Dan Johnson: The 4 Mindsets
Over his years working with nonprofits, Dan Johnson has developed four mindsets, or principles, which he encourages leaders to embrace, and spread throughout their teams. He invites us to get comfortable with: The point is impact; the sustainable impact cycle; donors are partners, and, how volunteers get paid. He shares the touching story of his friend, Christina, who was murdered, doing the work she loved. Dan is chief consultant at Next Level Nonprofits.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. If your host wasn’t so damn lackluster, he would have acknowledged Valentine’s Day last week. Just like last week, I had forgotten to acknowledge the 725th show the previous week. You would, you would think that this is, you might think these are planned, but they’re not. I, I just don’t, I don’t look ahead. So I hope you had a Valentine or more in your life last week and I will try to be more scrupulous about looking at the calendar for the coming week. But still, I’m glad you’re with us. Because I’d suffer the effects of African trippanosomiasis. If you bit me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, to introduce it. Hey Tony, I’m on it. The 4 mindsets. Over his years working with nonprofits, Dan Johnson has developed 4 mindsets or principles which he encourages leaders to embrace and spread throughout their teams. He invites us to get comfortable with the point is impact, the sustainable impact cycle. Donors are partners, and how volunteers get paid. He shares the touching story of his friend Christina, who was murdered, doing the work she loved. Dan is chief consultant at Next Level nonprofits. On Tony’s take 2. The kindness of a stranger. We’re sponsored by DonorBox, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Here is the 4 mindsets. It’s a pleasure to welcome Dan Johnson to nonprofit Radio. He is chief consultant at Next Level nonprofits. He’s a 4-time nonprofit founder, former impact evaluator, and nonprofit coach. He grew his first nonprofit to 10,000 volunteers nationwide in 3 years and has created federal and state policy changes on numerous issues. He’s on YouTube at Next Level nonprofits and his company is atexlevel nonprofits.us. Dan, welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much for having me, Tony. It’s a genuine pleasure. Let’s jump in. these four mindsets you have. What’s the evolution of these mindsets, you know, give us sort of a high level overview before you start the, uh, the indoctrination and uh uh uh uh uh uh process of of changing our mindsets. It does, it probably does qualify for the dictionary definition of indoctrination. I’m I’m being fair then. Not an overstatement. Alright. So I think that to put it simply, uh, the wrong mindsets keep small nonprofits small. That in all of my time, both in nonprofits, you know, having some of the wrong mindsets myself and founding my own and struggling through that, um, and working with other nonprofit founders. Um, I have found that if we skip the mindset portion. And we just jump into the skills, and we teach new nonprofit leaders, you know, certain skill sets, you know, fundraising, marketing, whatever. Then it actually doesn’t have the transformative effect it needs to have on their organization. But if we start with mindset and we spend some time in how people should think about their own nonprofit, how people should think about donors, how people should think about volunteers, things change. And a good example of that is uh one of my first clients since I launched my firm, um, is Christa at Battle to be. Which is an organization that helps first responders and members of the military who are struggling with PTSD. And uh uh when we started working together, Krista had about a $50,000 revenue per year, so considered a small nonprofit, and she was fearful of talking to donors like, heck, I even stutter when I’m reaching out to people I’ve been doing this for a long time. Um, but, uh, we worked together probably for about a month and a half or so, and a lot of that was on mindset, on her nonprofit being worthwhile on how to think about donors. And uh we did a little bit of vision work too, and, and those two elements took her nonprofit to $200,000 in revenue the next year. That’s all we did. And uh I just think that any conversation around what it takes to take your small nonprofit and make it a bigger nonprofit or make it a legacy nonprofit or make it a high impact nonprofit has to start with mindset and that’s why I suggested that as a show. OK, all right. There are 4 mindsets. Uh, let’s, uh, I’ll just reveal them quickly and then of course, you know, we have plenty of time. The, the point is impact. The sustainable impact cycle. Donors are partners. And how volunteers get paid. So let’s begin with, uh, the point is impact. What’s, what’s your, what’s your message here? How do you wanna revise our thinking, uh, so we, we are, we are on beginning our journey to the, uh, cult of Johnson, uh, for mindsets. Uh, does that sound? It’s it’s a self-help book or it’s Kool-Aid at the end. Yeah, it’s a little ethereal, but we’re gonna break it down so people know that there is a genuine there is substance here. All right. The point is. Share your message Let’s start with a charity that pretty much everybody knows, the Salvation Army and the Red Bells, that represents how charity, Salvation Army probably represents the best of how charity uh has primarily worked up until the 2000s. When you have the red buckets, the red buckets and the bell ring the bells are typically brass, I believe, brass bells just like it takes brass balls to start and grow a sustainable and fruitful nonprofit. All right, so the brass bells and the and the red buckets, yes, we’re we’re all well acquainted. rass bells and brass balls. I like it so. Uh, let me ask you a question, Tony. I generally don’t like uh guest questions this early, but go ahead, anarchist. All right, most cult leaders are, you know, are not anarchists. Well, I guess they are. They just don’t, they don’t prefer anarchy within the membership. But yes, go ahead. You’re welcome to ask a question, of course, please, anarchist, go ahead. OK, so uh when you walk out of Walmart. And you give your change to the bell ringer. Let me ask you, let’s make it my Food Lion. I’m not. I’m not much of a Walmart shopper. Yeah, works for me. Food Lion down here. So you walk out of your local Food Lion and you see the Salvation Army bell ringer around Christmas time. And uh he asks you for your change and you give him that change. Do you primarily think about the impact that that’s going to make? Or do you just think, I really hope that does some good. Yeah, I’m, yeah, I’m not even sure I’m giving it either of those. I’m just, you know, I, I got a couple of singles, so I put them in the bucket. Uh, you know, I’m not thinking about the salva, you know, I just know overall they have a good reputation. You know, we see them every year. It’s purely for me, that’s, that’s purely a transactional charity. I see them in holiday time. That, that, that’s as deep as it goes. And that is how most nonprofits run their charity. Their donors give because they have extra money. Their people give them extra stuff that is garbage, that is leftover. I don’t have any use for this, so I’m going to give it to this nonprofit. Volunteers volunteer for the organization because uh they have extra time and they want to donate to somebody and that happens to be a nonprofit or they have a friend there that they like. For the