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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of callous isto pile itis if you filled me up with the idea that you missed today’s show you’re online auctions and raffles, john kazarian has advice to improve your auctions and raffles or help you decide of starting them would boost your fund-raising also, what do millennials expect from you? John is ceo of excel events and it takes more than a hashtag how do you connect people to your movement? How do you build the capacity of your network to create the change you want in the world? Marty currents is founder and president of net centric campaigns, and jackie mahendra is founding director of the u s open open us network. This is from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference tony’s take two twitter responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com also by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits now with apple pay for mobile donations. Crowdster dot com very pleased to welcome, john kazarian to the show. He is ceo of excel events. They do online auctions and raffles to help non-profits raise more money. They’re at x l a c c e l events dot com. John kazarian. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. Pleasure. Have you let’s let’s first distinguish between a raffle and an auction? If we can start there? Yeah, definitely. So the general difference between the two is that with a raffle, people are essentially putting tickets into a fish bowl. They’re buying tickets and placing them for the number of items that they want to. When it comes to an auction, there’s a bidding mechanism so there’s a starting bid him out, and then each subsequent person is placing a higher bid for that item until the event ends and the highest bidder become the winner. Okay, people may very well understand that that was largely for me to get straight from for me, because i don’t deal with these that often. I’ve certainly been to them, but thank you for making it a very simple explanation. Now we could be talking about doing this strictly online, or people are still doing physical events or we could mix it up. Yeah, exactly. And what we’re actually seeing is ah, hybrid approach, where people are going to start the process online, get all the items out there, get people excited about it and a lot of people to start bidding then. But then, as our physical than actually begins, it will seamlessly transition into that. Ah, interesting. All right, so are you seeing fewer physical events or or no? Mohr maura tending toward the hybrid? You’re saying we’re seeing more tending towards the hybrid, specifically in millennial space, we’re seeing mohr physical events people like to get together. Oh, interesting. Okay, i’m not sure that that’s ah, intuitively what people would, what nonmilitary lt’s would first think that millennials want. I think the stereotype would be that they just want to do it all online, and and they don’t want to get together e i can see why they would think that but interestingly tends not to be the case. There’s actually, some studies out there talking about just that how many als actually prefer to spend their money on buy-in experience is over buying material goods, okay, okay, and including alright, so including not just experiences for themselves, but they’re actually enjoying the the company of others. Exactly. Okay. Not not to make you a spokesman for i don’t know how many tens of million i don’t know. Seventy, eighty million millennials. I don’t really know how many there are, do you? Do you know what the rough estimate is? I’m not sure what the count. Okay, okay, i know, but i’m not trying to make you a spokesperson spokesman for the entire generation either. But you happen to be the one i’m talking to solve this as these questions car, you’re getting them from a boomer. Okay, so you said, and we’re gonna spend a lot more time to about what? What millennials are specifically looking for around auctions and raffles, but experiences they like so that’s one of the categories of gifts that auction items that do well, auction and raffle items and do well, yeah, i mean within that, too, that we see doing the best our travel and something like going to a sports game or a play hard to find tickets, anything on those lives. But the general concept of going to an experience tends to be that of some sort of physical good that well, as you said, our generation will buy that online. Okay. Okay. You got any good? Uh, ones that stick out in your mind and you? Good experiences that you can recall. You’ve seen clients, uh, offering way. Host the annual fundraiser here in boston. And we do a raffle on. Actually, the reason that we do a raffle over an auction is because when you do have a younger generation that has less discretionary money, everyone can afford twenty dollars, with the raffle tickets. But not everyone can afford two hundred three hundred dollars for a silent auction, right? Very thoughtful. Yeah. And what we try to do is have a grand prize. So this year, we actually worked with ah, company that does five private flight from boston to new york. And we found another company that gave us a hotel room. And we made that our grand prize it’s an experience that you don’t normally get, uh, just did tremendously well, a private flight in one of those accident prone small jets. You mean exactly. No, i would love to do that. We’ll take this too seriously. Okay. John, please. Um so yeah, i mean a private. Charter jet like that from new york to boston. That could easily be i know. Is that a fifteen hundred a ride? If you had to pay market price, i don’t know twice that twice. Three thousand dollar mark. It was a trip for two. So it’s pretty cool package. Yeah, no kidding. How much did that go for the in the auction? Well, so it was a raffle. So that was the right? Oh, yes, okaying. About a third of all the raffle tickets that that were submitted and way had about four hundred fifty people buy raffle tickets. Okay. Okay. How much do you are a raffle? Tickets go for these days? What is it, it’s? Still a dollar each? How does that work? I think it depends a lot on the price of the items, but we’re we’re a big fan of hearing the pricing and giving people an incentive to buy more tickets. Yeah, so give us give us an example. So for that that we did one ticket for five bucks, three for ten and so on. And if you bought one hundred buck sport, the tickets came down to two dollars a ticket and and that’s what we’re pushing people to dio way ended up bringing in about fifteen grand justin raffle tickets? Yeah, outstanding. Okay, well, you know what you’re doing there? Um, okay. Tearing makes a lot of sense. Take what? Let’s, let’s, take a break. We’ll go out a little early for a break