Jason Shim & Meico Marquette Whitlock: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics
Jason Shim and Meico Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech. From collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to hidden Zoom tools, this panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience and Meico is The Mindful Techie.
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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with Jejune. Oily, JJ June. Well, uh JJ June, Jun Ol, did you know I, I did you know ill. Did you know? I welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with Je Juno iliitis if I had to digest the idea that you missed this week’s show. But first we have a listener of the week, Sharry Smith or it could be Chary. It’s either Cherry or Sherry. I’m gonna say Sherry, but it could be Cherry Sharri Smith from Portland, Oregon. Sharri gave us a shout out on linkedin when she was listing her favorite podcasts for nonprofits, Shari Shari Shari Shari. Thank you. Thank you very much for doing that. Uh You had a couple of other podcasts listed. Um Yeah, they, they’re, they’re good, you know, II, I know them. Uh hm. Ok. They’re good. But nonprofit radio is on the list. That’s the one that’s the one you want. So Sharry Cherry, thank you very much listener of the week this week. Thank you so much, Sherry. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, congratulations, Sherry. This week we have future proof your nonprofit with apps, tools and tactics. Jason Shim and Miko Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 nonprofit technology conference with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech from collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to Hidden Zoom tools. This panel will help you find greater balance and efficiency. Jason is at the Canadian Center for nonprofit Digital Resilience and Miko is the mindful techie on Tony’s take two chatty gym guy were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is Future Proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. It’s a pleasure to welcome back, Jason Sim and Miko Marquette Whitlock to nonprofit radio. Jason is Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. How can we harness technology to make a difference in the world? That’s the question. Jason loves to explore with organizations. He’s on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A Miko Marquette Whitlock is the mindful techie. He’s a workplace well being strategist who helps mission driven professionals prioritize their well being so they can elevate their well doing. He’s also on linkedin and his practice is at Mindful techie.com, Jason and Miko. Welcome back to Nonprofit Radio. Thanks for having us for having us. This is a tradition. Uh We, we didn’t get to talk at the nonprofit technology conference proper, but uh we’re, we’re, we’re filling in now uh with your annual sort of review of apps techs and uh uh apps, apps uh tools and tactics. And it’s actually quite appropriate, I believe because we’re recording on uh May 1st. It’s May Day in much of the world, not celebrated so much in the US and Canada uh celebrating uh labor organizing and labor rights. However, in the US and Canada, nonprofit workers certainly uh have a right to the apps, tools and tactics that will make their work more balanced and productive. So I’m sure you agree, you both agree with that, right? We can come to terms on that. So, so why don’t we proceed? Uh Let’s go alphabetically by uh first name. So Jason, uh you go first, you get to introduce the first uh apps tools and, and tactic. Yeah. So thank you, Tony. Uh So before we jump into the, the tools, I think uh you know, 11 thing that we definitely, you know, keep in mind when talking about tools is, you know, the concept of tiny gains. And so, you know, having um the uh kind of perspective that, you know, uh one to the power of 365 is one, but 1.01 to the power of 365 is 37.7. And so, you know, that that notion of improving bit by bit, you know, 1% each day is kind of how we look at these tools that, you know, it’s not going to be, you know, uh you know, one tool isn’t necessarily going to solve all the things. But, you know, we’re going to be sharing uh various tools that can, you know, help kind of nudge things, you know, 1% at a time, you know, in that regard. So the incremental growth is uh is valuable, of course. Yeah, totally. So, so you know what the first tool that we want to highlight for folks is that it’s, it’s a tool that is actually built into uh Microsoft Word already. But uh um folks may not necessarily be aware of it in as much detail. Um And that’s that, that there’s actually a built in transcription tool, right in Microsoft Word. And so you can actually um uh when you find a little microphone icon on it that you can dictate directly into word, but you can also upload files uh into it. And so that, that’s a feature that’s not as well known uh that you can upload up to five hours per month per user inter software for automated transcription that is bundled in uh with your uh word online. And where is this microphone found? Maybe I’ve seen it 1000 times. I just haven’t noticed it. Where, where do we find the microphone? So typically it’ll be in the menu bar in the uh the, the top right hand corner uh of uh of Microsoft Word online. So if you’re accessing it in the browser, uh it should be in the top right hand uh uh section. OK. We had a session uh uh uh a panel at uh at NTC about tools that you already have that you may very well not be using. And they covered uh all of the office, office 365 has a lots of, lots of value in there that, that people don’t know about. And also Google, a lot of very uh free Google tools. Um Yeah, we, we, they focused on Microsoft 365 and, and Google. Um interesting, you know, they had like a dozen things that, that are, that you’re already paying for or getting for free and you’re just not, you, you just don’t know that they’re there, they’re hidden. So, OK. So consistent with that is the uh the transcription tool. OK. So up to five hours, you said up to five hours a month. Yes. And it’s, it’s super handy if you’re doing, you know, things like uh interviews or if you’re doing um uh uh yeah, the meeting notes, you know, those types of things, you know, some other tools already have, you know, the transcription part built in. But in the specific, you know, use case where, you know, you may be doing, uh say uh a program interview or something like that, that this is an additional functionality that’s uh that’s in there. So you’re uploading the audio file. Yes. All right. Interesting. I know, I know a guy who does a podcast. Uh II I believe he already has a transcription process in place. But uh I have to re evaluate because uh maybe this is, maybe this one is simpler. Uh And I don’t know if he’s paying for the uh that transcription process. I, I can’t recall what he’s, what he’s been doing for the past several years around transcription. But uh I’ll have him look into it. Miko. Welcome back, Miko. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Congratulations. Also on your new book, uh which you and I will be talking about in a couple of weeks. We’ll, we’ll get you back on exclusively for uh how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, I know you and I will be talking in a couple of weeks. Um What’s next? What’s next on our uh hit parade of uh apps, tools and tactics. Well, so if you want to stick on the theme of things that people aren’t using, I would add Zoom to this category. And if I could, I wanna walk through just a few things that I think are pretty interesting in terms of developments with, with Zoom. So similar to Microsoft Office and Google workspace. Um Zoom is one of those platforms or tools that many organizations are using. Many folks have at least a basic paid subscription at the organizational level. And um these are tools that are constantly evolving. And so sometimes because we’re using them all the time, we’re not aware that there are certain features that have been added. Um So I’ll, I’ll share, I’ll just go through these really quickly. So the first is for lots of organizations, you know, it’s important that when people are identifying themselves, important, people identify pronouns. And so one of the ways people have been doing that is they modify the name in the way that that shows up and they add their pronouns. Uh But now for folks that didn’t know Zoom actually has a dedicated pronoun field, so you don’t have to do that. So um if your administrator has enabled this in the web-based um login for Zoom, um You can set that by default for your, for your own profile. Um And you don’t have to update your name when you pop into zoom to do that. It’ll your, your pronouns will appear automatically. So I think that’s one cool feature um where, where that’s appropriate and where that uh makes sense for folks to, to look into that uh another option. And this is about accessibility. This is also about making sure that um we recognize that people learn and process differently. And so you and I are talking uh we’re able to see each other um Right now as we’re recording this interview. Uh But for some folks, maybe they process differently and they actually need to be able to see the, the captioning, they maybe need to see some form of a transcript to be able to follow along and process information. And so for that, there is automated captioning that is built into zoom. Now, it’s not 100% perfect, but it’s there. Um It’s uh essentially computer generated captioning. Um There are a lot of languages that are covered by default in your basic paid description and similar to the pronouns field, your administrator or whoever is managing your Zoom account for your organization and log into the web based portal and enable this feature if it’s not already uh enabled. And what this allows folks to do is if someone is in a meeting um and they need access to um to, to close captioning that particular individual can enable that um for themselves. And for folks who don’t need it, they can leave it turned off or if they’re turned on by default, people can turn it off, uh, completely up to you as the user in terms of what, what you need. Um, I’ll share one final, um, thing and then we’ll toss it back to you, Tony. So one final thing that I think is pretty cool. So, uh, you know, many of us have probably seen like the news, um, where they’re doing the weather report and you have this, this person standing in front of a screen and they’re pointing here and they’re pointing there generally, what’s happening is this person is standing in front of a, a green screen and their technical team is projecting the images. So it looks like this person is actually pointing to a map of where you know, fill in the blank wherever you are, right? Well, you can actually simulate that when you’re presenting. So many of us are used to traditional screen share where you share your slides or you share your screen and then a box if you appear in a different place in zoom, but you can also share your screen in such a way that you are overlaid on top of your slides so that you have that weather man or weather person effect as well. Um Now the caveat here is you have to be aware of how this is showing up your lighting. In some cases, you might actually need to have a green screen in order for this to be effective. And it’s gonna require you to format your slides or your presentation a bit differently because obviously you’re taking up now a slice of the screen in addition to the content that you have on the slides. But a really interesting way to create a different type of experience um for folks that, you know, you are meeting with um or doing a webinar with, I think you can have some fun with that. Uh Like at the beginning of a webinar, like you’re immersed in your slides, you know, I’m, I’m surrounded by my valuable content. Uh you know, you could have, but I don’t know, can you uh can you control where you are or how much of the frame you get in proportion to your slides behind you or whatever, whatever the content is, I guess let’s just use slides. Yeah. So you like, I’ll be in the lower left so that you would make format your slides so that the lower left is always blank and you can do it that way you choose where you would have to test this out and, and, and, and try it out. So there are some limited features that allow you to do this directly into zoom. Um The other which is thinking about physically positioning yourself in reference to the camera. So you think about where you’re going to physically be and try that out, test it out for yourself. The final thing I’ll say is there are third party tools that work with Zoom that do this better. But nonetheless, I just wanted to point out that Zoom does have this built in feature for folks that at a basic level that want to try it out and have some fun with it. OK? So that’s the uh so pronouns can be uh automated, automatically populated, you don’t have to go and change your screen name. Um There’s the automated captioning and then the what is this, this background feature called? It’s called, it’s called set powerpoint as virtual background. OK. It’s aptly named, said powerpoint as virtual background. All right. Um Are you guys familiar with or, or recommending any zoom alternatives? I mean, there’s, I know there’s teams, of course, uh although most people iii I don’t know, 95% of the meetings I’m in are on Zoom. Uh Are you, are either of you finding alternatives to zoom for any, for any reason or, or something that other folks are using? That’s valuable. So what, what comes to mind is uh well, this isn’t necessarily an alternative to zoom for the video conferencing itself. Uh There, there is a tool called the O BS uh that if folks are looking for advanced uh video streaming capabilities, uh that uh O BS actually sits as an additional layer to your video feed so that you can further customize some of the green screen effects or being able to move um yourself uh uh into a corner, you know, like uh like Miko described, but it uh it gives a ton of functionality as well and it kind of sits as in um sits in between your video feed and something like Zoom or Teams or Google Meet and allows you to, you know, do all sorts of things like you could um the directly do like a picture in picture, you know, type thing if you want to do like an advanced video broadcast. So O BS is used quite a bit by uh uh streamers and such. But that, that’s uh uh definitely a tool that uh if folks are looking to explore uh for some more advanced functionality, uh it’s called uh O BS and it’s uh uh available and free. Oh OK. Cool and live streaming, live streaming. Yes. Yeah. Not just for live streaming. It’s also like if we’re on a Zoom call, that isn’t necessarily be live stream that you can activate it and it will uh you know, it will help you control, you know, some of the outputs of your video feed that way. So yeah, O BS stands for open broadcaster software. So essentially go to build on what they are sharing. So going back to the example of the weather person, if you wanted to create a highly produced and polished uh you know, presence that doesn’t look like a typical, you know, zoom or uh teams meeting um screen or presentation, you could add lower thirds, you can change a ho there are just so, so many different cool things that you can do using what Jason was was saying. Um And to pick up on, you know, your original question around alternatives. So to my, in my awareness, um you know, the Zoom, there’s Google Meet and teams I think are probably the top three and there’s, there’s a good reason for that, you know, there’s, there’s broad compatibility across um platforms and devices. Um And there’s, you know, some built in trust there that organizations have in terms of those, those big three. that, that said, I think it’s also a good point to make in terms of thinking about when we think about the expansion of tools we don’t have to use necessarily the the latest and greatest. Everything doesn’t have to be high tech, right? Everything there, there’s a, there’s room for mid tech and low tech and when it comes to meetings and collaboration, sometimes we forget what happened when we didn’t have these tools, right? We picked up the phone, we, we met in person. Um we had conference lines where people called in and we, we couldn’t have seen each other. You know, when I first started working in the tech space, I work with colleagues and manage teams that of people that I actually never met in person. And, you know, we would have phone calls and conference conference line um conversations and meetings. And that was the the primary way that we communicated and collaborated. And we’re seeing that in terms of digital wellness, there’s actually a benefit to that, right? Because we’re spending too much time in front of our screens. There’s research that shows that it increases, you know, cortisol levels and increases stress levels. And over time, too many of those back to back video mediated types of collaboration actually reduce engagement, reduce productivity. Um And actually, in some cases can be counterproductive. So we wanna be able to find that balance and also recognize that, hey, depending on what your intention is, what your outcome that you’re trying to get to sometimes just having an old fashioned phone call or working asynchronously um can be just as effective or sometimes more effective to get to where it is that you’re trying to go. Thank you for that. That, that’s a valuable reminder. Uh Yeah, because you can feel like, you know, unlike an in person meeting with, with many people, several people, you know, you can feel like you’re being stared at uh or, you know, you’re not, but people are looking at their screen, they’re not necessarily looking at you, but it looks to you like everybody’s looking at you and uh I can see why that interesting that cortisol levels rise like by the after a few hours of this, I guess or. Absolutely. And, and what you just described is a very real phenomena. So part of it is um the self view, right? You seeing yourself on screen and being self conscious about that and you can turn this off in zoom. So this is another feature you can you can turn off self view. So if you click on the three dots on your particular image, there’s an option that should be allowing you to turn off your self view if that’s an issue. Um The other thing, others are still so others are still seeing you. So you’re not, you’re not stopping your video, but uh you’re stopping your own self view. OK? And uh one final consideration here is that there’s, there’s research from Stanford University that actually shows that um this particular phenomena that you just talked about is, is compounded for women. Uh because we have different expectations about how women are presentable and show up on screen. And oftentimes there’s this um un assessed costs that we, you know, we just take for granted that that in some cases, women have to do more work in order to be what we think, what we deem of as presentable, right? So if you’re requiring folks to be on camera all the time, that sometimes is one of the the side effects if you’re not aware of that. Excellent. Yeah, valuable reminders. Thank you. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. It’s their mission to move the Needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and gross giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to future proof your nonprofit with apps tools and tactics. Jason, you have, you have something else for us. I know you do. That’s a rhetorical question. When I’m talking to me and Jason, we can go on for hours. It’s purely rhetorical question. Absolutely. So, uh the next step is, uh you know, along the lines of we talked about transcription earlier is uh some of the text to speech tools. So they’ve developed quite a bit in the last few years. And you know, the there’s a few that are out there that I’ll rhyme off, you know, Natural Reader 11 labs. And uh nr and so, uh in particular, um I’ve used Naet before and it’s super helpful when you need to record uh voice greetings. Um And if anyone’s ever experienced, you know, having to record a voice greeting and say like for a voicemail and you have to do like 20 some odd takes to do it that, you know, something like Naki can, can help streamline that. Now the, the special thing is that they have a lot of uh voice models that are available in different languages as well. So it really nails uh some of the uh the accents around the world as well. So, you know, uh given that I live in Canada that when recording, um some of the uh greetings for an organization that it uh uh it needs to be delivered in English and Canadian French. And they have specifically Canadian French models as well as many other language models uh uh for the, the text of speech so that we’re able to provide a script in both English and French and that it’ll read it off and, you know, you’re able to get it in one take rather than having to do, you know, 10 or 20 takes or trying to get multiple people to coordinate around the recording of that. So that’s an example of a tool that can help streamline uh in that regard. And, you know, there’s many other, you know, potential use cases that one was called is called N Yes, like parakeet with an N N and also natural reader and 11 laps. Sorry. What’s the last one? 11 labs? 11 labs. Yeah, and similar to the, uh you know, text speech and also uh editing you know, audio files and text uh is uh there’s a few different tools that, that do this, but the one that I, I’ll name specifically, um you know, with this functionality is a descript. Uh So descript is a tool that can help with things like uh let’s say if you have a transcript, um we have an audio file that you’ve uploaded to uh to descript is that they can do filler word removal. So, what it does is that it imports an audio file and then it produces a transcript for you and you can edit it like a word document and it’ll detect things like if you say, um ah and it’ll, uh it can automatically help you remove some of that. So, you know, let’s say if you added a few extra words and you’re speaking and you can edit the text that is uh in descript and it’ll automatically remove it from the audio file. Uh So, uh it without having to, you know, uh splice the audio file itself and looking at the waveforms that you can do it as uh edit the transcript and it’ll give you a clean audio file afterwards. That to me is, that’s incredible that you can edit it as text and then it, it goes and does the, applies those edits to the audio file? Yeah, it’s good. Uh I, I don’t know. To me that’s amazing. I don’t, I, you know, descript, it’s called D the letter D script. Yes, de D E. Yeah. And there’s additional functionality as well uh in, in the script called overdub. So let’s say if you are recording something and you left out a word that overdub can actually fill in the word for you. Uh If you, you trained a voice model to do it. So let’s say, you know, if I intended to say um you know, an extra word or a phrase or something that, you know, similarly you can enter in, you know, the word that you intended to say and it’ll uh fill it in for you so that it can uh it sounds seamless uh there. So, you know, for something like a podcast or, you know, whatever other um uh function that, you know, folks may be looking to accomplish there is that it really helps streamline some of the audio editing process rather than having to rerecord an entire section against placing and placing and everything that uh you can uh just, you know, type in the word and it’ll drop it in for you uh in uh your voice. So it learns from the rest of the file, how to pronounce the word or words that you’ve just inserted into the text file. You, you, you, you, you may have to do some training on it where you um Yeah. Uh but it, it does use E I voice cloning to uh to replace some of the uh the audio there. Damn. And, and I’ve used this, so I’ve used it for my podcast. My podcast producer uses this and um it’s, it’s, it’s saved us so much time. And as a matter of fact, Jason was one of the folks that we interviewed for the first season and we use this software to clean up our episode with, with Jason. Yeah, that’s incredible because I do some of that work uh in my own post production. But I’m, I’m using audacity. But like you said, Jason, I’m looking at the wave forms. Uh Anyway, it’s, it’s eminently doable. You just have to make sure you have the right spot and you play it a few times to make sure you have exactly what you want to take out. Uh but it’s not nearly as swift as text editing and, and, and you can’t add unless you go, you know, go record again and then the, the ambient noise is never gonna sound the same as it did on the day you recorded even sitting here at my same studio office, the, the ambient sound is different. Uh Wow, I, I’ll add one more thing in terms of how this works. And so you, Jason is right in terms of being able to edit the transcript. And so let’s just say, using that example, if I thought Jason gave a long, would it answer or maybe Jason said something? And he’s like, oh, well, actually, I don’t want to share that with my employer, can you take this out? Right. We can go in and edit the transcript that way. Uh, and then for the fillers, you can set it so that you don’t have to go in and manually remove the fillers. You can just tell it which fillers you want to remove and it does, it automatically, um, for you. And depending on which uh, subscription level you have, you can fill in, you can do not just fillers, but maybe there are specific keywords that are significant to you and your audience or to how you wanna edit that you want to remove. You can train the software to remove those specific things automatically. Oh, that’s very robust. That’s remarkable. I think uh descript. OK. Cool Miko. What’s next? All right. So I wanna talk about collaboration tools and training tools. So I do a lot of training for organizations, a lot of things I do virtually. And Google Jam Board is a digital um white board that I used. Um And I still use. But unfortunately, um Google is winding down that particular offering. They’re getting rid of it as of this fall. And so I, I wanna talk about a few alternatives for folks that either have been using Google Jam Board um and are looking for alternative white board tools or maybe you haven’t been using white boards and you just want to get, you know, you wanna come to the party, you wanna be a part of the all the fun. So I wanna give you three really quickly. Um The first is Fig Jam. So this is a white board tool by the company fig A uh F I MA is uh in the space think of think of Adobe. For example, uh a lot of designers use their UX tools and, and web developers use their UX tools to design products and design websites. But they have the separate product, Fig Jam, which is specifically for uh white boarding. And one of the ways that I use white boarding tools is if I have people doing exercise where maybe we brainstorming together, you know, we can the same way that you’re in the room in person and you get people stickies and people stick them on the wall or they sort them into different buckets, you can do the same thing, but you can do this essentially virtually. Um And so Fig Jam is one of those tools you have mirror uh which is another tool that’s in this bucket. And I know that the the Intend team actually uses this a lot. I know that when Jason and I served on the board at Intend, um that was a tool that we used a couple of times as part of our collaboration and you know, strategic planning process um to be able to do that virtually. And then the final tool going back to Zoom for a moment um is zoom has a white board feature. So for folks that weren’t aware of that and you’re, you’re not using it. Zoom has a whiteboard feature um and tied to the Zoom also has an annotation feature where you can annotate things on the screen. Um Both as the presenter, you can also have I I in my presentations, I sometimes have questions on the screen or like a scale and I’ll have uh participants use the annotation tool to indicate where they are on a scale. People can write on the screen or in this case, you know, if you want to use the Zoom whiteboard feature, you could do it that way as well. But those are three alternatives to Google Jam boards. Uh So fig jam mirror and Zoom White board and they all allow uh all the participants to contribute to the white board. Yes. And so they, they, they, they, they, they all allow that feature uh with the caveat that um they have the all three have the basic white board functionality, but they also serve, they have some distinct reasons why you might want to use one over the other. So just picking on mirror for an example um from my perspective, mirror has a very steep learning curve. And so as a trainer, I probably would not use mirror in a training where um folks haven’t been together before, they haven’t used a tool before. But if you’re using it over the long term and you’re able to train people on some basic things. So use your team over time. Then mirror is a, is a great tool for that. Um Fig Jam and Zoom white board are a bit more intuitive. And so depending on your audience, you wanna take those things into consideration if you’re using the Zoom whiteboard, which I’ve, I’ve never, I’ve never used. Um Are you just collaborating with your, your, your mouse? Is that how you, is that how you contribute to the whiteboard, your mouse, your stylus or if um I believe there are just like with Google Jam Board, you know, the, the way that Google Jam Board works is, you know, you, you can drag and drop text boxes and type in the boxes. Um And so that, that’s one option as well. Jason, I’m not sure if you have if you have familiarity with this or have other thoughts about the use. Yeah. Iii I believe uh yeah, you folks would drag their mouse and they can type in and uh it has a lot of parallel features to uh to jam board and, and, and neural although lighter for sure on that front. OK. Cool. Right. It’s your turn Jason. Yeah. So the, the next one that comes to mind is uh Minimus launcher. So it’s minimis. And what it is is that it’s an alternative launch screen for your phone. Now it’s uh launched initially in Android. And uh I believe the the iphone version is now out as well. And what it is is that it helps you get control over uh addictive apps. So if folks are finding that, you know, they are um in a loop or cycle of, you know, constantly checking their phone or things, you know, this is one of those apps that can help uh uh make a dent in trying to break that cycle a little bit. And so what it does is that it actually limits and changes uh your initial kind of phone screen uh and gives you a primary access to, you know, the apps that you need for, for work or basic functions. But if you do want to access uh something, you know, like social media um that it will prompt you and ask you, you know, are, are you sure that you would like to do this and you click, you know, yes. And then it will actually prompt you again, like, you know, you’re absolutely sure. And then, you know, you go to another screen and then they’ll say, OK, now give a rationale as to why, you know, you would like to, you know, check your, your social media. So it puts, you know, additional barriers up. Uh and then when you do move through it, it’ll allocate you 15 minutes uh to, you know, time box it so that you’re not necessarily stuck in that loop of, you know, looking down the screen and then you know, looking back up and like, oh my gosh, you know, an hour has passed. Uh so, uh really um uh a tool that can help regulate, you know, some of the uh the, the instincts that, you know, may be triggered around, you know, some of the uh those addictive algorithms that keep on feeding content that, that may keep us hooked to a phone and social media. This is like a uh a mother looking over your shoulder or you know, your own, your own conscience being, being uh awakened. Are you, are you absolutely sure. And then, and then you get a time limit even when you’re absolutely positively 100% sure. You, then there’s still a time limit. Absolutely. That Minimus Minimus launcher. Yes. OK. Cool. These are, these are really fascinating. Um I mean, so there are tools that can help us. We just, you know, we need to be conscious uh Miko, this is right in your right uh right. Aligned with your practice. We just need to be conscious about our uh or intentional and conscious about our desire to be, be uh be more productive, be less distracted. I mean, you know, you, you’re the mindful. Absolutely. I think the underlying thing here, both personally and professionally is uh being clear about what your overall intention is and what is the outcome that you’re driving for. So, being clear about those things is gonna number one help you determine which tools are the best tools for you to use right now. And as I mentioned before, sometimes the latest high tech tool isn’t the best tool. There’s the, there’s the, you know, the the mid tech and low tech also option exactly. Going to the phone. Exactly. So those are options as well. The other consideration is to consider that not only is it intention and clarity about outcome important for the reasons I just stated, but also because you have to remember that particularly for for profit entities, a lot of companies don’t necessarily always have your best interest in mind. What I mean by that is that they have to generate um time on screen. Um They have to sell ads and so their incentive is slightly different. Yes, maybe they want to provide a useful product, but they want you to use that product in a certain way or for a certain amount of time so that they can increase the share of the revenue or profit that they’re making. And so when you are aware of that, um it it becomes easier for you to identify the ways in which you might want to um recapture your time and recapture your attention using something like what um Jason just shared in terms of the Minimus stauncher. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team and member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a bre and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. I like to go to the gym and do my work. I work out on the ellipse elliptical and then I go on the floor. I do a bunch of planks. I have to get some upper body work in. I’m not, I haven’t done that yet. I like to, I like to just get the work done, you know, take my time not rushing, but I like to get through the work. And it’s my uh kind of, you know, it’s my time. Theres a guy I know more about this guy’s life. I’ve learned over the past many months that his wife had a stent when they were on vacation in Florida. Uh And the surgeon said it’s a good thing, you’re not in the Caribbean because the medical care wouldn’t be as good. And you, you, she’d end up with an infection. She had to have a stent. She was have a suffering shortness of breath in Florida. It was, I know where it was, it was Miami. They were in Miami. It’s a good thing. They weren’t in the Caribbean. The surgeon says the guy’s boat, he’s having motor problems with his boat. Now, his boat is leaking oil and he’s got a, you know, this guy with the boat and the, and the, the, the, the wife needs a stent. The boat needs, uh, uh, a repair to the, to the oil line. Um, he went to an air show last week. Uh Cherry Point is a local uh the, well, not that low but it’s within a half an hour or something. It’s a Marine Corps Air station. He went to the Cherry Point Air show. I had over Memorial Day. The, the Blue Angels were there. I heard all about the show, like the guy was narrating the show but he, but he’s not even talking to me. He’s talking to somebody else. But, you know, it’s a community gym. It’s not that big. It’s certainly adequate, but it’s not huge. It’s not a 10,000 square foot gym. So, you know, you overhear people. So I, I hear him, you know, I like I got the narration to the Blue Angels Air show, you know, personalized uh to for us in the gym. So this chatty guy. But are you the chatty guy? Oh, don’t be the chatty person, the guy or gal don’t be the chatty person, you know, I don’t know. I’m not watching who he’s talking to. So, I don’t know if they’re suffering or they’re, they’re maybe just, um, you know, being polite, uh, you know, condescending a little bit but he gets his, he gets his oratory out. I mean, he’s, uh, sh, don’t be the chatty person in the gym to do your work just, you know, it’s nice to say hi. That’s different. But, you know, you don’t need to narrate the air show for everybody who didn’t get to go over Memorial Day weekend and the, and the motor with the, the oil line with the testing and you use a soapy water to, to spray it on the line to find the leak. And I know more about motor boat mechanics now than, uh, uh, than I’ve known in my entire life. I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks. I got, I got a short course in, in, uh, outboard motor maintenance and mechanics and, and troubleshooting chatty guy. Don’t be the chatty person in the gym. Just do your work. Just do your work. That’s Tony’s take two. It’s exhausting. It’s just recounting. It’s exhausting. Eight. You meet some of the funniest people in your gym first with the birthday guy and now with the motor guy. Yeah, Tim. Tim was sad with the birthday. This is a different guy. This is not Tim. Yeah, I don’t know the characters. Well, we’ve got Vuk but loves more time. Let’s return to Future Proof. Your nonprofit with apps. Tools and tactics with Jason Shin and Mikko Whitlock, Mio. I’m gonna ask you about one that, uh you have uh in your email signature. And we, we talked about this, uh I remember either last year or the year before, uh, but it, and I clicked on it as we’ve been, uh, you know, scheduling together, uh inbox when ready. So I’m, I’m, I’m imposing one on you. I know this is not on your list because we, we talked about it a couple of years ago or last year, but please reacquaint us with uh Inbox when ready. Ok. So Inbox prim ready is one of my all time favorite tools. And so I use Gmail. So for folks that are gmail users, this is a free plug in that you can um essentially install into Gmail and