vast majority of charities and absolutely the vast majority of small ones. They have a charity mindset. We are the source, we make uh gems out of everyone else’s garbage. That would be the way to put it. And uh this is how nonprofit leaders of new nonprofits usually think. They’re thinking primarily about how you hear them all the time in fundraising calls or in conversations, talk about how frugal they are, how little they spend, how, you know, much they push their team to do more than they possibly can do. You hear them talk about all of this stuff from what I would consider to be a charity mindset that the primary thing that they are out to do. Is make people feel good. And that is also the mindset that holds them back in pretty much every area of becoming a bigger nonprofit. Say a little more about that. They, they, they want to make people feel good. Expand on that. So for a lot of nonprofits, you know, I’ll use an example, um, a guy helped out uh in Texas, uh, he started a nonprofit to help homeless individuals, um, and the way he started it was, uh, him and his mom don’t like anything at Thanksgiving dinner. They’re just not a fan of the spread at Thanksgiving. So, they started taking when they would be invited to these dinners, they started taking the dinners to the local homeless encampment. And they felt really good about it. And so they did it again, and they felt really good about it, and they did it again. And this is how the majority of nonprofits start is I have some extra time or have some extra something um or I feel really good when I help this person or when I do something for this person and I want to do that more, and I want more people to get involved with me doing that. So it actually starts with the founder and how they, they looked at it. And everyone else around them is just used to nonprofits being like this. You volunteer for a nonprofit because it makes you feel good. You donate money to a nonprofit. What did the thing we always talk about with donors is uh uh you know, they, we want to reach their heart, want to make them feel good. All of this is about feel good, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that, right? There’s, there’s nothing that is bad about the the local bridge club and making people feel good and have community. There’s nothing bad about making donors, um, you know, feel like they’re, they’re making a difference and, you know, sharing stories and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that. But the thing is, when we do things to feel good. We only put our extras there. And when we don’t have extras, we don’t use it to feel good. And that I think is really important for nonprofit leaders to understand. If you run an organization like many do, like a charity, that is primarily based on making people feel good, then you will accept impact that makes you feel good but isn’t actually helping the people you serve. You will accept donors who primarily want to give to your organization because of how it makes them feel. Your volunteers will choose to show up or not show up. Everybody talks about how flaky volunteers are. They’ll choose to show up or not show up because they do it because it makes them feel good. And that pins a nonprofit in a basically impossible to grow stage because you’re constantly relying on everybody’s feelings about the organization. Instead, what I encourage a nonprofit leader to do. I think about the difference. Why is it that people can should start a nonprofit. As opposed to a for-profit or go work for the government. And the reason is simple. The government is very, very good. At requiring people to do things. If there is a problem that needs to be solved by requiring someone to do something about it. The government is where you should go. The for-profit sector is very good at meeting the needs of people who can afford it. If you are serving people who can afford all of the food as a nonprofit, you might not be in the right area. You might start that as a for-profit. What nonprofits are uniquely good at. Is making an impact on the lives of people. Who requiring them to be better is not going to help. And having them pay for a service is something they cannot afford. That is the niche, if you will, that nonprofits do well. That is different and better than just making people feel good. Nonprofits change lives. They change lives, they change communities, they change cities where they can, and that is worth something. And this is not only valuable for uh startups or people launching nonprofits but also well established. You, you want people investing in your work because of the impact you create in the community, your state, your province, the nation. The environment, the globe, however you define your community, may be the oceans, or it may be your small town. Uh, so, yeah, I, I just, I don’t want folks to be astray that this is only for, uh, you know, launching. This is, this is, and this, so this kind of, you know, these, these mindsets, I think are just generally gonna have to come from. The top down, I mean we need our CEO to be speaking often about the impact that we make in the community, not that we just want people to, uh, feel good because we’re so we’re frugal, so that makes people feel good that. We, we save money instead of investing in the community, we’re saving expenses. So, so this is gonna trickle down from all these mindsets that you want to inculcate in us, uh, uh, or inculcate us to. No, inculcate in us, I think. Uh, you have to be from the CEO level down. Absolutely, they absolutely have to be from the top, because if the top is saying. That, uh, you know, it’s about no like and trust and it’s about uh saving money and you know, look at all the money that we, you know, spend on our program and we never spend anything on our staff and we never grow our organizations the organization is not worth growing. If that attitude comes from the top, everybody else will immediately buy into it because that’s the normal attitude of nonprofits. In fact, nonprofits are so used to. Operating on a lack mentality and who you are not that it’s literally in the name. Nonprofit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so if I can. Let me give an actionable step for anyone listening to this as to what it takes. And then we’ll move to the to our mindset. But yeah, actionable steps are very, very welcome. I don’t mean to give short shrift at all. Yeah, good. So what does it take for you to realize the impact your organization is making and what that’s worth? Start implementing this mindset at your organization. I want you to sit down and determine the economic value of what you provide. Start there, right? Give you an example. Um, a lot of people who I work with, they are running like youth entrepreneurial organizations. Um, so they’re helping you understand how to be entrepreneurs and start their own businesses, including one recently in the, um, in the global South, actually lost a friend, uh, who was taken by the violence there who was doing this. In what country? In Honduras. But I work with a lot of uh organizations doing this. And uh you know, I asked him, OK, I want you, you’re you’re concerned about asking for money, you’re, you’re concerned about, you know, talking to donors about what you offer and a lot of that, it’s not all, but a lot of the fear of asking for money is just lack of confidence in your product. You’re talking to people about what you’re doing. I want you to think about the value of what you provide. Let’s say that