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Hello and welcome to Tony martignetti non-profit Radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with Wall I if I saw that you missed today’s show Scale Up and sustain. It’s a question I hear often from non-profit leaders. How does my organization get to the next level? Kathleen Kelly. Janice’s research leads her to the answers, and she shares them with you. Her book is Social startup Success that originally aired on December 8th 2017 on Tony’s take to share Share. That’s fair, Responsive by Wagner C. P A. Is guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner cps dot com Bye Cougar Mountain Software Denali, fundez They’re Complete accounting Solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to DOT CEO. Here’s scale up and sustain. I’m very glad to welcome Kathleen Kelly Janice to the show. She is a social entrepreneur, author and lecturer at Stanford University. Her work in philanthropy, millennial millennial engagement and scaling Early stage organizations has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, non-profit radio Is there TechCrunch and The San Francisco Chronicle I’ve been in the Wall Street Journal, too. So you know, she’s the co founder of Spark. I haven’t cofounded anything. That’s the largest network of millennial donors in the world. Her new book is Social Startup Success. How the best non-profits launch scale up and make a difference. She’s at K k. Janice. And I’m very glad and pleased. Thrilled that Kathleen’s book brings her to non-profit Radio Welcome, Kathleen Kelly. Janice, Thank you so much for having me, Tony. It’s my place. My real pleasure. I am. I am anxious to talk to you about this book. As anxious as I was to read it because I do always get that question. How do we get to the next level? And, um, I believe you have Ah, I believe you have the answer. Answers answers. I believe you can point us in the right direction. I hope so. Okay. Okay. I wanna, um I’m gonna start with reading something. I’m actually gonna start with the conclusion of your book. Thats paragraph just struck me. So, um, it says the journey and we’re gonna talk about your journey has made me even more keenly aware of how many non-profits are operating on a month to month basis, scrambling to raise money to sustain them. While so much innovation has occurred in the nonprofit world in recent decades, my conversations with organizational leaders and my observations of their daily routines have impressed upon me how considerable the challenges any non-profit faces are, no matter how innovative it’s model or impactful its services. What’s going on out there? Kathleen Kelly Johnson. Janice Well, I think you you really summed it up nicely there. Those are your words, not mine. I just You summed it up. I just I’m a copycat. What what’s happening is that we’re on the one hand, living in a philanthropic renaissance. It’s a really exciting time for non-profit innovation. So many in-kind credible ideas are happening, and I’ve really had a front row seat here in the Silicon Valley, watching so many non-profits capitalizing on Ah, lot of the growth that we’ve seen in the tech industry as well. Organizations like Key by using crowdfunding Thio be able to support organizations in the developing world. And then, on the other hand, we have so many incredible ideas that are dying on the vine because organizations can’t get the financial support that they need to get to the next level to get to a level of sustainability. And I became really interested in the question myself. I was really, really curious. Why are some organizations succeeding and wire others really flailing? And it turns out that in fact, 2/3 of non-profits in the United States air $500,000 in below revenue. And many of these organizations should stay small community based organizations and are feeling an important role in the non-profit community. But many of these organizations want to scale. They figured out a proven model that is working to support their beneficiaries. Thio help create a more just world, and they simply can’t get the capital they need to grow. And so my research really explores the foundations of success. What is it that organizations need to do in order to take that next step in to grow their impact to the next level? Yeah, you talk about the struggle to scale, which is essentially what you just said even more eloquently. Um, see. So let’s, um we’re not gonna have time to go through the the entire book. You know, you’ve got five elements of what you think. It takes toe scale and be sustainable. Um, so I’m just gonna start with encouraging people. You just, you know, if you want to get to the next level, you just got a by the book. I mean, that non-profit radio is good as it is. Cannot substitute for this for this book, so all right, I may mention that a couple times. So why don’t you walk us through the five parts of what you believe? You know, your research has, um, lead youto t believe you are the essential parts of what, What’s needed? Sure. So there’s five strategies that I identify that came up over and over again in the 100 interviews that I did around the country of organizations that have scaled past $2 million and beyond. And and that’s really the level that I define as a certain level of sustainability. Um and so the organizations that tend to scale really all exhibited thes five strategies. So the 1st 1 is that They began testing their ideas very early on and before they went out and raised money. They figured out some ways to pilot the program so that they could figure out what was working at what was not so. But by the time they went out to market, they they