Gene Takagi & Amy Sample Ward: The State Of The Sector (Beginning With AI)
This year, any conversation about the nonprofit sector finds its way to Artificial Intelligence. So we start there, with our contributors Gene Takagi on legal and Amy Sample Ward on technology. Amy is concerned about our lack of security readiness and shares their Top 5 security must-haves. Gene explains your board’s duties around tech, budgeting and planning. They both see resilience as critical. Plus, a ton more. Gene is principal attorney at NEO Law Group and Amy is the CEO of NTEN.
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Hello, and my voice cracked. 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. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of chondrodermatitis, nodularis helicus. If I heard that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s on the menu. Hello Tony. I hope it’s so funny. It’s that voice cracks like I’m 14. Hey, Tony, I hope our listeners are hungry. The state of the sector, beginning with AI. This year, any conversation about the nonprofit sector finds its way to artificial intelligence. So we start there with our contributors Gene Takagi on legal and Amy Sample Ward on technology. Amy is concerned about our lack of security readiness and shares their top five security must-haves. Gan explains your board’s duties around tech, budgeting and planning. They both see resilience as critical, plus a ton more. Jean is principal attorney at Neo Law Group, and Amy is the CEO of N10. On Tony’s take two. Tales from the gym. The cure for dry eyes. Here is the state of the sector, beginning with AI. It’s a pleasure to welcome back Gene Takagi and Amy Sample Ward, our contributors to nonprofit radio. Gene is our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the nonprofit and exempt organizations law group in San Francisco. He edits that wildly popular nonprofit law blog.com. The firm is at neolawgroup.com and he’s at GTech. Amy Sample Ward is our technology contributor and CEO of N10. They were awarded a 2023 Bosch Foundation fellowship and their most recent co-authored book is The Tech That Comes Next, about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. You’ll find them on Blue Sky as Amy sampleward, aptly named. Welcome. Good to see you both. Gene, Amy, welcome back. Good to see you both as well. I actually got to see Gene in person this week, which was a real treat. But your faces coming through the internet. Where? Where? In DC in a in a meeting. Oh, cool. Yeah, it was wonderful to see Amy and hear a little bit more about her family and learn, learn about things going on. um, and great to see you too, Tony. Thank you. Last time we were together was the 50th. That’s right. Yes. All right, um. So Amy You have been, uh, you have lots of conversations with funders, intermediaries, nonprofits, uh, I’d like to start with you just. What are folks talking about? Yeah, I think there’s A lot of desire for thoughtful conversation across the sector right now and, and over, you know, the last handful of months and I’m sure the months to come. And that desire for thoughtful conversation is trying to be held in a time where things feel rapidly unraveling, you know, and A few, I think patterns have been coming up at least in the versions of conversations that I’m, I’m in, whether those are, you know, 1 to 1 with other intermediary organizations, capacity building organizations, um, nonprofit service groups or, or even philanthropy serving organizations or with funders themselves, and they’re, of course, different. You know, flavors of the same dish maybe, but I think everyone really wants to hear and help and It feels like there’s not that much help happening. Um, I think when you talk to funders are presume you’re talking about. How does that go? Like you you should be funding technology, you should be funding capacity building, you should be funding. that are advocating for things or yeah, I mean, part of what sees as our kind of theory of change in the way that we make impact is of course and directly supporting nonprofit staff through training but also shifting the conditions in which all of us are doing this work. Right, so asking funders to fund adequately for the technology and data that is needed to, to deliver the programs, their funding right is part of that or, or all kinds of other advocacy, um, big, big a little a, you know, influencing thropy, and they, and I, I have to do, so they take these meetings like they don’t mind being told what they ought to be funding. Oh, it’s easy to take a meeting. It doesn’t mean you’re making you’re implementing what’s what’s the outcome and what’s the action? I realize that. But I’m OK, I’m, I’m, I think that most of the, most of the conversations N10 is entered into with foundations are not necessarily on the premise of like, can you please give us this feedback to fund a certain way, right? We just say that when we have access to. To folks that we, that we could share it with, but mostly, um, I think in these times, just like honestly in 2020 funders and other philanthropy serving organizations are asking for what we see because we are able to see into a lot of different types of organizations across the sector, not even just in the. and see trends that are emerging, see what folks are really asking for help on right in a way where we’re not having to divulge, oh, this organization that’s your grantee, they don’t know how to do this, right? There there’s not that vulnerability we’re able to share trends and unfortunately, the trends aren’t aren’t new, but, but at least they’re asking about them right now and they. are very, um, vulnerable issues. Like we are seeing incredible lack of security readiness in organizations. And as we’ve talked about on this show, and Gin has talked about, you know, there’s a lot to be concerned about when you think of a nonprofit organizations like digital and cybersecurity because It’s your staff, it’s your content, but it’s also all of your constituents, all of those people who’ve received programs and services, and if you feel that your mission and your programs and services are vulnerable, those folks in your community who’ve accessed them are 10 times more vulnerable, right? um, than your organization is, and that’s something that I think for us we just. We care about that kind of more than anything and so it really has felt like a spotlight on security and even just to um illustrate, we we can created a new program just to try to help in this way, um, a 3 month just security focused program. We had a single email that said that it was open. Um, In 4 days, we had 400 applicants from 26 different countries asking to be in the 20 people, you know, cohort, so That was, I think, validation that we were really hearing the trend and hearing what, OK, what are, what’s behind some of these questions that we’re getting? What are people really struggling with and oh my gosh, OK, we’re right, they are really struggling with security. This is um let’s, let’s bring Gene in on uh on security. You’re nodding a lot, Gene. And, and we have talked about, as Amy said, uh, as they said, we, we have talked about it, but, uh, you know, it’s, it bears amplification, because we, we all have talked about cybersecurity, protecting data, but especially as Amy’s saying, the, the, the people you’re doing the work for, if you’re, if you’re involved in a people, uh people oriented work, Gene, remind us. Oh, I’m amplifying everything Amy says, as I’m wise