you help 100 young people learn to be entrepreneurs, right? And let’s say that out of them, only 20 of those young people actually go out and start their own business, decent success rate for that kind of program. And out of those 20, only 6 create companies in the area that provide 10 or more jobs. Well, at a very minimum, a company that’s providing 10 or more jobs is probably bringing in a million a year. So your work with 100 kids is worth $6 million. Isn’t it worth asking for 1000? Isn’t it worth asking for 20,000? Isn’t it worth asking for 5000? Sit down with your team. And ask yourself, what is the economic impact of what we do and that’s just direct economic impact. That’s not talking about the values you teach them, the people, the employees, how they’re furthering their lives and their children’s lives, etc. and and the economic impact that they each have because they have a regular income. Yeah, order effects, but. Uh, I want to keep us moving because I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna end up giving our last mindset, you know, 30 seconds, short trips. I, I, I, I’m not being cruel. I, I want everybody to get the full value of all, all four of the, uh, All four pillars of the. The, the mindsets, the, I was gonna, I was gonna go back to the cult, the cult metaphor, but we’ll, we’ll pass on that this time. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services, and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to The 4 mindsets. Uh, your next one is the sustainable impact cycle. You make a difference between Uh, corporate, uh, commercial selling and nonprofit revenue generation. Go ahead. The quarter, quarter in the slot here. Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. So this was a probably a little bit easier to, to wrap your mind around, but it’s something important, so. In my experience, and I don’t know how this relates in the data, um, I think I saw a statistic recently that 79% of nonprofit leadership reported being burnt out. Um, and, uh, it might be higher than that, particularly among small nonprofits, because what you guys are doing, this is your passion project, this is the impact, the legacy you want to leave on the world. There is no such thing as too much time spent on the legacy that you want to make on the world. The people you want to help, right? Um, but it is also the number one cause in my experience of nonprofit failure. Absolutely it is the founder, particularly in the 1st 3 years of the organization. The founder gets burnt out. They give their all, everything they’ve got, everybody loves it and then they realize it’s not sustainable and they keep it going until something breaks, their health, their relationship with their, you know, kids, their relationship with their partner, um, and then when that thing breaks, the nonprofit dies. And I, I’d always ask myself, why is this? Why, why do we keep running into this? And uh I’m the kind of person who always looks for the fundamentals and so I, I. Determined that I think the reason for this is. People who come into nonprofits typically only have experience in for-profits prior, whether as an employee or a business owner or whatever with an organization. And uh uh they know what works there. In fact, a lot of these are just, they have a for profit mindset and they don’t understand the nonprofit side. Um, And in for profits, you have a single phase revenue cycle. Sell transactional sales, that is your revenue cycle because every new sale you make means more money for your organization. In fact, most new clients that you serve mean more money for the company, which you can then invest in getting more clients. You have a one track revenue cycle that millions of books have been written on sales. And uh in nonprofits, you have a two phase revenue cycle. You not only have to make an impact because with the nonprofit, every new client you serve is actually less money for the organization than more. So, every single time you serve more people, you actually have to then go fundraise to raise that money in order to make that sustainable. And when someone doesn’t understand that when they, you know, how do, how do most new nonprofit leaders and maybe even existing nonprofit leaders select a project, they go, I see a need, you know, we need a food pantry in this area. There’s no food pantry in this area. I see a need, let’s figure out what it takes to put the food pantry together, let’s put the project plan together, let’s, you know, figure out how we’re going to do this. Let’s go implement the food pantry. But they didn’t ask the question. Is it sustainable? Will donors fund it? Because as a nonprofit, if you want to make the impact you have in your head as a nonprofit leader, you have to make it a sustainable impact. So every single so the the sustainable impact mindset is going from. I want to make this impact, so we’re going to figure out how to make this impact. 2, I want to make this impact. So we’re going to figure out how to make this impact and if it can be funded. And it sucks that you have to do both sometimes because there are some ideas you have that would be really helpful for people you serve and you can’t find the funding for it. But what that means is you will get 65% of the way into making the impact you want to make and then it will die. And if your organization is based on that, the organization will die. You have to figure out as a nonprofit founder, not just how to sell, how to make impact in nonprofits. You have to figure out how to get it funded and every single time you go to make an impact, you should be thinking impact funding impact funding. They are pairs, they work together. If you have too much impact and not enough funding, you will start losing your impact. If you have too much funding and not enough impact, you will start losing your funding. The sustainable impact cycle is 2 phases and everything you do as an organization leader, you need to think about both the impact it will make and how you’re going to fund it. In established nonprofits, that means uh new programs. What everything you just said would apply to a subset of your work rather than your, you know, your, your, your full mission. Exactly. All right. Uh, Yeah, you know, I see a lot of strategic planning. That is, is, is very widely often unfunded. So we have this 3 to 5 year plan. And the, the funding for it is like an afterthought. Well, we’ll, we’ll just have to ask the, well after the development often it’s the development person, not even the team, we’ll have to ask the development person to just, you know, she’ll have to take on a little more, she have to do more. Well, we need, we need more grant applications because we had to fund this. So rather than funding being an integral part of a strategic plan, so you know, I’m, I’m positing a, a more established nonprofit. Uh, but same, same principle. We have a, we have a plan. How are we going to fund the plan? The funding is, is an integral part of the plan, not an afterthought. Well, then we can take this a step deeper too. You need an organization to make impact. End of story. Well, that’s number one. The point is if you could do it by yourself. You would start your own podcast. You, you would just be doing it. You would just go out and do it. Exactly. And so this. Part of the sustainable impact cycle is understanding. That I have to have an organization to make this work, which means I need to be willing to spend money. I need to be willing to hire the right people. I need to be willing