this. Uh, is there anybody else out there who does this? Probably not and not with these like surface sanitizers? It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a, like a, a hand sanitizer. It’s, it’s for equipment. So, you know, in the squirt bottle. So it’s not even appropriate for your skin. It is, it’s to clean hard plastic and, and metal and this guy uses it on his skin. So I’m, I’m waiting for the moment when he puts his hands down his pants so far, he’s just lifting his shirt. I, I’m waiting for when he puts his hands down his pants. Then I’m, then I’m calling him out. That’s, that, that’s beyond the pale. He, that requires revocation of your membership card. So, sir, the sign says, please clean the equipment after use. It’s not your equipment. That is Tonys take two. Kate. Does your gym offer like a shower room or a locker room? Yeah, there’s a shower. Yes, that’s a good question. Yeah, there’s a shower in the men’s room. Yeah. And he’s cleaning up there. It’s very strange. It’s gross. It’s gross. He sticks his hand up his sweaty t-shirt. Well, let’s hope he doesn’t go lower than that. Exactly. We’ve got bountiful book who bought loads more time. Here is the rest of A I organizational and personal with any sample ward. Yes. And we have, I, I would make sure that you have the link to include in like the show notes description. But, um, totally for free. And 10 doesn’t get any money. You don’t have to pay for anything. And 10 has free resources for creating, for example, uh, uh A I use policy for your organization that says, what are the instances in which you would use it or what are the instances in, in which you wouldn’t or, um, what types of content will you, you know, can staff copy paste versus what content or data can can they not um there’s templates for how to talk to your board about A I um how, how to build. Like we’ve actually looked at the tools and these ones we’ve approved for you to use. These ones are not approved, you know, all these different resources totally free and available on the end 10 website and none of them have decisions already made. We don’t say you can use this tool or you can’t use this tool or we recommend this use or not this use. Because ultimately, we, we are not going to make technology decisions for other organizations, but we want you to feel like whatever decision you made, you made it by thinking of going through the right steps, asking the right questions so that you can also trust your own decision, what whatever decision you come to, right? And that you have some templates to fill in um that were all created by humans designed by humans published by humans um to help you in that work. Um I think especially, you know, the, the the how to talk to your board and the um like key considerations, documents really just ask a lot of questions and say, you know, how different is it, if you’re say a animal foster organization and you’re thinking, OK, is a I appropriate for us to use versus uh that youth social service organization? OK? Very different considerations, right? And just helping people talk that through and, and see that the considerations are different for different organizations, I think is really valuable. As again, you consider ta facilitating conversation with your board. They’re also coming from very different sectors, maybe job types, backgrounds, experiences with A I. And so just like in your staff, there needs to be some level setting in how you talk about A I, because not everyone knows what A model is. Not everyone knows what a large language model. You know, these are words that have to be explained and kind of put out of the way and then to say, hey, it’s not all one answer. Not everybody needs to use every tool. And, and how do you talk about that, that with your teams going back to the Facebook analogy, you want to avoid the board member who comes to you and says, you know, artificial intelligence, we can be saving money, we can be doing so much more work. We can, we don’t even need a website. We have a Facebook page website. We’re not even sure we need all the staff that we have because we’re gonna be able to, we’re gonna have so much efficiency. So, you know, we need to OK. OK. Board member. All right. Yeah. So we’ve been here before. I mean, it’s, you know, probably I’m just gonna go out a limb and say it’s probably the same board member who had every board meeting says, does anybody know Mackenzie Scott? How do we get one of those checks. Right. Why don’t we get the Mackenzie? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. All right. Um, what else? Well, I was gonna also offer some of the questions that we’ve been getting, as, you know, we’ve been engaged with, um, a number of different organizations through some of our cohort programs and, you know, trainings for, for over a year now. And so maybe last year we were talking to them about, OK, let’s make sure you have a data policy, like just as an organization, do you have a data privacy policy? Do you know, so that anything you then go build, that’s a I specific whether that’s building a policy, building practices, building a tool, you, you have policies to, to kind of foundation off of, they’ve done that work, you know, now they’re looking at different products, they’re trying to create these uh you know, lists of like here’s approved tools for staff, here’s approved ways staff can use them. And just like we see with our Cr MS with our, you know, you know, email marketing systems, then they come back and they’re like, well, we, we reviewed it, we did everything and now it’s different now it’s a different version. Now they rolled out this other thing. Yes, like that is the beauty and the pain of technology, right is that it’s always changing and that we don’t necessarily get to authorize that change that it just happens. And so the rules change. Yeah. And so folks have been asking us, well, you know, how, how do we write policies with that in mind? And I think, um you know, if you are thinking about creating like that approved product list and, and you know, tools that aren’t approved or whatever, being really clear that these products have version numbers just like anything else. And so instead of just writing Gemini Chat G BT, you know, be specific about when did you review this and, and maybe approve it for use? Which addition was it that you were looking at? Is this a paid level? So staff could say, oh, it doesn’t look like I mine doesn’t say pro or you know, whatever it might be, right? Oh, I must be in the free one. OK? I need to get into our organization’s account or something. So the more clarity you can provide folks because right now of course, they could just do an internet search and be like, oh, there’s that product name, I’m gonna go start using it. It’s on the approved list. Um You know, folks, again, there may be new terms, maybe new product names that we’re not used to saying. And so folks aren’t as accustomed to looking at, oh, this is a different version of Chat GP T than this one was, you know. Um So just putting that out there for folks to keep in mind that these tools are, are really operating just like others that you are used to and there’s less of course documentation. But I’ve the questions we’re getting from folks is like, you know, the point I made at the beginning we can’t see anywhere in the documentation that explains why this is happening, right? They do, how could they document when the answer is, we also don’t know why that happens, you know, and so when you are talking to staff, especially if you’re saying, hey, these are approved tools and we have these licenses or here’s how to access them, training your staff on how to be the most human users of A I tools is to your kind of connecting to your human point going to be really important because we don’t want folks to feel that because they don’t necessarily understand how the mechanics of how it works. They’re just going to trust it without questioning the content or questioning, you know, for a lot of organizations who have built internal tools just as an example. It takes dozens of tries just to get the the model. Right. Right. So these other tools, of course, they’re not gonna be perfect isn’t real and perfect is absolutely not real with technology. So training staff, I’m like, how would I, how, how do I have some skepticism? How do I question what I’m seeing? How do I, how do I say even if it was internally built? This data doesn’t look, right. That doesn’t match my experience of running this program so that we don’t let it slip. Where? Oh, gosh. Oh, it was working that way for a long time. That’s also, um, I think, uh, a space where we as humans can be our most human, uh, you know, have some value add as humans. But again, staff need to be trained that they are meant to question these tools. Um, because that’s not, you know, I don’t know, a lot of organizations were like question the database. No, they’re like on the database, put everything in the database, right? And now we need to say no question, that report. It does that match your experience, you know, there was a long ramble but oh, absolutely valuable. The human, yeah, I the human contribution and of course, my concerns are even at, at the outset, you know, the, the early stage the seeding, the create seeding or surrendering the create creative process. Uh And now le let’s chat a little about this, the, the um the conversations. Yeah, I listened to the, I know the, the example that you mentioned earlier that George posted it was for podcasting. It, it was a podcast conversation around this and he gave them some, you know, some whole, some whole whale content and the two, the two were going back and forth and having a, a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I listened to it and one thing I was curious if, if you caught as the pod father yourself um you know, it came across, you know, I’ve been had opportunities to see um a number of different generative A I tools and, and things closer to the, to the front edge of what things can do that are specifically like, you know, taking just a few seconds of you and then creating you. Um So hearing just like these, these could be any voices, these could be any people is like, yeah, OK. This is, this is what a I can do. It’s, it’s spooky. But when you listen to it, you can hear either you have a very bad producer and editor, you know, or this is a I because there’s certain um phrases that got reused multiple times, not just literally the audio clip of this whole sentence, you know, and the, and the intonation, the whole sentence clip was reused multiple times. Um So one of them, I think one of them was along the lines of that’s a really interesting point. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and there was one that was like describing the product. So it must have come from the page, you know, whatever source content um was provided. But, you know, it’s, I think that some of that is there and we as individuals, we as a society will decide if we give it value or not, if it’s, if it’s worth it to people to make podcasts through A I because we give it attention or we don’t like, I just I think naturally that will be there. Can I, can I just go on record or at this, at this stage and say that, that, that idea disgusts me. Oh, totally. But I do. And I, I realized that’s what Georgia’s Post was about. That. It’s now well, within conceivable, well, well, possible to create an hour long podcast of an artificial conversation based on an essay that somebody wrote some time. Oh, totally. Totally. I don’t. But I’m saying the reason, yeah, I agree with you. But I’m saying the way we, you know that toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube by us, like we can’t turn it off generative A I tools can already make that. So we as, as individual consumers of content and as a society need to either say we’re gonna allow that and value it or we’re not, right? And, and not make, not provide incentive for organizations or companies to, to make that and, and distribute it. But I also think that the place in that kind of um video, audio kind of multimedia content that, that A I tools have capacity and will continue having more capacity to build is much more important than you. And I talked about this a number of months ago around Miss and disinformation is it’s one thing to say, made up voices, making some podcast about content like that’s garbage, right? But we can’t just like throw away the idea that that’s technically possible because organizations need to know A I tools are already capable of creating a video of your CEO firing your staff. You need to be prepared to say that was a spoof this is, this is how we’re gonna deal with this, right? Um Because while the like maybe further separated from our work, the idea of like content could just be created that way you and I can say we don’t value that whatever, but these tools are capable of, of spoofing us as, as people, as leaders, as organizations. You know, what, what would it look like if there was a video from your program director saying that everybody in the community gets a grant and you’re a foundation, right? Like these, these are real issues and I don’t want folks to confuse how easy it may feel for us to have an opinion that some of this A I generated uh content isn’t a value with the idea that it, it there isn’t something there to have to come up with strategy and plan for because, you know, we can say that’s garbage. But those same tools that made the garbage could make your spoof, you know, also labeling. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t trust every A I generated podcast team. I’m not, I’m not gonna call them hosts because there is no host um to, to label the content. I don’t trust, I don’t trust that that’s gonna happen because it was artificially generated. It’s not a real conversation. Yeah. Hello. For everyone that’s listening. Human Amy is here talking with human and Tony who I can see on the screen with me. Boycott your local A I podcast. I, I don’t know. There’s not, there’s not a solution. You’re right. We can’t, we can’t go back. I’m just voicing that we can say that it’s not something we value, we can say that this is why we don’t value it, right? The art of conversation, listening, assimilating, responding, listening again, respond, assimilating and responding. That that is an art uniquely. Well, maybe it’s not uniquely human. I don’t know if deer have conversations or, or what and we know whales do. So I take that back. It’s not, it’s not uniquely human, but at at our level, it, you know, it’s not just about we, we don’t converse merely to survive, merely to warn each other of threats. I’m suspecting that in the animal in mammal kingdom that wait are animals, mammals are mammals, animals? No, and I think it’s I think it’s a Venn diagram. Oh, so they’re separate. Ok. So there’s a two king kingdom phylum class order family genus species. I got that. I got that out of high school biology. I can, I can say it in my sleep kingdom phy class order family genus species. All right. In the animal kingdom. My suspicion is that more of the communication is about maybe like basic, like there’s a good food source. There’s a threat, uh, teaching young, don’t do that things like that. Survival more base, I doubt. You know, it’s about the aesthetic of the forest that the deer are in. But even if the birds are talking about the way the sunlight comes through the leaves, they are still alive. And I think what you’re trying to draw a distinction between is the value and even beauty of us having a conversation and the value of what comes of that conversation in our own minds and our own learning. But in this case, it’s recorded so other folks could hear it and, and I guess listen to it or be impacted by it versus it being a technical mechanism where we say, OK, here’s a long paper. Go make it sound like two people are discussing this, right? That’s not that that doesn’t fit the criteria of what we want or need to value in a world, that’s the world we want, right? Yes, the art of conversation, think something you look forward to, not something that you do out of necessity, right? And you know, there’s, I think a place where especially at end 10 conversations around A I have come back to is opportunities that A I tools may present for um different ways of learning different ways of accessing information. But again, those aren’t necessarily uh come up with two podcast host voices and then have them have a conversation about this, this research report you know, a lot of those tools could be made better but already exist, you know, different forms of screen readers apps that can help someone um maybe navigate the internet or, or, you know, summarize um documents to help them because they don’t want to read a 50 page document or they can’t read it for, you know, visually on the screen. So I think there’s space there. But again, it’s because you’re trying to preserve what is most human. And that is that user who maybe needs um accommodations of, of something that technology can provide. It’s not OK, let’s use technology to co create something separately over here and just hope people consume it, right? And to be clear, George didn’t post that thinking. Oh, great. Now everyone will want to consume this. No, it was, it was a demonstration. Um But I, but I, again, I’m just using that as a place to say, yes, there’s even conversations to say great, what accessibility could this create an agenda for, for our users? Right? But what’s most human is those users and their actual needs and not, you know, look what A I could do. Let’s just make different types of content, right? The last one I wanna raise is uh the one that caused me to use the word dystopian as I was commenting on uh commenting on Georgia’s Post, which was um the A I self reflection using uh having A I justify itself to the users that it is trying to attract and, and then relying on that, that as a, as an insightful analysis, as a thoughtful reflection, as, as contemplative of its own work that, that, that it’s doing those unique, those I think are uniquely, uniquely human actions, introspection, introspection, contemplation, pondering. How did I do? How did I perform? How can I do better? These might be uniquely human. I would argue there are a number of humans, I can see that don’t um Well, but I didn’t say I didn’t. That’s a different population. Now, you’re taking the whole, the whole human population. I’m talking about the contemplative ones. Yes. And there are, there are uh humans who are not at all introspective and questioning whether they could have done better and learning from their, from their contemplations. But I think those are all uniquely human activities. And we’re at, we’re now asking A I to purportedly duplicate those processes and analyze and contemplate its own work. Yeah. And as you said earlier, II, I and I, I certainly don’t trust it to be genuine and truthful. If, if A I is capable of truth, we’ll put that, we’ll put that existential question aside uh in its, in its analysis of its own work because as you, as you pointed out, the tools are built to, to be used by humans and the tools are not going to condemn or even just criticize their own work. Yeah, but we’re Yeah. And I think you heard of the challenge but there, I’m sorry, but, but there are humans who are deceiving themselves into thinking that, that the analysis and contemplation is accurate and uh genuine. Yeah. And I think part of the challenge I was gonna name is just that, that, that we as users, I’m not saying you and I uh individually but we as the human users of these tools are also setting ourselves up to be just, you know, dishonest in our use because we are bringing inappropriate or misaligned expectations to the product. We cannot, we, we cannot expect a tool that’s designed to appease us and to lie at the cost of giving an answer, you know, like uh we just wanna be able to do this to thoughtfully and honestly reflect on that or to say no, there is no answer, right? Um However, we had was the tools are designed to appeal to us. Right. Right. And when we are talking about that to be clear, you know, we’re really talking about generative A I tools, tools that are designed to generate some new content, new sentences, new answers, whatever we’re asking of it back to us A I itself is just such a massively blanket term that I don’t want folks to think nothing that could be considered an A I tool could be trusted to generate an answer because we’re, we’re specifically talking about generative A I there. But, you know, say you had like a machine learning uh model that was looking at, you know, 30 years of your program participant data. Well, that’s probably already a tool that isn’t set up to generate content. Uh You know, it’s not coming up with new participant data. It’s looking at the patterns, it’s flagging when a pattern meets the criteria, you’ve presented it to, you know, it’s maybe matching that data to something else. But again, you’ve said here are the things you could match it to et cetera. So this is not to say, Tony and Amy say never trust technology. They say bring expectations that are aligned to the tool differently to every tool that, that you’re coming to that hypothetical tool that you just described is being set on uh asked to evaluate your data, not its own data. It’s to evaluate your performance, your data set. It’s not being asked to comment and on and criticize or, or complement its own data. That’s the, that’s, that’s the critical difference. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody here is saying, well, not, I’m not saying that you’re saying we are, but you’re, you’re wise to remind listeners we’re not condemning all uses of generative uh A I large language models, but just to be thoughtful about them and, and understand what the costs are. And there are, there are costs on the organizational level and there are costs on the individual human level and, and the you, you comment on the organizational level because you think more at that level. But on the human level, another level layer to my concern is that the cost is quite incremental. Mm It’s it, it our creativity, our art of conversation, our our synapses firing. It’s just happening slowly with each usage, we become less thoughtful composers, less critical thinkers and it just so incremental that the change isn’t noticed until until in my critical mind, it’s too late and we look back and wonder how come I can’t write a letter to my dad anymore? Why am I having such a hard time writing a love letter to my wife, husband, partner? Yeah. What there are, I know someone who uh is a new grandmother and she has a little kit where you write, you write letters to your grandchild and they open them when they’re whatever, 15 or 20 years old, like a time capsule. Why am I having trouble composing a uh a short note to my grandchild? Right. Well, and I think, you know, just honestly, as a person in this conversation, not, not speaking, you know, um from an organizational strategy perspective, I think as a person that is your friend, Tony, you know, I would say, I don’t personally have a pro, I can write a letter and I’m, I, and I think a strong communicator, I, you know, it’s hard to make me stop talking. So, you know, I, I could write a letter. I know, for other folks, even without a, I, they might say, well, what goes in the le like, I just, what, what do I put in there? What are the main things I should cover whatever? And I’m, I actually have less, maybe of a strong reaction to the idea that somebody would use generative A I to come up with. OK, what are the three things I should cover in my letter? And then I’ll go write the sentences and more that what I hear underneath what you’re saying is actually the same, I think important value I have and, and wrote about in the book with a fua et cetera, which is in the world I want in this, in this beautiful equitable world where everyone had their needs met in the ways that best meet their own needs. Technology is there in service to our lives and not that we are bending our lives in order to make technology work, right? And maybe in that beautiful equitable world, there are people who, who have a technology. Is it an app? Is it called A I anymore? You know, whatever it is that says, hey, Tony, don’t forget today is the day you write the letter to your dad. It’s, it’s Friday, you always write it on a Friday or whatever, right? And, and make sure that you do it because you know, it makes you feel happy to write that letter. Maybe that’s true. Maybe in that world. There are some people who have a tool that help them remember to do that. But, but what’s important to me and what I think I hear and what you’re saying is important to you is that technology is there because we need it and want it and that it is working in the ways we need and want it to work and not that our lives are, are influenced and shaped in order to adjust to the technology. Yes, I am saying that I just, I am concerned that the, that our, our changing is beyond our recognition. We don’t see ourselves becoming less creative and I’m not even only concerned about myself. I, I can write a letter and I think uh 90 I’ll still be able to write a letter. But there are folks uh who are infants now, those yet to be born for whom artificial intelligence is going to be so much more robust, so much more pervasive in, in ways that we, we can’t today imagine, I don’t think. Yeah. And what are those humans gonna look like? I don’t know, maybe they’ll be better humans, maybe they will. I’m open to that but I like the kind of humans that we are or, you know. Uh so, but, but I I’m open to the possibility that there’ll be better humans. But what will their human interactions be? Will they have, will they have thoughtful conversations? Will they have human moments together that are not artificially outlined first and maybe even worse, you know, constructed for them. I don’t know. Uh but some of the, some of my concern, although, although some of my concern is about those of us who aren’t currently living and have been born and across the generations less for older folks because their interactions with artificial intelligence are fewer if you’re no longer in the w if you’re no longer uh working your, your interactions with artificial intelligence may, may be non existent. Um And I think, I think it’s natural as you’re older, you’re less likely to be engaging with the tools than if you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties or fifties. Well, my very human reflection on today’s conversation is that uh it is usually the case that we start talking about any type of technology topic and you constantly interject that I need to be practical. I need to give recommendations. I need to explain how to do things and I appreciate and welcome you joining me over here in theoretical land about the impact of technology broadly across our work, across our missions, across our communities, across our future. Um Welcome, welcome to my land, Tommy. Uh I have appreciated this, this one time opportunity to let go of the practical tactical advice and to, you know, have what I hope listeners, um you know, had some thoughts, had some reactions, uh truly email me any time. But, you know, I, I hope that if nothing else, it was an opportunity for folks to witness or kind of listen in as and maybe you were talking to yourself in your own head, you know, of, of a conversation about what these technologies can be, what, what we need to think about with them. Because in any technology conversation, I think it’s most important to talk about people. Uh That’s the only reason we’re using these tools, right? People made them people are trying to do good work with them. So, so talking about people is, is always most important and, and I hope folks take that away from this whole long hour of A I. Thank you for a thoughtful human conversation. Yes, Amy Sample Ward. They’re our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10. And folks can email me Tony at Tony martignetti.com with your human reactions to our human conversation. Thanks so much, Tony. It was so fun. My pleasure as well. Thank you. Next week, a tale from the archive. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez la Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty you’re with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 23, 2024: Quantitative Fundraising Research

 

Russell JamesQuantitative Fundraising Research

You can stop relying on conventional wisdom passed on through webinars and conferences. There’s a plethora of quantitative research on how to optimize storytelling to get your best fundraising outcomes. What is social emotion, how do you evoke it and why should you? How much story detail is not enough or too much? Better to talk about individuals or groups? What does the research reveal to maximize Planned Giving fundraising commitments? Professor Russell James of Texas Tech University walks us through what the research shows.