and when we come back, you know, i’ll keep talking about different types of items and and how to collect them and what to look for as you’re considering different sites. No, stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. John kazarian is with me, ceo of excel events, excel events, dot com. John, you got any other examples of cool experiences that you can share all of these stories? Yeah, so we worked with a number of different companies. Help actually procure the items and some of the other cool things that we’ve seen. Our cruises. We saw a hunting trip in africa, which is pretty interesting. And, you know, there’s there’s, a lot of easy ways to get your hands on those those different trips and things like that from these no risk providers, where they’ll give you the item to use, and you might have to pay some percentage of that. But you don’t have to pay that up front. You only have to pay it if the eye themselves for more than that. So it’s no risk to the organization. Oh, interesting. Okay, okay. All right, well, let’s, let’s, go there. Since you mentioned ways of movinto ways of getting the the items, how do you find these providers like you just described is no risk providers, there’s a number of them you can google around and find them pretty easily just providers of awful auction and raffle items. Is it that simple? Yep. Ok, usually no risk assignment items. If you google that, you’ll find plenty of them. There are usually when we work with thank you. Heritage heritage. Okay, no risk. Insigne mint items. Interesting. Um, so they put up the item and, uh, you ah, you offered. And if you don’t make enough to pay them, then then the item just goes back to them. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you needed that. Okay, you’re making this a lot easier than that. I think a lot of people realise certainly than i do. I’m used to the, you know, knocking on doors from the neighborhood, the local cos we’re not. We’re not doing that. We’re not doing that anymore. Way still are that’s a big part of okay? Yeah. You know, when it comes to fund-raising there’s, a lot of those local companies that want to get involved, but they just don’t have the cash to do it. But what they can do is donate in-kind ida and through an auction or through a raffle, you can monetize that item and makes the money the organization while still helping them get exposure, which is what they’re looking for. Okay, so local restaurants for gift certificates, things like that, okay, any other? Yeah, some other examples of ah, local local company ideas that we might not think of. So the big ones that we see our boutique clothing stores and, um, fitness especially, you know, with millennials there so into these boteach fitness classes, charlie that’s, what we’re seeing and and the cost is loved to love to donate like a block of crosses and get people in the door, okay? You mean, like spin classes? Something like that? Yup. Spin, boxing, anything like that? Okay. All right, so don’t don’t ignore the local companies. Even while you might be going to one of the no risk providers. I mean, you can keep it local and you can also be global. Yeah, and it allows you to spread out the price point of the items you have to, okay, yeah, for sure. Um, do you let’s say, you mean, you always start with a minimum bid for auction items, right? I mean, you always specify a minimum bid, right? Yeah, we always specify minimum bid, and then we also expect buy-in bid increment. Each bit has to be at least twenty dollars, more than the last yes, by item, okay, right. Or for more expensive items that might be a one hundred one hundred fifty dollars minimum increment. Okay, okay, um, all right, so that’s cool. Don’t ignore the local companies. Any other advice on gathering items? I think if you, you know, if you take both of those approaches, you’re going to be in a great spot on dh. Then, once you have the items, promoting those items is a big part of it. Actually, you know that extended ties into getting the items, and you can explain to these local companies the publicity they’re going to get from those items, going to make them more inclined to get involved. In-kind of compete against the other local companies that are donating. So if you have ah, right, so, oh, excellent. So if you’re getting companies from our donations from local companies, they’re going to be on the on the site, along with the bigger prizes, right? Yeah, okay, what back to their okay link, right, link back to their company website. What else can we offer in promotion? Uh, those big points of it. We also do banners at our events in different things like that to get the word out on. Then just the ability to share those items on social media goes a long way. You can even have the company that’s donating the item repost your auction website a raffle website on their own social media page. Good publicity for that man. For you. Yes. Okay. So, cross promotion. All right, so i’m trying to help listeners, you know, put together ah, pitch basically too. Two two potential donors of these in-kind in-kind gift. People understand what goes into making this ask. Okay, yeah, yeah, i mean, there’s, a lot of pizzazz to it. And a lot of it overlaps with the same ask that you would be doing if it was a cash donation. It’s telling your story, explaining your cause. Your event too. If there’s going to be in a van. But then also making sure that is that the donor understands the benefits that they’re going to get by getting involved. Okay, yeah, indeed. And, of course, if there’s been a history, if this is a on annual event you can share. What the what the past has been like, how many people have come, how many hits the respective sites have gotten? How many auction bids have been on comparable items? Things like that, right? That’s all huge, and we put together a sponsorship package for our events when we do that asking, communicate all that information goes a long way. Ok, did i did i mention everything that you should be sharing? I mean, you’re in this you’re in this business, anything you want to add? Yeah, i mean, ah, well, when it comes to the data, certainly website hits are important, unique users and just general hit uh, you can see the same information if you’re selling tickets on a vent, right, or just the publicity that your facebook of that might get or if you were able to get any pr news articles written about you sharing that’s also a great way to spread the word are these are these events? Are you typically just auction and raffle nights? Or are they? The auction and raffle is part of some larger gala dinner dance type thing it’s the ladder thie event itself that’s what’s bringing people in the door ok, you’re using the the event or inside the auction of the raffle to actually make