to spend on infrastructure. Your lack of technology at your organization is killing you in your ability to make an impact. Because you’re not investing in the organization along with investing in the impact. If you want to make social change, social change is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. I know because I was in politics for 10 years prior to uh with nonprofit work, but prior to working with community nonprofits, and everybody in politics thinks they can fix everything in 2 years and that’s why so many of the solutions suck. A social change is hard. When you are going and making your impact, build out your organization with it. Invest in that team, invest in your organization, find those donors, bring in that funding, because that’s what it’s going to take to change the lives of the homeless people that you’re serving of the children you’re serving of the women you’re serving. What ended up happening with the, uh, was it mother and son, the anti-turkey, anti cranberry sauce, anti-stuffing, was it a mother and son team? It was the anti-ryptophan or what uh, what happened with that mother son enterprise just briefly go, did it, did, did it expand or it just ended up delivering 6 meals each year? Yeah, it was a bit more than 6 meals each year, but they never really got Mindset one. That was one of the ones where we jumped to tactics, they never really understood Mindset one and so what happened was the founder got really successful in his business and decided to focus on that and the nonprofit died out, because again, there wasn’t that impact value, right? I assume his business was not turkey farming. It was not. Or cranberry bogs. He did not own a cranberry bog. Did not grow green beans. No, all right, potatoes for stuffing. No, not. All right. OK. Um, all right, so before, so we’re halfway through the, the, uh, indoctrination, uh, uh, the mindsets, um, let’s spend a couple of minutes, uh, can we honor your, your friend in Honduras? What, what happened there? What was that situation? Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, I could tell it was poignant for you or is still. Yeah, um, so her name was Christina Palmer. And uh she was a corporate executive at a fairly big um tech firm. Who decided to quit her job. And moved down to Honduras. Because her husband her um her husband is Honduran and as is her son. And she saw the plight of the kids there and she had this incredible idea. To create instead of all the other organizations there that were offering pieces and piecemeal, you know, we’ll teach you how to start your own tortilla business or whatever, because she worked at in big tech, she had access to all of these resources for high tech tools. And she was developing an innovation center in Honduras, where we bring all of this tech from the United States to Honduras, whether it was AI drones, windmill technology, and introduce these young people to this tech, so that they could learn it, they could, you know, get jobs elsewhere they could improve their economic situation, they could build a business in Honduras and help overcome that economic situation there. And um she. Uh She died doing what she loved. She lost her life from one of the same people that she was trying to help. Um, she was robbed and she was killed, uh, on the day. The day before Christmas Eve. Um, And It It brings home the. Importance Of what we do, um, I. She ignored mindset too. It’s all I can say. She ignored mindset too, and she kept digging herself into a desperate situation. And not being sustainable in what she did. And it put her in a position where that could happen. And what? And that’s that’s part of why some of this stuff is so important to me. this is real work. Like I don’t, I’m not involved in not, you know, I could go work for for-profits. I have a branding and marketing background. I could go work for a bunch of different for-profits, but I’m not doing that. Because this is real work. That we’re doing here. These are lives we’re transforming, we’re developing methods for solving some of the most challenging social problems in this country. I talk about we as the nonprofit sector, right? as nonprofit. This is why we do what we do. And this stuff matters. And uh Yeah, we’re I, I’m so glad you gave me the opportunity to bring her up because uh her her vision for. What young people could achieve that they couldn’t in in the global South, what young people could achieve that it wasn’t just, you know. They can have their own tortilla shop or or they can um. You know, create cute little Honduran art things, but that young people, no matter where they were in the world. Had the ability to be. Uh, incredible players in industry and in technology and uh you know. They had the ability to compete with young people from anywhere else. That was, that was her vision, that was her dream and. Um, Well, we, yeah. I’m sorry that happened to you, your friend, to you and and to your friend Christina, you know, it, it shows the desperation. Of the folks that she was helping, she whose lives she wanted to improve. It sounds like that person was just so desperate, um, but she was doing the right thing, just. I didn’t, I just didn’t quite manage her safety and I, I’m sorry, I, I, I think that if she were watching me right now, she would probably, you know, slap me a little bit and be like, get to the point. Um, and, uh, I think the point is. It’s OK to quit your nonprofit for a little while sometimes. The problems that we take on in this world as nonprofit leaders are really hard to solve, really hard. This is not easy work that we do. That’s why it’s worth so much. It’s not easy. The, the, everybody thinks you can solve homelessness in like two months and give them a shelter. The most effective program I know is in San Diego, California called Solutions for Change. They deal with family homelessness. It takes them 5 years. To get a family out of homelessness, like permanently. It’s hard work that we do. And I think the lesson that she would want me to pass on to you guys is It’s just OK to recognize you didn’t do it right the first time. It’s OK to go back, it’s OK to get a job. It’s OK to get paid. It’s OK to put yourself in a better position all the while researching, talking to the people that you’re, you’re looking to serve, figuring out how you do this again. It’s OK to stop. So that you can start again, so that you can be better, so that there’s so much more impact you can do. But if you’re driving yourself to the point of financial desperation, if you’re driving yourself to the point of not being able to do this work anymore, where you’re mentally not able to do this, where you’re burning yourself, if you’re doing that. It’s OK to just walk. And then come back when you’re better, when you’ve learned more, and the sector could use more of that. And there’s so many more people who will be helped because you took care of yourself. And then came back and pursued your dream with the new knowledge that you had. I think that would probably be the lesson that She’d want me to pass on. Very worthy, it is essential to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. And if that means stepping aside, Whether you’re CEO or or further down, you know, uh employee in, in nonprofits and you, you’re You know, you know, you’re not, you’re not feeling right. Right. Sustained. Healthy in, in, in practices uh or or just your own, your own being, um. It’s, it’s so much smarter to step aside. And maintain your passion and, and hopefully come back, or maybe