to do, um, but maybe I’ll just add that, you know, when people think, including funders, when they think about technology and, and some of them are just focused on AI right now, but technology is much broader than that, of course. When they’re thinking about technology, they really have to think of it as one of the core assets of an organization, and that’s not all because it’s also a huge risk and liability not only to the organization but all to all its beneficiaries and its communities that they serve and it’s communities that they exist in so it’s all of that it’s it’s even more complicated. To manage if I might venture and say this, then your other main investments which are like in staffing and in facilities like this is stuff that we don’t have a lot of experience with it’s newer things that are coming up. We haven’t learned how to manage it very well. It’s a little bit out of control. as it develops as with AI going on we don’t even know what the laws are related to this um so this is stuff that funders need to fund and organizations need to invest in really badly and when they don’t think about doing this they’re they’re really. Living for the short term at the expense of the intermediate term because it’s not even that far off in the future where these risks will ripen. They will ripen very, very quickly now. um, so that’s my two cents. And add to what she’s saying. I talked to two different, um. Funders who are who are regional funders, not national funders, and said, hey, I know the folks that are your grantees, they’re um predominantly rural organizations. They’re predominantly very small organizations, you know, single digit FTEs. There are folks that we can see in our data, not as individuals or individual organizations, but by kind of organizational demographics, are, are very likely to have really low scores, you know, ineffectiveness in these areas. We have free resources. We’re not even like asking you to fund us necessarily, like, which I should have been asking, but, you know, coming at it from really how do we get these resources available to organizations who we know are vulnerable, and their feedback was, well, security is not an issue that any of our grantees have raised with us. And I just want to pause there because why would a grantee in the vast power imbalance between a very small rural two-person organization and a funder, say we don’t have a security certificate on our website, we don’t have secure, you know, donation portal, we don’t. Have a database protect like why would they surface these would be fun? Of course they had of course no one has brought this up, right? Why would they point you, you need to be thinking beyond what was in that grant application and about really the, the safeguarding of that mission. Not only why would they admit it, but it may very well have nothing to do with, although it’s, well, it is related to what they might be seeking money for, but it, it’s, it’s grant application. Yeah, it’s not, it’s right, it’s not gonna be a question on the grant application is your, you know, do you have a, do you have a secure fundraising portal? Um, Gene, you have some advice around board like this should be at a board level, board level CEO conversation, right? Yeah, I mean it’s where it starts to get started. Yeah, and, and very obviously like technology comes up as a budget item, right, for the board. So when the boards are approving annual budgets, are they leaving any space for technology changes? Well, so many organizations, including public governments, are, are just like putting patches, right? They’re investing in patches and so they’ll patch, patch, patch. Um, but the technology is advancing so much quicker than patches can actually address. And again, The persons and organizations at risk are not only the the charity itself, right? It’s all of the beneficiaries whose data they’ve compiled and potentially like just goes beyond that as well. So it’s really, really important now for the boards to say let’s think about this as one of our core assets and our core risks and figure out how we’re going to properly budget for this item. And talking about sort of risk opportunity, you know, assessments and saying, well, what happens I, I’m a big fan of scenario planning and maybe it’s hard because these things don’t have definitions but over strategic planning for like a a longer term plan. I think scenario planning right now is really important because the the environment is just shifting so quickly, right? It’s like shifting every few months it feels like so scenario planning for different scenarios and and some of that would be well what happens if we don’t change our technology or what happens if we don’t invest? What are the worst things that can happen? What are the likely things that are gonna happen? and do we actually have board members who understand any of this? Do we need to relook at our board composition? Do we have anybody younger than 50 on our board? And for a lot of organizations, too many organizations, the answer is no, which will hurt you in the fundraising sort of pipeline down the road very quickly as well. Um, we’re not incorporating enough, um, Gen Z, millennials into the governance and leadership positions as, as boomers and even, um, Gen X are are are hanging on to positions longer. You know, for, for a reason, for a good reason, but, um, we need to bring more younger people into the pipelines because they have perspectives. They have a lot of what’s at risk, um, here as well. So that’s kind of my thinking in with respect to fiduciary duties, in the budgeting, they’ve got to understand it. In the recruiting for board members, they’ve got to figure out how to develop the pipeline of who to bring in on the board, like in their duty of loyalty, like to the organization’s best interests, they’ve got to be. Thinking not only about the purpose or the mission of the organization they’ve got to be thinking of the values of the organization, including how much they value the community and all of this relates to the organization’s um what what I’ll call it’s. Reputation or it’s just um legitimacy to the public at a time when the government is poking holes at organizations’ legitimacy if you haven’t earned that from your own community fundraising and everything else will will just dry up so you’ve got to invest in legitimacy if you’re not investing in technology at this point and protecting persons that rely on you. To safeguard their data you’re gonna lose legitimacy really quickly and you’re gonna be irrelevant or or, you know, liable for, for what are two quick things to what Gene’s saying on, on the staff side but then also on the board side. Plus a million to everything Gene said about making boards more diverse, um, including age, but I don’t want folks to think that that means because you need to like have a 25 year old on your board that’s now in charge of your technology. The board’s job is not to be in charge of your technology, but having more folks in that board meeting who have perspective or experience a lot of different. Things are possible helps open up strategic conversations to say, hey, have we considered this? Not that I’m now the implementer because I’m the board member, but it really does help and I just want to draw that line that we’re not saying make someone on your board in charge of technology, but having people comfortable with technology strategy conversations is very, very valuable, of course. The other side on the staff side, You