more money that night? Because otherwise, most of money has been made from the sponsorships for from the ticket sales. This is a way to actually make money that night and it’s a nice way to get people involved and keep them involved throughout the night. It creates excitement to me as the auction items are are going hyre and the people getting notified about the bid that that outbid them and you know they’ve got to get the next bit in me, and that creates a buzz, right? Absolutely the way we do it with our platform is there’s ah paige, it’ll go up on a monitor, a projector, and it has a countdown time so people know how much time they have left to submit more bids or toe by more raffle tickets, and they can see which items are have most raffle tickets or which items have the highest bid, and they compete in real time and the other part of it is when it comes to outbidding we do it through text message so soon as you get out. Bid for an item. You can see that on your phone. Submit a new bid, and it creates a little bidding wars that drive the prices up right. And meanwhile, this war is projected on a screen that everybody’s watching, right? Yeah. And what? That screen is cycling through the different items. Is that how it looks? Yes. It’s cycling through the different items that showing how much money has been raised that night, how much time is left? Ok. And meanwhile, like the host of the evening is reminding you, there’s just two and a half minutes left to get your bid in, right? I mean, we’re building us all up together. Yeah, we suggest for the events that have a p a system that there that get on the mic a couple times at night or have the deejay do it and keep encouraging people. Teo continue bidding. Yeah. Okay. I could see how that would be very exciting. That’s cool. All right. And also reminding people that all the money that they’re bidding is going to the cause and just keeping that focus. Okay? Absolutely. And then i imagine when people win these bidding wars there’s like big eruptions of applause, right? Yeah, a lot of fun. So you’re out of one of the events with our platform. You’ll see people pulling out their phone at everyone’s phone goes off at the same time and looking, and then you just see little groups of circle or around everyone who won tonight and a lot of fun to watch. Okay, yeah, cool. Now, if you are looking at providers of this type of functionality, what are what are some of the things that you want? Oh, compare across platforms. The first question is whether or not you want a full fee, full service platform that’s going to bring people to your event and run the whole thing for you that usually starts in a couple thousand dollars range. Or if you want to provider who’s got to do more of a do-it-yourself model. So they’re giving you the technology. But you’re loading your own items in and people are using their own devices. That of bringing hardware and those events can start way started forty nine dollars in the back. So it’s a pretty big, pretty big difference in the price point. Yeah, okay. That’s a very broad. Range and then up the higher end. There are companies that will actually come on site and help you run the event. Yeah, there’s a handful of those companies out there and some of them even bring their own hardware to your event. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Very good. Um, now, focusing now, this part on millennials, i expect a very seamless and easy method of payment, right? Yeah, exactly. And millennials? I mean, they have their device, their iphone there droid in their pocket. They’re not expecting to carry around another device to payment all night. And they’ve already got their apple pay and our credit cards stored on their phone. So they’re expecting to get a lake, indicate about it and be done with it. Okay, no, i see that. What about people who are at these events and or participating beforehand? Like you described on dh? They’re older is there. Is there a swipe method available at the event or or now? Yeah, so they can. They can go to what we call him that volunteer. So with our system will set it up so that you know, thiss person or a handful of people who are volunteers at your event, walking around an ipad or even their own phone and they can submit bids on behalf of others. Okay, okay. So can handle payment for that. Well, okay, because there are some people you know, you hear this that are still risk averse about making payments online. Inevitably? Yeah. That’s. I mean, it’s naturally changing over time, but it’s certainly silicates that. Okay? Yes, but they’re not dying off that fast it give it. Give us a break. I’m not among that crowd, but i hear it. Ah, okay, no sharing you mentioned. You mentioned important to sharing, but let’s say more about that. If you’re if you’re comparing across platforms. Yeah, i mean, it goes backto for every aspect of it, really being able to promote individual items or your events auction or raffle page online is huge on dh. The nice thing about being able to share individual items is that if i’m one of the event attendees or from one of your donors and i’m flipping through and i see this trip to go hunting in africa to use that example again. And i have a friend who i know would be interested in. That with the click of a button, i can post it to their facebook wall. So the larger your audience toe well, spread your word personalized. Yeah, without, without having to know the larger scheme of what the event is and what the charity isn’t. All just just sharing that individual item. Yeah, huge. Okay, okay, as well as opera, obviously, the opportunity to bring bring friends to the to the event or two, you know, to the larger cause. Yeah, and then you get a piece of that is it allows people who aren’t able to actually attend the event to stay involved, participate to give back to the cause. They can continue to bid online orbit from their phone, even if they’re not at the back, or even if they leave early. Yes, ok, right, so okay, well, makes a lot of sense very good, very good. What else should we be comparing across platforms? So another part of it is whether or not they have a nap. Now, i know i already have way too many app on my phone. I bet you do too, and i don’t want to download another app that night. Use up my deed. Uh uh, the ability to have ah, mobley optimized web page and to be able to use text message something that, no matter what generation you’re in you’re familiar with goes a long life. I’m keeping the simple. Okay. Okay. Very good. Um, let’s see? All right. Uh, support support is obviously going to be important. Yeah, we all know that when it comes to pulling off your events, the last couples of ours are stressful, that’s inevitable. Having someone that you can call, no matter what time it is, i