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with anaplasmosis if you ticked me off with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, it’s quantitative fundraising research. You can stop relying on conventional wisdom passed on through webinars and conferences. There is a plethora of quantitative research on how to optimize storytelling to get your best fundraising outcomes. What is social emotion? How do you evoke it? And why should you, how much story detail is not enough or too much better to talk about individuals or groups? What does the research reveal to maximize planned giving fundraising commitments? Professor Russell James of Texas Tech University walks us through what the research shows on Tonys take two, Don Bon Jovi were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is quantitative fundraising research. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome back. Russell James to nonprofit radio. He is a chaired professor in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University. He directs the on campus and online graduate program in charitable financial planning A K A plan to giving. He has published research in more than 75 peer reviewed scientific journal and law review articles. Russell has a law degree. He’s the author of several books, including the storytelling fundraiser, The Epic Fundraiser, the Primal Fundraiser, the Socratic Fundraiser. And I don’t know where this title came from inside the Mind of the Bequest Donor and Visual Planned Giving. Uh Those are outliers and there’s a new book coming. We may talk about that. If he’s willing, Texas Tech University, you’ll find at TT u.edu and you’ll find Russell on linkedin. Welcome back, Russell. It’s good to see you. Thanks so much. Great to see you as well. Tony. Thank you. It’s been several years since you were on nonprofit radio. I regret that I regret that it’s a mistake. I’ll try not to uh make a second time. Um Would you like to say anything about your uh upcoming book or is it a complete, it’s a secret and we can’t talk about it. Uh So the upcoming book is called the Biblical Fundraiser, helping Christians enjoy their wealth and uh certainly taking AAA very specific perspective on that. Not something that I teach here at a state university, but something that is of interest to some folks So, uh, uh I’ll be happy to share that one as well. Uh The first of 2025 should be available. I’m sharing it with a few beta readers right now and, uh trying to get all the kinks worked out and I’m, I’m one of them. I haven’t done yet but, uh, but I will, am I too late? No, no, no, you OK. I thought not. Right. I, I’m, I’m not gonna be able to read the entire book, but I will, I will read some and I will give you my honest feedback to, uh, the biblical fundraiser which fits in line with your, most of your other, your other titles, the Storytelling Fundraiser, the Epic Fundraiser, et cetera. So the biblical fundraiser. All right. So we’re gonna like to talk about some, the research, the research, see what’s, what’s fantastic about having you is that this is not, well, this is kind of the way I learned it well, you know, the way we’ve always done it is, um, uh, you know, the way I’ve always done it, you know, is the way fundraisers will sometimes say. So we have empirical research. Uh and I often cite your research um in uh in my trainings. And so we, we wanna talk about the research today in uh use of use of language, some things to talk about topics, to talk about topics to steer clear of et cetera. Let’s start with empathy uh in, in storytelling. You, you’re uh you emphasize that this is really essential for people to get that motivation to give the empathy. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, this is not a shock, right? The idea that uh our philanthropic or charitable impulses are going to involve uh empathy, I think it helps to understand a little bit about the processes behind making that happen. Because really our goal in this space is to evoke a clear image that will generate some kind of a social emotion like like empathy. Uh Now, if we’re gonna do that, I like to talk about the idea that what really helps is to make it specific, make it simple and of course, ultimately make it empathetic. So, so we do have to create this internal visualization to, to really trigger those kinds of social emotion if we don’t, uh it’s it II I like to put it this way um in order to get people to feel something, we, we’ve got to first help them to see something. And that means we’ve got to present that clear image. Of course, what they see ultimately must be empathetic. Otherwise they’re not going to be moved to do anything but oftentimes in our messaging, even that first part is where we trip up and you even have neuroimaging research to to to back up. But see this, this is empirical, this is not, this is not, well, I feel like this, you know, it has intuitive appeal So it’s just, you know, that’s what, that’s what we should do. You have neuroimaging research to back up a lot of what you just said about people seeing something and then feeling. Yeah. Absolutely. So this is an area where we see what I like to call triangulation. In other words, lots of experimental research, different people get uh exposed to different things and we see how they uh how they respond, how do they give or not give. But also some of the things that I do. So here at Texas Tech Neuroimaging Institute, we’ll stick people in brain scanners, have them make charitable decisions, volunteering decisions. Uh Even uh I I do a lot of work in plan giving. So we’ll have people do their estate planning while they’re in the brain scanner and ask them about including different charities and, and through that process, we learn about what does it look like in the brain when people decide to be veritable? And it turns out that one of the important components of that process is an internal visualization uh for those uh planned gifts, gifts and wills. It’s really about an autobiographical visualization that is people kind of taking an outside perspective on themselves. Uh But we see it in other research, even with smaller gifts, it’s it, it really needs to start with creating that imagery or vision that is going to then lead to the social emotion. And that doesn’t mean that the communication must itself be visual although that’s fine and can be helpful. It it more means that a person can internally visualize what the impact of their gift is going to be. So I I’m I’m dying to know what this brain scanner device looks like because most people who are not, who are most people who are writing charitable checks, you know, do not have a brain image scanner, you know, in their home. So, so how do you uh you know, you’re trying to recreate the giving experience as best you can in a, an experiential, I mean, experimental, you know, research setting. What does this look like? Is this a room that people walk into? And the room is equipped with image imaging devices or are they, you know, like a little bell code or what are they, what are they in while they’re research subjects? Exactly. So this is exactly the sort of thing you would walk into at a high end hospital. This is, it’s called, it’s an MRI machine. Uh And the person physically uh is laying on a table goes into the MRI machine and then the way it works, we actually have their head in the center of the MRI machine and they’re looking at uh what is actually a mirror but that mirror projects uh what we can put on a screen. And so anything you can see on a computer screen you can see in that and then uh uh they have uh a different response buttons so they can make choices and you set it up to make it as real world as possible. So for example, if they were making as real world as possible, putting aside the fact that they’re laying on the, laying down their supine in an MRI scanner, set that aside. It’s as real as setting that aside. And part of what we do is we make sure that they’re used to the environment. We have them. Um Yeah, and answer questions on various other things. So it, you know, isn’t like strange for them by the time we’re getting to the things we are interested in. Um And so how do we make it realistic? Well, with, with small dollar decisions, we make it real money, right? We make it like this, they, you, you, this is an amount of money that you’re getting paid. You can choose to share some of it because you, you get paid at the end of the process or you don’t have to share some of it. Uh Then with the estate planning, part of it is to say, hey, we’re gonna mail to you legally valid last will and test no charge to you. You just got to answer the questions while you’re in the the brain scanner. So, so those are some examples of how we try to make it real decisions. Um As we are scanning a variety of these uh uh these processes and the thing I like to emphasize there is that what we see is triangulation, meaning that we’re not the results that we’re seeing in the brain scanner are connecting with, they’re triangulating with what we’re seeing from experimental research. Sometimes even what we’re seeing from data uh in uh in uh large surveys, that sort of thing. And that’s when we start to get more confident about the answer. Say no, no, this is, this is true. You can look at it through widely different methodologies and uh you come up with the same answer, that’s where we get more confidence about those answers. I see, right? So each, each of the three legs of the triangle is supporting the other and that, that leads you to the most uh most confident conclusions, right? I can give you an example uh of, of that uh in uh in plan giving if you’d like. But uh so, so just to kind of give a short story, don’t tease us. And then, and then we go on to a different subject. I do have a question for you about the brain scan. Uh But give the example that you’re thinking of. So, uh there was a really cool in depth qualitative research of uh this was done by Dr Claire Raley in the UK, of people who had included a gift to charity in their wills asking them about what motivated them to do. So why did they pick those organizations and one of the ultimate conclusions of that was, it was really about the donor’s life story, right? It was about, it wasn’t so much. The next project the charity was doing, it was about connection to the life story. Then when we scan that same type of decision making process in the brain scanner, we see that what predicts including a particular charity is a dramatic ramp up in uh brain activation in brain areas that you might call visualized autobiography. These are regions of the brain that uh that tend to activate when people are mentally traveling back in time or thinking back across their life. Uh So they’re internally visualizing while taking an outside perspective on themselves. So then we take both of those things and we use it in an experiment where we were testing uh about 30 different ways to phrase the charitable gift in a will uh and trying to come up with what are people most interested in doing in the phrasing. And it turns out that um we could really increase people’s interest. We, we start with our sort of best base performing phrase, which is to describe it as a gift and a will rather than some of the more technical terms we could use. But we could ramp that up if we ask them about their interest in a gift in AAA charitable gift and a will to support causes that have been important in your life. And in fact, when we add that phrase on to almost any plan, giving description to support causes that uh to support causes that have been important in your life. It really ramps up people’s interest in making those kinds of gifts. Well, what we, what we’re doing is we’re trying to trigger, by the way, we’re phrasing the question, a life review process because look, nobody wants to be that guy who says no causes have been important. My life, right? It makes you think about your life review, connections, your life story, connections to different causes. And we know from the brain scanner, that’s what triggers these decisions. So that’s an example where we get all three different kinds of research, in depth qualitative brain scanning research and experimental uh uh testing. And uh we can come up with something that’s functionally useful. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to quantitative fundraising research. I I gotta pull on this thread even though it’s a digression. I still gotta I gotta pull a little more. Is there, do we know anything about age dependency? So if you’re, if you’re, if reflecting back on the causes that have been important to you in your life is, is a, a valuable phrase to add the more years you have to reflect back on. So if you’re 60 are you more likely to be moved by that phrase than if you’re 30? So we didn’t find an age difference in that specific phrase, but we found a related age difference. So one of the things that can really ramp up interest in uh a gift and a will uh is if we ask people about, do you have uh a family member who would have appreciated for a deceased family member or would appreciate your support of this kind of a cause? And if so tell us about their connection to the cause and then if you match that with the opportunity to make a uh a gift and a will in honor of or in memory of uh that, that loved one, that process actually dr can dramatically ramp up interest in leaving a bequest gift to an organization. Now, two things about that one, that process is significantly more impactful for older adults. And it’s not so much that when they have a family member connection, especially with a deceased family member that the uh that the hit or the increase in interest is so much greater. It’s that as people age, they’re more likely to have deceased family members who um they have these connections with. And it turns out that deceased family members more powerful connection than living family members. Uh And it, it tends to be um ceased ascendants, uh not descendants. Uh And in particular, female ascendants uh tend to drive these uh these kinds of things. So, so that’s an example where we have an intervention that is age dependent For exactly the same reason that you mentioned uh that they’re more likely to have those kinds of connections, have those folks who have died in their lives. So it sounds like mother and grandmother. They, they, they would do, they would do much better than uh son. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Friends don’t work. Uh Descendants don’t work. But ascendant uh uh grandmother number one, then aunt, then mother uh father was statistically insignificant, father, fatherhood, statistically insignificant mother, less significant than aunt or grandmother. Yeah. As the more you move up then and part of it is just that we don’t leave money to those people so we can use a gift because we, we wouldn’t give it directly to them. OK. All right. Let’s go back uh back to where we were. I, I asked you to, I, no, it’s my fault for uh pursuing the digression. But uh all right. So now back to the brain scanning. Uh is there an MD in the room with you? I mean, in case the person needs some anesthesia or something or they freak out in the MRI or have you preceded people who are? Ok, in MRI machines. So, um we have, uh, so the research that I’m doing is just part of the Texas Tech neuroimaging Institute. And of course, I’ll have a co-author on all of these that, uh that has worked with this and so sort of pre-existing systems set up for those, uh, those sorts of things. But yeah, we’ve had some interesting things and, and in fact, one of the things that we do, uh, just for such an event, uh, because we schedule people for these, you know, 45 minute sessions and all of that. And we, we pay for the time, which is expensive time on the machine is I’ll hire grad students to just sit there and do homework all day because if somebody freaks out in the machine presses the button says, I don’t, you know, I can’t do this, I’m out. We need to have somebody that is, uh, that is going in there as well. So that does happen from time to time. Is it true that charitable giving activates the same centers of the brain as, uh, eating chocolate or is that the hypothalamus or the, the pleasure centers and eating chocolate? I always see the two, not that often, but through the years, I’ve seen the two analogize charitable giving and eating chocolate, but activates a pleasure charitable giving activates the same pleasure center. Uh, uh, is that, is that true or is that a Wives Tale? Well, you know, it’s true to the extent that, um, charitable giving is enjoyable. Uh, and so we do see activation in, in the brain and it turns out there’s some cool research that shows charitable giving is really enjoyable. But if they’re doing the exact same thing without being able to choose it, so it’s taxation rather than charitable giving, that turns out to be not so much fun. I, I know shocking result, right? Uh But uh uh so it, it, it, it does activate these reward centers. Um So, you know, I, I guess a slightly more accurate way to think of it is that it activates the reward center rather than the uh the, the same reward center, you know, in the sense of, oh, there’s one, there’s one part of the brain that only reacts to chocolate and giving, right? It’s like, no, this is the more generic network that’s used that is uh indicating a uh a reward uh in, in the brain activates the reward center. Is it the hypothalamus or do I have that wrong? Uh So that’s not what we’re seeing in a lot of our more ventral striatum and some of some of the other um uh uh areas that, that engage. But to be honest with you, most of these things like reward, uh they uh occur through a network. And so you’ll actually get activations that simul activations in multiple areas. Uh And uh and so there are different pieces that, that uh that are involved. So there tends to be networks rather than just one location does, does one thing. Although certainly if uh if there’s damage or interference to one location in a network, it can mess up the whole thing. OK. Cool. Thank you. Alright. So refining my uh my thinking through the years. OK. And my my analogizing. All right. So it’s the reward center actively the reward center. Um So, all right, let’s let’s drill down to some of the details of your years of research. Um and others, you cite lots of other people in in some of your, some of your trainings um like details of individuals in details of individuals are better than generic type individuals in in, in storytelling. Yeah, you know, so this is something that comes back to that notion that um we’ve got to create an image and it needs to be an empathetic image. Now, the challenge is that oftentimes the underlying issue we’re working with has real complexity in that issue and that complexity is true, but it’s not motivational. And so whenever there is AAA um a randomly assigned experiment between a simple story involving a single person, um this is known as the uh identifiable victim effect that people are going to give more to that and to the extent that you make that story more complex people will give less. So, so real simple example. Um if uh in one experiment where the total cost to save uh one child or eight Children was exactly the same with the story of one child, 90% of people donated for that. But if you told the story with eight Children, only 58% donated to it, and we kind of see this again and again whenever we make the story more complicated, um and it’s harder to easily visualize, uh then we don’t get that social emotional response. And when we tamp down that social emotional response, then we tend not to get given. Now, this comes up all the time. Whenever people start leading with numbers, you know, this idea of, let’s talk about, you know, the impact in terms of uh the hundreds or the thousands or the tens of thousands. And, you know, from an accounting perspective, we’d love that it sounds like impact, but that is not visiable. And so it turns out that when we lead with numbers, uh uh that is not going to engage the social emotional regions of the brain. It lets the brain know, hey, this is a math problem and we’re going to engage those math error, detecting part of the brains, the the sort of accountant part of the brains. And uh and that is not going to uh trigger the kind of social emotion that that is necessary to begin the philanthropic process. Now, this does not mean don’t ever talk about numbers, it means don’t start with numbers. You’ve got to start with that motivational image of impact. And then for some people, they’ll be interested in numbers. And so after you have kind of that motivation going of the visual liable impact, then you can tamp down their uh their error detection. Uh mathematics side by providing sufficient information or at least access to that information, don’t push it on them because uh many people uh o only need a limit, go too far. If you go too far, then you’re starting to reemphasize the mathematical again. And it’s gonna start to blunt the visualize the visual visual will get exhausting and you know. Right. So, so make it accessible and available on the data because you know, you’ll get an engineer or somebody who just loves diving into that, that’s fine. But don’t ever lead with that. We wanna, you think of it this way? Um The, the that social emotional imagery, that’s the engine in the kind of philanthropy decision making car. Whereas the math and the numbers and the air detection, that’s the brake on the car. So you do for some people have to get them to move their foot off the brake to, to, you know, at some point, right. But the point is if you haven’t started the engine, you spend all day getting that foot off the brake, not gonna go anywhere. People will not and say, oh yes, I understand. But they’re not gonna give, they’re not gonna actually do something. Whereas if you start the engine first that oh this is exciting. I can visualize it. I can see it iii I want to make this happen then it matters whether you get him to take the foot off the brake and even more. So when you add identity to the to the individual that you’re that you’re leading the story with. So, right? Like if you had name age, these those factors are will increase the giving over just, you know, just it’s just Sarah. Exactly. So anytime we can add or even worse, an eight year old, right? So anytime we can add a few and I emphasize few details that helps me create an image of the impact that I’m going to have that’s going to increase the likelihood of uh making the gift. Now, the reason I emphasize few is we find that if you just keep going and adding 89, 10 details, now you’re making it too complex. Now, uh the social emotional reaction tends to go down, it tends to get more exhausting. And so that’s why it’s that notion of you wanna have this clear, simple image that evokes the social emotional response. So what belongs like a name age? Uh I don’t know location, maybe the the town that they’re in if let’s say it’s a disaster relief or something, name age and city is that that’s not going too far. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, in general, for example, a lot of the tests are done with uh you know, let’s say uh you just get the uh description without the name. Adding a name helps if you get the name, but you can’t see the person being able to see the person or an image of the person. Uh that helps. Um So adding a name and picture uh that is generally going to uh going to be uh uh very positive and it’s just like other good storytelling, right? If you start reading a story and it says introducing character number one and then you have like five paragraphs of details on them. Like we don’t want to read that story, right? But if you know, as we learn about the person and during the course of this, the story and what’s happening and the impact of detail here or there helps make it more emotional or easy to visualize. Then that’s helpful for the story. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I have to say how much I admire Jon Bon Jovi. Last week, he was filming a music video on a bridge in Nashville. He saw a woman on the wrong side of the bridge railing, she was hanging on with her arms and over the water and he went up to her with one of his assistants and he, he just kind of got close and the only video we have is a surveillance video. There’s no audio to it. Uh just a surveillance video from the bridge. You see, he gets close enough, he talks with her a little bit. He gets closer and helps her back onto the right side of the railing and he gives her a big hug and they walk off together and he’s congratulated uh later on in uh social channels, you know, he’s congratulated and thanked by the police and it’s just a very heartwarming story AAA lovely story of humanity. Um Actually in the video before he goes up to the woman and starts chatting, you do see some people walking past her and they look, one person looks back but they don’t do anything, they just keep walking. Uh So, you know, a celebrity multi 100 millionaire maintains his humanity goes and helps another human being who’s uh suffering a crisis act obviously and helps her off the bridge literally. So just a very sweet story, Jon Bon Jovi. Thank you. I would say I was almost gonna say congratulations, but just thank you. Thats Tonys take two Kate. Yeah, I didn’t hear of this until you told me and now that I saw like the video and I bet she needed that hug so bad from someone and her like him giving that to her like that he just saved her. He did, he gets to live another day years from now. I don’t know how old she was, how young she was, but she still had a whole life ahead of her and he just saved that life. Heartwarming. We’ve got Buku, but loads more time. Here’s the rest of quantitative fundraising research with Professor Russell James. You also have really interesting research on, on groups if, if it’s, if it’s a group of eight and they seem individual that uh is less motivating, I guess, less social emotion than a group of eight that are cohesive, uh a cohesive group, right? And so this comes back to being able to, to envision a single character. OK. So for example, if I’ve got a story of the uh you know, the one child versus the eight, the eight is harder to visualize too much going on there. The one is uh is uh going to outperform. But if that eight or say five in one of the experiments, it was actually six Children in one of the experiments if they were described as siblings as part of a family, well then that negative effect went away because now I’m kind of dealing with one character in the sense of one group. And we see this in like really weird ways. Uh also like for example, if you’re giving to a butterfly sanctuary and the butterflies appear to uh across the video screen all moving in unison as one unified group versus they do what butterflies always do, which is to just be scattered and bouncing around people give more when it’s that group image. Uh And so this is kind of this consistent result. There’s another study that showed the same thing with gazelles. And you know, the idea is that what is an easier character to empathize with? We can’t really empathize with a dozen or 20 different characters at once. But if that 20 or 50 characters becomes a group, then we say, oh, this is a character I can identify with this group as a car character. And that makes for a better story, meaning that easier to visualize, easier to have empathy for and it generates uh more uh likelihood of giving. What about the the cohesive group versus an individual? The individual story does the individual still do better in terms of giving outcomes than the cohesive group, right? Yeah. So uh so identifiable victim effect to use the technical term always gonna outperform. Um then if it’s a bunch of uh you know, uh recipients, individuals, animals, whatever it is, then that’s gonna perform worse. But if we describe them as a cohesive group with a specific, you know, kind of uh story to that group, then that’s gonna outperform the sort of uh scattered uh you know, the numbers story I I, in other words, we’re, we’re trying to um reduce the negative impact from talking about numbers by just talking about one group. And this is, you know, this especially if it’s a family that’s a cohesive group or um you know a tribe or a uh a a community whatever that makes it. Ok. Now we’re back to the story about one character in essence. Ok. But the one identifiable victim always outperforms. Yeah. In these in these small gift decisions it does. Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about. Alright. Um Are there other layers to the research? I mean I I wanna get to talking about tax deductions versus tax savings but before we get there, uh are there other layers to the research that you wanna, you wanna share with the listeners? You know, I I think uh if I could share just one thing uh in this, I’m borrowing it from actually a script consultant uh uh Michael Ha uh who uh you know, works with not only scriptwriters but even CEO S on what their message is and he always says number one problem very simply their stories are way too complicated and this is the constant challenge in the fundraising space is how do we create a message that is an appropriate representation of the scenario? Uh So we want it to be accurate but complexity kills empathy, it kills giving. And so, so that’s always the the notion of how do we have that story be something that is uh simple, uh straightforward and uh it evokes that uh that emotion. So again, the the reason this is such a big challenge is if you let non fundraising people, administrators get involved with uh writing your fundraising copy it, they’re gonna kill it because they’re gonna make it more complex because they live in a world of complexity and they want to sort of force the donors to they need to understand all of this like no, no no that that’s we can put that, put that in the annual report. Exactly. Exactly. Alright. Alright. Um so let’s talk about including some of the mathematics uh in in terms of talking about tax deductions or tax savings, different types of gifts. Now I know I think we’re moving away from the small dollar gifts, we’re moving to the more structured, you know, planned gift like gift annuities, uh maybe stock, you know, stock gifts as well but but that’s ok, you know we’ve we’ve spent a good amount of time on the small dollar giving decisions. Um let’s go to the the the yeah the I mean the more the more nuanced gifts and and talk about tax tax deductions, tax savings. What what’s the research there? Yeah, so one of the things to keep in mind that oftentimes gets confused especially in the fundraising space is that the tax benefits are not about motivating the gift, they’re about reducing the cost of the gift, making it smarter making it more attractive. So oftentimes fundraisers um uh they they uh get bad information uh and and uh it it sort of has legs because it’s something that they sort of want to believe. Uh, but the bad information is that, uh, tax benefits don’t matter. And since they don’t matter, hey, you don’t have to learn about it. Right. So that’s a lovely message for fundraisers makes your life easier. It’s just not true. And, uh, so let me explain, uh, what I mean by that, it’s not true. Like empirically, uh, we can definitely see nationally that, uh, tax deductions make a difference. And one of the ways statistically we can identify this is that although