not. But either way it’ll be it’ll be better for you and better for the people who that institution is, is serving. Um, it almost seems trite now, but I have to ask, uh, do you, it does seem trite. Uh, is there an action step for our sustainable impact cycle mindset before we move on? Identify how you are not currently sustainable. So you know what you need to do. So look at a couple key areas. That’s some deep introspection. Look at your volunteers. Do you have enough volunteers to do the work you’re doing? If not, stop growing. Stop. Go get volunteers to help you fill those roles. Do you have enough staff? Do you need more than volunteers in some of those roles? If, if you need more than volunteers, stop, go get them. Where are you at as far as revenue? Are you skimping and buying the freest software in existence and you know, everybody’s using OpenOffice on their Nokia, uh, and is that harming your ability to actually carry out your program? And in a lot of cases, it is, you know, talk to people how frustrated and how difficult that is. So many nonprofits I know are still using paper, not even using anything electronic. No millennials, that’s super weird to me. But uh regardless, evaluate your personnel, evaluate your funding, and evaluate your marketing. If you’re not doing anything as it relates to marketing and getting your word out there and you need new people. That’s part of being sustainable. People have to know you exist. To know you exist is know what you do. Sit down and think, what does it take to get us to be sustainable? And go focus on that before you grow again. So this is something that you can still be doing and be passionate about and be excited about and your family can be excited about in 5, in 10, in 20 years. It’s time for Tony’s Take two. Thank you, Kate. I have a story about the kindness of a stranger. This was uh just a month or so ago, I got back to my car in a hotel parking lot. And there was a note on the windshield, which I thought was a ticket at first, but I was like, it’s, it’s a hotel parking lot. I can’t, how can I get a ticket. Uh, so, um, take a look at the note and it says, I am very sorry, my eight year old son flew our car door open and dented your rear passenger door. And, and she left her name, her email and her phone number, and, you know, very sorry. And sure enough, you know, there was a, there was a dent. It was uh like 1 inch and a half or so, and the paint was, uh, was scraped off, but it’s something that I never would have noticed. It would have taken many, many months cause I don’t have passengers and I certainly don’t have passengers getting in the, the, the passenger side in the rear seat, right? Any passenger I might have, which is like, I don’t know, 3 a year or something, they sit up front with me. So I never, it would have been a long, long time. And I was just so grateful that she did the right thing when nobody was looking, you know, it was probably her and her eight year old son. So as a parent, she taught her son the right thing to do. And with no other adults around looking, she certainly could have got away with it. She could have just ignored it. But she didn’t. She offered to pay for all the repairs, which she did. I offered to thank her by reducing the cost of the repair for her, taking $200 off. And she said thank you, but no, she, she uh sell me the full amount of the repair. So, very thoughtful woman. Did the right thing when nobody else was looking, so I’m very grateful to her. And that is Tony’s take too. OK. Yeah, that’s really sweet, and that’s also like, you know, teaching. To take accountability. Teaching their son, yeah. There was, there was one just reminds me real quick. I. I’m a really bad driver and I I don’t feel very confident parking. I was pulling into my university parking lot next to someone. I went to go get out of my car and I didn’t realize how um. They were crooked in the spot. And over into my line, but I didn’t realize pulling in and so I dinged their door. I was like, oh my god, it’s a really nice car. So I got out. I went to my passenger side to go see if like I had like a napkin or something cause I had to go to class. And then as soon as I open up my passenger side door I’m on the other side, they pull out their spot and they zoom away and then so I never got to, you know, like I’m sorry, I didn’t know to do the right thing. You didn’t even see them. You didn’t see them get in their car. No, they were in the car and their windows were, they had one of those like tinted cars. It was a really nice car and there was or anything, but like I still felt bad for, you know, dinging them a little bit. But they sped off, so I’m guessing they heard that I hit them and they were just like, ah, then they drove away. Wow, well, you were gonna do the right thing. That’s the point. That’s the point you’re going to do the right thing, didn’t. We’ve got Boou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of the Four Mindsets with Dan Johnson. Mindset number 3, why don’t you uh introduce this one, please. I have two posters on my wall. One you can see in this video, I know it’s mostly audio, but when you can see over your right shoulder, it says charity. Charity is crossed out and charity. Charity is crossed out and is beneath it. Yes, all right, thank you. And I have another poster on the other side over there. That crosses out donor and replaces it with partner. Why? Because I need nonprofit leaders to understand. That uh because the point is impact. And because you need both money and impact to survive. You provide the impact and your donors provide the money. They’re partners in what you do. Everybody says, oh well, I don’t want to go sell to donors, so it’s easier to sell to somebody when you’re selling them something that they could use. And my response to that. Is uh you think the donors aren’t getting anything out of this? Really? You, you, you think you, if you truly think that donors to your organization aren’t getting anything out of it, shut down the organization because you’re a waste of funds and there are 1.7 million other nonprofits working on things that could be funded instead, and I’m dead serious about that. The reason that we I think that our organizations are not delivering to our donors as we have not sat in their shoes. Why do donors give? There was a, there’s one of my favorite books, the, um, it’s by William Sturdivant, and it is the Artful journey. And it goes through the process of developing a major donor, major gift donors written in the 90s. You sound a little unsure about the book and the title. Are you sure this is a book you’ve read? It is. It sounds a little unclear. OK, I was, I was unsure about the title. Yeah, I yeah, I was just a little fog, but this is a legitimate that you have. Yes, I believe you. So, uh, the artful journey, one of the things in it is he has a study where they asked donors, why do you give? Why do you support nonprofits? And unsurprisingly, if you’ve been in the nonprofit expert space for a while, the top answers were not the tax deduction and because I feel guilty. So, you know. But the top answer was not the team. It was not no like and trust. That is a bad model. The top answer was the vision. I give to the organization because of. What I believe they will achieve. See the donors who give you, particularly donors who give you any amount of money with a comma in it. They kind of wish they were in your shoes. What I mean by that is they kind of wish they were on the front lines, helping people that you