had some impact to show. When we’re able to get funded for that and and B, we’re able to then integrate a culture of innovation that helped them constantly improve their models as they grow. The second strategy is that these organizations that the organizations that tended to scale more quickly in a large survey that I did the survey results show that these organizations, we’re able to say that they began measuring impact from the very start from Day one, and that’s not make sense because those are the organizations that were able to go out, and Thio show donors that they were having an impact and, um but those are also the organizations that are able to increase their impact by letting go programs that aren’t working or tweaking them and making them better, so that impact measurement is really key and it’s often something that organizations struggle with the third strategy is funding experimentation and developing a plan to test both earned income sources as well as philanthropic income, to figure out a funding model that works, Um, and Thio to be able to take the organization to scale. There is no one size fits all sending model for nonprofit organizations. Every organization has to figure out what’s gonna work for them. And so putting some processes in place to test out different sources of income is gonna be the best way for organizations to figure out what that is. The fourth strategy is developing a culture of collective leadership. I think we all have this tendency in in today’s society thio to revere the founder to put founders on the pedestal, whether it’s in the for-profit world. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook or associating Apple with Steve Jobs or even in the nonprofit world. And you know, the quintessential um example, is Mohammed Yunus is the is the founder of the Grameen Bank and won the Nobel Prize, and leaders should be honored. But at the same time, they’re the best organizations figure out that greatness is not built on one person. It’s built on the backs of teamwork and the best organizations figure out how to bring in senior leadership early on so that founders can go out and spend time on fund-raising and strategy that they have really strong, um, boards of directors that help help them grow their organization. And they flipped that hierarchical pyramid on its head and put the staff up front because they realized that their staff are the ones that are on the front lines. Making an impact and have the closest connections, often to the beneficiaries, is really the key to their work. The final strategy is storytelling with purpose. I think we all have a tendency to listen Thio a Ted talk or ah, great political speech and think, Wow, that person is just a natural. But when I went out and talked with all of these leaders, the best storytellers spend a lot of time practicing their craft. I had one social entrepreneur tell me that her she she’s an Olympic athlete, and her Olympic sport is storytelling and speech making and because she could be speaking the word of God. But if it’s told in a boring way, then no one’s gonna listen to her and these leaders figure out that that organizations can have impact when they’re able to build a movement, and that comes with telling a good story and getting people on board. And it’s not just at the leadership level, is at every level of the organization, because these organizations realize that staff members, board members, beneficiaries and champions can all be brand ambassadors for their organizations. And so they work hard. Thio help them with their storytelling so that everybody can go out and be champions for the cause of the five strategies. And to me, what was most exciting about this research is that I kept waiting for someone to say, You know, it’s just charisma or grid. You are some sort of innate trait that makes an organization succeed or not, but no one said that on. In fact, it really came down Thio thes strategies that any non-profit can implement no matter what kind of resources they have at their fingertips. Kathleen Kathleen Way, It’s time for a break. I wanted to do the overview. Hang with me while, uh, what we take a break. It’s time for a break. Wagner. CPS. Does your accountant return your calls and emails that they keep up to their deadlines. Do you like them? You get along with them. Are the keeping mistakes to a minimum? If these aren’t all yeses, then maybe it’s time to look for a replacement. And, you know, a partner at an accounting firm. You know, partner Wagner, CPS. He’s eat duitz tomb. He’s been on the show a couple times. Check out wagon cps dot com. Then talk to you. Eat, See if they can help you out. Wagner cps dot com Now let’s go back to scale up and sustain. I want to do some of our live Listen, love. Okay, Kathleen, you are there, right? Yes, Absolutely. Okay. Wonderful. I feel like doing the live. Listen, I love a little early, so let’s shout out to Tampa, Florida. Would Ridge, New Jersey Woodbridge so consistent with the listening? I don’t believe it. Would you please identify yourself? Woodbridge, New Jersey. Please come forward. I want to shout you out in person. Um, New York, New York. Multiple New York, New York. We’ve got, uh, Charlotte, North Carolina live listener love by going after Charlotte and Jersey City, New Jersey. My, my uh, my dad’s my dad’s hometown. That’s where he was born on McAdoo F. Jersey City, New Jersey. Live listeners love to you. College station. Texas is with us. So our, uh Germany Boudin tog Seoul, South Korea on your haserot. Come. Zoho Mita, Mexico City. Yes. Mexico City, Mexico. We got multiple there. Good afternoon. Born a swat? Bona Bona Santa. That’s it. It’s