know, one thing we see in our research, um, and our, you know, different assessment tools and in our programs, yes, there are still organizations that don’t have all the policies that they could have, right? They don’t have strong data retention policy, they only think, oh well, payroll files or HR files, right? They’re not thinking about all of the data, all of the content, you know, all these different things, right? We can have a big policy book and there’s work to be done there. But the real area of vulnerability that we see is organizations likely have some policies, but they do not have staff fidelity to those policies. So you could like go through a checklist and be like, yep, data consent policy, data collection, you know, but staff don’t know the policies exist and they are not practicing them at all in a consistent way. And so I wanted to go back to the scenario planning note because I think we see some folks um. You know, yes, you could bring in a consultant or you could get some sort of big security like test going, but what you could also do is in a staff meeting just take that time and say right now if we got an email that we had been hacked, what do we all think we would do? And just talk it through together and see oh this person. Thinks we would do this and this person over here says, oh we have an account here. What do we have? What, what is our answer, right? What, what are the questions we don’t know how to answer? Let’s go answer those questions for ourselves and really have more um opportunity I think to surface with staff where people don’t know something, not in a shame way but in a like, gosh, this is what we should focus our training on isn’t just let’s draft another policy. Let’s understand how to do these things as the people doing them every day. Amy, uh, in, in a couple of minutes after Gene and I talk about something that I’m gonna ask him, then I’m gonna ask you something, but you, you, I don’t want to put you on the spot with no, no forewarning. If we have, let’s, let’s take a, let’s take a, our audience is small to mid-size, so let’s go more toward the smaller, let’s take a, let’s take a, a 15 person nonprofit. Uh, it, I’m not sure it matters what the mission is. I, I, I don’t want to constrain you. I want you to think broadly. I, I’m the CEO of a 15-person nonprofit. Uh, we’ve got a $4 million annual budget. Is that 2, maybe 33 to $4 million annual budget for 15 employees, full-time employees. Uh, what I’m gonna ask you in a couple of minutes is what, what are some, what, what basic things can you name for us that, that we ought to have? OK. You, I thought that was you know way, you know, yeah, I know you’re gonna start writing, thank you. Gene, I want to ask you, uh, I, I, let’s let’s talk about the core assets of a nonprofit. Uh, you, you, I love that you’re identifying technology as a core asset. Are there, are there other core assets that, that I’m not thinking of? The staff is typically number one, right? Facilities is typically a pretty big investment, although that’s been changing um with a lot of remote working now and organizations seeking to downsize how they allocate where their investments are, where their assets are. um, staffing is also changing and. Part because of some technology, right? So if technology isn’t in that bucket in there, you may be downsizing staffing, you may be reducing facilities, but why is that happening? Probably somewhat related to your technology. If your funding stays stable. I know that’s a big assumption, but probably technology is playing a part in that. Is your technology? Gonna break down like in a year. That’s something to really think about. If you’re now reducing staffing and reducing facilities, relying on technology that’s gonna break down in a year or give you problems in a year or create harm to your beneficiaries, that’s like the big one that that Amy raised that, that really hits home for me. It’s like. Now you’ve got to really rethink what was the board doing? Did you even think about that? Um, so you know as part of your fiduciary duty of care, and again I love to think of it in terms of both the mission of the organization and the values of the organization which if I bring it down to fundamental human rights, it’s preserving dignity to your beneficiaries, right? And if you’re not safeguarding your private data and if you’re letting health data flow away, and this includes your employees too, right? like. Like your key stakeholders, if they can’t trust you. Then your legitimacy is also gone, right? So you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot unless you’re doing that. So boards have got to now rethink like we maybe weren’t thinking about technology that way so much before, but as we’ve seen how exponentially, you know, um, exponential changes technology creates for our organizations and the environments and what we invest in and what our risks are, boards have got to be in the mix and I agree absolutely with with um. Amy, it shouldn’t be the 30 year old or 25 year old board member who’s like, OK, you’re in charge of the technology. Yeah, no, no, it’s, it’s, but it’s another perspective in there. Yeah, and it’s, it’s, it’s better informed, uh, look, I’m the oldest person on the on the meeting, uh, in our chat. Uh, they’re, they’re better informed, you know, they, they, they have a a fluidity, they think about things that, that 63 year old is not gonna think about or 55 year old is not gonna think about. Um, so I’m just kind of fleshing out, yeah, of course, different perspective, but how so? Because they, uh, depending on their age, they either grew up with, you know, uh, technology is an add-on to my life. And some people have had it since like age 5. You know, I had a rotary phone at age 5. And I always dialed it backwards. So, you know, I was challenged from the beginning. Our colleague, our colleague is looking up from our uh homework assignment, homework from their homework assignment. What, uh, what, what do you, what you, what can you enumerate for us? I have 5 things I wrote down off the top of my head. I don’t know that if I had. You know, 50 minutes instead of 5 minutes that I would write the blog post with these same 5 pieces, but I think all of them, I know you gave me an organization, kind of 15 people, 4 million, but I don’t think any of these. Are unique to that organization. So I just want to say that. The first is cyber insurance. I know everybody thinks like let’s make sure we have our DNO in place. Check the box for some insurance as well, you know, um. Let’s make sure everybody DNO directors and officers insurance in case you’re not familiar with that, that’s, that’s an essential should definitely have that directs and officers, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, the second piece I um put down was data deletion practices. I feel like there’s such a focus on preserving data and content at all human reason, um, but actually, Like, to what end do you have this, especially to to Jean’s point before about the dignity of people, and they’re not in your program, you’re not reporting on them, you know, to a funder, you’re not, why are you saving every bit of this if it means somehow that list is taken, you know, um, and we talk a lot in our kind of closed cohorts when we’re working with organizations. That it isn’t that we don’t think there’s value in being able to look at longitudinal data of your programs and, you know, do that evaluation, but you don’t need to know that Amy Sample