help. They wish they were there and able to serve the people that you serve, but they can’t be. Hm, interesting. And uh and that’s why stories work so well, by the way, like, quick aside, that’s why stories in donor conversations work so well. You are telling them what it’s like to be there. Yeah, you’re, you’re drawing them into the work. Right? They they can almost envision themselves. Hm, yeah, exactly. So the way they can be there, quote unquote is with their money. That is what they can provide in this relationship. And what that means is uh. Nonprofits primarily treat their donors like ATMs. I go to you when I need money, and we all know you got to thank them and you got to reach back out to them and and whatever. But I want you to think of them instead. As partners, as people who are essential in helping you do this work. So the primary way they support you is their money, but they also have a lot of knowledge, and they also have a lot of connections, and they also might even want to volunteer sometimes to, you know, help out the organization. And don’t our partners offer all of those back to us besides their money. It’s also their influence and their networks. Uh, and their own values and yeah, so, uh, uh, a, a, a real partnership. Is, is more much deeper than just financial. Exactly. And that’s how I want organizations to start treating their donors. If you are linking up with a business partner, are you pitching them before you even know whether they would be a good partner for you? No. You’re having a conversation. Hey, what do you, what do you invest in? What’s your mission? What, what, what are you trying to do with your money? Why do you like my organization? Why do you want to talk to us? Why do you give us money? If you have partners after they give you a contribution or they contribute, do you like never talk to them for 36 months, a year, whatever, or are you consistently reaching out up what’s going on, giving them advice, you know, getting advice from them, uh, seeing if they have ideas. If you treat your donors like they fund our mission and that’s what we do, that’s what you’ll get, and then you won’t even get that. But if you treat your donors like partners, like people who wish they could be on the ground with you and want to do everything they can to help you make this work. Your donor retention rate will go through the roof. And you will spend a lot less time and money and effort, prospecting and trying to bring in new donors to fund what you’re doing. I spend a lot more time and effort just getting a whole lot more money from the people that you’re working with. We know that the donor attrition rate is very high. Over 75% of first year donors don’t come back to a second gift, and that, and it’s so much more costly to attract a new donor than it is to retain an existing one. It, it’s a it’s also more fun. It is, it is, absolutely. It’s not just sales all the time. It’s relationships and every relationship can’t be a personal one, but it can, it can feel, you know, if, if, if you’re embracing this mindset number 3 that your donors are your partners. It’s a, it’s a different way of looking at the relationship. It’s a different way of messaging to folks, you know, again, everybody can’t be someone that, that you have a handshake and a hug with and a lunch every month. That’s not sustainable, but it’s the way you think about folks. The way you bring them to you, the way you message to them will be very different if you’re thinking of them as, as the kind of partnership that that you’re proposing. Exactly. Is there an action step for donors or partners? Yes, there is. I want you to reform your, this, this should be fairly quick. Um, and I do have a uh tool to do this. It’s at the very bottom of my website at Next Level nonprofits.us. There is a link to the, I think it’s called the Donor Progress packet. Um, but if you click on that, it’ll take you to Google Drive and it actually has templates in it, but what I want you to do. I want you to uh implement. Um, a 4 star donor thank you system. This comes from Trevor Bragdon’s seven figure fundraising. See, I remember the name of that book. That was that that sounds much more credible than Sturdivant. So the 4 star thank you system is I just want you to think about. These donors are used to getting, especially your bigger ones, are used to getting really high tier customer service. Um, you know, they’re platinum at Delta, they are gold at Marriott, they are whatever. So what would it look like to give a donor top tier customer service when they give a donation to your organization? And there are at least 4 things to look at. One is a thank you call. Immediately as soon as possible. Another is a thank you letter. Another is a thank you text. And uh the final is the donor acknowledgement letter. You do at least those four things, at the very minimum for every donor who comes into your space. I love pick up the call, pick up the phone for effusive thanks. And I’m also a big proponent of handwritten notes. Absolutely. There’s there’s 2 of 24, yep. All right. So the resources, uh, is at the bottom of the page, bottom of the home at next nonprofits. Implementing something. Uh, high touch for your, your, your larger donors, your major, however you define major donors, some organizations, $150 may be a major gift. Others may be $10,000. That’s right. And actually, I, one correction, this is for all your donors, you implement this for every single donor because the mindset is donors are partners. The, the, um, Charity Water, which is a very famous uh nonprofit for those in the space. Um, they found that the vast majority of their kind of inner giving circle of their top donors started by giving them a $25 donation. Do not forget that your donors are your partners, treat them all to the extent you can like that, and you will see how they level up. Mindset number 4, we’re focused on our volunteers. So, so we’ve, we’ve just talked about how donors benefit, how our donor partners benefit. Now we’re looking at how our volunteers benefit and, and you frame it as Uh, how volunteers get paid. Understanding the volunteer paycheck. So please carry on. So uh. There are 3 kinds of organizations and how they treat their volunteers. Actually, there’s really only 2 major ones. We’ll talk about the 2 major ones. Top down and bottom up. And everybody thinks the latter one is better. So you have top down, top down is I tell you what to do, where to stand, how to do it, you know, when to do it, and you have to get approval from me in order to do that, right? Um, and that is how a lot of corporate America works. So that is the framework that a lot of us are used to using. And then you have another model, which is bottom up. And bottom up looks a little bit different. So instead of all the ideas and everything coming from the top. You have a lot of ideas and things coming from the bottom. But Bottom up always has a feature where the top has to approve it. So even if the bottom comes up with the idea, so you have your, uh, you know, line worker at the pantry, so I think we really need to have better boxes or whatever, that goes up to their volunteer chief who passes it to the department head, who eventually gets it approved by whoever needs to be at the top. Um, and both of them suffer from the same problem in managing volunteers, which is Volunteers look to you to be told what to do. And uh when you are a nonprofit leader, I’m willing to bet you don’t have a ton of extra time. Uh, there’s not exactly free