Italy. When a start is is it leave with us born Asada. If you are, Tehran is with us and took a result. Japan and the United Kingdom live list here. Love to each of you. We’re gonna divide it up today. The other 2/3 are gonna come. Ah, a little later on. All right, Kathleen. Now you don’t You don’t like to go by, uh, Katie or Kate or Cather. Kay, You’re strictly a Kathleen girl. Is that right? My name Kathleen. Okay. No, Katie’s. Okay. Okay. Um, let’s talk about your journeys. I mentioned in when I read a little bit from the conclusion you’re parents were very active and promoted a spirit of giving when you were young. This is That seems to be the genesis of your interest in this hole in the whole sector. It was definitely an inspiration for me. I’m really lucky that I grew up in this amazing little small town in Napa, California and my parents were very involved in the non-profit Ah, sector. My dad was a community banker and my mom was a teacher, and they they served on dozens of non-profit boards throughout the year. So when I think about our weekends, we often spent time volunteering in soup kitchens or serving at the local medical clinic for low income workers. But our volunteer efforts didn’t end there. We we sat around the dinner table and talked about how organizations often struggle. So my parents were talking about fundraisers they were hosting. Thio. Try and help support an organization that was struggling to get the resource. Is that needed to do that important service work that were involved in this was actually this was dinner table conversation for you. Yeah, that’s you know that that’s that’s Ah, that’s not common, right? E didn’t know any different. I know, I know. Yeah, but you know, it’s not it’s not. I mean, I know you’ve realized that since then, but, uh, that’s a remarkable Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just That’s just remarkable as I was reading about you having these conversations with your parents about sustainability, even though that word we weren’t using that word. But that’s what you were talking about. Well, yeah, and it’s not that my family was very sophisticated. It’s just that they believed really strongly that there are people in our community who are not as fortunate as us and that it’s our duty to give back to those people, but that it’s not just about giving back Thio people who are less fortunate. It’s about making sure that the organizations that are supporting them are strong so that they can provide those important social services. That something that was very much a part of my upbringing. Yeah, that’s outstanding. Um, and let’s now come to the research that led you to the ah to the overview that you gave us earlier. What was Thea was the process for this? Lots of interviews. Yeah, So I really came at it because I had experienced this issue myself personally. When I graduated from law school, I I started my own small non-profit with a group of women in San Francisco called Spark. We engage young professionals and gender equality issues, and we also had this problem where we had a ton of buzz. In the beginning, we were growing our revenue every few months, doubling our annual budget. And then at a certain point, just when we were hitting our stride, we hit a wall and we couldn’t get the capital that we needed in the door, get to the next level and increase the impact that we wanted. So that was around the half a $1,000,000 mark, wasn’t it? Half a $1,000,000 for us, and for every for every non-profit it it could be different. But I have found that that half $1,000,000 mark is a really a critical state hump because it is a place that a lot of organizations struggled to get beyond that kind of like initial grant funding and initial seed capital to really get some more sustainable grants in the door. So to get back to your question about the process for me, and when I began teaching social entrepreneurship at Stanford wearing my research cap, I began looking at this question more critically. I developed a survey and sent it out Thio Ah, 1000 organizations in the United States that were in some of the top. There’s entrepreneurship portfolios like going green and a show CA in school. And so I heard back from them and I tested everything from, you know, with their social media better and helping them scale, or was it there impact measurement in the way that they were measuring impact? And I came up with some initial findings that I went out and tested and I got to go out and interview in person. Ah, 100 organization founders there they’re funders, their beneficiaries, their staff and really just asked them a key question, which is what is the secret to non-profit success? And the findings are based on the stories that they told me in those interviews. The, um the the parts that I wanna start to focus on, um, is that that early stage you call it testing testing ideas? Um, I I think of it as sort of, you know, mastering as much as you can. The the problem. Like trying to get your mind around what the problem is and testing solutions to it. Um, I Is it okay if I describe it that way. Absolutely. What I found in my research is that the best social entrepreneurs fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Well, it is a lot harder once you fall in love with that solution. Thio let it go even if it’s not working. But if we really focus on the problem, then you’re gonna be able Thio, figure out the best strategy to address the problem. You talk about ideation and and brainstorming and not allowing any solutions to be censored at at the early stages. Yeah, and that’s you know that is that this human-centered design theory that has come up but Stanford at the