mean that’s very important. It’s it’s. Just a a little bit of a relief to you now, it’s. Not necessarily the case that you know, it’s not because something’s broken it’s just you’re gonna have a lot of questions. It happened having someone there is very helpful. Okay? And of course, these events are nights and weekends too. So you want you want that? Degree of support. Yeah, yeah. For us, we see about eighty percent of our events on thursday through saturday night. Yeah, all right. So there needs to be support those those kinds of ours. Okay, let’s, talk about, you know, behind the behind the scenes, the the dashboards and that you need for the for the management of this. Yeah, definitely. So it starts with your event set up having an easy to use dash for that allows you to upload all of your items being ableto add pictures, being able to generate sheets that display the items. So even with with an online auction or ah, mobile auction, we still encourage our event host to put together thes pieces of paper to have a picture of the item in the description and put them out on a table somewhere for everyone to say and our system will generate those for you. So that’s one helpful piece. Another aspect is setting up your payment processing there’s a lot of great payment processing options out. Their price point for them is pretty similar across the board now, so that, uh, well, easy set up their helps to and then when it comes to running the event you want to know. Who’s paid once the winners have been notified. And if you could see a doctor for that shows you who’s paid you know who to give the items, too? So they could get out of there. You can keep the lines. Sure. You know, hospice swiping credit cards at the end of the night? Yeah, on dh swiping credit cards at the beginning of the night. To that. People don’t like that line. Now. Now, i mean everyone’s excited to get into the van often to get a drink. And no one wants to wait twenty percent decline to do that. Right? Okay. Anything else that you should be looking at? Technology wise, support wise and his mother. Yeah. There’s. Other features that you see in there do you have a donation page or no donation? But and on the on your online auction, paige, how customizable it is. You want to be able to brandon and put your logo on there just to keep all of your messaging consistent. And then also it’s nice to be able to in bed that that bidding page in your own website? Oh, yes. Okay, all right. So now, on your on your dot org’s site, there’s a. Ll the auction items and raffle items were there that what you’re talking about? Yeah, exactly. I mean, your people know where to go, so no reason to send them in a couple different directions. Okay, excellent. Yes, right. Zumba, everyone place, um, is anything more you want to add about what millennials are expecting? That we didn’t. We didn’t touch on. I think we hit on the big pieces of any mobile mobile payments. Definitely, i won’t. The important part, you know, the other thing is just that in the morning. All generation people are so connected today, even if you’re unable to attend an event or didn’t even know about it. And then you’re gonna have friends who are now chatting. You might google att that night, even if you’re not there, you might come across that auction page and see that it ended an hour and realize that you can still participate in and well, the organization benefits benefits from that. You okay? John? Yeah. Okay, so it sounds like a minor earthquake, but you’re okay, alright, i get it. Okay. No headlines coming out of boston. All right. Um okay. We have just like, a minute or so left. What thoughts you want to leave people with that we haven’t covered. Yeah, i think i go out there and collect those items. Check out some of the options available online. If you’re struggling to find items. Uh, be sure to keep sharing the story in the mission that you’re going after when it comes to collecting items and also emphasize the web presence and the in person presence that the donors are going to be getting by contributing to your auction or apple and then make it easy for everyone. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Okay, you make it all break it all down very simply. Thank you very much, john. Thank you. My pleasure. John kazarian, ceo of excel events coming up it takes more than a hashtag first pursuant and crowdster pursuant has online tools to help you manage your fund-raising one of them is prospector using your existing data you’ve already got it to find your most upgradeable, most likely donors, tio dahna make hyre gift they’re going, they’re going to be the most likely to increase their giving from the fifty dollars level to the thousand dollar level the thousand dollars to the five thousand dollar level. These are the people you want to focus on prospector will help you identify who they are that focuses your time on the right people and obviously then helps you raise more money. It’s, the prospector tool at pursuant dot com over a crowdster you know them for simple peer-to-peer fund-raising sites that are easy to set up. They’re elegant looking sites easy for youto managed the campaign easy for your donors to navigate and bring their friends too easy for everyone. Good looking everyone ends up impressed and they have the apple pay. John was just talking about catering the millennials apple pay feature crowdster dot com now tony’s take two twitter twitter is a great way to get me if you want to engage with the show sometimes there are people live tweeting the show happens occasionally using the hashtag non-profit radio but more often it’s people getting me in between, you know, just i’m at tony martignetti ah, i’m pretty active. There are days when i spend a lot of time, days when some days when i spend less time, but i’m always looking at the twitter stream either live or looking back a couple hours or maybe even a half a day, but i’m paying attention to it, so if you want to feed back at all about non-profit radio, you want to get me for some reason, i mean scharpnick can use email tony attorney martignetti dot com but twitter is also a very easy way. Teo catch me and i’m spending a lot of time there. That’s tony’s take two live listen, love i believe i neglected live listen love last week and i don’t know why you didn’t berate me. You could have used twitter at tony martignetti to break me or maybe you did, because we’re pre recorded. Uh, how could i’ve forgotten live listener love podcast pleasantries and affiliate affections last week? I don’t know how that happened live listeners, you know how you who you are, you know you’re there, we know the places you are coming from, you know where you’re coming from because you know where you’re sitting and that’s your there so live listen love to you at that place each of you podcast pleasantries for over ten thousand listeners doing whatever it is you do while you listen to the show on whatever device and at whatever time very grateful for our podcast listeners pleasantries to you on our am and fm affiliate stations. Listeners across the country so glad to have you affections, affections to our many affiliate listeners in our many affiliate am and fm station duitz here are marty kearns and jackie mahindra from and t c just a couple of months ago. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc that’s twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference hosted by intend the non-profit technology network. We’re in san jose at the convention center. My guests now our marty kearns and jack eva hendra marty is founder and president of net century campaigns and jackie is founding director open us network and also a partner at citizen engagement laboratory. Marty. Jackie, welcome thanks, tony. Think standing pleasure. Pleasure to have you both your session topic is it takes more than a hashtag to build a movement network building for change, jackie let’s, start with you. What do you think? Non-profits maybe you’re not getting quite right about network building. Why do we need this session? Sure. So when marty asked me to be part of this conversation, i was really excited because i’ve been spending about a year and a half working with leaders within a network that i’ve been convening called the open us network, the online progressive engagement network and the reason that we’ve been building this network and thinking a lot about how we move forward together to tackle our longer term impact is that oftentimes were siloed within organizations, especially when we’re moving at the speed of technology when you were in that twenty four hour news cycle tried to start campaigns and win campaigns. We’re not always thinking about the longer term obstacles that are keeping us from having the kind of impact we want to have, and so networks are a way for us to be able to see our resource is across organisations and think about we’s toe move forward together that get us further than we could alone. Okay, marty, what are we talking about? A network? Maybe we should just define our terms here. What? What do we mean? Yeah, no, i think that’s a good question for off the back. Yeah, right. No, no, no. Already smooth for ah, for for us networks are not. We’re not talking about the computer networks that you typically think about at a technology conference like and then we’re talking about networks of people. So the nodes in the network, the individual components, the network, our people and how those people are connected to each other is the place where we try and focus there’s i think when you think about networks of people and a lot of organizer’s say that they’re going to build a network to create change. Often when you push on that when you ask the questions, but what does that mean? How do you how do you build the capacity of that network that’s where they struggle and what we’ve done over fifteen years of trying to figure out exactly what of those ties between people? How do we make those ties stronger? And how do those stronger ties between people lead to greater social change? So, talking with jackie, you know, her fellowship program, uh, she’s been she’s been identifying who are the key people that need to be together to create the change that she wants. And she’s been investing in exactly the kinds of things that net centric campaigns focuses on social ties, communications grid. All these elements that give that network a capacity to create the change that she wants. Okay, is this is the place to start this with the reason as answering the question, why are you creating a network? Why do you wanna have this network that you don’t feel you? You have now? No, that’s, not the place. I know. I know. I mean, i you know, i think i think the place to start is, you know, when we think about loose networks of people and we think about the social change, you know, whether some of the cases that jackie brought up some of the groups that she works with the people come from black lives matter. They come from the women’s group, they come from lgbt community. So they come from all these different communities and they recognize there’s not one boss there’s, not one big organisation that is going to be that movement. It really is a network that is, that is at play creating that change to start the story, you need to start to say, okay, how do we how do we make that stronger without trying to build a new organization? How do we build that now? Okay, so how do we build the connections across organisations and communities that already exist? Make so is our is our network a network of networks? I mean, okay, right. Black lives matter, lgbt center. Are those not networks among themselves? Those air movement, though xero comments and within those movement there are people connected to each other. The question is, how powerful are they connected to each other to advance that cause? Okay, and we want to enhance those connections. Build those country, jackie yeah, i could make it a little more concrete for a moment. So back in twenty thirteen, when we started open us that’s a disengagement lab and with many of our field partners, including move on dot org’s we thought, you know, we’re at an interesting moment in the field of technology fuelled campaigning where it’s been almost two decades since the first move on petition and what could we really see about where our field is headed and where we want to go? How do we think about are longer term strategic opportunities? And so for us, part of coming together and beginning to form a network was really having a space to step back and reflect outside of the day to day of our really busy rapid response campaigning cycles. And so having that kind of learning space having that human connection where we could actually say, oh, i know marty’s working on this, i’m also working on that from my perspective. How do we think about our collective resource is differently so that we’re not just kind of doing our own thing and our silos, but actually coming together to strategize and identify places where we could go deeper see what’s comin exactly and where we can grow from from the commonalities? Yeah, when we start similar to that often will start a process and say, ok, imagine you’re the governor or the president or, you know, five years down the road, host of non-profit radio five years down the road, this is going phenomenally the your work is achieving everything you wanted it to achieve, and you’re going to throw a party, you’re going to say all the people that made non-profit radio a huge success that increased its impact and, you