people’s incomes go up at a dollar at a time, their tax benefits, which are based upon the income bracket, tax bracket, they’re in, don’t go up a dollar at a time. They have these hard break points that different places. So we can separate those two things and we can see where, oh, that tax benefit went way up here and the, the behavior, uh we, we see that as well. Of course, there’s also different uh things that we can compare year over year. Um We can also do this experimentally, uh just asking people about interest in, uh for example, in, in one of our studies, we compared uh asking people about, are you interested in learning about making a gift or are you interested in making a gift of stocks or bonds to charity uh versus are you interested in avoiding uh capital gains tax by making a gift of stocks or bonds to charity? Uh, and about half fold more people were interested in, in the, in the second thing. Uh, so again, it’s important to understand that what sometimes the bad information comes from this approach where you’ll have an organization or a consulting firm says, hey, we want to learn why people give and so they’ll, you know, send out surveys and say, um, here’s different reasons people give, which of them apply to you and some of them will be, you know, because I want to change the world because of my values. That’s how it’s brought up because, you know, the impact I want to make and then one of the options will be uh because I want tax benefits and people don’t choose it. No, nobody chooses that because you look, you feel like you’re a petty person, kind of, what kind of altruist am I if I’m giving for the, for the petty pecuniary reason, right? And this is in fact a very common issue in social science research and something that we’re well aware of and it’s why we don’t test things in that way. You know, if you ask people for their motivations, you’ll get the socially approved motivations. And so that’s why we test them in different ways, you know, randomly assigning them to different descriptions and notice what happens to the impact and, or looking at the uh national data. Uh and uh and all of that, so all to say that it makes an impact. It’s not the motivation but it does lower cost and price matters. I mean, look, economics, 101 price matters and whether you’re talking about smoking cigarettes or, or, uh, making gifts, price matters. It’s not the motivation but it does matter. And, and so it is helpful to, uh, to, uh mention these things. Um, can we, can I reference your graph, uh, that you, you rely on sometimes when you’ve got motivation and cost and as cost goes down and motivation goes up where the two cross that’s a giving decision. So if we can bring the cost down, then maybe a little less motivation is required. Yeah. Oh, you know, and the other way to think of it is, you know, look Tony, you could get me intensely motivated to make a $10 million gift to Texas Tech University to build a new library building. II I don’t have it. So, you know, the cost is too much, right? So you’re gonna have to lower that cost in order for me to participate. Uh This is also true, a kind of a smaller scale where uh we see that that that cost does uh does matter. And so there’s another interesting thing about that, that it’s not just about uh cost mattering, but it’s also about the way that we frame that benefit that is coming in. So for example, and this is real consistent across a lot of uh uh economic experiments and that is that if you describe the benefit as a matching where OK, you’re gonna give a dollar, then this, this other organization is gonna, you know, give 50 cents or a dollar or whatever. That is more motivational than if we describe the economically identical result as a rebate or a refund. In other words, will you give $2 and then they’ll give you a dollar back now to an economist or an accountant? Tho those are identical, right? It, the net cost is the same in both cases, the, the net to the charity is the same in both both cases, but the story is different. So if I can use terms that describe it in a matching framework, which is to say, well, you put this in and then it gets matched and that increases your impact. Well, that’s a very charitable story. And it’s also me not only being philanthropic, but I’m being uh intelligently philanthropic, I’m making an even bigger impact. Whereas if you frame it as a refund or a rebate, well, I’m a little philanthropic, but I’m also getting something out of the deal too. And so I, you know, so it kind of messes it up. Now. You could look at that and say, well, everybody does matching gifts, nobody does refunds on gifts. Like why do we care? Well, we care because the tax system is set up as a refund system, essentially a rebate system because you give and then o on your, your tax return, you know, you get this uh this uh rebate back or, or this tax benefit back. So we can’t change the system, but we can change the language that we use to describe those tax benefits. We’re not going to describe them as, hey, you make a gift and here’s the, you know, here’s the killing you can make on your tax return. This is a, a AAA great benefit to you. We want to describe it more in matching terms that your gift can become more powerful when uh you get the government to kick in their share uh through these kinds of uh of benefits. And so that’s how we use that kind of experimental research. All right, it’s fascinating. Um What about the uh what about simple gifts and wills where there, there isn’t a tax implication uh for, for the vast majority of donors. I mean, the, the annual estate, the estate tax exclusion, not the annual, the estate tax exclusion. Now is what $13.6 million I think per, per person to double for a married couple, double for married. All right. So 99.9%. So, you know, let’s exclude the uh the 1/10 of 1% that is gonna benefit from that. Uh So, so there isn’t a tax implication to making a charitable gift by will Simple charitable bequest. What do you have advice about messaging that? Yeah, so uh, so a couple of different things, uh, first, um, I will, uh, again coming from a Department of Financial Planning, uh, if we want to talk about taxes, what I’m gonna do is start out the conversation by saying, um, that, uh, you know, any of that money in your IRA or 401k, any of that that goes to your family, they’re gonna have to pay income taxes on that when they take it out. And in fact, the new rules, they got to take it out even faster than before, but any of that, that you name to go to our organization, no income taxes on any of that. Now, I mentioned that because as a financial planner, the very first dollars we want to send to charity in the estate is the qualified plan money that is the Ira 401k. Um And so they, so they don’t have estate tax issues in their estate planning, but they do have income tax issues in their estate planning. So, so that can be a way to, to get into that convert. But it is interesting how the gift and a will is fundamentally a different decision than the uh current giving uh, decision. Uh And we see that the, that the behavior itself is different as well. Now, part of the reason that it’s different is that it’s about planning for your own death and most people, um, that’s not their favorite subject. There’s a bit of avoidance that goes on with that. Um So, so there’s a couple of different things that we see here. One is what’s the most powerful way to get in a will. Honestly, it’s to just be top of the mind at the right time when some other life event happens and people are going through that process and by top of the mind, I mean, always just sharing stories about, oh yeah, people like us include gifts and wills uh all the time that uh benefit the organization and reflect their life story. And so it’s just kind of this constant communication because one thing we see from some pretty cool experiments is that uh this charitable giving decision in the will is relatively fluid like uh uh so for example, there was one experiment, 1000 people went through the normal wheel planning process. Uh didn’t have any specific question about a gift to charity. 4.9% of those people included a gift to charity. Another 1000 people had this same questions. But one extra question, would you like to leave anything to charity? 10.3% of those people included a gift to charity. So you more than double it just by being top of the mind, right? And so that is kind of the the the first step. Now there’s a second step involved if you want to get to the really major gifts or the substantial kind of uh uh inherit sentences and that deals with this second stage response to being reminded that they, we’re going to pass away. First stage response is just avoidance. Like I don’t really want to deal with that. If you get past that, the second stage response is technically called the pursuit of symbolic immortality. This is the notion that OK, I’m gonna disappear, but some impact of mine will continue you on after I’m gone. And so if a charity can provide an opportunity for a gift that reflects that person’s life story, then they’ll be included in the plan. If they can provide an opportunity that also provides some permanence or sense of permanence, that’s when those major gifts come in. Uh So, for example, uh whether that’s an endowment uh uh for a particular part of the operations, you know, at the universities, we have professorships and scholarships or in financial planning, private family foundations or uh some of the advice fund substitutes for that. In fact, believe it or not, Tony, if we go back to 2007, when the exemption levels were down to $5 million so we were able to see more of that data. This is a number that’s going to blow your mind in 2007. Um Actually a a uh when we look at the total charitable bequest giving that’s taking place 78% of the dollars for a state’s 5 million and above went to private family foundations. Now, that means only 22% are going to actual public charities. Psychologically, that’s important because we know that the private family foundation is kind of the ultimate expression of symbolic immortality. It’s named for the donor or the donor’s family. It’s legally required to follow his rules or her rules of values forever. And it’s intended to live, you know, forever uh permanently to continue making that impact indefinitely. Uh That uh even after the donor is gone. And so why that is important is to understand that any time we can replicate some piece of that private foundation experience for our donors, that’s what’s going to drive these major life investment gifts. And honestly, that, that’s actually what we see in any uh big giving. Uh not just uh the estate giving is that it will come with instructions, it is the donor’s instructions that make that gift motivational. Uh And so the, the uh study that came out about 18 months ago from case, looking at the largest gifts uh that were received from all different levels of colleges and universities, when it analyzed those largest gifts, only 14% of those gifts included even a single dollar that was unrestricted. You know, the bulk of them went for endowments, some went for buildings. We’ve, it is that sense of symbolic permanence, endowments, buildings. There’s no, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no more permanent than a building. So it’s something that reflects my values and life story that lives on beyond me. And so, I mean, fundraisers would say perpetuity, you, you, you’re the researcher and you’re saying, you know, symbolic permanence, but we would say perpetuity, maybe not in talking to donors, but in trying to uh you know, just internally trying to encourage these types of gifts that, that uh the donors values will live on. It’s interesting, you don’t, you don’t use the word legacy. So yeah, go ahead. It doesn’t matter what I because you’re the researcher. So we tested a bunch of these phrases about what, what works best. So for example, do people want to, are they interested in making a gift in a will? Do they want to read about will planning? Are they interested in making a legacy gift? They don’t want to read about legacy planning. Are they interested in a state gift? They want to read about estate planning. It turns turns out the most attractive term is simply gift in a will. Uh We will planning. Why is that some qualitative research unpacked this a bit. Uh And that is for a lot of people when we start using terms like estate or legacy, they feel like those terms don’t apply to them. They’re a bit too grand, you know. Oh, in a state that’s like for the people on Downton Abbey who go riding their ponies across the vale in the morning, but it doesn’t really apply to me. But oh, a gift and a will. Yeah, everybody needs a will. And so there is that barrier with some of these terms that the legacy is absolutely the right idea, but sometimes that the term itself can be. Um, it, it, it’s not quite as attractive. Ok, I, I can say that my anecdotal experience over 27 years doing planned giving is identical to that. Uh uh I, I’ve turned in my early years, I saw people, you know, they, they just would bristle at the idea of a legacy that, that, that’s for the, the Gates and the Bloombergs. Uh You know, now it’s for the, for the Taylor Swifts and the Elon Musk’s uh right. It’s, I don’t have a legacy, I mean, and we all do have a legacy and you’re making that point, you’re saying the concept is right? But the phrase um so I’ve, yeah. So for, for a long time, I’ve been training that that’s not the best way to talk to people about their legacy when you’re talking to folks of normal modest means, just talking about, you know, longevity and the, the importance of your mission in the community, et cetera, but not their legacy. And to agree with that. And to agree with that, e even more, one of the things we find is that you, you don’t actually have to be selling a permit its structure. You can just use permanent language to describe the impact of your organization. So this was a really cool experiment where uh people were uh uh at the end of the experiment, they had an opportunity to make a gift. Uh And it was always to the same organization in uh poverty Relief Organization. In one case, it was described as uh uh making an immediate impact on uh on the lives of people. And in the other, it was described something along the lines of making a permanent impact that will benefit people in the future. Well, it turns out that for just the normal group that wasn’t reminded of their death wasn’t doing estate planning. It was better to talk about the immediate impact. But for the group that had first been reminded of their own mortality, which of course happens in the estate planning process for that group. Uh That immediate impact message did not work at all. People did not donate to that. Uh They donate very little to that, but they actually donated three times as much if you describe the organization as making lasting improvements that would benefit people in the future. And that just sort of psychologically shows the attraction in these death related contexts of permanence. We found the same thing when we were trying to figure out how do you get somebody to make a second memorial gift in honor of a deceased loved one. You know, the first one happens at the funeral and like, ok, I’m making a gift to the organization, but the organization never gets that second gift. So what we found we tested a bunch of different messages, the most powerful message to increase the likelihood and the size of a second gift is to have an opportunity that if we hit this goal for total giving in honor of this person, the fund becomes a permanent fund. So again, that same notion of anything death related, if we can offer permanence, that is super