D school or in various capacities? It’s really just a fancy way of talking about problem solving and a process for understanding how to brainstorm ideas. Um, and it doesn’t really have to be fancy. I owe you an example. An organization that I interviewed It was wishbone, which is Ah crowdfunding site for low income kids who want thio have summer experiences in the arts are in Fillmore in cooking to help them following their follow their dreams. And when the organization started, they didn’t start by launching this huge website in this platform and investing a lot of money and then, you know, then find the kids they did it the other way around. They did a really low cost test to figure out whether the model would work. So, uh, the founder was a teacher for low income students in Los Angeles at the time. She assigned an essay to them and ask them to write about their passion. Then she took some of her favorite papers and she photocopied them. And she stuck them in a male in the mail with a stamp and sent them to her relatives and her friends to say, Would you fund these kids to be able to follow their passions in the summer? And she got a bunch of money from those people and she was able to send them to summer camps and to do internships and realized that there was really something there, and it was really just this kind of low cost testing in the beginning that helped her figure out what worked and what didn’t and helped her develop an engine that she could then grow to scale. And it is hard to to throw off solutions. I mean, you know, remove solutions, eliminate them. You know you feel like you’ve got some, um, resource is devoted to it, but the outcomes air just not coming, it’s It’s hard to throw off, throw them off, though, and start a family. A lot of work to overcome that a lot of organizations get stuck in that cycle for two reasons. One is because it’s really hard. Thio admit failure. So I think that’s a big problem in the sector is just getting more comfortable with failure? But because oftentimes these these programs are doing important work, and it’s not that they’re necessarily bad. Maybe not the most impactful they be. I’ll tell you a story of one really successful example of this an organization called Last Mile Health founded in Liberia Toe help Get health care for some of the poorest communities there to decrease their mortality rates had when it started 13 different programs everything from women’s health programs, Thio AIDS programs, helping patients with HIV AIDS and as they started to grow, they realized that the program that was having the biggest impact was this program that was helping bring community based care to the rural areas of Liberia. So there were no doctors there. There were people who had to walk, sometimes 12 13 hours to get to the capital city on, and they had very few doctors serving millions of people. And so these community health care workers were able to give them the treatment that they needed, sometimes using cell phone service, t get care remotely. And, as it turned out, because it was so successful, they decided they made the very hard decision of closing down all these other programs that were very good programs but just weren’t having that kind of level of impact they wanted to see. And when the Ebola crisis hit in 2012 that was absolutely critical because they had focused their efforts on these community health care workers. Those community health care workers were able to prevent a global health crisis, so I can’t think of a better story. You know that they really because they were able to focus their energy on a program that was working, they were ableto have massive impact and so I think we all have to keep that kind of end goal in mind when we’re when we’re doing this, that it’s really about maximizing the potential of the impact that we can have. And let’s talk about measuring that impact. Um, let’s start with the distinction between your outputs and your outcomes or your impact. Well, what I found is that a lot of organizations tend to focus on the outcome on the on the output those air, the Vanity Mac tricks that are very easy. Thio T. C. So, for example, how many people are participating in your programs, or how many people are coming to your website to get social services? But ultimately, it’s not showing how the programs are having change on their life, their long term outcomes. It might even be something physical, like how many, uh, backpack kits we put together for homeless outreach? Yeah, I think. Then what is the home of the people do with them? And how did that change their lives? Right and does not change their lives so that you get out of homeless. Does it really the ultimate goal? Um, and so this is something that I think a lot of organizations struggle with, because non-profit leaders are not data scientists, and sometimes it can be overwhelming to think about, Like, how do you measure outcomes? How do you measure the ripple effect of providing that backpack to a homeless youth and what that does to get him in the door to a shelter that does that, help him ultimately get a job, Um, and and ultimately, get him off the streets. That’s a really hard path to follow. But you don’t have to be a data scientist, and it doesn’t have to be so hard. And in the book, I give a lot of really tangible strategies that non-profit organizations can use the help figure out what are the long term outcomes and get past these vanity metrics that just make us feel good about our impact but aren’t really telling us whether we’re making progress toward the ultimate goal. Kathleen, we just have about a minute or so before next break. Um, talk a little about the ah, using this