spots in your calendar laying around for everything and everyone talks about volunteers like herding cats. If you adopt a top down or bottom up model. You are going to be herding cats. Because both of those are hierarchies. Where you called me an anarchist earlier, you might not realize how close to that I am. Both of those are hierarchies. Where volunteers are just kind of waiting on somebody else to tell them what to do. And as long as they’re doing that. You will struggle with volunteers. You will have to, they won’t show up, you have to call them to get to do the thing, to follow up all the time, yada yada, etc. That is the failure of providing volunteer ownership. I prefer a 3rd model. Uh, which was outlined, uh, in Working swarm wise by Rick Falkvier. Now Rick Falkvia is, if you’ve never heard of him, is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. Which became the largest third party in the world in 8 years. In fact, it was so large that they took a majority in Swedish parliament. And all of their positions were adopted by every major party in Europe. The he developed the concept of the swarm, which is we’re going to trust our volunteers to do what needs to be done. And then we’ll check on it. That is one of the 3 keys to the volunteer paycheck, and the one that nonprofits miss the most. So here’s your volunteer paycheck because I know we’re running out of time. Volunteers don’t get paid money. But they do get paid in 3 different ways. Purpose, ownership, and mastery. Volunteers get paid because they are contributing to what? the impact that you’re making. They see themselves being a part of that impact and they want to be part of something bigger. Volunteers get paid the second way and they are a part of that impact. Any person who tells you they don’t want the credit on your team doesn’t want to be seen getting the credit. They do actually want to know they individually are making a difference and that is why they must own the area that they operate in. And 3rd is mastery. Volunteers want to get better at a particular task. I’m volunteering for organization because I want to get better at web design, and I’m going to start by working with you. I’m volunteering your organization because I want to get better at X, I want to get better. If you are constantly delivering to your volunteers, purpose, ownership, and mastery, they will work for you like employees. And they will be thrilled about it. I had volunteers in my organization. Move states and moves scaled, but your first nonprofit 10,000 volunteers nationally in 3 years. Yes. Uh, I had my volunteers move states and move their entire family to a different state to be more effective at what we did. Wow, you had volunteers change residences, moves, moved to continue volunteering for you? Yes, your work, not the cult, not you, the cult leader. This is where I got everybody moved to Courd’Alene, Idaho. Uh no one fact, it was actually Idaho they moved to, but that’s hilarious. Coeur d’Alene has a rich history and uh and uh I think it’s white supremacy actually, but um it’s unfortunate. OK, yeah, uh. All right, so, all right, say a little more, you know, we can, we, we saw a few minutes. I, I don’t wanna, again, I don’t want to give a short trip to the volunteers, but you know, this purpose ownership man is like Palm POM like Palm I’m thinking of the palm that you’re the, uh, this is the pomegranate juice, uh, that’s a good analogy. OK, yeah, the POM, the company, the right, the pomegranate juice, uh, volunteer management strategy you have. All right, so say some more. Go ahead. So, uh, you had people move, you had people changing their homes to continue volunteering for the organization? Yes, go ahead, I interrupted you twice. No, it’s OK. It actually sometimes creates a bit of a burden to have people believe that much in the organization, but anyway. It’s a responsibility. It is, it is a responsibility, um, and it won’t always go your way. So the Volunteer paycheck. How you implement this with your volunteers. I, you know, first of all, you understand what of these are they most interested in when they come into your organization. Most volunteers want all three, but for every volunteer, not every paycheck is the same. Some people are more interested in getting better at a skill set than they are in, you know, owning that area or whatever. Some people are more interested in. Um, having being a part of your purpose, than they are in, you know, learning a skill set. So the first thing I want you to do. I, I want you to ask every single person who volunteers for your organization, why? They want to volunteer. That is not already a part of your process, implement that in your onboarding process now. Because you need to know if you just like employees aren’t gonna show back up at your company, if you’re not paying them, at least not usually. Volunteers aren’t gonna show back up. If you’re not paying them. So you need to know what’s your volunteer salary. And that question will help you understand what is that volunteer’s salary. Now you and your volunteer coordinator, whoever manages your volunteers, what they want from their volunteer work. Correct. What is their volunteer paycheck? So that’s number one. And number 2, I include all three in a volunteer onboarding. How do you do that? One Every single volunteer who comes on board, by the way, I always do a 20 to 45 minute onboarding with every new volunteer, always. Nonprofits bring on people too fast. They hire too quickly and they fire too slowly, put it that way and the wrong volunteer who doesn’t fit your culture can wreck it. They can drive 1020 volunteers away, right? So, number one. is we’re gonna talk about the organization’s vision. Ideally a transformational vision. We’re gonna talk about the organization’s vision, the impact we’re looking to make, and what our values are. Every volunteer gets that. Number 2 is, uh, I have a couple areas in mind that I want that I think you’d be good at as a volunteer, you know, whether they you indicated on the form, I’m interested in admin, I’m interested in helping out on the ground, I’m interested in whatever. I have a couple ideas in mind of where you can own in this organization. And uh are we still on because you froze on me. Oh, there we go. You’re just frozen like a statue. I’m captivated it’s. So anyway, it’s valuable. um, so I have a couple of areas in mind that I think that they might be interested in helping out with, let’s say, you know, website and you know, sending emails, they’re marketing persons website, sending emails and uh you know, designing our physical newsletter in graphic design. And I asked them, which of those would they be most interested in. Which a lot of people do. OK, fine. And then they they pick one that they they want to do. And then I do something different. I say uh awesome. So, uh, I’m gonna give you uh a task to do in that area. This is the thing we’re looking for. And um what I’d like from you is to carry that out, but also bring me a little bit of a plan of how you think this area could be better. In our organization because the way we work after you spent some time doing the work, yes, I’d like to meet with like I’d like to meet with you again in 6 or 8 weeks. Yeah, I usually let them pick because uh they have their own time still, right? So 2 weeks. OK, great, meet in 2 weeks. Um, and what I tell them is because we’re the kind of organization where, uh, we. Uh, won’t really tell you all that much what to do. Um, but we will hold you responsible for