know, helped us transform the space. We’re gonna invite them to a room and have a party and say whoever you invite comes, who are those people? How many dozens, hundreds, thousands of people become, you know, are part of that party, that success party, if that’s, if those people need to work as a network, they need toe work as a network to make you succeed where? They now and how are they connected to each other today? And then you can you can start to say okay, well, they don’t know each other. They don’t they don’t have each other’s contact information, they don’t have common language, there’s no, they don’t trust each other. And what what we do is we try and try and build back from that vision of this network comes together to create the change that we want. And we need to understand well, what are the pieces that need to be in place for that network to accomplish that and that’s that enables us to be very specific and very deliberate in the way that we build the power of that network to get to that end result? Okay, what are what are some examples of jackie, other organizations, networks that are out there? Sure. So one of, well, one of the examples first of work that we’re doing in the open us network that’s become something very concrete that we can share is the kairos followship and this is a case study that we shared during her her session today where, you know, groups that came together to identify their obstacles we’re saying, why don’t we stop talking about our racial equity challenges and diversity challenges? Is a field of digital fueled campaigning and start fixing that coming up with solutions? And so one of the efforts that we’ve launched this year called the kyra’s followship is about bringing in and training up the next generation of leaders of color and digital campaigning, and the way that we’ve approached that as a network is to think about, you know, we may not have all of the resource is here within the eighteen organizations gathered in the room, but there’s a larger field that also shares this challenge. And so now that we’ve developed a shared vision and shared language about what we’re trying to do, we can go out there and find new resource is and new points of common interests and bring them into what we’re doing. And so we just launched this january, we’ve got fourteen fellows on the ground and organizations across the country, from sierra club to mozilla foundation to black movements on the front lines of the movement for black lives like dream defenders in florida and it’s creating kind of a network effect across those organizations, as well as within our own open us network where we’re kind of strengthening our collaborative muscles by doing this work together. There’s gotta be a lot of trust across the across the partners because, i mean, it sounds like potentially there’s maybe requests for funding for this network that we want to create there’s it’s going to be some degree of leadership management, if not if not a structured leadership, and so these are all grounded in trust way need to we need to trust each other, right? Yes, i mean, so. So another example of one that we built was is the halt the harm network. This is a network of people say to get halt the harm network, it focuses on supporting the leaders who are fighting the harms of fracking and gas development. About three years ago, we started with what we call network opportunity assessment, where we interviewed people from across the field and tried to see where the different camps were in the folks that we’re dealing with the harms from fracking and gas development. There were people who wanted to do bans they wanted to ban like they did in new york. They wanted a moratorium. No fracking in new york in, um, in other states like pennsylvania, where fracking already existed, they wanted much tighter regulations. Some townships wanted to ban it, and there were a whole variety of opinions in between these two spaces. What they found was that there were there were some good national coalitions that worked on bands or that worked on heavily regulating fracking and gas industry. But those people in those camps didn’t really talk to each other. There was some frustration between the two camps, so halt the harm network was really designed. Two attract people from both camps. Tto bring them into some common space in the network by giving them services, but not by giving the money because, you know, there’s. A great saying what? One of my one of my staff members from the south you say, you know, all hungry dogs will get along until someone throws a stake in the yard. Money is not. Money is not a really good hook for building a network. So so you try and think of other things that the more that people use them, the more powerful they get things like media list things like outreach tools, so the more the more that they get used, the more powerful they are, the more people want to use them. So that brings the people to the table, they get something of value when they show up. Now there, there. Then you have to say, well, how do we start toe wire them together? How do we build trust? So we throw happy hours at conferences, we we introduced them to each other, we make sure that we’re capturing data about what they’re working on, how they’re doing their work so that we can share it with others. The privacy policy on our pages are very different than most non-profits they say, you know, maybe even your non-profit as has, you know, well, we won’t collect any information on you, and if we, you know and will never share it with anybody else, that’s that’s a problem when you’re building a network, you want to collect as much information as you can on people, and you wanted to share it with the others in the network so that they can figure out where their common ground is. So through those through those steps were going to say, okay, do we attract the right people? Are we getting the right people to come into snusz halt the harm network? Are we getting people from both camps? Are we getting them from new york and pennsylvania? Then once they’re there, are we able tto see that see them starting in, connect with each other there, finding each other’s profiles, they’re participating in conversations together, they’re going to happy hours together and then finally, once they’re they’re connected for this first time, do they want to collaborate and do things together? And how can the network support those collaboration? So so it’s really about attracting individuals people into a network by giving them service? Once they’re they’re in the network, connecting them powerfully to each other and waiting to see what these leaders do as they want to drive that social change for sort of attracting, connecting, and then maybe call it assessing supporting