data to help you tell your story. Yeah, that was something that I saw over and over again. Is we have a situation where 75% of non-profits collect data, but only 6% of them feel like they really know what to do with that data on the best non-profits. Figure out how to get it into bite size chunks of information that someone can easily digest in just a few minutes. And that could be whether you’re a small organization or whether you’re a huge organization. It really just comes down to those bite-sized pieces of information. Indulge me while we take another break. You need to take a break. Cougar Mountain software designed from the bottom up for non-profits. Simple to use phenomenal support. Can you say that about your own accounting software? QuickBooks. Quicken Turbo Cash Workday zoho Patriot No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think that was That may have been one too many nose, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot. Cougar Mountain has a free 60 day trial made for non-profits. You’ll find that on the listener landing page at tony dot m. A slash Cougar Mountain. Now time for Tony’s Take two. How about a little, as we learned as children, you know, share, share? That’s fair. How about sharing non-profit radio? Do you know someone who do you know? Let’s let’s let’s be in the affirmative. Who do you know that order. Be listening to non-profit radio. Someone who works for another non-profit works for your own non-profit eyes on a board, someone who’s a boardmember board members, great listeners to get a lot of good feedback from board members. Um, you know how good this show is. You’ve been listening your subscriber or you’re just sampling. Either way, you’re getting value from it. Share the value share share. That’s fair. That’s what I learned in third grade. When I was never shared that I wouldn’t share anything a little trouble game, You know where you popped the thing in the middle and then you move. The wooden used to be long ago. You move the wooden pegs along yet to get into the center. I never would share. I would just play all four or four parts for myself, but that’s that’s in the past. Now we know that sharing is good, So who can you share non-profit radio with? Please do. Let’s let’s expand the flock. Bring more into the family and I thank you very much for sharing non-profit radio. Let’s go back to Kathleen Kelly, Janice and scale up and sustain. Let’s let’s continue with the podcast Pleasantries. He was surprised. I divided it up. We say, on the heels of the live Listen, love has to come. The podcast pleasantries. Well, the heels a little longer this time. It’s a stiletto this time, Um, podcast. Pleasant feast are over 12,000. Listening in the time shift. The vast majority of our audience is there. And I’m thank you’il thankful that you are with us. Pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections to our AM and FM affiliate station listeners throughout the country. Thank you so much for being with us. I’m grateful that your station includes us in their weekly schedule. And I’m glad that you are listening on the, um on the terrestrial on the terrestrial side, the AM and FM affections to the affiliate listeners. Thank you very much. Kathleen Kelly. Janice. Thank you. You’re welcome. You’re still there, right? Yes, I’m here. Okay. Cool. Um, I noticed you, uh, is going back to your parents. You You dedicated the book to your parents and you say, for my parents who taught me the value of citizenship how do you define that citizenship? What do you think of as a citizenship. Well, for me, I’ve been raised with this idea that we all have a duty to give back to making the world a better place. And so we all have the capacity to make impact in some way. And to me, that’s really exciting. And I think getting even Maur and more prevalent I acknowledge that not everybody was is lucky to have been raised with that mentality as I was, although I’m sure there are others who had those really important dinner conversations about social impact where No, no, I’m not sure how caught prevalent toyour, but more and more. What I see with my students at Stanford when I see the next generation is that there is this changing mentality that non-profit work used to be just about writing a check to a foundation or thio non-profit and then being on your way, people want to roll up their sleeves. Now they want to get involved. Non-profit work is no longer relegated. Thio. You know when you leave the office at 5 p.m. That millennials are thinking about how can they make a difference in their work in making the word world a better place? Whether that is using their skills to do pro bono work, or whether that e-giving back through donations and getting others involved in like minded causes. To me, this is really exciting because it’s increased the potential for all of us. Thio make an impact in the world because we’re thinking about social change in a in a really different way. But it’s also really exciting for non-profits because there’s an opportunity for non-profits to capitalize on that. And I think too many non-profits out there are operating in this old fashioned model where they’re seeking donations. Maybe they have, you know, an annual event or an annual dinner where they bring people together for a long program and, uh, over dinner. And then that’s it. They collect their money, and then they get back to them the next year when it’s time for the dinner again. But people don’t want that. Donors don’t want that they want to be engaged, and they want to feel like they’re making an impact. And so the onus is on the non-profits to really think about how to help donors get involved, and