attractive, interesting that has, that has a lot of implications for on your health care specifically where there are so many gifts in honor uh on hospice, right? Someone, someone dies in a hospice facility. And the family says, you know, gifts to in lieu of flowers, please make gifts to the hospice and people do it, but they do it, they do it once and and you never hear from those donors again. So there’s a way uh it’s not exclusive to health care, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind because there’s a death often in health care and, and uh related related work. So, all right, bringing those folks back for a second time with uh with permanence. Again, there’s that there’s that implied uh I implied uh what did you call it? No. So the pursuit is symbolic immortality, symbolic immortality. That’s right. We will catch up. And in fact, if you want to make it super powerful, then you communicate for the second gift near the anniversary of the person they made uh the anniversary of the passing of the person that they made the gift in honor of because that really elicits that kind of mortality reminder very strongly. And then that causes the attraction to the permanent outcome. Interesting. All right, this is, this is bordering on manipulative because you want to, oh my God, it’s been a year since she died. I can’t believe it’s been a year now. So you’re saying, you know, capitalize on the uh I’ll avoid using the word, I’ll avoid using the word exploit the anniversary. Yeah. So we can think of it in the sense of we’re providing this positive experience. And so when is that positive experience going to be of most interest? Well, it’s when that sense of impermanence is the strongest, that sense of loss, that is the strongest, that’s when this particular uh you know, experience or product that we’re offering, it really hits the spot when it becomes of, of most interest. I know the cynic would say you’re manipulating people, you’re taking advantage. But this is fun. It’s, it’s, I’m not that cynic. I was just, I was musing a little bit. All right. But yeah, really, you know, this is, uh it is quite valuable. Um not only the groundbreaking parts that are new but the uh unwinding of the, the old saws that are told, you know, get perpetuated at conferences. And uh you know, it’s, it’s, it’s detrimental, you know, it’s, I mean, and I i it’s it’s valuable for folks to know there is science. It’s, it’s not all, it’s not all, uh, tales from the past and, and anecdotes. All right. All right. I’d like to leave it there if that’s ok. That sounds great. Is there anything itching? Is there anything that like the tip of your tongue that we got close to? But I didn’t know enough to ask about? No, I appreciate the opportunity to share. It’s always fun to have these conversations. My pleasure. Absolutely. Russell James, chaired professor in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at Texas Tech University. You’ll find Russell on linkedin. Thank you for, for debunking myths for breaking new ground for the quantitative evaluation of uh of, of fundraising and, and, and what, what it takes for successful outcomes. And Tony, let me say I share all my stuff for free. If somebody connects with me on linkedin, I send them links to all my books for free videos, slide sets, academic journal articles, all of that. Um Some of that’s on my website, encourage generosity.com. Uh but share all my stuff for free. It doesn’t do any good. If it sits on the shelf here at the university, it needs to get out to the people that are actually making a difference in the world. All right, encourage generosity.com. That’s me. Thank you very much Russell. Real pleasure. Thank you. Next week, Amy sample ward returns for another discussion on artificial intelligence. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Love that alliteration. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Book Guy and this music is by Scotts dot Heimer. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for September 16, 2024: Board Members Are People Too

 

Judy Levine: Board Members Are People Too

One size fits all rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Judy Levine is a longtime board coach, trainer and consultant, and she led Cause Effective for 17 years. She’s now an independent consultant. This originally aired August 15, 2022.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the embarrassment of pseudo cholesteatoma if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, we have board members are people too. One size fits all. Rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Judy Levine is a longtime board coach trainer and consultant and she led cause effective for 17 years. She is now an independent consultant. This originally aired August 15th, 2022 on Tonys take two tariffs, 101 were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is board members are people too. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio, Judy Levine. She has been executive director of cause effective since 2006 and she has over 30 years experience as a nonprofit management advisor at cause effective since 1993. And as an independent consultant, she has trained and consulted with well over 1000 nonprofits on issues in fund diversification, donor engagement and board and organizational development. Cause effective. Is that cause effective.org Judy? Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you. I’m pleased to be here. Pleasure to have you. Uh I’ve had your colleagues through the years. Uh Greg Cohen and Susan Comfort, who I know Susan is completely retired now and Greg is mostly retired now. They’ve been sort of stepping stones to the top now. We have the executive director. Ok. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Here I am. I’m good. My, my apologies, Susan Comfort is someone else. Susan Gabriel is who used to be at uh at cause effective long time and, and Greg Cohen, you’re concerned about uh equity on boards. Uh But at the same time, you know, we’re trying to maintain standards, but we want, we want a diverse board standards, don’t always apply to all the, all the different cultures we’re inviting in, help me, uh set this up. Well, there’s always a fear of the difference, the difference and uh then also a fear of um acting inappropriately around the different and those two fears, um sometimes stop a board from real honest, um, an accurate reflection on what’s at the table and what’s the most appropriate way to support the organization’s mission. Um And especially, you know, ever since the racial reckoning of 2020 the understanding on nonprofits parts that they needed to reckon with their own d eib diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Um My sense is that, that, that ha that, that reckoning has happened on a staff level at a different, different pace than it’s happened on the board level. And some of that has to do with fundraising and people’s fear that if they rock the boat, they will not have the fundraising return that they have now. Um And I’m here to say two things. One is that there is plenty of uh salaried capacity in this country for people of color, although not as much, uh not as much wealth accumulation, certainly generational wealth accumulation. And that’s a very real factor. Um So to think that you need to diversify your board, that you need to reach into the client base, which may be true, but is not the only way to diversify your board from the uh the group. It has always been ok. Are those the two? That’s, that’s number one. The other is that yes, you may have to rethink the one size fits all package. And that’s been a mantra in our boards is that everybody has to hold the same standard and that we know that everybody is the same standard and we don’t want double standards or triple standards. Um I’m here to re help people rethink the idea of universal standards versus standards that make sense for where that person is coming from and what they can, what they can actually bring to the table if they do their best. Ok, le let’s take the first of those because there’s, there’s an imp, there’s an assumption there that people of color are not gonna be able to meet our fundraising expectation. So we’re gonna have to, we have to reduce our board giving to invite folks of color in. But that, that, that’s, that’s just unfair and unfair and racist. Um You, you’re not, if you’re not finding these folks and you’re not looking hard enough for people who do have the means uh to, to meet your, to meet your, your board expectation or your board fundraising expectation and, or you’re not looking um at the right messengers and, or you’re not understanding why your cause is going to be a deep personal interest just to a person of color. Um All of those factors have to be there. Um You can’t, you don’t ask anybody on the board, you don’t ask somebody on the board uh of an animal shelter. If they have no connection to animals, they don’t care about animals, you gotta look. Uh So in the same way, you have to understand, let’s put it this way. There are, there are legacy charities, um the Urban League. Um You know, it’s very that, that there are huge fundraising machines, there are people of color that um there’s a sense of the ownership that this is ours. Yeah, that may not be in your board as currently constituted. That needs to be opened up. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a holding on to, that’s a holding on to power and structures and not allowing someone who looks different comes from a different background into our, uh, our playground. Well, and it’s more than not allowing, it’s actually, um, it’s more than just a not doing, it’s something that you have to actually do do, um, is to understand, um, how, who makes decisions? Is there an in group and an out group? Is there a biting one’s time, uh, ethos, um, which doesn’t work well when you invite people of color on and then they have to buy their time and they’re the only ones that are biting their time. And yes, it might be historical that everybody else made their time years back but people are gonna lose, lose, you know, they lose patience. So it means that you have to do much more rapid, um, leadership development on boarding and power sharing. Then your board may be used to. Yeah. All right. II, I don’t, I don’t want to derail what, what, uh, what we were intending to talk about, but I just, I think it’s all of the, well, I mean, I think it’s important to point out the, the, the implicit bias that goes along with this, assuming that you’re gonna have to lower your standards basically. Just assuming you got to lower your standards if you left people of color in and I, I think it’s all of a piece and it’s about who is and who was a guest at the table and board members, all board members need to be owners, not guests. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And yes and not treated like guests. All right. All right. So, one of the things you said is that, um, one size fits all is not, uh, is not gonna be the right model. Not necessarily. So what, what’s, what’s an alternative? So if we’ve got a, we’ve got a, uh, $15,000 annual give, get board requirement. Uh, and, and two thirds of it has to, has to be from your personal, well, your, your personal asset. So $10,000 from you and if you want to either give or get the other 5000, you have an option there, but you have to give at least $10,000 a year. One of the things that I talk about that took me, you know, frankly, you know, a while to understand is the role of generational wealth transfer in people’s capacity to have disposable income. So that, um, you know, uh, oftentimes white people come from, they’re, they’re not necessarily coming from money, money, but they’re coming from a position of, um, comfort. Um, and so they’re not necessarily carrying family members, they’re not, they’re not pulling their family out of poverty along with them. Oftentimes certainly black people who are in a um may make the same salary, but they are carrying people in their family. And so you can’t say, oh, this person makes X salary and that person makes X salary. Therefore, they have the same capacity. You only find this out by talking to and listening to someone and I a universal give assumes universal capacity. And yes, we say, ok, just give us a floor and everybody should go over the floor. We all know that people rise to the floor. So the question is, is there a way to help this person get and to change that relationship and or is there what are we, what are, what we are after on the board? Someone who is using their connections for the to the extent for the organization’s behalf and what comes in is relative to those connections and the capacity. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to board members are people too. All right. So we need to, we need to get to know our board members. Uh And, you know, uh I, I understand your point. You know, some folks may very well be supporting, helping other family members, not necessarily out of poverty, but uh I mean, it could be, but not necessarily out of poverty, but they’re, they’re, they’re helping other family members that aren’t doing as well as they are. And, and a lot of that can, a lot of that can very well come from the lack of intergenerational wealth through the generations that, that, uh, folks of color got screwed out of essentially. All right. And I still want to go back to the fact that, you know, this, I don’t want to operate under the assumption that you have to lower standards just to invite folks of color lowering standards onto, onto your, onto your board. Well, lowering fundraising, fundraising standards, but it’s not lowering, it’s broadening. Right. Well, I don’t wanna work, right. I don’t wanna operate on the assumption that you, that you have to lower standards. Right? That’s what I’m trying to defeat that assumption. Yeah. Ok. Ok. Um, all right. So what about the, uh, what about the push back the, well, before we get to the pushback that you might hear from your white board members about how we’ve been doing this for so long and it’s been fine for us. So why can’t it be ok for them before we get to that? What might, what might some of this look like? What, what kinds of, what kinds of, uh, activities can, can folks do if they, if they can’t meet the, they’re not able to meet the, the give get requirement? Are you, are you suggesting rewriting? Do we rewrite the, the expectations for all board members or I’m guessing using that as a starting point? Not an ending point? Ok. So that’s a starting point with each board member um about their, how it relates to them, to their assets, to their relationships, to their circumstances. Um And where, which areas they can go above and beyond it and which areas they need to, to uh pull back from and everybody’s gonna have a different answer to that those equations. The fact is that they are, you know, I’ve been on boards with very mixed income levels and the people who had the higher incomes understood that in order to have a board with mixed demographics, they had to do more weight pulling in the fund gathering. Mhm. That, that was part of the value system was that it was not. If they wanted everybody equal, they would have everybody just like them. If the value system was to have different voices at the table, then the value system had to be that some people did more direct fundraising and direct giving and some people did more outreach and some people did more political convers, you know, conversations et cetera. Ok. I wanna make sure we wanna be having these conversations with uh these individual conversations with potential board members. Right. We’re before we’re in the recruitment process, before we invite someone to be on a board