Ward was the person in that program, right? There are ways that you could anonymize the data and still preserve the pieces that are helpful for your program like evaluation. Well, removing the, the risk of it still being me or Jean or Tony, you know, associated. So I really think deletion practices and policies that dictate when you delete things, how much of it you delete, what you um anonymize is really important. Third, This is, I think, hopefully more top of mind for folks since so many organizations. Maybe became hybrid or virtual or remote permanently from the pandemic and that’s content and machine backups and and redundancy. I see a lot of organizations who say, oh, but we use the cloud, right? Like we use Microsoft 365 or we use Google Workspace. OK, but in your day to day is every single document that someone’s working on in those systems and if they’re downloading it to work on it offline for any reason. Well, does it have data in it? You have constituent information in it, um, but also like if someone’s working on something and they’re You know, computer is stolen or broken or vulnerable, is all of that backed up somewhere? Do you, you know, there it’s quite simple to set a full machine backup to the cloud every day too, right? But it, it just takes thinking of that, prioritizing it and setting it up, um, including, including with that recognizing. That employees might be using their own devices. They, they probably shouldn’t be, you should be, or you should, you should at least be funding their technology, their, their monthly Wi Fi bill, etc. but beyond just recognizing that they may not even be using exclusively your technology and, and what’s the, what’s, so then what’s the redundancy and backup of on their own devices. Technology policies that say the only tool you could use is the laptop we gave you are intentionally limiting your own understanding of how those workers are working because there’s no way that they are only using that laptop you gave them. So, having a policy that says this is how you safely access our tools, whether you’re using our laptop or not, at least allows you to build the practices, the human side of security into that use instead of pretending it doesn’t happen, you know. Yes, yeah, OK, number 4 and number 5 are somewhat similar, but again this is where we see big breakdowns in practice. Number 4 is that Every system that can have it has two factor enabled and is required. There’s so many ways to do to factor that it isn’t an excuse to say that it’s like burdensome, it doesn’t have to be like, it doesn’t have to be a personal text message. It could be an authenticator app, whatever, but like you need to have to factor on everywhere, um. And need to be using a password manager so that staff are not sharing passwords with each other by saying, hey Gene, the password to, you know, our every.org account is is this like, oh my God, you know, that we can both we can both log in but it’s encrypted we don’t see the password, right? We’re sharing it um in a safe way. And then the last one, number 5, is that, again, a practice, organizations have established processes for admin access for if you get logged out of something that it is not. I email Tony and say, oh, hey, will you send that password to me? Like, most of the security vulnerabilities that we see with organizations isn’t because somebody was in a basement and hacked their way in. It’s they sent one phishing email and a staff person responded and was like, oh yeah, here’s your password, right? Like, it wasn’t hard to get in. So, If you have a policy that says you’ll never email each other to say I got logged out, what is, what is a more secure way? OK, well, I call you on the phone. We have this secure password that we say to each other that only staff know and like. I’m not saying that has to be your plan, right, but it isn’t just randomly, oh, the ED sends an email to the staff person that says, please reset my password. Like, I don’t think that’s gonna be foolproof, you know. OK, so it’s just as simple as like a procedure for what happens when somebody can’t can’t log in. Exactly, because that does happen. So why not create something where everybody on the team knows this is what we do. I know I’m doing it safely, you know, and following the procedure. OK, those are pretty, those are pretty simple. Um, so you might, you might say, well, cyber insurance, that’s not simple. It’s not like I can do it today, but you can talk to brokers, you can talk to insurance brokers for cyber insurance, data deletion policy. I’m gonna venture that N10 has a, uh, sample data deletion policy and its resources. There you go. Backup and redundancy. Do you have, is there advice about that in Yeah, there’s lots of it, but I’ll put it on our list to make sure that there’s some guidance on that on our cybersecurity resource hub, which is all free resources, so I’ll make a note of that. Beautiful. 2 factor and and password manager. All right, that, I think that’s pretty well understood. I mean, uh, I, I have clients that use the, uh, the, the Microsoft authenticator. As soon as, as soon as I hit, as soon as I hit enter on the, on the laptop, I can’t even turn to my phone fast enough. The Microsoft Authenticator app is already open, notified. I’ve already got the not in the, in the second it takes me to turn from one side of my desk to the other. The authenticator is open. Uh, so it’s not, there’s no, it’s not like there’s no delay. Right, um, OK, and a procedure for not being able to log in, uh, uh, I bet you could find that on the intense site too. All right, thank you for that quick, quick homework. Thank you. All right, all right, so this is eminently doable. And then there’s, you know, of course you have to go deeper. There, there are policies that you need to have, but you know, I wanted something kind of quick and dirty, so thank you for that. All right, all right. Um, Should we turn to just like general state of the sector from our cybersecurity conversation? Sure, um, Amy, you wanna, you wanna kick that off? You kick that off. Yeah, I do talk to lots of people and I think, you know, we’re hitting the two-year mark of kind of like unavoidability of people constantly talking about AI which I have my own feelings about, but, you know, If I step out of any one day’s conversations about AI and look at the last two years, we’re in a very different place of those conversations, you know, um, in a way that I think I finally feel good about how the trend is going in those conversations, um, a lot of one on one calls I have with, with really diverse organizations, you know, small advocacy organizations, global HQ or, you know, like all kinds of folks is. How do we not use the tools that are being marketed to us? And how do we build a tool that’s purpose-built, that’s closed model, that’s just the content we want it to have, right? And like actually useful for us. Which I think is really exciting, that folks are kind of seeing that it’s, it’s just technology, just like, yes, it has different capabilities, you do different things, different tools do different things, of course, but I’m really excited that it feels like folks are trending towards. Well, we have some use cases. How do we build for those use cases versus we want to adopt these things? How could we find something to do with these things we want to adopt, which I think was the reverse order of it all. You and you and I have a friend who is devoted to this exact project, uh, George Weiner, CEO Whole