ultimately that will lead Thio. I think more funding for organizations as well. You encourage non-profits to think about earned income, recognizing that it may not fit in every situation, that there might be non-profits where it’s not appropriate. But let’s talk about the potential for earned income and howto explore it well. I am keenly aware, as someone who was trained as a human rights lawyer that not all causes air suited for earned income. Human rights work is a perfect example of someone cannot afford the bus fare to get to the courthouse in the first place. They can’t afford to pay a lawyer for their rights. Many organizations are going to rely on philanthropic capital to fill that gap, and that is important. And that’s okay. But what I found in my research is that when possible, the organizations that are able to bring in earned income are going to be ableto have this kind of level of sustainability that helps them get through the hard times. Ah, lot of organizations talked about the recession in 2008 went so many grantmaking organizations pulled funding that they had already promised this was money that organizations were relying on, but their endowments had gone down and paint with the down Jones, and so they weren’t able to provide that really important funding and the organizations that had earned income sources, like a fee for service model or ah, model where they were selling products, those air the organizations that had the fuel to get them through that time when they didn’t know where their next philanthropic check was coming from. So it’s something that I think all non-profits need to at least consider as they develop their funding model, are their sources of her an income that can help grow the organization and and be willing to experiment with those. Absolutely. You also encourage a ah multiyear fund-raising plan. So it’s a little about what you’re going to that I think so many organizations think about fund-raising, like filling a bathtub with a teaspoon. It’s painful. You’re putting the water in a teaspoon by teaspoon, and then at the end of the year, when you start a new budget cycle, you drain the bathtub and you start over again. That is a really painful way to approach fund-raising, and what the best organizations do is they think about fund-raising on a multiyear strategy so they make sure that their grants when possible or multiyear grants so that there looking at funding 3 to 5 years out and not just here in a year, and then they help educate their donors on the importance of that. So not just not just foundations, but also individual donors who can contribute on a year to year level. And when you set that culture into motion, it helps you think much bigger about the prospects for fund-raising, as opposed Thio from a place of scarcity, that mentality of scarcity. It is him. There’s a lot of not just organizations, but people. They just they feel like the they aren’t going to get what they need. It really does. And I hate to use that example because I think it’s really easy, you know, as a researcher to say, just think bigger and non-profits I can think is because they wanted. That doesn’t mean that the funding is gonna come in the door. But I do notice there was one funder that I interviewed who said You can tell the difference between the organization when you ask them the question. What would you do if you had $10 million and the ones that are able to answer that question right off the bat. Those were the ones that are going to go big because they’re the ones that are thinking in that way and that have a plan and are and believe that they can get there. And so I think it’s really it is really about mentality in many ways. Yeah, all right, OK, so we need to overcome that. We need to have the courage to think that’s a $10 million level, absolutely, and don’t need to be thinking bigger, too. I mean, go both ways, and that’s your responsibility to help your donors think that way. Rate. Imagine what we could do if we had $10 million. Imagine how many lives we could touch inspire those donors to be a part of the solution. That is really what it’s all about. Collaboration. You mentioned it earlier when you were, ah, giving us the eloquent overview. Um, let’s let’s talk about the collaboration delegation. Strong leaders are not afraid to pass tasks onto others. It’s really critical, and organizations cannot succeed without a really strong team. The story that I love that really illustrates this is of Kiva dot org’s. I mentioned earlier that crowdfunding platform to support small businesses in the developing world, using donorsearch Unnie from premier from primarily United States but also now all around the world. And this organization started right around the same time that I co founded a spark. And so I I got to see this firsthand competition. Yes, well, they were in a competition, but you could benchmark against. I guess you were well, yeah, and and it was really amazing story because Jessica Jackley and Matt Flannery, the founders, were on Oprah Winfrey. They were featured in Bill Clinton’s e-giving book and were featured on The Oprah Show. That income that didn’t come for you as co founder of Spark? No, as much like the way I saw what happened for them, they raised $11 million overnight. After being on the Oprah show, they they literally crashed their servers and and we’re no longer able to accept funds. And so overnight they had to think about leadership in a very distributed way because they needed all hands on deck in order to distribute all of those funds that they had received until now is an organization they have 100 employees and 500 volunteers around the world. There, keep a