them, supporting them as their mourning for way have to be solving problems with and for people not not on their behalf, but i think if leaders are coming together and seeing the network as a place where they can get questions answered where they can get things done together, that they couldn’t do alone. That’s when you really start to see ah hyre level of buy-in an investment of time and resource is that it will take to make the kind of change you’re trying to make. Okay? Yeah, good, you know, i mean, i mean, just picking up on that, i think i think it’s really important latto people build networks and they think, oh, people come, you know? And i think it was clay shirky who had that thing every network needs needs a promise, a tool in a bargain, you know, and and those those three things. So when you show up, if you’re part of this network what’s in it for you and it’s got to be clear and apparent from day one and it’s gotta always provide value then the second is, you know, what’s the tool, how are you going to connect with each other and then what’s the promise if i stay in this network and it’s, you know and and i contribute that’s the bargain, i give it my data, i give it some information about what i’m doing what’s what’s the problems that’s gonna come out of that? I’m gonna be able to collaborate with new people and get more campaigns and more good work done. So, you know, if you think about those themes that’s, a really important kind of design approach to social change and very, very different from traditional organizing and an organizational building. 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I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Dahna jackie what’s some of the sum of the value that marty was just alluding to that we come out of these network. Yeah, that’s a great question. So for us, the example of the cairo small ship is one really concrete one where a lot of organizations air hitting a wall on hiring it’s really hard to find talented digital campaigning staff have the skills to just hit the ground running, experimenting, trying things. So this is really solving a challenge for them around hiring and that’s one reason why it’s been an effort that a lot of organizations have poured a lot of time and money in dollars and and vision into right? I think other ways that were starting to address that is building community amongst technologists who are often kind of undervalued or under restore resourced within their organization with a nonprofit organizations. And so even creating a learning community is something of value to them where they actually get to step back from their work a little bit and say, how are we thinking about the next stage of email advocacy or movil advocacy? And where people are today versus where they were ten years ago? Right. Okay, marty, anything you want to know about the value is value proposition no, i mean, i it’s a great test, you know, it’s a great test, if you know otherwise, the network is going to start tio lose members, right? Right, right. I mean, think of all the networks you start to join there’s a promise. So it’s going to be great and then you’re like, hey, this isn’t panning out for me. I’m out of here, you know? So so i think i think approaching it that way is very different from building brand affinity or something like that that an organization does it’s got to be valuable to you today in your work and what you’re doing for you to keep coming back. Okay. Now, as part of your session description, you had seven elements of network design. So xero this was an e mail. Sounds like click candy, you know, check my block post seven elements toe you know, ever. But have we hit on some of these? Are there some that we haven’t discussed? You want to go into a lot more detail on you? No way have. Ah, pneumonic that we use to remember, which will help was it? Seven crocodile crocodile is crowded very slowly around food. So the the idea is that there’s, you know, have lunch today is the second time you’ve brought in food. Yeah, the crocodiles weinger you know, i have a lot of good it does feed you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That’s, that’s, that’s my payment, i think. Okay, well, well, we’ll work for food. So so yeah, the one element. So? So we don’t talk about the different types of roles in a network that types of actors in-kind a network that which is, i think, an important distinction, and we didn’t talk about feedback mechanisms and how important feedback mechanisms are looks a little time with so let’s start with feedback mechanisms because that’s that’s i think probably the biggest failing of the nonprofit sector networks. Feedback mechanisms are the only way that not that networks get smarter if you have a business or you have an organization, people report up, you know, they report they take the lessons learnt and they give it to middle management, and then they give it to senior management. Senior management says, oh, that’s a good lesson. And then they distribute it back out to everybody in the organization and a network that’s really flat. You have to say, well, how are we gonna learn? How are we going to know what’s working and what’s? Not and that’s that’s where the role of feedback mechanisms come in if you think about traffic on your way to work, you know what you have is a feedback mechanisms you, khun c o there’s ah there’s. A two hour delay on the road here, you know, like, well, i got to go anyways, i got to get up earlier and go there’s no central traffic authority that says you’re not allowed to drive. You know, on this road today other people may decide well, just telecommute. I’m going to avoid the traffic jams so feedback mechanisms enable each individual user to get smarter in our sector. You know, we have people that are that are that are being convinced to come in and do good work work every day. But we don’t actually have that data what’s working today. How are we recruiting? New people toe work on climate change today because all of that information about why they joined his segmented it out into the fifty different groups that are trying to recruit people, you know, in the in the new york stock exchange that that that network works because there’s a there’s, a there’s, a ticker, you could see this cos we’re going up on these air going down that starts to tell us where i should focus my attention and the non profit sector. We don’t have any of that, so it’s very hard for us to learn lessons it’s very hard for us to iterated quickly and improve, and when you build a network that’s, one of the things that we really try and do is what the feedback mechanisms that this network is going to travel. So what are some of them, jackie, how do we how do we overcome this? Sure, i’d love to hear from marty about if