whale, they’ve created Cas writer. Yeah Horider.AI, which is intended exclusively for the use of small and mid-size nonprofits, limited, limited learning model, uh, your content safe within it and not being skilled in artificial intelligence, that’s about the most I can say about it. But whole well, they have a, they’ve, and they’re not the only one I’m sure, but they’ve created a product specifically, uh, to take advantage of. The technology of AI, but reduce a small and mid-size nonprofit’s risks around your use of it in terms of what it brings in and how it treats the data that you provided. Yeah, causes writer, change agent, there’s a number of folks in the community. You know, trying to help organizations in this way, which I think is great, um, but a trend, a smaller trend in the last couple months in these AI conversations, bigger trends like I said, but there’s also this piece where I’m hearing from folks saying that. They can tell, for example, a colleague used Chat GPT Gemini, and, you know, a large tool like that to to make this proposal that they sent to them or this email, and when they say, hey, it’s really clear that you used Gen AI tools to write this, could we talk about it and get into like your thoughts more about it? There where they had in the past felt that folks were like, oh yeah, I did, but like here’s what I was thinking. Now there’s just complete denial that the tools were used. They lie. People lie? Yes, that’s right. And so to, they’re like, well, how do we have strategic conversations about the way we use these tools if you’re going to deny that you’re using them. Well, let’s let’s talk about what, when you lie to someone about anything, especially I don’t, I don’t, it seems innocuous to me, but, uh, including AI, well, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll leave my own adjective out of it. I think it’s innocuous. It’s so the the technology is so ubiquitous, but all right, if you lie about anything, you, you lose legitimacy. I, if I were a funder, uh, OK, thank you very much. Goodbye, because you just, you just lied to me about something that I don’t think is such a big deal even. And I’m giving you a chance that I was able to point to it, you know, yeah, and I’m giving you a chance to overcome it. I want to have a chat human to human, and you’re denying that the premise of my question. OK. All right, I’m so I’m shocked, obviously, I really, I’m dismayed that people are lying about their use. That’s completely contrary to what the advice is ubiquitous advice is that you’re supposed to disclose the use. Right. I’ll just throw in there that. Please, Gene, get me off my, push me off my soapbox. Well, back to kind of board composition, if you ask a bunch of board members, I think many of them. Would say AI is just like one thing. They have no idea that like AI is a million things, right? And you’re probably using many, many forms already whether you realize it or not, even on a Google search, like, you know, AI is popping up now you might, that might be a little bit more obvious now, but. Just to, to know that AI if I compared it to a vehicle, for example, it could be an airplane, it could be a bicycle, it could be a tank, right? They they all have very, very different purposes and repercussions and so you have to understand that like, oh we’re gonna like invest more in AI. That doesn’t mean a whole lot. So, um, to figure out what your what your strategy is again, I, I, I think, um. Cybersecurity and when when organizations are gonna venture off into AI a little bit more they’ve got to see it as part of governance and not just information technology it’s not just the uh a management tool it’s part of their governance responsibilities. It’s time for Tony’s Take too. Thank you, Kate. Got another tails from the gym. This time, two folks whose names I don’t know yet, but I do see them. Fairly often, they’re not as regular as Rob. The marine semplify or uh Roy, I’ve talked about Roy in the past, not, not, not as common, but we’ll, we’ll, we’ll find out. Like I did find out the uh name of the sourdough purveyor, you recall that just a couple of weeks ago. Uh, I, I’m gonna hold her name, it’s in suspense now, but, uh, I learned her name, the, the one who gave the sourdough to to, to Rob. So these two folks were one of them, uh, the guy. Suffers dry eyes. And the woman he was talking to had the definitive. cure for dry eyes. You have to try this. And she was on him for like 5 minutes, you gotta try this. Hold, hold on to your, make sure you’re sitting because you know you’re not, you, you’re not gonna wanna, you’re not gonna wanna stumble and fall down when you hear the startling news of the dry ice cure of the uh of the century. Pistachios, pistachios. She was very clear. 1/4 cup. She, she did not say a handful, which to me a handful is a 1/4 cup. She didn’t say a handful. It’s a 1/4 cup of pistachios daily, right? This is a daily regimen you have to follow and you will get results within 3 to 4 hours. She swears it 3 to 4 hours, your eyes are gonna start watering. It’s gonna be like you’re crying and tearing, like you’re at a funeral or a wedding. That’s how much water you’re gonna have. All right, I editorialized that I added the wedding funeral, uh, uh, analogy, but she swears within 3 to 4 hours your eyes are, are gonna be watering. Follow the regimen, pistachios. She was also very precise. These are shelled pistachios. You don’t wanna get the, uh, the unshelled ones too much work, uh, which to me that’s interesting now that’s, that’s contrary to the advice that I’m hearing on, uh, YouTube. There’s that guy on YouTube, the commercial that I always skip, but sometimes I listen, uh, Doctor Gundry, you may have heard Doctor Gundry on the YouTube commercials. He talks about pistachios. He says get the unshelled ones because that way you won’t eat too many of them because you have to go through the task of shelling them yourself so you won’t eat too many because too many pistachios, according to Doctor Gundry now this is too many pistachios is bad, but the right amount of pistachios is, is, is, is beneficial, but he’s not as precise as the gym lady. He does not say Gundry, you can’t pin Gundry down. Of course, I didn’t listen to his 45 minute commercials, so, you know, I listened for like 7 minutes and I got the, the shelling, uh, the tip from, uh, from Gundry. So, He’s not as precise as the uh the dry eyes cure lady. A 1/4 cup of pistachios shelled every day. You’re gonna get immediate results. That’s all, it’s just that simple. cure the dry eyes. Don’t buy, don’t buy the over the counter. Don’t buy the saline in the bottle. Don’t buy the uh red eyes. Well, red eyes is a different condition that, uh, it’s different. She doesn’t claim to have a cure for that. Dry eyes, she, she stays in her lane. She’s in her lane, dry eyes. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. I like the specificity of the uh the shelled unshelled unshelled, no, no, no, get the shell, the ones without the shell, they’re already been shelled. She’s very precise cause that, because the shells are gonna take up more capacity and you know, and then you’re not gonna get the full 1/4 cup uh therapy. The treatment is gonna be lacking because you’re not gonna get a 1/4 cup because the shells are taking up space in your measuring cup. Well, then my next question would be like, salted, unsalted, old bay, no old bay. It’s like, Well, you should have been there with me. Uh, she didn’t, she didn’t specify. I think just straight up. She didn’t say salted or unsalted. That’s a good question. You’re gonna have to go on your own, let’s say if it’s a, if it’s a dry eyes regimen. Then you wanna, you wanna be encouraging fluids. So I would guess, now this is not her. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna impugn her, her remedy, her treatment, you know, with my, my advice now I’m just stay in my lane. This is not my specialty, dry eye cures like hers. I would say you probably want the unsalted because salt, uh, salt causes, uh. More dryness, right, if too much salt, you know, you become dehydrated, I believe, so. But again, that’s not her. You know, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna add anything on to her, her strict regimen. Um, oh, and by the way, uh, I heard one of the, uh, commentators I listened to on YouTube said, uh, somebody had Riz. I knew exactly what they meant, yeah, I knew exactly. I didn’t have to go look it up in the, I knew it, charismama. I said, oh, I know that. I don’t, I don’t have to go look it up in the uh in the slang dictionary. Oh, so proud of you. Yes, thank you. That’s just a couple of days later. All right. We’ve got Beu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of the state of the sector, beginning with AI with Jean Takagi and Amy Sample Ward. Now I asked about the state of the sector and we’re back into cybersecurity. It only took about 6 minutes, uh, and we’re like 1 minute and uh and then we just talked about it for 5.5 minutes. So, all right, where there are bigger things going on in the nonprofit sector. You know, our, our, uh, federal government, uh, the regime is, is, uh, has found nonprofits that are complicit in terms of universities. Uh, I don’t think it’s gonna stop there. um, we are, you know, both the left is, is under attack and. In a lot of different ways and that, that impacts a lot of nonprofits that do the type of work that is essential, you know, whether it’s legal rights or human rights, uh, simple advocacy, um, I mean, even feeding certain populations, uh, so obviously immigrant work, um, let’s. Uh, let’s go to the uplifting subject of, uh, the, uh, the state of the sector generally. Like, let’s put AI aside now for, for 15 or 20 minutes and just talk about. What people are, what people are feeling, what people are revealing to you. Gene, I’ll turn to you first for this, you know, what, what, what do you, what are people concerned about? What’s happening? Well, um, what’s on people’s minds is what I what I mean. Yeah, I, I think the sector is still feeling the the impact of the broader public being very polarized, um, and the effect of not only government actors on, um, uh, inflaming the polarization but on media as well, and nonprofit media is not exempt from that, uh, as well. So really is about trying to figure out, well, how do we. Move forward at a time where it is so polarized and where for many organizations the government is acting uh adverse to where our mission and our values are and they are affecting our funding and what’s gonna happen. So one of the trends going on right now I, I, I see is. There’s a greater understanding that we’re not gonna go back to the world. That, that was a year, right? We’re not going back there. We’re in this, what I’ll call is probably a transitionary period. I don’t think this period will last exactly like this either, but what’s gonna be next? What’s forthcoming? Is it gonna be worse? Is it gonna be better? And what can we do now as nonprofits to shape that direction? Like we can fight. Tooth and nail for everything right now, but if we’re not and by we, I’m including myself in the nonprofit sector, so forgive that indulgence, but if we can work towards a brighter future strategically, what are we thinking about instead of just sort of defending against every new executive order or every law and just trying to sort of fight on a piece by piece basis to just maintain scraps of of rights that. That we can preserve what what is our future plan, um, so we’re gonna also see with the diminished fundraising we’re gonna see some um consolidation in the sector, right? There’s, there’s a lot of nonprofits out there and they’re going to be a lot fewer nonprofits in 4 years. So what is gonna happen? So we’re gonna see more collaboration. We’re gonna see more mergers. We’re just gonna see a lot of dissolutions, um, and that’s gonna mean that a lot of communities are no longer gonna be served. So what other organizations are gonna pick that up? And if we have less funding to serve communities, do we need to find ways to do it in different ways, um, and so you know, back to technology, people will rely on technology, but that’s not the panacea for everything. Um, and I think collaboration is going to be a big part of it as well. So yes, there’ll be some consolidation and some mergers, but there’s gotta be other sorts of collaborations because the need is just gonna keep growing. Uh, but also trying to shape what we want in the sector is important and to understand that we’re not the only country that’s going through this, right? And we are more and more in a, you know, and this is one world and everybody impacts each other. And there are other very authoritarian countries that have really harmed their civil society and their nonprofit sectors, right? Yet there are nonprofits that continue to thrive. In those sectors, what are they doing? What can we learn from them? What gives them legitimacy when the government is not giving them legitimacy? There’s a lot to grow from here, evolve and adapt, um, but we are, and admittedly we’re in really, really harsh circumstances, so everybody is just sort of, you know, running all over the place without, without any direction still, but I think there’s more and more. Understanding that we’re gonna have to start to gather together and and and create some plans. I really agree with Jean and I, I’m also thinking about how we first started our conversation and How I said, you know, I’m experiencing folks really wanting to have thoughtful conversations, even though we may not be able to even make a container for those thoughtful conversations because of all the pressures and the anxiety and the unknowns. And I feel similarly here and in the way Gan is framed, framed the the uncertainty ahead because I see so many organizations who have never, through all the ups and downs, even if they’ve existed for 100 years, have never had to say. That their mission was political because no one has ever said that feeding hungry children was political or that housing people that don’t have a house is political or, or, you know, name most of the missions across the sector, right? Um. And now we’re in a place, you know, the last few months of the budget cycle and all of those debates made snap and uh so many programs became something where we we saw staff in the community saying like, oh gosh, well, normally I send a newsletter, normally, you know, this is my job and now I’m having to defend. That our organization exists and why we would exist and and what our programs do, but I also think to Jean’s point, there’s so much to learn and there is so much we already know. We do know how to do our work, right? Our folks who are running all kinds of missions and movements are experts and so even if we are. Um, looking at opportunities to collaborate, not just mergers and, and acquisitions or closing, but, but really collaborate in new and different ways, we don’t need to enter those conversations feeling like