fellows go into the field. Thio, Thio, follow-up on the Grants and Thio ensure that they’re going where they say they’re going and Thio tell those stories and catalog those stories. We rely on all those volunteers and all those staff to be on the front lines. And so they have strategies to make sure that those people, their staff, feel empowered to support the mission of the organization. So an example is they allow their staff to develop their own impact metrics so the staff can feel connected to how their work in particular is Contributing to the mission of the order is excellent. Okay, it’s not. It’s not top down right where we’re talking about the antithesis of top down leadership. Absolutely. I mean, even their feedback model. They have horizontal feedback mechanisms so that they’re not giving and receiving feedback in a top down way. And that really helps set into motion this culture of horizontal value for all employees. All right, Kathleen, we take our our third break. Um, I want to remind listeners the book is social startup success. If you’re listening live. You could be cooking right through now to Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Be buying it while I take this break time for our last break. Turn to communications, PR and content for your non-profit. They help you tell your compelling stories, get media attention on those stories and build support for your work, media relations, content, marketing, communications and marketing strategy and branding strategy. You’ll find all that at turn hyphen to DOT CEO. We’ve got butt loads more time for scale up and sustain Kathleen the, uh, the other part of collaborative leadership. Besides, um, strong, strong senior leadership is a strong active board. What do you like to see there? Well, a lot of organizations start out with what I call in the book of Friends and Family Board, where they know they have to legally have a board of directors. And so they go out and they recruit anyone who’s close to them. Thio help them with their organization, and this leads to a lot of problems because friends and family are not always the most suited to help you grow an organization they don’t always necessarily have the skills and often time friends and family. Tell you what, you want to hear those two really pushing you to be your best Not gonna challenge you Tell me they’re not gonna challenge you. They’re not gonna challenge you. Yes, exactly. And so and so and so really what I saw. The organization that scaled had a robust organise a robust organizational board that was suited for the skills that they needed and the talents that they needed to grow the organization. And even if it meant having to go through that brutal process of moving from the friends and family board to the more robust kind of governance board my husband always that we have three children and my husband always likes to say, I can’t fire my mother in law. You know, it’s a lot easier sometimes. Hire a baby sitter. Well, that should be Your job. Should be firing your own mother. It’s much easier for you to do. No one wants to have to fire their mother. So don’t put your mother on your board. That’s the lesson, Um, and and really getting it right. The first time is the best recipe for success. But there are strategies that I talk about in the book for how to move past the friends and Family board to a governance board. That’s really gonna help challenge you and get you through the strategic planning process to help you build a theory of change so that you can show your solution to the problem in a logical and impactful way. Board relationships Very tough for lots of organizations. The relationship between the CEO and the board. Sometimes it’s a micro managing board. Even those even the relationship between staff and the board can sometimes be difficult. Um, intra board relationships. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of potential for problems there. There’s a lot of potential for problems, and there’s a lot of potential for solutions. Well, one leaves you doesn’t have to be that hard. One of the key things that I talk about in the book for developing a really strong board is putting the policies in place. You’re very clear about what the expectations are of your board. I think a lot of these challenges come in when it’s just not clear whose role is what and what boardmember Zehr supposed to do. So let me give you an example. Organizations that responded to MAE survey said that only 15% of their boards are involved in fund-raising. When asked what they would like their boards to doom, or of 66% of the executive director, said they would like their boards to be doing more friendraising. So that’s a huge disconnect. And I would, I would ask, those organizations will, what have you done to communicate with your board that you would like them to be doing more fund-raising? What have you done to establish what they’re fund-raising goals are in the board policy. What have you done to support their fund-raising efforts? Have you provided events that they could bring their contacts to? Have you given them the stories that they need to tell at a cocktail party so that they know how to make an elevator pitch? If you want your board to be involved in friendraising, you need to lay the foundation to make that happen. So I think a lot of board frustrations that executive directors have with their boards can easily be alleviated by just laying the foundation with clear policies and clear expectations, like the model of collaboration that you were talking about. You know, bottom up. You encourage that also in buy-in storytelling. And, um, I know, I’m not sure if if you had Well, all right. I