we had a breakout conversation just on that topic that i wasn’t in, but one of the ways that we tackle that with an open us is really baking in surveys and also qualitative feedback into every session that we do, whether it’s a three day in person convening or ah, training that we’re doing. We tried to make sure there are opportunities for people to say, hey, this is this is what’s working for me about this or, you know, actually we can’t do video conferencing because no one knows how to do it or whatever it is, right from the very basic to the what are the large themes that we should be talking about? Should they be more on the infrastructure side of how we grow our organizations or more on campaigning like, are we actually gonna get money out of politics today? The breakout session, there were some great examples. One of the mid food banks for a big state, they kind of supply chain for all the food pantries, and we talked about, well, what happens with your data about what people are ordering, you know, is there a shortage of peanut butter? Is there a surplus of of ah, diapers? And the idea was not not to just for central management and on that, but to reflect that back out to the network so they could see a dashboard across the state of where the need is. That would be a prime example of a feedback mechanism that would make that network smarter and more effect, you know, and they have the data, they know what they’re they just it’s not reflected back to the network so that, you know, i think those are the kinds of examples that we look for buy-in in campaigning, we look att trying to reflect back how much it cost to do advertising to bring people into the campaign and instead of just your central management person knowing, well, i spent, you know, this amount of money on change in this mountain character care dot com and this i care not organ and this much on google ads and never sharing one cost forty cents and one costs eighty cents and the other cost two dollars, you know, the network never gets smarter, that one person gets the data, but it’s not shared across the network. So what you want is you want you want feedback to capture data that we’re already getting and mirror it back to the network so that different people can interpret what to do with that data on their own and it becomes part of value becomes part of the value, right? Exactly. Exactly. I’m learning, i’m learning. You gotta give me a break. No, no, no. I think it’s forced it on me. You’ve been thinking about this for decades. Jackie let’s, move teo to some of the roles within i gathered on i suspected this that’s. Why? I kind of head julie when i talked about management. Or maybe, you know, i mean, there is no management, so but now marty is confirmed. You know, it’s, we’re talking about more flat organizations, but there are still defined roles. Help us out. Yeah, i think every network has a slightly different structure, or at least there are many different flavors of networks that marty’s built that i’ve been a part of. So with open us, one of the structural elements that we have that’s worked really well, actually came from mirroring the open network internationally, which is the online progressive engagement network. And they started out with a ko convener structure. So as they came together for the first time to kick off a sisterhood of digital campaigning organizations, they said instead of one person saying here’s, the agenda for the conference here’s what we’re going to do when we get together let’s actually bring in the heads of you know that the largest digital native organisations in the world and say, what are the questions we have? And so it’s sort of like having a governance structure, but also a convening structure that’s wider than one organization was critical to the dna of open and then also open us which kind of borrowed that structure. Some of the other ways that we have for people to really dig in together on the work is called trojan mouths working groups. And so this is ahh sort of experiment in experimentation and for us, instead of spending years building that perfect trojan horse that you send across the wall, maybe it works and there’s a huge coup and everyone celebrates, or maybe it fails and you’ve spent years building something that didn’t work. We try to be more literate, ivo, and say okay, well, this is a need we have is a network, how do we test it quickly? And so, trojan charge in mice are a sort of framework for us to do that, and we have people who step up to say, i’m going to lead that trojan mouse so it’s sort of like a working group in a traditional coalition setting. I just like the metaphor of the trojan mouse explains it very well. Alright, alright, how they got cholera, and of those old castle. My goal is to spread diseases quickly. Hyre out in victor. Okay, we’re going to wrap it up. So, marty, i’ll give you a last word. Would you like to leave people with this network’s idea? I think the most important takeaway is that both from our session today and and our work in general is that networks are our structures. You can actually understand them, and you can build them very intentionally. And when you build strong networks that’s how you create social change, i think networks have kind of gotten a fuzzy term around them. Oh, a thousand flowers bloom and they’re uncontrollable in their viral. Well, that’s that’s one way to think about networks, but networks are very controllable, and there are great mechanisms for supporting social change. So the more that we could get people to kind of think about that think about this the discipline and the approaches to network building. I think the better we’re off, we’re going to be a second. All right, thank you very much. Marty kearns, founder and president of net century campaigns donor-centric campaigns. And jackie mandra, founding director of open us network and a partner at citizen engagement laboratory. Marty. Jackie, thank you so much. Thanks for having us, thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference. Thank you for being with us next week. Monisha ca piela returns with managing up. If you missed any part of today’s show, i berate you. Find it on tony martignetti dot com. Please help, please help! We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled pursuant dot com, and by crowdster online and mobile fund-raising software for non-profits. Now, with that apple pay crowdster dot com, why did you say that apple pay like it’s foreign to me now with apple pay crowdster dot com, our creative producers claire meyerhoff, sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. On our music is by scott stein. Thank you, scotty. We with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. 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