we don’t know anything. We know a lot. We’re just looking for maybe new venues or ways to apply that learning and that knowledge and I, I just, I wanna say that part because I, I don’t want folks feeling like they can’t enter those conversations because. They’ve just never done it before and they don’t know what what to even say. No, you know all about housing. You know all about resource mobilization in your community, whatever it might be, right? And so from there, there’s lots to grow from that that there’s already fertile ground. We, we have, yeah, we have experience, we have wisdom. Um, it sounds like, you know, you’re, you’re both talking about resilience. You know, we, we, we need, we’re, I guess in the current moment, we’re sort of treading water to see what’s coming as we’re, as we’re defending our, whatever, whatever our work is or whatever is important to us personally, because we, you know, we know that we, we can’t, we can’t take on everything, but, you know, we’re, we’re standing up for what it means the most to us. As, as individuals and as, as nonprofits. And then we’re waiting to see what, you know, what the future holds, um. I, I, I agree. I, I don’t, I don’t think it’s gonna be this extreme, but I also agree we’re not, we’re not going back to uh the 2016. Yeah, I’m just a really strong believer in, in one thing you said, Tony, about like what we want. There, there’s some things we want, and I think that is true of most of the country. I think for a lot of things, we want the same thing, right? It fundamentally it’s dignity for everybody, um. Uh, and, and dignity for our own communities. So just trying to find that and showing how nonprofits further that goal and making sure. That your representatives know that is really critical. So right now our our representatives just seem to be voting as blocks, right? They just vote along party lines and they’re not doing much more, but that would change if en masse, like the people that vote them into power say these are the things that really are meaningful to us like do something. You know about these fundamental things we wanna be able to feed our children we wanna feel safe on our streets like they’re just fundamental things, um, and then we can talk about how to accomplish that and we might have disagreements on, on that, but make sure the representatives know that they’re gonna be held accountable for helping people get what they really want and what the things that most are are most important to to them. That are meaningful to them, um, because so many things that people are shifting the arguments towards have no real meaning to their personal lives like attacking certain groups, you know, for, for, for allowing them to have rights probably, you know, the people people are attacking them. It probably doesn’t make any difference in their day to day lives or not whether those other people have rights or not when we’re speaking about certain minority groups, but why are they attacking it because that makes them or or they’ve been positioned. I, I think they’ve been. Uh again with, with technology and AI they’ve been brainwashed into thinking this is the fundamental thing that separates us versus them and we have to be better than them and um I, I, I think we’ve really got to get off of that sort of framework of thinking and really having nonprofits connected with their communities and tying them to their representatives is really really important at this time. Yeah, that that zero-sum thinking. That everything somebody else gets detracts and takes away from me, my, mine. Whether it’s an organization or person. It reminded me of a conversation we had on the podcast. I’m trying to remember when it was, it was years ago, years ago, um. And I don’t remember what if it was uh political administration change or it was natural disaster. I don’t remember what maybe the original impetus was when we, when we very first talked about this, but It is reminding me of, you know, we’ve said before the value that every organization has in, in kind of sharing the, the information and the data and the lessons and the truth of your community and your work so that when people are putting into the garbage machine, you know, tell me the tell me the real. You know, stats about hunger in my city or whatever, who, who cares about that? But if they actually came to your website as an organization that addresses hunger and you said this, these are the real numbers, right? This is what it, this is what hunger looks like. It looks like a lot of different things, right? It’s like AI hunger can be all these different things, um. That’s an important role in this time that every organization I think can be contributing, really saying this is what we know, this is what we see. This we are experts on these topics so that There’s a little, even if it’s a small antidote to the spin and the and the media and the wherever those online conversations go, at least you were kind of putting on the record what you do know and see in your work. Exactly right. I, I think I remember we were talking about how to be heard when there’s so much noise out there in the social networks and in media. How, how does, how does a nonprofit get get heard, and part of your advice was you have your own channels. So, and including your own website. Yeah. Thank you. All right. All right. What are you hearing, Tony? You get to talk to people all the time too. You have your own angle. You’re sitting over here grilling Gene and I. You got that’s not fair. I don’t see and hearing. Gene, I hate when they do this to me. Gene, help me out. No, um, alright, I’m gonna put AI aside because there is so much of that. Um, Still, you know, funding, uh, people still reeling from the USAID cuts, you know, it fucking kills me. It’s $1.5 billion which there are, there are several 1000 people in the world who could pull out $11.5 billion from their pocket and replace all the AI, all the USAID funding. See, I said AI when I’m, it’s a ubiqui it’s, it’s, we’re, we’re. We’re like, we’re, we’re conditioned that could replace all the USAID funding with a check or with a crypto transfer, and they wouldn’t actually be cash like that’s bananas, and they wouldn’t miss it. So, you know, people still reeling, um, missions still reeling from the USAIDs. I have a client that’s, but I, I, I hear about it from others as well, um. And it wasn’t just USAID, but State Department cuts that were non-USAID funds. The State Department did a lot, um. Yeah, a little, a little in media, you know, I, I listened to some media folks, um, Voice of America, trashed, trashed under, uh, what’s Carrie Lake, you know, uh, used to, used to, you know, like our, our soft. What’s it called soft diplomacy, right? Like, like bags of rice, bags of flour and sugar through USAID and State Department, news and information that was trusted, unbiased. I know there are a lot of people who would disagree that it was unbiased, but still, the, the effort was to, to be unbiased, spreading news and information around the world, around the world. Uh, and then I guess also, uh, public media cuts here in the United States where grossly, ironically, Red rural communities are most impacted because they’re not gonna get emergency flood warnings like like just failed in help me with the state was it Kentucky, the the river that flowed and the and the camp that lost 20 counselors and children, was it Kentucky, Texas. I’m sorry, it was Texas, right, thank you, um. You know, emergency warning systems, let