was gonna say my favorite part was the storytelling part, but if you had to pick, that was my favorite. I’m not saying that’s the most important. Is it possible for you to say which of these and we are gonna talk about storytelling very moment very shortly. Um, which of the five areas like, most important. Are you willing to rank them like that? Or I just think they’re all equally. It’s like asking me to choose My My favorite child thinks they are all important, but I will say that that that kind of they do. I write about them in the order that I write about them because I think that they do. They do lay the foundation for success in that order. So you can’t tell a good story until you have the deed I’ve and the qualitative stories to show for that. And so that impact measurement and that testing process is really key to get there. So you did. You did think through the sequence of, uh that you were gonna, um, present these in the book? Yeah. Sequence is very important. Okay. Non-profit metoo tested the war haphazard, but you thought through when you’re writing a book is different. So you you actually you thought through this. Okay, I’m gratified to hear that. Okay, um, so let’s talk about the story telling you, like, again, bottom up. Absolutely. It has thio involved everyone around you. There’s an organization I interviewed called ideo dot or GE and they use design thinking thio help non-profits develop innovative solutions in their work. And they have this thing that they they implement on in their staff meetings called storytelling roulette where they spin the wheel like a wheel of fortune. They they spin it and then randomly, it will land on a story and they’ll pick a staff person in advance. Who on the spot has to tell that story as if they were pitching it to a donor or a potential partner. I’m not because a every staff member hasn’t necessarily been involved in all of those projects and doesn’t necessarily have that institutional memories of the way to build institutional memory. It’s also a way to build skills. Storytelling is not something that just happened. Storytelling happens with a lot of practice and, uh, and a lot of opportunities to practice. One of my dear friends, Nadine Burke Harris, has a Ted talk with three million views, and she runs an organization called the Center for Youth. Wellness focuses on toxic stress. When I interviewed her and asked her about that Ted talk, she said she practiced it for six months. This 10 minute talk and she said by the end of those six months her husband could have given the Ted talk for her because she had practiced it so many times in front of him. So I think it’s important that we remember to make the space for that practice, not only for ourselves as leaders of organizations, but also for all of our teams and our board, and even benefit. Yes, I wanted to go to the beneficiaries. I was, um you’re so you’re so ah, comprehensive. I was hoping you were gonna leave beneficiaries, and then I would sound smart and say no, but what about beneficiaries? But, um, yeah, well, we just have about a minute and 1/2 left before we wrap up, so talk about encouraging beneficiaries to tell. Well, I think when you’re working with beneficiaries to tell stories, I think there’s ah lot of things that organizations need to do to be very conscious of what it means to put a beneficiary in that position and to set them up for success. So it’s not always appropriate. And I think organizations have to do a lot of thinking to make sure, for example, that beneficiary is well, past and being part of the program, that they are in a better place to be able to tell that story. But there really is no more powerful story for unorganised ation to tell them someone who has successfully made their way through the program and has created a better life because of that outcome. And so we talked earlier about outputs versus outcomes. That is an outcome when you can show that someone’s life has changed, and hearing that from from the beneficiaries own mouth is really going to be your most powerful sales person for the organization, those air so compelling the, uh, I mean those could be riel tear jerkers literally. Um, it’s and they don’t have to be high production value, but they could be very, very compelling. Very, very moving. Absolutely. All right. We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much. Kathleen Kelly. Janice. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Tony. It’s been my absolute pleasure. The book. Get the book for Pete’s sake. We just did a romp through it. You need the book Social startup success. Have the best non-profits launch scale up and make a difference next week? I just don’t know. You know it’ll be worthwhile if you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you. Find it on tony. Martignetti dot com were sponsored by Witness E. P. A. Is guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com But koegler Mountain Software, Denali, fundez They’re complete accounting solution made for non-profits tony dot m a slash Cougar Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turned to communications, PR and content for non-profits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Our creative producer is clear. Meyerhoff. Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day, huh? Mmm. Do you run or are ready to open your own business? Hi, I’m Jeremiah Fox. I’ve been operating an opening small business for the last 25 years, and I’m the host of the new show, The entrepreneurial Web Tune in every Friday at noon Eastern time for insights and stories on the nuances of running small business. 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