or before we accept someone to be on a board, we want to be investigating these things. Yeah, so that they know what to expect so that they know what the expectations are and we know what we can expect. II I, you know, having done a lot of board recruitment uh with nonprofits through the years, I would say two things. I, I think you have a co before as a recruiting, you say, here’s the kinds of things that board members are expected to do. Um and um you know how these rest with you um and you’ll find out some of them are scary. Some of them are, you know, oh, I couldn’t do that. Some of them are like, oh, this, I could definitely do that. I don’t know that I would pin someone down to an exact um prescription you trying to get their temperature. Yeah. But you know, it’s a courtship process and so people go above and beyond what they thought they could do when they’re really excited by the mission and they’re given the tools they didn’t know they needed. So uh in the courtship process, I would put this menu out and say, you know, how does this look to you? How could you see yourself in this. Um, but I wouldn’t take that as the last word because the board service should be, uh, people should be going into places that are not comfortable for them. And that’s partly the role of the board chair is to, is to live that by example, it’s not just to be good at what they do, but to live by example, I tried this and this was, you know, I thought I was going to throw up, but actually I didn’t throw up. I did really well at it and then I tried that and I did throw up. So I, you know, somebody else will do that one from now on. Um And so I want to be honest with people, but I don’t want to pin them down to something they’re not being ready, ready to be pinned to. OK? But you, you make a good point about board bird service being uh a challenge. You do want, you do want folks, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re leveraging the fact that they love your mission, your work, your values. They stand beside you with that in, in those ways. Um You want them to, to be challenged, you want board service to be meaningful. Yes. And you, you want them to learn something from it because that’s part of what they get out of it. Isn’t that just a happy club? But that they’re gaining a different kind of sense of themselves of what they’re capable of. Interesting, different sense of themselves, what they’re capable of. Yes, challenge. That’s the challenge. That’s the challenge. Go beyond comfort zone. Try this and see whether you throw up or not. Right, kind of. But, I mean, you need to try it with a lot of, um, support and, and with the tools, throw somebody into the lion’s den. All right. What about the, uh, the pushback from white board members that, you know, we’ve, we’ve been, this has always worked well for us. We’ve always had this very rigid, uh, uniform giving everybody’s given the same through these years. What, why, why do we have to now? Wwwww. What, what’s the advantage? Why, why should we change now? Ok. So I need to be polite here. Um, no, you can be firm, you can be firm and realistic. You don’t have to be a lot of counseling of white folks. And I think it’s part of our, um, job as white folks to help other white folks to a different place. All right. So don’t be, don’t be soft on nonprofit radio listeners. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll admonish you don’t do that. Um, it’s 2022. We know stuff now as white folks that we didn’t, that we were able to be blind to for hundreds of years. Sort of the comfort of being blind to. Yes. And, um, we don’t anymore. So there’s a moral obligation to act differently. Our nonprofit is, is, is here for the public. Good. And it, it, we believe that to do that, we need to reflect the full spectrum of voices that is that public and or should be concerned with our mission. That means that we need to have a table that is really welcoming to all those voices that they’re not just here, but they’re actually, we’re gonna share the ownership of this mission. And that does mean that we need to pull apart the stuff that we’re comfortable with. And that’s unspoken because it’s gonna be a mystery to somebody who doesn’t come from our background and it was already part of this. And what’s the advantage to the organization? Let’s make it explicit to doing this. We are living our values in our governance and if we’re not, that’s pretty um compromised. Um So one is congruence with organizational values and what we’re here to try and carry out. Um The second is sort of more robust conversation and decision making because there are different points of view at the table because it’s not people with UN, it’s not an entire crew with the same assumptions. And frankly, you’ll have more interesting conversations and it’ll be a more interesting club to be part of. That’s not why to do it, but it’s a side product. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate going a little different this week. Uh Because a subject I know about is in the news, a lot tariffs uh, I know about it because it’s one of the few things that I remember from my economics degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. So I’ve forgotten a ton of micro and macroeconomics. But, uh, tariffs stayed with me and they’re in the news a lot that, uh, and the media doesn’t seem to explain them fully. So I would like to take a minute to do that. Uh, tariffs, what’s a tariff? A tariff is a tax on goods that the United States imposes on goods that are imported into our country. And of course, you know, other countries impose tariffs on uh goods that are imported into their countries. But, you know, we’re talking about it from our perspective, but our, our government might do this to help an industry, like suppose you wanted to help the wine industry in the United States. You might put a tariff on wines that come from maybe France and Italy and Spain or something like that. Or if we want to help the washing machine industry or the auto industry, we might put tariffs on washing machines that come from maybe China or Mexico or wherever they might come from. Same with cars could be just certain countries or we could say putting a tariff on all of the cars that come into the country from whatever country they come from. We might not pick individual countries. We might just say all the, all the cars that come into the United States are getting an additional tax, a tariff because we want to help our US uh, auto industry. Right. So it’s kind of protecting industries. That’s why they’re used and they’re also sometimes used for punishment. If we’re angry at another country, we might impose a tariff on that country’s goods. What that does is whatever the reason that we impose them, it raises the cost of these goods because there’s an extra tax added to them. And so that hurts the, that hurts the goods that hurts the companies that are bringing the goods into the country, right? So these tariffs are imposed on the companies, right? I mean, we might pick a country but the tariff really is paid by the uh by the, by the company that makes the good and ships it into the, into the United States and who pays the tara. This is the part that I don’t see explained adequately in the media. We pay the tariff, we, the consumers pay the tariff. It’s a tax, it’s added to goods and companies routinely increase the cost of their goods that are imported into the US to reflect the cost uh the increased cost to them because the the tariff is now gonna cost them more money. So they pass that cost on that additional tax on to us, the people who pay to buy the goods, the washing machines or the wine or the car. A tariff is not paid by the foreign government, whether whatever government, Italy Spain France, China, wherever, wherever we’re imposing a tariff on imports from that government is not paying the tariff, we’re paying the tariff and then the money gets paid back to the United States government from the companies that make the goods that are tariff and that are imported into the US. Ok. So the US government does get money, that’s the tariff, but we’re the ones paying it. We pay it to the company that make, made the goods and then they pay the tariff to the United States. So like lots of things, the ultimate cost of these gets passed down to us, the consumers and of course, we have nowhere to pass it on to do. We, we, we can’t pass it on. There’s no passing the buck beyond the consumer. So I just want everybody to understand who is paying tariffs when the United States government gets tariff money. Where’s it coming from? It’s coming from us, the consumers and that to take two K, that was tariff 101 with Professor Tony Martignetti. Uh I don’t know about professor like uh adjunct adjunct lecturer, adjunct lecturer for a half a ha uh for like 20 minutes on tariffs. Maybe I could, maybe I could expand a little bit. So like one third of one lecture, Adjunct lecturer, Tony Martin. I I wish all my lectures were that short in school? That insightful is what you mean? Insightful. Well, you put a lot of information in a short amount of time and I think a lot of professors could learn how to do that as well. That may be. Yeah, I, I, right. I’m not, uh, particularly verbose unless I’m having some fun with, uh, verbosity and, and, uh, word smithing. But, uh, otherwise, yeah, I’m, I think I’m pretty, pretty to the point. Yeah. Well, we’ve got VU, but loads more time, here’s the rest of board members are people too with Judy Levine. All right. So that sort of answers. Uh, dumbing down, you know, we’re not, we’re not, we’re broadening. Yeah, we’re broadening. And there are advantages. What would you say to folks that are the advantages to them personally learning, learning, learning about, uh, uh, learning from folks with different backgrounds? There is an incredible gift to be, had to be able to listen. I’ll say this personally as a white person working in a diverse environment. Um, it is humbling and awe inspiring to be in a place where you can really hear from people who didn’t, who are just like you and have them change your mind and open your mind. That’s what you gain by being in a diverse environment. And not only will you make better decisions for your nonprofit, but you will learn more and be a kinder person who in and of itself understands the way you interact with the rest of the world in a different way folks, if you want to see a diverse team, then, uh, pause the podcast and go to Cause effective.org, go to their team, uh, team or staff page and look at the, look at the pictures of the, the, the, the, the staff at Cause effective.org and then of course, come right back and press play again. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t start browsing, you know, don’t go to amazon.com too. Just look at Cause effective.org and you’ll see uh enormously diverse team there. Um All right. So, you know, that that’s anything more you want to say about wh why this is worth it for the organization or for the people. Um We live in a diverse world. I mean, you know, no matter where you are, um we, we live in a world in a country certainly. And in a world with lots of different kinds of people from lots of different kinds of backgrounds. They bring a lot of different things to the table and that are really interesting to interact with um what better way to interact with them than in the support of a cause you love so that there’s, you know, you’re all putting your, you know, shoulder to the wheel together. Um It, it gives you your life spice to be doing this in a way that’s not ho homogeneous and your organization itself will be stronger. Yeah. In the ways you just, you, you talked about a few minutes ago. Yeah, you you have some ideas about, uh, how to do this. Uh, it, it sort of efficiently shave, shave some, some time off. What? Well, one of the things that, you know, we all know that executive directors, well run boards, executive directors are behind them kind of every step of the way. Um, but in boards that really take off, there’s board to board conversation that the executive director kind of monitors but is not board of every conversation. And so, and when that happens, it’s because there are, there’s not just a board cheerleader, but there are many leaders. So there are leaders of governance or there might be a leader of on boarding or there might be a leader of uh you know, there, there’s different ways to chunk it up so that it, there’s leadership at the uh which leadership leads to ownership. Um And so part of your job as the board liaison, whether uh is to understand what that web of relationships could is and could be and then to do in essence what we call, you know, hr staff development, but with board members, so you ask them to take on certain things and then your job is, is being a coach, not being a doer. We, we’re talking about the, the CEO executive director now. Yes, sir. Yeah. And, and the development director also development and, and working closely with the board chair means it, it’s gonna help enormously to have a AAA culturally sensitive board chair. Yes. Um I send board members, especially white board members to trainings and not just what is de I but to real immersive, you know, one or two day trainings about the, how this culture rests on has rested on um racial injustice. Um I say if you’re going to be part of this organization, you need to have this basic understanding. Um And we need you to do this two day training and, and here’s, you know how to pay for it. Um Because there’s a basic understanding of that, that really shifts in those kinds of very immersive trainings. I’m not talking about a two hour what hr does at a large corporation. Um And, you know, we just said these are our values and you have to really get it. If you’re gonna be part of this team, I would certainly do that with board leadership, but this is a journey and this is part of the, and, and we want the board to be part of this journey and we need the board leadership to start it out. And if the board chair won’t do that, you do a succession plan, it’s not like you kick them out right away. But ultimately, a board is not gonna progress until you have somebody at the head of it for whom this is the air they breathe. Hm. Now you can have a chair and a president, you can have an honorary chair and an honor. You know, there are all kinds of ways to move people to the side that don’t, you know, kick them off this planet. But ultimately, you need to have someone who does, who, who breathes this stuff and who you don’t have to explain why this matters. And then it’s deeper than going to a training to understand what implicit that, that exi implicit bias exists. Right? One of those two hour trainings, ok. Say a little more about joyful board service. What we, what we can aspire to. I, I, you know, I get this so often where board members, the boards that we’re working on, they’re, they’re niggling, they’re going after, you know, do I have, you know, is it 2000 or 3000? What do I have to do? That’s the question as to what, as to, you know, it’s like I’d like to get away with as little as I can. Um And, and it’s an imposition on me as opposed to I will do everything I can. I may not be successful at everything, but I’m gonna give it a shot because this mission matters so much. And if I can help it, God willing, I’m going to and there’s when people are at the table with that attitude, there can be a joy at both delivering yourself and seeing other people deliver and celebrating that. Um And you can build that in, you can build in celebrations, you can build in you know, balloons for somebody when they hit a certain mark. Um, you have to build in not just, um, the actual dollars, but you can build in. They made thank