alone news and information, you know, we’ve, we’ve gutted, uh, corporate media long ago gutted local media, but just so news and information. Lost through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. Corporation for Public Broadcasting, of course, winding down in I think October. September or October, uh, so their funding lost and even just as basic as like I’m saying, you know, emergency warning systems for rural communities, horns that blow. Uh, messages that get sent at 3:30 in the morning. That that overcome your do not disturb. Lost, you know, lost. Stupidly Um, and a, a lot of this, you know, we’re just not, what, what aggravates me personally is we’re just not gonna see the impact of it, some of it for decades, and we haven’t even gotten into healthcare. But we’re, we’re maybe not even decades, but just several years. It’s gonna take several years of Fail failed warnings about things that NOAA and the National Weather Service used to be able to warn us about, you know, 8 months ago, um, and health, health impacts in terms of loss of insurance, lost subsidies around Obamacare, uh, Medicaid cuts, and Medicare cuts likely coming, you know, we’re we’re gonna see. Sicker people. We’re gonna see a sicker population, but it’s gonna take time. It’s not gonna happen in 6 weeks or even 6 months, but it will within 6 years. We’re gonna be, we’re gonna be worse off, and we’re not, and we’re gonna blame the, the current then administration, whatever form it’s in. Nobody’s gonna be wise enough to look back 6 years. And say 6 years ago, we cut Noah and that’s why now today, in 2031, you didn’t get the hurricane notice. And then of course healthcare too. How about in fundraising, Tony? I mean, what I’m, what I’m hearing is, don’t rely on the billionaire philanthropists anymore. Like, yeah, yeah, we’re over, thankfully, we’re over that. I, I, I never, I, I, you know, there’s, there’s so far and few, few and far between and, and 10,000 people, 10,000 nonprofits want to be in, um, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, uh, pocket, I can’t remember her name, Mackenzie Mackenzie Scott’s pocket. 10,000, 100,000 nonprofits are pursuing that, you know, the focus on your relationships, build, work on donor acquisition, but not at the billion dollar level. Work on your sustainer giving program. Work on, work on the grassroots. Can you, can you do more in personal relationship building so that, so that people of modest means can give you $1000 or $5000. And, and people who are better off can maybe give you $50,000 but they’re not ultra high net worth. But if you’re building those relationships from the sustainer base up working on your donor acquisition program, how are you doing? Are you doing with the petitions, emails, and then a welcome journey and you’re moving folks along and then you’re bringing them in and then inviting them to things, you know, work at work at the grassroots level. Among the, the, the 99.9. 8% of us that aren’t ultra high net worth. The other 95%, for God’s sake, we’ve been doing this since 2010, 2010. Yeah, 2010, 15 years, right? Yeah, 15 years, 7, yeah. The other 95% were, you know, don’t focus on the wealthy that everybody wants to, you know, the celebrity. I got a client with big celebrity problems on their board. Names you would know, 3 names you would, everybody would know. Um, they’re a headache. They don’t, they don’t make board meetings. They cancel at the last minute. They, uh, last minute, like a couple of hours. After all the work has been done, all the board books have been sent, and a couple of hours’ notice, they can’t make it. And then the and then another one drops out. Well, if she can’t, then, then I can’t also. Uh, as if that’s a reason, and then, and then the board meeting is scrubbed, and now, now we’re, you know, now they’re struggling to meet the requisite board meeting requirement in the bylaws, right? But so, you know, celebrities, you don’t need celebrities, you need dedicated folks on your board who recognize their fiduciary duties as Gene talks about often, to you, loyalty, care. Is there a duty of obedience to? Is that one? Or is that’s, no, that’s, that’s the clergy. That’s the duty of obedience. I know it’s not celibacy. I know that’s not, I know that’s not good. Amy, why did you mute your mic when you’re laughing? Come on, let us hear you laugh. Uh, now I know it’s not celibacy, but uh loyalty and obedience, loyalty and care, sorry, loyalty and care. And what’s the other? There are 3. What’s the other of obedience in the laws and internal policies. Yeah, yeah, obedience to laws and internal policies, right. So but, but care and loyalty. That’s another one, another one of these celebrities. The giving to Giving to a charity that’s identical to the, the one that I’m that I’m working with in the same community, does the exact same work and major giving to that charity. So Yeah, you, you know, focus on the, on the 99.98% of us who aren’t ultra high net worth. The grassroots, work on your work on your donor acquisition and sustainer giving and move folks along from the $5 level to the $50 level. This is how it gets done. Things are hard, and there are things we can do. Yeah, thank you. There are, there always are. Yeah. If we’re, if we’re focused in the right place and, and bring it back to artificial intelligence, you don’t even need to use artificial intelligence if you don’t want to. Amy, you’ve said this to us. You don’t need to, and it, but, you know, but that’s, it’s, that is not all of technology and that is not all of your focus in 2025 and beyond. Especially. When using it is impacting care and loyalty and obedience and data protection and everything else, right? Thank you for putting a quarter in my slot. That really worked. There’s a lot going on and there are things we can do. How about we end with that? Because that’s up, that’s upbeat. There is a lot you can do. There’s a lot you know. Amy, you were saying we have so much you can do. There’s so much you do already know and That doesn’t change because it is so hard. It just reinforces how important it is that you do know all of that, that you do know what you are doing, that you can take some actions, even if they feel small. Making sure 2 factor is enabled everywhere could be the thing that saves your organization from being in the news, you know, like, that’s worth it. And it didn’t feel that big or overwhelming. And also everything is still horrible, but you did that thing and it was important to do. Know what you know. You know, a lot of people we don’t know what we don’t know, but you, you do know what you do know. Know what you do know, and, and take action around what you do know. Whether it’s two-factor authentication or, or uh talking to your board about sound technology, investment, or it’s Focusing on your sustainer giving. And there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot you can do. Thank you. And pat yourself on the back whenever you take those small steps because they’re probably bigger than you think. That was Gene Takagi. Leaving it right there. Our legal contributor principal of NO. With Gene Amy Sample Ward, our technology contributor and CEO of NE. Thank you very much, Amy. Thank you very much, Gene. We’ll see you again soon. Thanks, Tony. Thank you Tony. Next week, better governance and relational leadership. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. 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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