the outcome of your role, and we will provide support to you as much as we can. Instead of this being an organization that you contribute to, we are an organization that supports you in your volunteer work. And that will both tell you, are they a potential leader in any way, shape or form if they come back with that plan? And are they actually going to do anything at your organization if they come back with a task done. They don’t, it’s a filtering mechanism to filter out bad volunteers and it is a powerful mechanism for reframing the volunteer relationship. Where you own your area and you make decisions on your area and if I don’t like the decisions that you’re making and I think they’re bad for the organization, I will remove you rather than removing your decision ability because volunteers have to be able to own what they do or they will just be sitting ducks and wait for you to come tell them. And the last thing I asked them What would you like to get better at? Is there anything you want to learn while you’re here? Right, that mastery element. And, oh, you know, I’ve always wanted to learn grant writing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to learn grant writing. OK, cool. Um, and you know, somewhere down the line, we’re gonna have a grant writer come and speak to our volunteer team. And they’re going to learn about grant writing, and it’s gonna take me 30 minutes to set up and it’s going to make their day for 3 months. Whenever volunteers do not work, this is the mindset, volunteers do not work for your organization for free, period. They don’t work for your organization because they like you. They might do that for a little bit of time. They don’t work for your organization just because they feel good if they’re going to be committed. They work for your organization because they get a paycheck. You know what that paycheck is when you bring those volunteers on and you need to deliver on that paycheck. And then. You will stop having as many complaints of, oh, they didn’t show up. oh volunteers are unreliable, oh this, oh that, pay your volunteers with their paycheck and they will work for you like you pay them and that is really intensely valuable for organizations who can’t yet do that with the full staff. And the action step for identifying the paycheck, the purpose, ownership or or mastery is asking these questions in the onboarding process. That’s right. Hi, Dan, uh, this, it’s pretty, yeah, this is the first time someone thought I froze on them when I, when I hadn’t, uh, but no, you, I mean, you really captured me, uh, talking about the volunteer paycheck. Uh, we haven’t spent a lot of time. And, uh, we, we’ve had guests through the years to talk about volunteer management, but not so much the, you know, making sure they get out of it what they want and asking them what it is they, what it is they want. All right, that valuable. So that’s why I froze on you. Uh, I was just I was just listening patiently, that’s all. Um, it’s very good. It’s an interesting moment. All right, valuable, valuable shit, really. Um, why don’t you wrap it all up? I, I’ll give you, you know, take a moment, wrap it all up before, uh, the before mindsets. Well, first of all, uh thank you to everyone for listening to this. Um, it has been a long time since I have been on the podcast circuit. So Tony, you were one of my uh first uh usually, usually everything leads to nonprofit radio. We are the, we’re the pinnacle that everyone is working there the denouement is nonprofit radio. Since you’re an avid reader, you’re, well, you, you only you cited nonfiction books, but Uh, you, you, you understand what I’m talking about. So we’re just getting you started now. I’m, I’m a little disappointed at that. You might just cut it off. Now you’ve already, you’ve reached the pinnacle. You just didn’t know it. That’s fair. Maybe this is the last show. Maybe this should be for the next, yeah, until the next, you know, wait 18 months. Take a, take a step aside as we, as we suggested might be appropriate in, uh, mindset number one, it might be time for you to move aside and then bring yourself back, you know, starting again. All right. Well, at the very least, I have a habdominal. I now know what that means. Um, so, uh, but I want to thank everyone for, for listening to this, and if you do have feedback on the mindsets, because it’s my first podcast back after, after several years, it’s been like 2017, um, uh, then I would appreciate that. That would be awesome. Maybe you can send it to Tony and he can pass it on to me. That would be great. Um, I want to end with what I think would be most valuable for any organization that feels like they are not sustainable. So you do that assessment and you’re like, oh man, we don’t really have enough money, we’re pushing our people too hard. You know, we’re we’re just not in a place where. You know, your kind of test is, does this organization run normally or does it feel like you are burning the candle at both ends all the time to do this and to make it work and people aren’t listening to you and they’re not getting on board, whatever, right? That’s the first phase of nonprofit growth. If you’re struggling in that area. One of the things that we’ve developed over the past couple of years with our clients is the 5 steps, or the 5 levels of sustainability as a roadmap for how do you actually get a nonprofit? That has the money that has the, you know, everything you need to run one program and make an impact. How do you do that? Um, and we’ve broken down those five steps on my website, so I have a giveaway that is the sustainable nonprofit Roadmap on my Next Level nonprofits.us website. It’s the 5 steps that take you from where you are to being a sustainable organization. And uh uh if you put in the reference, nonprofit radio, I’ll know you came from here, and uh uh you can get, you can also get on my calendar in addition to just getting that roadmap, but I want to make sure you guys have that roadmap, so you’re not sitting there, you’re not wondering what does it take to make this nonprofit work, man? Why doesn’t it actually work? Why am I putting in all this effort and time and energy and it’s just, I feel like I’m burning a candle at both ends all the time. This is your roadmap to get out of that, so you can focus on making an impact instead of just making the nonprofit work. It’s on my website, Next Level nonprofits.us. Put a nonprofit radio in the reference. I know you came from here. If you do that, then I’ll also send you a link to my calendar. We can hop on and kind of diagnose where you’re at and see if I can give you some, some helpful tips to walk away with. Well, thank you for that generous offer for our listeners. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Dan Johnson, uh, who now realizes that his, uh, podcast gusting is all gonna be downhill from here. It can only get worse Because you’re at the pinnacle. Uh, Chief consultant at Next Level nonprofits, again, Next Level nonprofits. and you will find him on YouTube also at Next Level nonprofits. Dan, thank you very much. Thank you for sharing and, and the story of Christina and, and your thinking on the, on the mindsets. Thanks so much for sharing all of this. Thank you for having me on, Tony. Next week, Jean and Amy return for a light chat about the devastations facing our nonprofit community. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, Donorbox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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