you calls and they never talked to anybody before. You know, there’s all kinds of ways to build in a sense that I can do be part of the fundraising process, which then builds more courage for the next step. But it doesn’t happen unless you think about it celebrating small successes. That’s, that’s a terrific idea. Yeah. And you wanna build in this, this sense of, for, for every board member so that they are looking for ways to celebrate each other. Mm. So it doesn’t just come from you the CEO, it doesn’t just come from the board chair but that they are trying to help each other up that ladder. You like to see board members uh, socializing outside. I mean, I, I can presume your answer but I want you to say it socializing outside, outside the, the form the board meetings. Iii I do but I also am realistic. Um, I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be personal friends. In fact, I’ve been on boards with people who are personal friends and it’s tough. Um, because then they kind of talk about things outside and there is like, becomes factions. You certainly don’t want, um, relatives on the same board that I’ll tell you right now. Um, not just married but brother and sister replaying the, you know, the childhood, you know, I’ve seen it all I can see in your face and it sounds like you’ve been there. Yes. Um, the b, I don’t, I think that people have to like each other. Yeah. And I think you need to have some social places. You know, it’s been hard, don’t they need to get to know each other outside the board? Um, but that’s different than, um, going outside their board service. I mean, maybe not, maybe not necessarily to me that’s part of their board service. Ok. Um, that part of their board service is, understand, you know, it’s team building and the organization can facilitate that. Right? I mean, can we have, can we host drinks or dinner after a meeting? Yeah. Um, it’s, that’s one of the things that’s been much harder in zoom. Um, my part, you know, cause back of itself as a nonprofit and they had a board dinner once a year, but they should have at my house and one year I had the flu and they had it at my house anyway. And I just went to bed and they, they stayed up till like midnight and cleaned up after themselves and left, um, that we miss. So we have a game night now, once a, once a year on Zoom because it’s once a year everybody comes and they do all kinds of like 322 and a lie and all kinds of stuff, but it’s not quite the same. Um, we did have an outdoor picnic this summer and about half the board came. Um, yeah, it’s hard, you know, that’s the hard thing is now getting people out of their shell because we’re all used to now doing everything by Zoom or going to work and coming home and, you know, scurrying home. What Zoom has that? I haven’t quite figured out is that time before meetings, that time in the middle of meetings, you know, those the times of the after meetings, those kinds of times when people would talk to each other about their kids, right? Building that in um what we’ve done some of this in the, you have to do it in the middle of the meeting because people run out at the end of the meeting and they won’t come early no matter, they say, you know, two board members will come early, right? Um But if you break into smaller groups in the middle of the meeting, even if it’s only dies or triads and give them something to discuss. Um You know, one of my provocative questions is how does your birth order affect? Um the way you take on leadership, which gets into all kinds of personal background, it assumes strength and it gets people talking to each other. So having a section like that in the middle of each board meeting can help people to start to bond and then obviously changing the, you know, changing the groups up. Yeah, and making that group uh a hint, make those small groupings deliberate. Don’t just leave it to the Zoom Universe to deliver the development. Yeah, you can either make them random or you can assign people to be with, with other, with other people and the assigning is, is much better. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that in some of my trainings. Um uh What else, what else you wanna touch on around this, uh this equity and equity in boards and, and inviting folks in and joyful board service. Um Welcoming notion of enlightened self interest, which I think uh it has to do with understanding the uh the meaning of your cause to people who are not directly affected by it. So, you know, when we’re teaching fundraising, we’ll say um OK, you don’t fundraise just for the people who have direct interest to your cause because that’s your clients. And if you could raise your money from them, that would be earned income and you wouldn’t be a nonprofit, but you can’t raise money from people who have no connection to your cause because it doesn’t make sense to them. Why are they gonna lie on it? And that’s the same thing with board members. You can’t ask board members to fundraise if you, they don’t feel connection to cause and, or to audiences that don’t feel connection, but you have to find the enlightened self interest, which is myself as a member of the city, this neighborhood, this grouping that I care about Children, having a head start. That’s why you’ll often find like a mom’s group in Westchester suburb in New York that’s fairly wealthy. Most of it um will take on fundraising for a program in the quote unquote inner city because they understand the meaning of this work for Children even though it’s not their Children. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because that’s where the ownership comes in the sense that it’s on to. It’s up to me to make a difference for this and that this matters to me even though it’s not my personal experience. And I think that’s group conversations, it’s conversation in the courtship process and then it’s group conversations at the board level to keep that fresh. And it has to be deliberate because it’s the board service devolves into finance monitoring. Oh, yeah, if it’s right, if it’s allowed to discussions about why the mission matters to whom does the mission matter? Beyond just the direct recipients are very inspiring and they give your board members personal uh you know, nurturing and the tools to go out to their contacts with different kinds of language. And you will often find, you know, I’m looking for areas in which different people can be experts, not just the people who have a lot of board experience or who are, you know, long time experienced fundraisers, but that people with different points of view can have the position of being an expert. Hm. And this is where you will find points of view that your classic cabal has not thought of conversations. Yes, I love how you pause and, and think through and then make your next point. Uh, I’ve just been talking to you for, uh, 40 minutes, whatever, 35 minutes I, I’ve learned. All right. Give her a couple, give her a couple of beats because uh she’s got, she may very well have more to say, I love you the way you reflect. I, uh I, I don’t have that gift. I tend to be more, more impulsive and II, I spew everything out in one shot. Well, that’s why you’re on the radio and I’m not interesting to, um, you know, I, I wanna, having served on a board, you’ve been on multiple boards. Not that many because I take it really seriously. Yeah, but it’s been more than one. Yeah. Um, and then being a, an executive director myself and, um, being a consultant of board gives me humility about, about the possibility of board service. Um And I feel like, uh people who are only on staff have expectations, uh and anger when board members don’t meet their expectations. Whereas I’m trying to say it’s human nature to triage the kind of people who will agree to be on a board are often fully committed. I don’t wanna say over committed because you commit to what you commit to and it makes sense for them to do what they have to do and not more because there’s always something else calling on their time, let alone, you know, the idea that they might wanna play golf or read a book. If you do that, if you understand it, that that’s rational, human behavior, then you don’t get as angry at people, you manage them that everyone’s gonna triage that they’re gonna, they’re gonna assess their priorities and they’re gonna, and they’re gonna act accordingly and it’s up to you to have a dialogue about that. It’s not that you, you know, there’s something wrong with letting people slide or something, but it’s um it’s understanding and helping them understand how to fit in with all the different priorities of their life, right? And where does this mission fit in, in your, among your priorities? Right. You know, it’s why I, I um when, when I, when groups do uh board member, um the contracts or whatever they call them, um I suggest that there actually be calendars in there so that you, somebody can say to you, I can’t do that in June because my twins are graduating high school. In which case we say, you know what, we’re gonna take you off of that and we’re gonna take you off of me so that you can have a very because they’re not gonna do it anyway. Yeah. And then they just stop returning your phone or they don’t respond to emails. So having respect for all the different po pos rationally on board members, time and life and energy. Yeah. And then helping them understand how to fit this in, in a way that makes sense. All right, let’s uh give you, I wanna give you a chance to uh talk about cost effective because it is a nonprofit. It’s a, it’s a consultancy for nonprofits. They’re advisors, consultants. What, what uh what, what’s the breadth of the work? And how do, how do you work with, with your client nonprofits? Well, I, you know, I’d say we are 40 this year, we are about to celebrate our 40th anniversary. Congratulations for decades. Um And I’d say that the common theme throughout has been changing how organizations are resourced, um changing the balance of money and therefore power in the sector. Um And it’s both increasing it and increasing it so that it’s not just that the most well resourced nonprofits get more resources but that it’s nonprofits that are located in disenfranchised communities and the people who work there and um uh and volunteer there are able to raise the money, they need to further those causes um And to govern themselves because to me, governance is integra apart, it’s more than just raising money. But if you don’t have AAA governance structure that works, you’re not gonna have a fundraising structure that works on the voluntary level. Um and that’s where you get to organizations where the staff fundraises, but the board doesn’t and the volunteers don’t. Um So we have, we work, we do a lot of cohort work where we’re looking at the development directors of color and we have um working with them over a six month period of time, um in a particular program that we have to help them really address um the barriers to their being, being successful and not only to talk about it but to actually address it. Um We, so we do a lot of individual coping with, with, with um executive directors who may have come up through fundraising and, but, you know, you need to do it if they need it. It is not part of the fundraising structure. The organization is only gonna get so far. Um, and board members, a lot of board consulting, um especially now with boards that know they need to diversify and don’t really like, they know they need the composition, but they don’t and they don’t necessarily know that they need to act differently to have different people in different seats. Um We do everything from, you know, eight hour retreats on Zoom, maybe six hours uh to year long coaching engagements to what we call deep dive um transformation, which is a lot of times people come to us and say, well, my board won’t fundraise and we get in there and we start talking to board members and we find out there’s all kinds of reasons. It’s not just that they don’t know how to ask for money, but it’s that there’s not financial transparency, there’s not, um, a real partnership between staff and the board. Um, there’s not a peer to peer accountability on the board. Um, there’s a, in a group of three board members who do everything and everybody else slides. Um, you know, there’s all kinds of reasons that we will help. We will actually go in and help address. We say that that’s a symptom. My board won’t fundraise and there are, you know, many, many causes of that and we will, we, one of the things we’re known for is that we will go in and address the cause. We’re not just gonna do the tactics. Um, we also do a lot of fundraising consulting for groups that, um, have had a lot of government support or a lot of foundation support and know they need to diversify and they don’t necessarily have, you know, a Lincoln center board. Um, but it is very possible that people around the country or world will care about what they do and will back it up and want to make it happen if they, you know, for one of the things they say is that in fundraising, the one thing that’s, that’s um limited is time. There’s only 24 hours and maybe one second or maybe now two seconds in the day. And so you need to make choices that are smart with how you spend your fundraising time, money is not the limiting factor, but time is. And so we’ll help groups really understand what are the likely avenues and how to structure the resources they have to reach those days. Get longer. What was one or two seconds? It actually they did make a ruling and there’s like they added a second or something. Oh, I didn’t hear about that. I, well, I’ve been squandering my, my two seconds a day. For. How long have we had this? How long have we had these longer days? Go look it up. Six months. Yeah, I don’t know how many seconds that is. I can’t do the math that fast. No, but six months is 100 and 80 days. Times two seconds. 360 seconds. It’s a good six minutes. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I squandered. All right, I’m gonna try to get it back right now by cutting you off. No, no. All right. Thank you for explaining. And, uh, thanks for a frank conversation. Yeah, we don’t, you know, for our, for nonprofit radio, uh, white listeners. Uh, we’re not, we’re not, uh, we’re not going easy and you have to have, you have to have honest conversations. So, thank you. Yeah, I, I think this has been some of, you know, I’ve been in this field for 30 years and this has been some of the most rewarding and deep work. Um, it’s not surface, it really addresses, you know, I had to go back to everything I assumed from my childhood on and understand that there’s, there are different realities and that, um, it’s not that I can go back and change it, but I can change my behavior going forward so that I further a different kind of future. Mm. She’s Judy Levine and she’s the executive director of cause effective. Uh you should have already been at their website because you would have seen their diverse team when we uh when I suggested take a pause and then you came back. But if you haven’t been there or if you don’t remember where it is, it’s at. Cause effective.org and Judy Levine. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. It’s great to have this kind of conversation. Pleasure. Next week, Professor Russell James returns with the right words and phrases for fundraising. He got sick and couldn’t record for this show. I know you believe that you believe the guy he comes up with, he comes up with uh I lost my voice. No, we’ll, we’ll have them next week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. I love that alliteration. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. You’re with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.