this only works on the, the desktop. So I wanna make, make sure people understand that if you’re dogging it from a computer or, or a web browser on a computer. But the idea is that um your inbox is if you’re able to hide your inbox after a certain amount of time or you are able to set it by default. So when you log in your main inbox is hidden, so that you aren’t sucked into the rabbit hole of sort of going down the hole responding to emails when your intention might be something completely different. As an example, maybe I was looking for the, the zoom link for today’s meeting and as opposed to logging in and seeing like, oh, I have, you know, 50 new emails. What if I don’t see any emails and I can just go to the search bar and, and type in Tony, uh you know, zoom link and I get directed directly to that email. I’m more likely to follow through on that and not be, be distracted. Um One of the other interesting things too is that we know from behavior change, being able to see metrics that actually show us, for example, in this case, how long we’ve been engaged in a certain behavior or how long we’ve actually been in our inbox for a day? Sometimes that awareness like, oh my God, I spent, you know, six hours like with my inbox open, that would be quite alarming, I imagine for a lot of people, right? And so those this particular tool allows you to see how much time you’re actually spending in your inbox in Gmail on a web browser. And that can sometimes be a tool that can be a catalyst um to help you shift um behavior if your desire is to actually spend less time um in your inbox. Now, the the the beautiful thing since this tool has come out, both Gmail and uh Microsoft outlook, which are the two, I think I would say most of those are the biggest sort of email providers in terms of the organizational space. Um they have introduced new tools including, you know, the ability to be able to snooze your inbox, you know, to be able to temporarily pause, you know, emails coming in for a certain period of time. And there’s a host of other ways in which you can um you know, manage your time in your inbox. Um that are something that you can use to supplement or to actually replace Inbox when ready. But I’ve been using Inbox when ready for so long. And it’s, it works for me that it is one of my, my go tos the idea of pausing your inbox. I mean, so it seems so simple and, but I never thought of it until you said it. I mean, the there’s just this simple functionality like maybe I just don’t wanna, you know. Uh Yeah, I, I just don’t need to see the incoming messages. Um There’s another simple thing that I, I think it was you guys who shared it with me years ago, which I did, which is just turn off the notifications. The little, well, I use apple mail. So for me, it’s a little, it’s a little red dot red circle that has a number of unread messages in it, just turn that off, just turn that feature off. Just let the email sit there in the in the dock for me. It’s a tool bar for others and you don’t have to be prompted uh that you’ve got 15 unread messages. It’s, it, it’s anxiety producing. Yes. And so one of the things that folks don’t re realize so, and I think um this happens in both the Android and the Apple device ecosystem where when you’re downloading a device or downloading an app, sometimes we’re still in a hurry that we don’t read the pop ups that let us know what’s happening. And so we just click. Yes. Agree. Yes, agree. Yes, agree. Because we want to get to the app. And what happens is generally what’s happening is what you’re saying. Yes to and agreeing to is in addition to sharing all your good data, you’re saying yes to um all the notification, right? Not a badge, the alerts, the badges and so on and so forth, right? And so the particular feature that you’re talking about are the badge notifications. Uh where for it could be for email, it could be for Facebook or Instagram. It shows you not only the app, but it shows you a little red dot on the apple device, for example, oh, you have, you know, 2000 unread Facebook messages or you have, you know, three new likes on, on Instagram and for many people, that’s a source of background stress every time you pick up your phone. And so I recommend for folks that unless there is a compelling reason, like uh like you’re some kind of first responder and you’re doing important work where you have to be, you have to know the minute someone is sending you one of those things because if you don’t, someone’s gonna die for most people. That’s not the case. Right. So, um, turn that off. Turn that shit off. Absolutely. And don’t be, you’re absolutely right. When you download a new app, they ask all those questions. Also. Location, share your location. Why do you have to share your location? Yeah. Right. Google Maps needs my location. That really, that’s about it. My bank does not need my location. I can deposit the check without it knowing what my uh well, you know what my IP address is or what or my, my my coordinates are. Um Yeah, don’t. Right. Mindful, mindful. You’re the mindful techie. That’s right. It’s, you’re aptly named as well. There’s a lot of aptly named things here. Um Yeah. Right. They, when you get the app, you’re anxious to get to the thing, take a breath and read. You know, you don’t, you don’t need all the notifications and alerts. OK. Let’s stick with you since I imposed one on you. Uh I took your, I, I took your uh your, your, your chance. So you had one teed up. Go ahead. All right. So I, I’m gonna share one I think is a favorite for both me and, and Jason so much so that I think we probably share this in virtually every presentation because it’s just such a phenomenal school. So it’s called Toby and it is a browser tab organization uh plug in. Uh That is, I think pretty much cross browser at this point. I know that you can get it in Chrome and Firefox and probably a couple of the other browsers. But the idea here is um you know, we routinely have meetings where, you know, you have to open a gazillion tabs that are relevant to that particular meeting. And for many people, you may be doing that manually. So you have a meeting with Tony and you’re like, OK, I gotta pull up the podcast together. I gotta pull up this, gotta pull up this. And so you’re, you’re, you’re trying to scurry around as the meeting is starting to open up all these different tabs. What uh Toby allows you to do is to essentially create collections of tabs and you just press one button. Um and you, you, it opens all those tabs automatically, right? And one of the interesting things with Toby in comparison to the built in bookmarks and, and mini browsers is that then you can share the collections with your team. So if, if you’re working on it, let’s say, you know, Tony, you have a, a humongous podcast staff and you have a central by set of tabs that you all have opened during your, your planning meetings. You could or someone else on your team could create a Toby collection, share that with everyone and then everyone has the same access to the same collection and it sort of standardized and people didn’t have the ability to create their own collections or customize uh on their own. And so it’s one of those things that it’s one of those going back to what Jason was saying about 1% better, you know, that ability to be able to save those few moments and to save that uh mental stress that we go through at the start of a meeting um adds up tremendously over time. This is another good, yeah, good point you made before to accumulated accumulated like background stress, even the the anxiety of seeing the badge with the 2000 Facebook uh messages unread or something, you know, just uh I didn’t get to, oh I’m so far behind and then, and then it becomes pointless to do it. But the number keeps increasing but you’re so far behind, you may as well let it go, but it’s causing more anxiety, more agita. All right. All right, Toby. So, so that falls under like uh um browser, browser tab management, browser management. OK. Toby Jason. Yeah. So the another tool that want to chat about is uh this may be something that is available for folks that they may not necessarily be using, but they just want to draw it to folks awareness. So, um for those that may already have an 03 65 subscription, you know, through their organization is that uh being copilot um has a commercial data protection uh uh flipped on. And so what that means is that, you know, when, when folks are using, you know, some A I tools that, you know, there, there may be a concern that it is the data is being used to train the model or that, you know, you don’t necessarily know that it’s going to end up, you know, being uh you know, pop up somewhere else, you know, down the road is that uh the, the commercial data protection feature, uh actually uh assures you that it won’t be used for the training of the model and it’ll be contained uh when, when you’re using it. And so, uh if you are using it, you just have to be logged in to your 03 65 account at bing.com/chat and then there’ll be a little green um shield on the top right hand corner that says protected. And so, you know, you’re, you’re able to use that and uh resting assured that, you know, the data that you’re, you’re putting in there isn’t being used to train a language model uh for the folks who are using um the generative A I function. So, uh so what it is is that, you know, it’s uh you know, the similar to things like, you know, GP T or uh you know, Google’s Gemini in that for this particular instance, uh that uh it’s uh the, the little green uh icon in the in the top. Right, assures you that, uh, uh, it, uh, stays contained to your organization. Ok. So it’s like firewalled off from, from, uh, the, the generative A I learning. Mhm. Yeah. And, and as a general tip for, for folks as well as for the other, uh, uh, you know, tools that they may be using around generative A I is, you know, to make sure that you’re checking the settings and the fine print uh that, you know, if you are using, you know, one of the free uh options as well, that there may be uh settings in there to uh turn off the um use the data for training data models uh uh for folks that may uh like to uh be a little bit more secure uh with uh their privacy and what they may be um putting out there. There’s also a concern uh when folks give one of these uh tools, their own data to learn, like, you know, I want you to write a letter to a donor in, in my tone and you, so you upload, you upload to the using in your prompts some of your own letters. And I want it in my tone with, you know, you, you need to be very aware of what you’re, what you’re providing for the learning act because I don’t know that it’s only, it’s keeping, it’s keeping your data only to this conversation, this, this uh this purpose that we’re we’re going back and forth about and whether it uses, it uses that your data that would otherwise be proprietary to you because it’s, it’s your letters, uh for some larger purpose. Absolutely. And that’s something to be aware of when, uh flipping on some of the features in some of these programs where, you know, they, you may be prompted you to flip on an A I feature or, or something, but, you know, in the fine print uh or even not so fine print, you know, it may say something along the line of like, you know, uh this will submit your data to a third party, uh you know, just giving you a heads up, but there’s a lot of additional subtext there where it’s like, OK, well, after it’s submitted to the third party, you know, what happens like is this going to be used to train, you know, the language model, you know, is, you know, this going to pop up, you know, somewhere potentially in the future or is, you know, or is it going to stay contained uh and not used to train the model? So, uh you know, those, those are questions that are worth asking, you know, as um you know, more and more A I features, you know, pop up along the way as well. What what third parties, third party is in the world, I think the broader point that I would make here too. And this is with social media. This is with um anything you post on a website. Um we technology has evolved to a point where essentially there’s a forever memory, right? Even if you take stuff down, it’s still there, still findable. It’s somewhere. Right? And so I always, particularly with younger folks, you know, say, don’t share anything, don’t text anything, don’t post anything on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and tiktok that you would be embarrassed to see on the news, right? If you’re embarrassed to see it on the news, then don’t post it. Don’t, don’t share it very wise, sage, sage advice from the mindful techie. Uh Let’s do uh let’s do one, each 11 more each Miko. All right. So uh we know that the amount of information the V information has continued to increase and it’s virtually impossible for us from a human perspective to keep up with all of that. And so in this case, one of the ways that A I can be very powerful is by actually helping us to summarize, you know, voluminous um documents, videos and so on. And so one of the tools that we shared during our session is uh a plug in for chrome that’s called youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud. So chat GP T and Cloud are both um two different types of um A I tools. And one of the interesting things about this youtube summary with chat GP T and cloud tool is that it allows you to summarize youtube videos, web articles, and PDF documents. And so I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to watch your two hour training on fill in the blank topic. Maybe I just want, you know, just give me the cliff notes, give me the, the, the bullet points and let me dive deeper on the points that are most relevant to my particular question or my particular curiosity at that moment, this particular tool you just plug in a URL and it gives you a summary um to help you to really focus your time and maybe you decide or determine that, hey baby, this video doesn’t have what I need or maybe it does. I want to look at the last third of this and actually dive a little bit deeper. Um but it can be a powerful tool to save you um lots of time um with particularly with lengthy videos or lengthy documents, say the name of the, the tools again. So this is a long one. So it’s called youtube Summary. It’s all one. Yeah, I’m just reading the title that they gave us. So youtube Summary with Chat GP T and Cloud. OK. Yes. Thank you, Jason. Yeah. The, the, the last one I’ll share is uh it’s more of a mental model and a tool and uh you know, to, to really think about things on a two by two grid. And so the the, the model is called the, it’s also known as the Eisenhower matrix. And so when thinking about, you know, the various tasks that one has to do, and, you know, we, we shared a whole bunch of tools that help, you know, automate and speed up things. But it’s also to look at the tasks themselves and really take a look at, you know, what’s, what’s urgent and what’s important. And so on the two by two grid on one access, um you know, you would have an important and not important and on the on the other access, you would have urgent and not urgent. And ideally, you know, you um you’re spending your time on the not urgent and important things because you know, that’s where you can make, you know, a lot of your long term impact and you know, the things that pop up that are urgent and important, you know, those uh is uh you know, important for you and your organization and when you make short term impact and when you think about, you know, things that are not urgent and not important, you kind of have to ask, you know, well, why are we doing them? And so we want to make sure that these tools aren’t automating things necessarily that, you know, if it’s not urgent and not important, you know, automating but not, not urgent and not important is, you know, spending more time and resources to do things that aren’t important and urgent then you know, those things just need to be eliminated. So those can be thinking of the like the the email inbox is a very good example of non urgent, not important. Most of it obviously there are exceptions but most of email is non urgent and non and non important. Mhm. Yeah. So things like starting to, you know, junk mail, you know, checking through, you know, a lot of, you know, social media, you know, they can be, you know, distractions and time wasters and, and then uh you know, and then the other quadrant being the urgent and not important uh part where, you know, that’s where a lot of the tools can help, you know, automate or help, you know, kind of you’re delegating it out to, you know, the, the tool to help accelerate, you know, some of that and, and so, you know, I think this is a really great conceptual framework to as folks are looking at, you know, their tasks and matching it up to the tools that they’re, they’re using as well. And I know that, you know, Miko speak to, speaks to this, you know, really knowledgeably in his trainings and um around uh how, you know, it can be used effectively and uh I’ll throw it over to Miko as well. Uh uh If there’s any additional things to add on this front. Yeah. So Jason, I, I think you’re spot on, I think that the key here. So in the context of the tech tools that we’re talking about, um we shouldn’t just be using the tools just for the sake of using them. Like you want to be clear about the purpose and at least in terms of the organizational context, and I think it’s critically important as you think about urgent versus important. Also thinking about, you know, what are the resources that we have? What’s the capacity that we have? You know, when I was communicating director, one of the the the the the common pieces of wisdom from some folks when social media was emerging is that oh, you gotta be on all the platforms. Well, that was impossible. We didn’t have the staff of the resources nor did it make sense because our audience wasn’t on all the platforms. So asking yourself the question, what resources do I have? What time and capacity do we have? And you know, what goal are we trying to achieve and what’s good enough for now versus what we can build toward for later or perhaps what we can eliminate all together because it’s simply not relevant, even though everyone else is doing it or the conventional wisdom says we should be doing this or be on this particular uh platform. Um And I think we can apply that to A I right now, right? So um I am of the mind that it’s not an all or nothing, right? Not every organization needs to be using every single type of A I tool out there. Um It’s simply inappropriate in some cases and some cases that actually can be counter productive. So you wanna be clear about what outcome you’re trying to get to. Um And how the tool can support you and help you. Not how the tool can sort of replace you being a critical thinker and that’s, that’s actively involved in the process. Yeah, loss of creativity is, is my biggest concern about artificial intelligence. Use that, that we’re, we, we could see some of the most creative things that we do. Uh And listeners have heard me talk about this with uh we had an A I A couple of A I panels. Um The one, the first one was with um Arua Bruce and George Weiner and Beth Cantor and Alison. Fine. And we kinda uh I aired my uh my concerns there in, in more detail just about giving away the most creative things that we do. And over time us becoming less creative, less creative thinkers, less thoughtful thinkers or less critical thinkers. Um All right. So why don’t we leave it there? And, and Jason, I’m just going to reiterate it’s the Eisenhower Matrix, which I’ve followed for years and I try to think that way, but I don’t, I don’t do it routinely but that, that’s uh that two by two that you were describing is uh the Eisenhower Matrix and you said it, I’m just reiterating it for folks. So that, because it is a, it’s a very, it’s a very sensible way of, of planning. And Miko to your point earlier, uh, you know, it’s, it, it, it’s been around for generations. Old tools can still be valuable. Absolutely. And I, I would offer to your audience, Tony if I’ve reworked this, um, for the mission driven context. And I’ve, and I’ve annotated it. Um, and I’ve, I’ve given sort of a road map of how you work through this in a practical way. So if folks are interested in that, they can email me or, you know, we can give you a link to put in the show notes or however, it makes sense. But folks want access to that annotated version. Ok. The annotated version of the Eisenhower Matrix. Ok. All right. That’s Miko Marquette Whitlock. He’s a mindful techie. You’ll find him on linkedin and his practice is at mindful techie.com. Jason Sim Chief Digital Officer at the Canadian Center for nonprofit digital resilience. He’s also on linkedin and the center is at CCNDR dot C A. Jason Miko. Thank you. Thanks very much. Real pleasure each year. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Next week, we’ll take a hiatus from 24 NTC with Gen Z career challenge. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. You’re gonna be interested in the Gen Z you, you’re Gen Z. That’s me, Gen Z career challenge. We’ll see if it holds true for you were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your support, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. 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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with trauma Tonia if I had to breathe while you told me that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, we have your four day work week. This 2024 nonprofit technology conference panel introduces you to the national campaign for a 32 hour four day work week. They’re the executive director of the campaign, a company that made the switch and a nonprofit that did too. They’re vishal red from work for Karim Bori with Mixy Communications and Patty Carlin at 10. Then Intergenerational communication. Our panel of two phd S discusses common communication challenges in the workplace and shares its strategy for overcoming them. They are Lauren Hopkins from prepared to impact and Carla Torrance from Ire for racial health equity. This is also from 24 NTC on Tony’s take two summertime planning time were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms, blocking supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is your four day work week. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. You know that we’re coming to you from Portland Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. What you don’t know is that the conversation we’re about to have is about a four day work week. And with me to have that discussion are Vishal ready the executive director at work for the national campaign for the four day work week. Also Karim Bori, principal at MD Communications and Patty Carlin Finance and operations director for our host at uh N 10. Vishal. Karim Patty. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks Tony Pure. Alright. Alright. I’m glad um you gave me like, like excited to be here, but you were smiling. I want, I want folks to know you were smiling when you said it. So I am very excited to be here. Yes, maxing out the volume and everything. All right, outstanding. Now. Thank you. The four day work week, Vishal, since you’re the executive director of the campaign, the national campaign for the four day work week, why don’t you kick us off? What, what are we? I think we know what we’re talking about. Why should we be talking about it? Why should the nation, the national campaign? Why should the nation go to a four day work week? Yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to say really excited to be here and, you know, when we talk about a four day work week, we want to be really crystal clear about what we’re talking about. We’re not just talking about a four day work week with 10 hour days. We’re talking about a four day, 32 hour work week with no loss in pay or benefits. And that’s very important to know. Thank you. And the reason we’re really excited about this is because, you know, there’s been a whole host of research and organizations, as we’ll hear from Patty and Cream that have shifted to a four day 32 hour model. And, you know, over the last few years, what we’ve seen is that this is a win, win, win. This is a rare triple dividend policy for workers, for companies and for society. And so what we’ve seen for organizations is that, you know, 91% plus of organizations that shift to a four day work week are piloted, stick with it because of increased productivity, improve retention, better work life balance for their employees for workers. 95% of employees that get to try a four day work week want it. And 80% of people in public in the public want it because, you know, better work life balance, you know, and more time to care for their loved ones. And then for society, this really is a policy that has potential to improve the environment, advance gender equity and give more time to people so they can participate civically. And so, you know, we’re really excited by what we’ve seen, you know, hundreds of companies already do across the US And we believe that this is a policy that can be scaled uh through, you know, public policy and through more and more workplaces implementing it. And we really believe that, you know, the evidence and the research is on our side to show that this is something that all workers in all workplaces in America should have. All right, Kareem, why don’t you just give us uh an overview of what it’s been like at uh mix the communications for uh for a 32 hour four day work week. Sure. Um So Tony, Tony would, it’s probably worth knowing is that our industry, the digital marketing and public relations space is often in the top five of high burnout industries, we’re dominated by the news cycle 24 7. We are addicted to the social media platforms, algorithms and we feel compelled to be on all the time. So high turnover um in industry where folks just don’t necessarily have this balance, we work in the social justice space. So as an employer it is super important for us that we practice what we preach. So we always look at our habits and our practices to make sure that what we say we fight for is what we do in our own company. So when the four day work week happened, it was the perfect or not happened. But when we realized that there were all these pilots with data around the world and especially in the UK and we started seeing data in the US that was showing what Vishal just mentioned. 90 plus percent. We just kept compiling and making the case internally for it. And there was no doubt that it was the right move. So we didn’t just move into it overnight. We took six months to plan it and it was a fundamental rethinking of everything we do and how we do it. Um I’ll probably point to three things that we did that helped us a lot. We tested and measured and surveyed our employees um every month for six months and we were measuring what’s working, what’s not working. The one thing we know that our employees all agreed on and we had 100% results from the get go was that nobody wanted to go back to five days a week. So as hard as it was to try to figure things out about how we communicate about how we run meetings about how long we do things and how we’re, we’re measuring productivity and efficiency. Nobody felt compelled to go back to five days in the grind mentality. The second thing we did is that we figured out that the model that worked for us was staggering. So half of our team is off on Fridays, half of the team is off on Monday. We use group emails for all our clients so that it doesn’t matter when they email everybody on that account. Team gets the message so that if you’re there on the Friday, somebody else on, if um on the team who’s out will know what’s going on on the Monday. But there’s never a loss of coverage for our clients. And then the third thing that is worth mentioning is that we actually didn’t tell our clients for a year and no client knew that’s, that’s a great test. All the black box test. You’re, you’re unaware. All right. And no, no, there were no complaints and no nobody really Patty Carlin at N 10. 00, I do have, I’m sorry, one more question. Um How long ago did you uh did you make the final transition? We did in January in January of 2023. And in 2023 we finished a year, a couple of months, we finished a year in 2023 hitting a record revenue first time in our 13 years. Um We intentionally decided that the year was about um rethinking all of our operations and systems. So the, the investment for us was prioritizing this transition. So we weren’t letting profits dictate what we were going to do. So we intentionally went through the year expecting single digit profits, which we hit still because that was the biggest investment for us. We are a fully digital and remote company. So virtual company. So our largest asset are people. So we needed to make sure that we prioritize them. So um it worked. Sorry about that, Patty. Not at all. Please tell us the N 10 4 day work week experience. Well, we started July 1st of 2023. So we’re not quite a year in, but I think that was there a transition the way Kareem was explaining or six months. No, it was a couple of months. We spent a couple of months talking about. Do we need all these meetings? Do we can we just not have a staff meeting if no one really has anything to say, we don’t have to show up and talk about nothing. Is it still a meeting if no one comes and is it a meeting that could have been an email? You know? Yeah, don’t, don’t have it. Uh Thinking about what’s really important to us as a finance and operations director. Maybe bookkeeping is not the best use of my time now. So I’ll hire one. Um What else we do? Um Monday through Thursday, we’re closed on Friday. There’s the whole team. You’re not staggering the way mixed up. And, um, the person in me that was raised to believe that someone should always be there. Wishes we staggered, but we didn’t. And I’m ok with it. Now, was it a conscious choice in the organization? Did you consider the staggering? I don’t think so. Not seriously. But when said they did it, I went. Oh, no. But, um, it’s been great. Uh, and basically I think that this very conference is a testament to what you can do on a 32 hour week. We did this. I did not know that we were talking about a 32 hour week. I’m glad you explained that right from the get go. Um Yeah, I just assumed that we were talking about a 40 hour week in four days. Um Patty, what happens on Fridays when work emails? Uh I know N 10 does have an office. I don’t know how many calls they get but you have an office here in Portland. No, you don’t get calls. We don’t have the office in Portland anymore. We are, you know that IP O box? You used to be on North Aldert, you on OK. No more. Just a po box. Just a po box where 16 people in eight states. What happens on Fridays when, if an urgent email comes from a member or no vendor? Basically, we also have shared customer service emails but on Friday, an out of office goes up and says, and tens closed on Fridays. We’ll see you Monday and all of our staff does that every Thursday when you log off your out of office goes up and it says antenna is, is a four day, 32 hour, 100% pay 100% benefits. See you Monday. So this is very hard for me as I pointed out in our session. I am gen X. I was, I’ve been a nonprofit for years and you are expected to be there first in the morning out last at night, never take a break, you know, don’t eat, don’t sleep. And this was a big deal for me. What was the impetus at N 10? It was just, you know, we’re, we’re always looking at social and racial justice. We’re always looking at what it’s like to bring your whole self to work. What is it, what we want to be the world that we want? You know, we’re gonna be what we want to see and, you know, at any time, we’re really into modeling those things for everyone. So it’s just like, you know what, this is the right thing to do and we’re gonna do it and it got done and it wasn’t that easy. I make it sound really easy. It wasn’t that easy. And I think there were some of us that were really nervous, but like I said, this, this conference happened because 16 people committed to each other and trust each other and did this on a 32 hour work week and it’s been less than a year. Alright. Alright. Um Michelle, what’s the, what’s typically the impetus for a company or a nonprofit? Doesn’t matter whatever a workplace to to embark on the at least at least the consideration of a of a four day, 32 hour work week. And what kind of factors are, are creating the the the discussion? Yeah, I think you know, one place to start at this is a lot of organizations look at their employees and you know, they’re looking around and you just realize a lot of people are burnt out, right? So I think there was a study that came out last month from our partner center for work time reduction. And they showed that organizations that are on a five day work week schedule, typical five day work week schedule, the burnout average burnout at those organizations is 42%. And meanwhile, now organizations that are on a shorter workweek model, the burnout is 9%. So I think, you know, 99, yeah, so 33% difference. And so I think what people are realizing is the way that we structure work is weird. You know, this is just sort of like this. Um the work that we have right now is, you know, it’s a relic from the 19 forties, right? And so, so much of the way we work, how we work when we work has changed in the last 80 years. And, you know, when we see an epidemic of burnout, an epidemic of stress or, you know, just the sort of instinctual feeling, you know, you go to meetings and you’re like, what the hell is the point of that? Right? And so I think people are recognizing that there’s a way to, you know, make our work more efficient, more effective and also meet people’s needs. And, you know, right now, I think one of the really powerful stuff that’s been happening is four day week global. They’re in organization in New Zealand and they’ve been doing these incredible workplace trials over the last few years. And so, you know, like from Cream and P’s perspective when their organization see these studies and trials and they see, oh, this is, this really is a win, win for both, you know, workers at the company and the company. It can be a really powerful impetus to, you know, explore and pilot the change themselves. Kareem, you said you planned for six months, I think before you actually flipped the switch, what kinds of things are you planning for? What were we working through in those six months? It’s a good question, Tony. Um Finally, jeez, it took, how many years have you been doing this the second day of the conference? It’s the end of the second day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um Let’s see, we wanted to make sure that it was not an edict from the two principles that this was something that our staff wanted. So we had a group of staff get together and be part of the planning committee at every level. So they thought through all of our operations. So how many meetings we have? How long do they have? Why do we have them? How many touch points internally do we have to share information? So we went through all of the exercise and the fun one that we mentioned this morning at our, at our session is for a whole month, we removed all meetings from the calendar. We canceled all our client meetings, we believe we did that, but we did, we kicked off, we kicked off the year and we had told our clients when we come back, we’re not going to have meetings in January. We’ll plan our work differently. We’re going to communicate with you, but we’re not having the meetings that we typically do and we usually meet with clients twice a month. So wipe the calendar, clean, internal externals, everything. And we basically had staff work on a rebuilding from the ground up. Why do we have this meeting? How often, how often do we need it? And that was part of the process. So the second thing was the measuring and the iterating. We did this monthly survey and we looked at the data, we shared it internally, we discussed it. Um But that was part of the kickoff part of the planning looked at our budget as well. So we went into the year, as I said earlier, anticipating that this was an investment in staff. So we didn’t get to a single digit profit just because we switched the four day work week. Part of the, the switch was making everybody a salaried employee. So we reorganized and we let three of our more junior staff go. So everybody now is a manage manager and above, we only have 18 employees. So it help, it helps to be at this scale, but everybody’s now an a salaried employee. So the reason that mattered is because if we’re going to move to a four day work week and we need to be efficient. We need our people to be trusted and autonomous. So we could not have folks who were waiting on someone else to tell them what to do. So part of that was changing the salary structure and changing the job descriptions to match that as well. So all that administrative work as patty knows, it takes a while of rewriting job descriptions of having conversations with the team of saying, ok, with this what we’re doing. We so for some of our team, we said, we think you could be a fit for this new role and some of our junior people, we, we let three of our people go and we transitioned through the year. So you don’t make those decisions lightly. And it’s why it took us six months to go through it, Patty. So your transition was, was quicker, quicker. Um Your head was exploding when Karim said that uh they canceled every single meeting for a month. Um I don’t know. But you, but you mentioned there was I, I want, you wanted. So that’s sort of leading into something that you said uh earlier. It wasn’t that easy. No, it wasn’t that easy. Talk about some of the challenges maybe and, and how you overcame them as an organization. We had a lot of meetings, we had meeting on top of meeting on top of meeting. And it, it seriously was about, do we need this? Can we make meetings optional? You know, if you don’t have something to say, don’t and you have something to do. You had meetings about meetings. I said that in our session, I said we had a meeting about meetings and then we formed a subcomittee of people that wanted to talk about meetings and then they came back to the group so we could all talk about meetings again and then meetings were done and you scaled back a lot of meetings and we do have um every other week on a Monday, there’s like a placeholder. And if you go in and say I wanna talk about this for 15 minutes, everybody will show up if nobody needs, has anything to talk about, we’re not just gonna get on their so anybody can call the meeting. But, but it’s, it’s just a placeholder. If no one calls a meeting, there’s no meeting that week and we do and, you know, some of that is complicated at N 10, we have live captioning for every meeting, even staff meetings. So, you know, somebody has to remember to call off the caption and all this and that. But it’s really just to be able to say I have work to do and have everyone trust you that you’re not just going off to hike in the woods. It’s, we talked about that a lot in our session about how we trust each other. We have a commitment to each other to support each other and do what we’re meant to do. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. It’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now, back to your four day work week with Vishal Reddy Karim Bori and Paddy Carlin K you. I would love to jump in because the meetings are one element of how we work. I’d love you to jump in because your voice is so base. You have a voice for some people. Tell me I have a face for radio. OK? I’ve heard that about 1500 times. You have a great voice for radio. Thank you. So I’d love for you to chime in. I promise I won’t do the only other time I did a voiceover, I started doing voices and the folks in the studio did not like that, we could probably skip that. I would love to jump on to something. Patty just said meetings are one element that suck our time there. We looked at the other things that our employees do that are also indicative of waste. And um and just just this rabbit holes, two tools we use internally are our Asana, which is how we communicate on threads, on different channels, on different topics for clients, operations, marketing. So we have all these threads. It’s basically a chat, right? So if we’re a virtual company, this is where we go for the communication in between meetings and then there’s Asana, which is the project management tool we use. So those are two places where we do a lot of exchange of information. One is organized on projects and we have to say, ok, I’m working on this part. We’re all doing this. Here’s my piece, here’s my update and those are basically nonstop updates. So we have an average of 25 to 30 clients on any given month and we are 16 to 18 people. We’re 18 now, that’s a lot to balance. So it’s not just how many meetings you’re in, in a day, but it’s how much of your time gets sucked. Every time you that chat function dings with a notification, how often you’re on, you’re checking your email, but you also have that slack open and you have a sauna and you’re watching the projects change and you go watching notifications on one and two and three things that’s overwhelming. And we work in the digital marketing space. So we know how these algorithms create um this toxic dependency and mental health breakdowns. So we’re super aware of it. So one of the other things we did is that we told nobody on our team can have their sauna and their slack notifications active. You cannot get a ding or you shouldn’t be able to see when it’s coming. You should be able to shut that stuff off and focus. So it takes a lot of habits to undo. And the one thing we talked about this morning that one of our former employees said was he called it The Great Unlearning. And I think that’s a beautiful umbrella for what it means to transition as a company and as an employee love that the great unlearning Michelle, why don’t you add some larger context to what uh what Patty and Kareem are sharing? I mean, I think their journeys are so indicative of what’s happening nationally, right? So in the last four years, hundreds of companies have shifted to a four day work week in 10 states have introduced bills that help shift, you know, mandate companies shift to a four day, 32 hour work week or, you know, create incentives for companies to shift to a four day work week. Last fall, the United Auto Workers Union led by Sean Fein proposed a four day 32 hour work week in their contract demands. With the big three automakers. Just this morning, my colleagues were tested in front of the Senate. Uh the Senate Health Committee had a hearing about the four day 32 hour work week. So, you know, this is a movement and you know, and a cause that is bubbling and we’re seeing, you know, really courageous workplaces that are, you know, led by courageous people like Kareem and Patty, you know, lead this effort and you know, take it to a place where, you know, it’s going to move in a direction where every worker in every workplace has this. And you know, we really see this as the future of work and not out of our goal isn’t to just make this a thing that is a nice to have, but a must have for an organization. And so I think one of the really amazing parts about this work that we’ve seen on our end is just that, you know, when organizations take the dive head first and they jump in and do the four day work week, when they are on the other side of it and they have a four day work week and everything is humming along nicely, they become really powerful advocates for it, right. So to us, that’s really proof that this is something that works and can work in even more places. And you know, one of the ways that we’re the most helpful too is often connecting similarly situated workplaces to each other, right? So we’ll often have organizations reach out to us and say, hey, we’re really interested in a four day work week. But, you know, just as we know, the five day work week is not a one size fits all model, the same is true of a four day, 32 hour work week. And so what we often do is connect similarly situated workplaces to each other. So that, you know, somebody who’s in a similar field is another field can sort of connect with that organization directly. And what we’re is the organizations that have already shifted are just always so excited to share their insights and best practices from what they’ve learned. And so, um this is something, you know, that’s organically grown so fast in just a few years. And if six years ago you were talking about a four day, 32 hour work week, people would have just laughed at you. And now people are like, they’re like, wait, that sounds amazing. And I know organizations that can do it. And even today during our session, we, um, I think cream asked people, you know, do you know any organizations that are on a 32 hour work week? And I want to say a third of the room maybe raise their hand, which is just a really powerful testament to what organizations can do when they think about their workplace. In a non zero sum way. You talked about gender equity earlier, you, you mentioned gender equity, say more about that, please, Michelle. Yeah. So, you know, a really important part of our work is really couching the advocacy for the four day work week. And our goal to build an economy that gives people time to care for their loved ones and care for their families. And we know that, you know, traditionally and disproportionately, you know, women hold the double burden. They often work full time jobs and then have to do unpaid domestic labor at home too. And so what we’ve seen is that, you know, one way we think about the four day work week is that it gives people more time to care for their loved ones. And one of the really amazing things is that in the trials that we’ve seen, there’s actually been, it’s not just about, you know, giving the people that are already doing the unpaid domestic labor more time to do more unpaid domestic labor. But actually, what we’ve seen is that, you know, amongst heterosexual couples, there’s actually a, a balancing too. So in those couples, men take on more of the domestic labor. And so, you know, part of what we’re seeing is, you know, this is we don’t give people enough time to care for their loved ones, to care for their families to do the necessary care, giving work. And what’s really amazing is just that it’s not just about giving people more time to do that, but also rebalancing it. So that work is better distributed amongst more folks. I’d like to spend more time. We have uh we have more time set aside. Uh Let’s uh I I’m going to your session description um how to ensure productivity and business outcomes are still achieved. I mean, we’ve touched on some of that accountability metrics measuring Kareem. You’ve been, I mean, are you still measuring productivity or it’s not necessary anymore anymore? We’re done, we’re done. All right. So that we put a lot of metrics and we say we’re not measuring that anymore, but that’s a lifetime journey. Very rare. Although we are, we are, we’re not measuring the four day work week anymore. What we are continually measuring is how are we using those tools that suck our time? So this slack tool, we are regularly going back to it and we just finished a three month pilot of how do we limit it? So we are constantly saying, are we seeing the small signals that tell us that our staff are reverting back to those bad habits and old habits? So let’s put a pilot together where we iterate test again, do before and after te uh measurements, surveys of our employees and then see if it’s worth continuing. I also, I, I think in, in, in ensuring productivity and business outcomes are still achieved. Um I, I’d like to talk more about the trust. I mean, the trust between employees, between the team members. Um You know, I, I think some of that I from the pandemic, you know, eroded. We, we, we hired a lot of people that didn’t get on boarded the way folks before 2020 got on boarded and they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the benefit of that. Now you have to. So a team has to be very, very conscious about bringing those folks in. Um and, and engaging, but let, let’s, I don’t know, I don’t know what more to say about Trump, but you all are experiencing it. So Patty say, can you, can you say more about the, the, the trust factor? Where is that from a movie or something? The trust factor I don’t know. I don’t know. As long as it’s not a slasher film. No, we don’t want to go in that direction. But, yeah, employee trust. Yeah, I, I think that feeling like you have to be able to see each other to trust each other is something that we’ve actually kind of gotten through partially because intens been distributed for 24 years. We did have an office in Portland, but only eight people live in Oregon. So we’ve been distributed all that time. So there was already a little bit of you don’t have to be in someone’s face to understand that they’re there and have that um feeling like you can trust them. We hired, mm I think the last three or four people that we hired were complete virtual hires. None of us had ever seen them other than on a little screen from stranger to colleague without ever an in person meeting and I completely trust them. We did have to get very intentional about on boarding. Um making sure that everybody knows how to use those tools because it’s crucial. And the other thing that has been a goal of mine for the last almost two years and it started with the pandemic was making our asynchronous work work better. And a couple of people have come up to me since our session and said that might be the next session for next year is let’s talk about asynchronous word because we have people in every time zone and how do we make that work? So on boarding is important, trust is important and just committing to each other to do our thing. Part of that onboarding has to be the A AAA lot of discussions or maybe even before, maybe even be in the hiring process, the culture, the culture of intent, the culture of mixing what, you know, what we stand for. You know, we’re, we’re not, I’m, I’m getting a little misty here. I don’t know, this is so lofty, but we don’t only hire for uh for skills, but we hire for value and, and trust, um values, values and trust. Um I don’t know. Do you want to add something Kareem on trust and on boarding, I saw you shaking your head. I do and I want to jump on the soap box and I’m going to be singing the gospel of leadership and the role and importance of leaders because I happen to be in this capacity. And that’s, I think where it starts. If we want loyalty. If we want folks who are going to stick around, it’s on us to set the tone for what trust is, it’s not going to be given to us just because we hired someone and you can be really talented and this is probably the message for any other business owner, CEO or nonprofit executive director. You can be really knowledgeable in a certain field that doesn’t make you a good business operator and that’s on us. Culture starts with us to have the humility and the flexibility to hear ideas that we don’t know. So I don’t assume that people just because we give them a paycheck and hired them owe us anything. We have to set the tone for what transparency, accountability, honesty, trust looks like. So I get really irritated very fast when folks start saying, well, our employees, I’m like stop, We create the conditions that employees walk into and we get to choose the environment that we create for people and we get to choose if we want them to come to work from a place of love or a place of fear, period. And that’s something I will hang my hat on and I will go to a fight with any executive director or CEO out there who disagrees with me, please. I am super easy to find. Ok. Did, did you uh avail yourself of the, the advice and council of uh work for as you were as you were embarking on your planning, your planning? No, no. Where were you all my life, Michelle, I introduced them. I’ll take the credit for that. 10. Avail itself of work for while you were preparing Tristan and Amy and I met with V Tristan Penn Equity and Diversity director at 10. I have it was just a guest. I think I think I it’s equity and Amy s everybody here knows her. So as we were making the transition. We had a call with Michelle and it was just such a good, you know, you’ve heard the things that he has to say and he asked us how we were doing and how we did it. And so when, um, you and Jamie reached out to say, let’s do this, I’m like, I got the guy, I got the guy and, and so it was kind of like we talked to you because we were doing it and then it just all came together. I’m really, really honored to be sitting here with these wonderful people. And if I could just chime in quick time, just that, you know, I think one of the amazing things that, you know, I connected with both Cream and Patty after they had begun to transition. But one of the reason, the reasons that we had, I reached out in the beginning was just because the way they were talking about the four day work week, you know, hated all the things that they’re saying today. And so it was just really one of the things that we want to continue building is just, you know, building a network of organizations that are interested in this and it’s so exciting to be here with them because they’ve already taken such leadership within their organizations and want to take such leadership with this cause that um it made so much sense to connect and collaborate and um and you know, it is very helpful for organizations to have outside support as they’re going through this change. It’s not a prerequisite, you know, these organizations. And so it’s really amazing to sort of see, to show that organizations can do this with no outside support, but we’re also happy to be that helping hand if needed. Alright, so why don’t you uh let folks know how they could reach uh work for if they wanna, or, or reach the website, if they wanna explore some resources about, you know, they’re thinking about maybe possibly considering sometime in the future, a four day work week where, where do they go? Well, so our organization is called Work For and our website is also work for. So that’s work and then for the number. So four.org and so if you’re at work for.org, you’ll see a page that says for employers, if you’re an employer for workers, if you’re a worker and if you fill out a quick form, then it’ll set up a conversation with us and we can sort of talk through what makes the most sense for your organization, but really encourage folks to reach out and we’re always happy to chat with people that are really interested in bringing this to their organization or to do any other advocacy work as well. Kareem, if I’m working at mix to do, I get my choice, whether I want Mondays or Fridays off, you can ask and then we look at which account you’re going to be on and we want to make sure half and half is well distributed between both. So my preference is considered at least it’s consideration. Well, Patty Carlin, I want to thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. And uh Michelle Michelle, thanks very much for sharing, interesting conversation. Fun, valuable, a little touching too, Tony. There’s only one day that everyone in N 10 has to have off and that is the first business day after the NCC. That is the only day everyone is off. You must take off its mandate. So if we see you online, you are in trouble. Everybody’s off on Monday the 18th of March this year. Don’t call in 10. Ok. And Friday, Friday. Well, tomorrow is Friday tomorrow next Friday, 1920 21 the 22nd. So it, so it’s a three day week for everyone at N 10 next week and well deserved. I don’t know what day it is. I just want to make sure you’re not swapping the Monday for the Friday. It’s a complete capitulation and everything we just talked about, right? Antithetical to everything we just talked about. All right. Uh Vishal Kareem Patty. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for being with our 2024 nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team a member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors, make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Summertime can be a good time for planning. Uh I’m thinking specifically about planned giving, planning for a fall launch um or even planning in June and July for August launch because August is national make a will month. So that would be a good time to kick off planned giving fundraising or do a campaign if you’re already doing planned giving. But the summer months, you know, June, July uh and or August could be good, very good for planning uh for either that August or September launch. Um It’s not limited to planned giving, of course, you know, summertime, slower. Uh Now I know it’s harder to get people together because there’s more vacation. But you know, that’s, that’s overcomeable. We don’t, we certainly don’t wanna deny people vacation time and everybody calls it PTO now. Wait, I’m on PTO. You get the email messages. I’m on PTO. I’m away on PTOW. When, when did vacation become PTOPTO? Sounds, uh, I don’t know. It sounds like something military vacations, you know, vacation sounds like fun. PTO doesn’t sound like fun. Uh, I don’t know. It sounds like something is mandated. Uh, just, I’m on vacation so we don’t want to deny people their vacation so that you can do your summer planning naturally. Uh And that would contradict what I said a couple of weeks ago about taking time for yourself because you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. So summertime can do both though. It can be your planning time and it can also be the time that you take for, for rejuvenating for relaxing yourself so that when you come back, you can take care of others, right? Summer can serve two purposes. So thinking about planning this week using summer for planning for that uh maybe August campaign or, or something in the fall. And that is Tony’s take two Kate. I am so ready for the summer and I have all my vacation plans planned out and I’m, I’m so ready to hit the beach. It doesn’t sound like you’re gonna be doing a lot of planning for the fall. Sounds like you’re in the balance. Like if there was a balance, you’re weighted heavily toward the time off rejuvenation, relaxation side. Oh, yeah, I know. I mean, I’ll go pumpkin picking in the autumn, but that’s about it. Ok. That, that’s a pretty audacious plan you have. Uh, ok. Very, very. All right. Congratulations on that. We’ve got VCU but loads more time here is intergenerational communication. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon where we are thoughtfully sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now are Doctor Lauren Hopkins and Doctor Carla Torrance. Doctor Hopkins is social impact consultant at prepared to impact. And Doctor Torrance is consultant at Ire for racial health equity. Doctor Hopkins. Doctor Torrence, welcome. Thank you. May I call you Lauren and Carla? Would that be ok? Doctor Laura Carlin Car Lauren Lauren? Ok. I’ll do doctor Doctor Carla. No. Ok. Absolutely. Your names, your titles you earned them. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about your topic. Your session is strengthening organizational culture through intergenerational communication. Uh This struck me because uh I’m a baby boomer and I do a lot of work not in, I mean, I have my own company but uh I do a lot of work with folks who are younger and um and even, you know, I do planned Giving, which puts me with folks who are in there, seventies, eighties and nineties. So there’s that uh there’s that dynamic also for me. So uh so I guess maybe for selfish reasons. Uh, I was very interested in this topic but I think a lot of, I think a lot of folks are struggling at across all the generations working with folks who don’t consider work the way they consider work or don’t think about, uh, I don’t know, don’t organize their lives differently that they just, they conceive of work differently. The purpose of work, the reasons for work, they conceive of family differently. Are these some of the reasons that this session is uh critical Doctor Carlo for sure. And what it is, it’s our work, it is our community. It’s everything it has for the first time in history. Five generations are in the workplace. Traditionalists, baby boomers. Gen X millennials and Gen Zs, which they’re now calling zoomers traditionalists. Is that the silent generation also known A K A the silent generation traditionalists. Um Dr Lauren, do you want to sort of frame this up for us before we get into some of the details? Yeah, I’ll tell you how we got started. So last year at N 10, at the NTC conference actually presented a session. It was a workshop on teaching technology skills within an intergenerational workplace. And so it was a nice size crowd and Dr Carla was in there and really enjoyed the session and came up to me afterwards and we connected and here we are. And so we’ve done a couple of projects together and of course, when in 1024 came up. We wanted to create a part two for this year. And so we were really excited and we actually presented this morning. You’ve already done? All right. All right, good. So we can maybe talk about some of the questions that arose, questions or comments. OK. OK. Um So one of the I’m just taking from your session description in the, in the agenda, uh common communications challenges in the workplace. Of course, we’re talking about intergenerational. Um You know, why don’t we start with? Stick with you, Doctor Lauren. What, what, what are some of the common challenges? Yeah. And so one of the um it’s very interesting that with the various generations, how we just prefer um modes of communication best and so with traditionalist and the baby boomers, they prefer more face to face communication. Um Yeah, more face to face, more written memos and things like that. And so if they are able to get in front of someone um that is better or if they’re able to talk to someone on the phone, that’s what they prefer also for um Gen X. No, Gen Xers. Yes. For Gen Xers, they really prefer um phone or verbal communication also and they’re also very quick learners. And so with Gen Xers, if they’re able to integrate some type of technology in it, think about like slack or texting or what not, they’re very fast learners. Um I’m actually a millennial and so I, I did not even say that but um we are two different generations. So I’m a millennial and Doctor Carla is a baby boomer. And so which makes our um our relationship very unique. So will you expand in 25 NTC? Bring in, bring in a traditionalist or someone on the other end? Maybe a maybe a gen X maybe. So I was thinking maybe like a panel with all with representative. I mean, it’s all born of yours from last year. So how do we overcome these? I mean, so as the baby boomer, I would rather just get up and go walk over to your office, but you’d rather I slack you or, or pick up the phone. I wouldn’t mind the phone. But that would be my second choice. My first choice would be the more laborious, the more time consuming I admit the more time consuming, the more invasive to you. I’m, I’m admitting that I still would rather knowing all that. I still would rather just get up and go talk to you in your office. You would rather I slack you or pick up the phone. Well, it’s very interesting. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you personally your generation. I got you. Yeah. And so traditionally, with those generations and the stereotypes, the research says that yes, that is um that is normal and stereotypical. However, we really have to consider the person. And so for instance, like me, um like millennials traditionally, we prefer texting something quick. I prefer a phone call. And so people know if they need to get me, they should just pick up the phone because I’m probably not going to text back. And so, um, and that’s just not just because I don’t like texting, but I get distracted and things like that. So we have to understand who the person is and communicate and ask them, hey, how do you prefer that I communicate with you and adapt to their preferred communication style? So we have the stereotypes but then also, you know, the person and the human aspect to it. But then I have to ask a challenging question, a question that challenges that a bit. So if I prefer the in person and you prefer the phone, where, where, where are we, we need to meet in the middle somehow and, and compromise and um yeah, and just figure out, OK, how do we work on this? And so an example with myself and, and Doctor Carla, sometimes we’ll text but often times we will um she’ll call me if she knows if she trying to get me like pretty quickly is a call or she knows that, OK, if it can wait a little bit, a text will be OK. But it just depends on the relationship and the person and just finding a common ground and communicating that from the beginning. OK, Doctor Carla, what about the different conceptions about work? You know, the generations consider work. I think different, different purpose. Uh younger folks consider it, you know, it’s a part of my life, but it’s not that big a part where I think, I think older folks consider it more, you know, they tend to more self identify around their work, you know. So you get, does it make sense? Different conceptions of work across the generation? And I think that COVID um was, was definitely an eye opener for everyone for engagement. So what you’re talking about is actually engaging with the community at work or just engaging with a person? Whereas um for years, uh baby boomers being in the workplace, you know, everybody, you know, um you know, you know, their Children, they all, everybody’s grown up. Well, once COVID hit, then we were all sent home and some of us went back. Well, they saw a difference in engagement, engagement. Those who went back to the work workplace, they saw a little bit more engaging in the whole community of work. Whereas those who were remote didn’t really engaged. So they were, they saw different generations, for example, the the baby boomers are more engaged, but the millennials and gen Z are less engaged because they’re remote, they’re remote, they’re not connecting as much. And so that connecting and engaging is very important for well being for anyone that is, is, is is on a job. So what do we do to overcome the lack of engagement. And I think that that’s where it comes in where maybe a hybrid or meeting at least once a month that there is, there is a time that we all do come together um and see one another and that meeting that coming together in person in face to face is for real, not just zooming or teams, but actually coming together and meeting and talking. And how are you doing? How’s your family? Because sometimes even when we were just tell me about your family, you don’t even know about your family, right? Because a lot of times when you’re working remote, you don’t even have to show your face. So a lot of people are not. But what we’re finding is that is making you even more, less engaged. Research is showing that there’s less and less engagement and you need engagement for well being. So we have to be intentional. Leadership needs to be intentional, all levels of leadership, not just all levels from board members, all the way down to every person within the organization needs to be intentional of wanting to engage. Because I can, if I can work on four jobs, if I can work on four projects and just give you what you need and send you on your way, I don’t have to connect with your organization. Just get, just get the money, just give me the money, pay me. And here, here’s the end result, the product I still I’m not connecting. OK. OK. Um Other challenges. I mean, we’re just, we’re just getting started. Well, you know, when you’re talking about I’m modes of communication. Um Again, we can’t generalize, we can’t use the stereotype is that traditionalists are like this, baby boomers are like this, those millennials are like that and those, those, you know, Gen Zs are like this, we can’t do that because even in our relationship, um if I text her, I mean, I, I mean, I hear from her all day whereas if she texts me, I text her right back now. That’s not normal. I mean, it’s not normal as far as baby boomer versus millennial. It should be that if everybody is saying what everybody does, she should be able, she should be calling me and it’s, oh, hi. It’s so nice to hear from you. How’s your family? Because I’m a baby boomer. Right? No, we’re to the point she, she wants to and she’s different, but we have learned and I think we’re test tubes for this and that’s why this workshop was so good for us to work it because we, we’re, we’re showing the strategies and how helpful it is to learn one another and to respect one another’s mode of communication and not just say, oh, that’s how you are. That’s how your generation is. No, it’s individual. It is and it’s respect, it’s respect of whatever it is. Whatever your mode of communication is, let me respect it and let me see where we can drop our drawbridge down and where can we come together so we can really communicate otherwise we’re, we’re just sacrificing the productivity of the, of the office of the mission. Right. I mean, we’re, we’re just, if we’re not, if we’re not listening to each other and respecting communications preferences, it’s just gonna be, uh, it’s not gonna be as an effective or an organization as it could be. It’s robotic, it’s not human, it’s, it’s just not, it’s not personable, it’s the long lasting. OK. We have um strategies for strengthening intergenerational communications conversations. We’ve talked about some share some more. Yeah. And so um so we talked about um go ahead, we talked about the um the different modes is what you’re saying, the different modes. OK. Yeah. OK. So we talked about um in what type of mode, how we will, is that what you’re saying? What’s the best way to communicate with you, whether you, whether you like face to face or whether you like text or whether you, whether you want social media. And so finding out which one is best and how can we be more effective? How do we find this out? We survey everybody with a uniform survey and then share the results or? Well, I mean, you can do that but you can also bring that human aspect to it and one get to know people, you know what I mean? Oftentimes in the workplace and even in the community, but especially in the workplace, I feel like we’re so, you know, just stuck at our desks or, um, there’s a lot of assumptions and just ask the person, especially as you get to know them, it might come naturally or sometimes you might have to ask, hey, I noticed that you haven’t responded to my teams. Um, I noticed that you haven’t even looked at it yet because I didn’t see little icon come up. Um, is there a better way that I can reach you if you, you know, if I need something? I noticed that it’s been like five hours, you know what I mean? And so they might tell you, oh, I don’t use that thing. Ok. Well, that’s not the best way to. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And sort of adapt and, um, and then, and then, you know, and tell them what you prefer. Also another one of the challenges I was going to say was learning from each other. And so it’s not really a challenge but it’s one of the different strengthening aspects. And so we always can learn from each other within the workplace. And so especially intergenerationally and we all have various experiences and knowledge and we can all grow from each other. And so that communication piece is not just about being effective in the workplace, but it’s also about just growing as a person growing as a professional. We can all learn from each other. And so really honing in on that and even within the workplace, how can um organizations and employers really foster that opportunity for intergenerational learning. How can we encourage people to grow with each other and from each other? So is that a co mentorship program, maybe it could be a baby boomer being linked with a genzer or oftentimes in the workplace. Now too, there may be a millennial who is supervising a baby boomer. You know what I mean? And those are opportunities for growth. Also, next week, apps, tools and tactics to future proof your nonprofit. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech. You find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms blocking your support, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org, fast fund, friendly, flexible fundraising forms. Love that I just, I I can’t get over the alliterations. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that mission study. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
As our 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage continues, Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader, rather than one person doing everything. Janice is at Shift and Scaffold.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of formation if you made my skin crawl with the idea that you missed this week’s show. And if you think I said fornication, get your head out of the gutter, close the porn hub window. It’s formation. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony, we have strategic meetings for teams of one as our 2024 nonprofit technology conference coverage continues. Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader rather than one person doing everything Janice is at shift and scaffold and cyber incident cases and takeaways. We’ve got good stories about bad actors. You’ll also hear the practical steps your nonprofit can take to prepare for cybersecurity incidents to reduce their impact and will empower you to hold incident prep discussions with your leadership or staff, Steve S who says security is a team sport joints from riprap security. This is also from 24 NTC on Tony’s take two delightful nostalgic women’s names. We’re sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking support, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is strategic meetings for teams of one. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the third day of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. We are all together in Portland, Oregon. Nonprofit radio coverage of the conference is sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me for this conversation, a uh an NTC perennial for nonprofit radio, Janice Chan, you knew she was coming. She’s Director of Shift and Scaffold Janice. Welcome back to nonprofit radio. After many NTC appearances. Many thanks for having me back, Tony. Always good to see you and talk with you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure as well for me to be here in person with you. Not just on Zoom. Yes. Yes. Uh This year your session topic is strategic team meetings for teams of one. All right. All right. Before we get into that, I, I wanna, I wanna talk a little about, I knew that I remembered I was reminded that you were studying Japanese. I, I, when I read it, I had remembered from previous years. Now, you live in Japan? Yes, I, I have been studying Japanese because my husband and I were not realized. But we had decided to take this job opportunity for him, which was based in Tokyo. And so we’re like, all right, we should start trying to learn the language. So, you know, it would be helpful to live there if we’re going to live there. And so, yeah, so we moved about a year and a half ago in 2022 some delays due to the pandemic. Um but it’s been great so far. And yeah, working at learning the language at the place that I live in, I’m sure living there helps quite a bit. You’re immersed. Uh is, is, is English very common or not, not so much, you can definitely get around Tokyo in English outside of Tokyo a bit harder. Um I think they did a lot of things to prepare for the Olympics when they were supposed to be there in 2022. And you know, in terms of the train signage and things like that. So you can get, you can get by in the city, in the city. Actually Japanese people in school, study English for several years. But you know, studying in school is always a little different than talking to native speakers. So I’m having the experience in reverse of going to class and then attempting conversations and often just mangling my way through it. But people are very kind fortunate. You’re, I’m working at it. People appreciate the outreach. They, they’re happy to work with me too, which is nice and really helpful. Do you have Children? Did you bring Children abroad? We brought our cat, our 18 year old grandma cat. She’s lovely and sassy. At 18, she’s still, she’s more sassy now, I think. Well, I know some sassy, 8090 year olds. That’s not surprising. All right. And uh I also want folks to know that if you want to see some beautiful photography, go to uh shift and scaffold.com because you have one stunning one too. There are several but the one of the from the Metropolitan Museum, the Reflection the park is in the background in that room. Yeah. Is that the Egyptian room room? So there are many great photos that shift and scaffold that Janice took there. Alright. So let’s talk about uh team meetings for teams of one. What was the genesis for this uh this uh up the this uh this intuition, this uh creative burst redefinition. That’s what I want resurgence, redefinition, defining redefining one to be a team. So whether even when I’ve been in house and now I’m an independent consultant and so I work for myself. But even when I was in house, a lot of times I was the only person who did the technology, who did the knowledge management, who did the training sometimes. And so I spent basically my entire career mostly being a team of one. Um And, you know, there are certain practices and things that I’ve done over time that I find really helpful in that because sometimes I don’t always have somebody to bounce things off of. Or sometimes when I do, they have a really, they don’t have the same background that I do. Right. So they have a really different perspective which is useful. But sometimes I’m like, I just got to figure things out for myself. There’s nobody setting the strategy. Like my boss is a development director and I’m doing database management, for example, right? So, you know, they’re supportive, but they don’t actually understand my day to day work. And so I need to do a lot of that strategic work by myself. And there were some of these practices I developed over time. And one of them was that I would meet with myself before you have these good practices, which we will absolutely get to. When did you start to think of yourself as a team as a team that emerge? Probably. So I remember, I don’t know why this sticks in my head so much. I had this phone call with this director at my organization at the time and I was supposed to help her team with some and she had a team of like, you know, actual other people. She had about seven people on her team. And I was the grant writer at the time. And so she was like, we have some opportunities. There’s some partners we talked to and, you know, I’d love if we could get your help on applying for these grants, we have the opportunity to apply for these grants in multiple states, but they’re all due at the same time. And she was like, maybe you can get some help from your team. And I was like, listen, I am the team. You were talking to the entire team. I’m the grant rating team. So in addition to my other jobs foisted on you the redefinition, talk to get some support from your team, the rest of myself. So your best practices, these are things you’ve been doing through the years for yourself in your work. So a lot of times often, you know, either at times when I really needed to say plan for the year or I’m about to take on a big project or start something new or I really want to maybe make some changes. Often. I would kind of set aside some time and just sort of be with myself, but I would take notes during that time, right? I would have a little, ok, here’s the thing that I want to work on for this hour or two hours or something, right? I need to plan out 2024 or I need to figure out how to work with that stakeholder who is, you know, I’ve got some stakeholders that I have to manage. And I’m trying to get that on board. I’m kind of trying to come up with some strategies for that. And I’m kind of sitting down and having a little meeting with myself with an agenda because I would be like, wait, what was I supposed to focus on for this hour? Right. And so it’s like a little reminder to myself and I’ve always been a note taker And so it’s just kind of a thing that I kept doing and then I would do it for planning my week. I would do it for reflecting on things at the end of the month and I was talking to someone and I realized that maybe some other people do it, but not everybody thinks of it that way. Um And it was really helpful that I ended up just taking things that I sometimes did in meetings with other people. I was like, oh, you know what, this is really helpful to take notes this way or whatever it is. And then I would do that when I was still doing it just by myself. So that’s kind of where it came out of. What else should we be doing with our team of one. Um So I, so to back it up a little bit part of, I didn’t really think a lot about the practice of meeting with yourself in that I didn’t necessarily articulate it. I was just like, oh, this is what you do. Right. You had a to do list. I certainly had a, to do list, but you didn’t think of devoted time to specific tasks. Well, I did but I think I didn’t think of it as maybe a thing that other people didn’t think of. And I was so, I also like to do creative writing. I was at this conference last year for creative writing and I talked to someone and they were like, so I told my new manager that I don’t start work before 10. She works from 10 to 7, but I don’t start work before 10 because the first two hours of my morning are dedicated for writing. That’s my writing time. And I realized so I live in Japan and I work with clients in the US. And so sometimes I wake up really early for meetings. I have meetings at like six in the morning, sometimes five in the morning. But on days when I don’t have super early meetings, I’d still wake up, my body just wakes up at that time now. But I would just stay in bed, you scroll through my phone or something. Like I wasn’t doing anything at that time. And why would I get out of bed for, for clients or for other commitments? But I wouldn’t do that for myself and for my own work, my own creative writing, et cetera. And I think so I recently, at the end of last year, I was like, all right, I’m going to really make this a regular practice. Um Yeah, and I thought it would be a really interesting session and tool to share with other people at the ante community as well. OK. Um Other, I don’t know, other tactics for you say tactics to make time for strategic work as a team of one, you got to take care of yourself, you got to take care of your team, take care of your team of one. Exactly. So I think a lot of this, so there’s tools and strategies and then there’s the mindset. And so um maybe I’ll talk about the mindset first and then talk show and strategies. But I think sort of as that team of one, a decent host would have asked you about the, you’re suffering a lackluster host. You, you think the host would ask about the mindset and the culture of the team of one first before you get into the, the tactics and strategies. It’s OK. That’s why we’re here to learn. We’re all still learning. And, you know, I think a lot of times where we start, right is when we want to do something better. We’re like, oh what are the tactics we’re doing it better? What’s the technical stuff and not the organizational culture or the mindset, all the internal work that we need to do when we work with people or work with ourselves. And so I think one of the, I don’t remember what started it, but last year I had this epiphany one day of like, wait, who’s leading my team? Like, nobody’s leading my team. Wait, it’s supposed to be me and I’ve not been leading my team and it was a really big sort of flipping the lights of it, John in my head. And I think realizing also whether I’ve been an independent consultant or when I was in house, right. Yes, I could run around and do all of the things and I would do all the things but not necessarily in a, I think I assumed that because I was the same person that it was cohesive and coordinate, right? And it was in a unified direction, you’re only one person, right? So of course, clearly going in the same direction as myself, I would think. And then I realized at one point I was like, I don’t think that’s actually the case and the, and part of that, what does that feel like when you felt like you were not going in a unified direction, I felt really scattered. I felt like, ok, I’m doing these things because it seemed like a good idea at the time or like you’re supposed to post more regularly on social media or you’re supposed to, I don’t know, go out and meet people and network and things like that. But I wasn’t necessarily doing them all in a unified direction. And I realized that I was doing sort of the different job functions like business development and content development and my consulting work and things and, but I wasn’t sort of doing the work to actually unify them intentionally. And so part of that was, I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a team or as a business or as an organization. I just like, I’m just Janice, I’m just showing up and doing the things and, you know, that works, you can get away with that for a time. But I think also, and you see this also in people when they go from being an individual contributor to being a manager or they kind of step from the, I’m just doing the things that my boss told me to do. So now I have to set the direction even if I don’t have any direct reports. And I think really, I realized that it was, I was kind of lacking that direction and I hadn’t made the time or really put into place the practices to do that on a regular basis that I wasn’t leading my own team and that spot was kind of vacant. And I think that’s a really big shift, especially in small organizations where a lot of times you just get thrown into like, hey, we need you to do, you’re like, hired for communications, let’s say, and, and, you know, you’re the only communications person and so you’re doing the writing, you’re doing the graphic design, you’re doing all the digital things. Um And then you’re just, you know, fielding whatever people think is your job honestly, a lot of the time and there’s no, if nobody is trying to make all of that cohesive for, say your external audiences, who’s managing the stakeholders, who is making sure there’s a cohesive strategy, you know, it, it starts, you’re not as effective for your organization. And some of that is, it’s easy to get caught up in all the urgent stuff. But some of it is also just I think that a big part of that mindset shift is we don’t respect ourselves as leaders as teams in the same way that we respect other leaders and teams, right? Like if I saw this meeting with you, Tony, right? There wasn’t a time to show up here, right? There was a process, there’s things going on, you know, I noticed that I would show up to meetings with other people differently versus I will reschedule things on myself all the time. And I’m not going to say that I don’t still do that, right? But I think just being more conscious of like, OK, I’ve pushed aside, pushed aside my time that I set it aside to do the strategic work and I’m putting out fires for other people because they’re urgent, you know, and that happens a lot. But I think the, I think especially in the social impact space, a lot of us, we want to make things better for other people. We care about other people, those requests that other people are making are not unreasonable. But it can also be really hard to, you know, especially for those of us who are taught to put other people first or that we exist for the community, not only for ourselves. Right? And that’s a very common ethos in the nonprofits face as makes sense. And also, you know, depending on who we are, I’m a woman, I’m the daughter of immigrants. And so there are a lot of things that when somebody comes to me and ask me for my help to do something, right? I’m like, oh, let me figure out how I can help you. And it’s easier to keep putting my stuff on the back burner, put myself on the back burner. But then that builds up over time. So if you’re the only, let’s say you’re the entire technology team at your organization, your single team of one, then if you don’t make the time to do the strategic work, your organization is not going to be able to use technology strategically and effectively, you know, your organization is going to be a little bit hamstrung in advancing the mission because you’re not carving that time out and you’re not respecting the time and the energy you need for that. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity, virtuous beliefs that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys. That response to the needs of each individual virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to strategic meetings for teams of one with Janice Chan. I it’s interesting really, the realization that you treat others better than you treat yourself. Essentially, you treat others work more importantly and more respectfully than you treat your own. Like you’re talking about putting off your, putting off your own time, putting off your own tasks. Um Yeah, minimizing your own needs or the other, right? It’s just I’ll get to it. You wouldn’t do that for somebody. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t procrastinate like that you wouldn’t put off the work of others that you might have been asked to do or that, you know, as an individual, as a solo consultant, you realize you need to do, you wouldn’t do that to your clients or to your, to your organization that you’re where you’re a team of one, you wouldn’t do that, but you’ll do it for your own, your own stuff. We need to shift that. This is the mindset that we’re talking about. This is the mindset. And, uh, you know, and some of that I just completely lost my train of thought. That’s, that’s right. I think, well, you made the point and I just was, like, underlining it. So, how about some of the other things that you do besides have, you know, agendas for your, for your solo time? What are some other, some other tips? Yeah. So the, you know, a lot of the things that are about running effective meetings and I know we all have this joke about meetings that should be emails. Um But I think there are times when it’s important to when the meeting is the right tool, when you’re making a decision, you’re trying to get alignment or you’re doing something where dialogue is essential to moving forward with care often, you know, to building relationships um and maintaining trust. And so a lot of the things that are crucial for effective meetings with other people are also useful when you’re by yourself, meeting with yourself, the agenda, taking notes, keeping track of decisions that were made, keeping track of the action items, not just in the notes, but hopefully in whatever project management tool or however you normally keep track of your action items. Um I would say the big difference when you’re meeting with yourself is, of course, there’s not, you know, in a, in most meeting notes, at least the way I take them in a group, I note down who is attending the meeting. Right. There were people we invited to the meeting. We’ve made sure there was somebody from finance and someone from programs and someone from fundraising or whatever. And when you’re meeting with yourself you’re like, oh, yeah, I don’t need to. It’s just Janice. right? Um And something that I find helpful that’s different for a meeting with yourself is to think about the different roles that you need at that meeting because I, so this is a pet peeve. I have of in meetings with other people where they’re like, OK, we finished the agenda for, let’s say the project’s status update or whatever. Actually, this is the same group of people that, you know, for the data working group. So could we just throw that in right now? Right. And then you’re like, I, that’s a total mind shift. Yeah, it’s a total mind shift. I didn’t prepare like I’m not ready. And also, now this was like an hour long meeting that was going to finish faster. And now you’ve just messed with my head because now we’re going to be here for an hour and a half. Right? And so, and I think not part of respecting yourself, right? Is to not do that to yourself either. And so being clear about what is the purpose of this meeting. We use different meeting types for different purposes, right? It’s very different that we’re like a strategic planning meeting and a project planning meeting. And a team general team, weekly meeting should not look and feel the same, you’re not doing the same things. And similarly, when we’re meeting with ourselves, let’s not do that to ourselves either. Um And so naming those roles who needs to be there. So, you know, if I am the communications team and I am the writer and the graphic designer and the digital person and also the uh communications director leading the team, right? Have all of those roles been represented in that time and space. And even if it’s something simpler, like as an independent consultant, right? Is it consultant me? Is it business owner me? You know, or at a more basic level, is it decision maker, me or implementer me? Because if it’s only implementation, that’s just like me writing the report, I’m not making decisions, this is not a meeting, I’m just working on something. So I think calling attention to those um is a key difference that I would say for meetings with yourself. I, I like the idea of different roles because I, I think it helps make you accountable for, for the different, for the different uh areas of responsibility that you have and not only areas of responsibility but individual tasks that you have, you know, the the the business development person is gonna come down on, on the uh the writer who hasn’t done a blog post for six, for six weeks. Right. So III I see an accountability role. Absolutely. I love that. Calling that out anything else? So I think there are a lot of different uh like let’s be real, right? We only have so many hours in the day, but more importantly, we only have so much mental energy and mental capacity for things, right? And so part of that, you know, it’s some tools and tactics for protecting your time. It might be things like no meeting Tuesdays or it might be the last Friday of the month is always dedicated to strategic work. So I think some of it is like making time and actually putting it on your calendar to do that work, right? Um And it’s helpful if your whole organization does it and put it in the calendar, put it in the calendar, this is an important time exactly like you would do for a meeting with three other people. So if you know, sometimes life happens, you need to reschedule, but reschedule it don’t just cross it off the list and then never come back to it. And, you know, there are also other things that, um you know, I think that that time thing is one thing, right? There’s only so many hours, but that’s also a little bit more straightforward in some ways, it’s much harder to protect your mental brain space to do strategic work. So for example, I’m an introvert. I like people. I love hanging out with people at N DC. And also at the end of the conference day, I go back to my hotel room and I’m like, I just need some quiet time for a little bit. But also I know that at the end of the day, I can expect of myself to do strategic work, right? Like maybe I reply to emails or something, but I’m not going back and planning out some major initiative at night because it’s not realistic of where, how tired my brain is. Um And so I think that’s harder because that’s also individual what works for one person isn’t going to work for another person. And so some of that is figuring out what you need to be able to get into that, to have that spaciousness to do the strategic work and to figure out how to ask for that for your team. Um And you know, that could be, it could be things like the no meeting Tuesdays or working from home instead of working in the office. But it could also be things like, you know what I need to go for a walk. I need to actually, when I’m doing this type of work, I need to not be at my regular desk. I need to be in a physically different location so I can get into a different mindset than my day to day, putting out fires, et cetera. Sometimes it might be just like, you know, um, knowing that your team, knowing that, hey, the first hour of my day, every day, that’s like I do not take meetings, right. I’m working, but I do not take meetings so that I can make sure I do the important work, whatever it might be. So it’s really helpful to make sure that you’re asking your boss or your team or your colleagues for that and making that clear. But in doing that, you’re also modeling that for other people as well as you honor yourself and your team. There’s nobody else to advocate for you. You go out and do it. You know, I mean, if you, if you, if that team leader role has been empty, that means there’s no one else that means you need to step into that role. So, you know, I told people in the session, give yourself that promotion already. If you haven’t, how about we leave it right there? That’s perfect. Wonderful. Give yourself that promotion. If you haven’t, she’s Janice Chan director at Shift and Scaffold, Shift and scaffold.com. Always a pleasure. I hope to see you 2025. You think you might come, come back. That’s the I, I’m hoping I will see you all in 2025 Baltimore. My old home city. It’ll be a little closer for you. Five hours closer. All your old home. I used to live in Baltimore. I look forward to seeing you. I know you’ll have a good topic. I don’t have to say, have a good you will. You will you so much to my p Thanks for sharing, Janice and thank you for sharing in our conversation about teams of one where we’re sponsored by Heller consulting, technology implementation and strategy for nonprofits. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up a new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box like kiosk, the smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team and member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors, make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two, Alice Antoinette, Bernice Charlotte, Constance Deidra. Thank you, Kate. These are some of the delightful names that I’ve kept on a personal list for years now of women in their seventies, eighties and nineties. And there’s even one who was 100 years old on the list and I just II I just get nostalgic over names that are so uncommon now. I mean, these are women who were born in the 19 thirties and forties. So not surprisingly, you know, names change, of course. Uh, but yeah, I don’t know, the, the names just move me. Um, and so I’ve been keeping this personal list and I did, I, I posted some of it on linkedin and I thought I would share some of it today. Um, the, you know, it’s, it’s the names and, but it’s also the, the women’s stories, you know, growing up in the 19 thirties, 19 forties, fifties in the United States. Uh, what that was like, you know, education wise for some, some women went on beyond high school. Uh, a lot did not. Some women went on to marry and have families and some did not. So it’s, you know, it’s the combination of the stories and, and I guess the, the richness of the stories makes me love their names as well. Um, and just as I said, you know, get nostalgic for these names that we just don’t see anymore. Like Geraldine Gertrude, Gussie Hazel, Jacqueline Lenoir, Lottie Mabel Marlene Maxine. Many Myrna, Ophelia, Penelope, Rochelle Selma Veronica. All right. I’ve got a lot more on my list, but that’s just a sample of names that I find, uh, delightful and I get nostalgic about them. Have you got any if, uh, if, uh, if you wanna contribute your mom’s name or your grandmother’s name or maybe your own name. Uh, let me know. Love to hear it. Tony at Tony martignetti.com. Let’s see if the names you know, are on my list. That is Tony Stick two, Kate. I would like to add Carmella both with one L and then one with two Ls. Yes. All right. So share why the name Carmela is important to you is I had a great grandmother. You might know better than me. But, but that I’m, you know, my name is my first name is Carmella. Well, I know that, but listeners, listeners could very well not know that your name is Carmela. Kate. Mar uh Carmela and then Kate is, is short which I never understood. I don’t know how Kate is short for Carmella. Carmel. I could see Carmel what? I have an aunt Kate but I have like a grandmother. Caramel, right? So, yeah, but they’re two different, they’re two different women. So how does because Kate is not your middle name? No, it’s not. Anne is my middle name. Like great grandmother Ann or? Right. Where is your great grandmother, Anne? Who was my grandmother? Right? This Carmela was on your other side, on your mom’s side of the family. So I, I didn’t know, I didn’t know Carmella. I don’t know. I’m, I’m happy to call you Kate, although, you know, I often call you Carmela as well because nobody else does. So I like to be different and I think it’s a beautiful name but Kate being short for Carmela, I, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. No, it’s been 21 years. It’s never made sense to me. Well, we’ve got VU but loads more time here is cyber incident cases and takeaways. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio’s continuing coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. We are all convened at the Oregon Convention Center in downtown Portland and Nonprofit radio is sponsored at the convention at the conference by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now to have a conversation is Steve Sheer. He is CEO and co-founder of Riprap Security. Steve. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Have you done your session? I have done my session. We were the first in the first session on the first day. So you set the bar high. I feel bad for the presenters that came after you. We just met a few minutes ago and I’ve already, I already know that you set the set, the bar high. Uh gave quite a challenge to the uh to the presenters that that succeeded. You. Your topic is cyber incident, uh preparation and what we can learn from real world incidents. So it sounds like you uh you are bringing some stories that we all are glad that it did not happen to us. Um Maybe these are major headline stories. I don’t know, maybe these are some of the big ones, but we can uh we can take some things away. Exactly. Ok. Ok. Um Why did you feel the need for the session? Yeah. So um I run a cybersecurity consulting company that’s focused on mission driven and purpose driven organizations and helping them improve their cybersecurity. And one of the key ways that we start working with new clients is that they call us and they say, hey, my house is on fire. We’ve experienced an incident, we need help and so we go and we help them and it, when we go in and we’ve never met them before and they don’t, they’ve not really prepared for an incident. The incident is much more severe. They end up incurring a lot more losses. They have a lot, it’s all very, it’s all much more stressful and the chance of recovery is lower than if they had prepared ahead of time to deal with an incident. And so the, the talk is all about how organizations can prepare ahead of time to make it less stressful, to make it cost less to respond to an incident and really reduce the impact of the incidents that happened to the organization. Ok. Iii I don’t think I’ve, I’ve thought about that or I haven’t heard it said that way that you can make it less impactful, less of a crisis by preparing. I mean, what I’ve heard is you should prepare because you can, well, you can never eliminate the possibility. You can greatly reduce the possibility of being attacked having an incident yourself. But you can actually make it less with preparation? Ok. Excellent, excellent. So um is it, are we just gonna share a bunch of unfortunate stories and, and take away lessons from each one? Maybe we can talk through some of the best practices and I can weave in some, some stories here and there. So why don’t we start with some of your, your best advice? Sure. So I think the primary thing that you want to do is when you’re preparing for an incident is really ensure that you have really good buy in from your stakeholders in inside your organization. So people that are working in the marketing and communications portion, senior leadership members of the board, so that they’re involved in the planning and the preparation process. So that when you do have an incident, they’re not caught by surprise. This is not the first they’re hearing about how to deal with an incident. And so, you know, we, we tend for organizations that, that have not prepared. We, we end up spending a lot of time trying to brief the senior leadership and the board about what’s happening and they were very nervous and they don’t, they don’t let the, the the people responding to the incident have time to actually respond to the incident. And, and part of what they don’t have in place is a AAA management plan for this crisis, right? I mean, uh um if it’s, if it’s become public now, we have APR issue. So, who’s the, who’s the public facing voice? Is it our, is it a, is it a crisis communicator that we’ve, we, we knew we would hire in an emergency or are we scrambling for that? Should it be the CEO, should it be the board chair? You know, uh, should it be the chief technologist or if we have one, our audience is small and mid size nonprofit. So the likelihood that they have someone devoted to tech, tech is, you know, off and on because I’m certainly not 100% don’t, but, but a lot don’t. So you know, who should even be the voice? And then what should we be saying? How much should we be telling the public and our stakeholders? So, all right. So we need to have a plan in place um as well as managing the expectations that you’re saying of the board, the C Suite. Alright. What else? I think another important thing is really clearly defined roles and responsibilities of who’s going to be involved and when should they be involved in an incident? Right. So you touched on it already is, when do we bring in the CEO or the board to talk with the public on our behalf or? Hey, when does it make sense to not have them do that? Who is responsible for taking the operational steps to respond to the incident? The hands on keyboard, very technical investigation that goes along with responding to an incident. What third parties do you need to bring in? Um, depending on the type of incident you need to bring in your web development team if you’ve outsourced the web development team, because the website is having an incident, but you wouldn’t need to bring them in. Maybe if you’re having a ransomware attack on one of your, your computers, right. They’re not probably the right people to bring in. So you really want to make sure that you’re involving all the right internal first party and third party people and assigning them roles, specific roles and responsibilities. So that, you know, hey, we need to do this thing. We need to go talk to this person who’s directly responsible for this activity. OK. Yeah. Um Who’s gonna speak and then you know who’s gonna speak to uh are there aside from the public, if this involves donor data, volunteer data, who’s gonna speak to those groups? What do we say to them? How do we reassure them? Um Yeah, I’m giving chills. I mean, my synesthesia is kicking in. Actually, I really did. I just got chills thinking about because I’m, I’m not a CEO of a nonprofit. This is I’m a one person entrepreneur. It’s not gonna happen to me like most likely, but to put myself in that position and to try to figure that out and now maybe we’ve got press calling perhaps. I mean, I’m kind of thinking worst case the press is calling, what do we say to them? Like if you say no comment, that sounds bad. Do you not respond at all? And then they’ll just say, well, we’re not, was not immediately available for comment. Maybe that’s better. I don’t know. But ok, I don’t wanna have to and then it’s a crisis, it’s a crisis and the whole planning you deal with these. I mean, we do, let’s take a worst case scenario. I mean, how do you, how do you walk in and manage the, I’m gonna make it even worse. Do you get called in by organizations you’ve never talked to before? And that’s the most stressful. You don’t know anybody. We know, we don’t know anybody, we don’t know their technology, we don’t know much about them. And what do you do? We, you know, you learn real quick. Uh You ask a lot of pointed questions and you figure out who the right people to have in the room are because we find that there tend to be too many cooks in the kitchen when we show up. Right. There’s too many people involved and they’re causing more uh rotation and more work to be generated than really what there needs to be. So we really focus on, hey, who are the key people we need to bring in and then the people that are kind of excluded from that group, say more senior leadership, we promise them, hey, we’re gonna give you an update every hour or every three hours or every day so that they know what to expect when they’re going through an incident that they should. Ok. At three o’clock, someone’s gonna come and brief me on what’s going on and tell me what are our next steps, right. So we, we keep, keep everything really communicative and what that also prevents is we also tend to go in and serve as a bit of a firewall between the upper leadership and the board and the very technical people in terms of blocking and managing access to the people that are trying to do the hands on keyboard work so that they’re not disrupted by someone saying, oh, I need an update. I need an update is calling and I can now I can’t deal with the crisis. Oh man, how do you, that was like promotion for riprap security. How do people find you in that kind of crisis again? An organization you’ve never talked to before? Yeah. So it’s a lot of word of mouth. It tends to be, you know, who, who knows an organization that can, that can help us. Um And you know, there are a lot of organizations that can, can help, but there are not that many organizations that are equipped to work with nonprofits that are attuned to their needs and the times of data and stakeholders that they’re working with. And that’s why we like to work with these mission driven organizations is because we have a lot of experience there and we, we really can feel like we help them because we’ve, we’ve responded to incidents, all sorts of incidents with all kinds of different nonprofits and other mission driven organizations. All. Let’s, let’s take it down a notch now from the, from that worst case, like somebody you’ve never heard of before and they’ve never heard of you and they’re calling panicked. Right? I mean, they are panicked. Alright. We can remove ourselves from that situation. Let’s go back, let’s go back to some of your uh your, your advice for uh for preparing. Yeah, so, uh, I, I think the next thing to really understand is you got to really understand what your capabilities are. What, what about incidents and managing incidents? Are you realistically going to be able to handle on your own? Do you have a very technical person that’s going to be capable of doing the analysis and the investigation to figure out how the attacker got in where the attacker is, what the attacker is doing? Or do you need to make sure you go find somebody to help you do those things? I mean, the reality is most organizations they don’t have a person like that. Um, basically forensics, forensic forensics, deep digital forensics. And you know, we, unfortunately, we, we’ve come in in a lot of cases where our nonprofit, our nonprofit partners, they think they can rely on some existing third party relationship that they’ve got say with their it managed service provider or their web developer to help them address the incident. But the instant response is like pretty specialized set of capabilities, right? So you wanna certainly include those people in the incident response, but you really need to know you have someone that can help take you through from beginning to end from identifying that the incident has happened all the way through recovery to help you through that whole process. And though understanding your who’s, who’s on your team, who’s responsible for what um and really making sure that there’s clear lines and expectations is really key to making sure that you can successfully recover. Can we, can we launch into one of our unfortunate stories? Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. Uh we, we worked with one organization. Um It’s about 100 person um company and it’s a nonprofit. It’s a nonprofit. Yeah. And uh what happened to them is that they, uh uh they didn’t have multi factor authentication configured for uh their, their email. And uh an attacker was able to gain access to the emails of the CEO the coo and the CFO and the attacker sat for months watching emails come in and out of these three mailboxes and they were able to understand what, what, what is the process this nonprofit uses to get new vendors on boarded. What is the process for the vendors providing the bank account information for how to pay the vendors. What’s the process for when a vendor needs to send an invoice to the nonprofit, for the work that they’ve done and what they were able to do. So they’re, they’re, they, I went to law school. Well, I used to be, I used to practice law. They’re lying in. Wait, I would say this is what, this is what makes it a first degree murder and lying in. Wait type murder versus a heat of passion. This is lying in. Wait. Exactly. Yeah. And Attackers will maintain access for a long time in an organization to really learn about them in the same way that I learn about an organization when I’m trying to work with them, right? I want to profile all the activity and understand how to make them more. Did you used to be a bad guy? Did you come over the other side? Luckily not my style. Um And so what happened was that the, the attacker understood this payment flow and this vendor approval process and was able to issue their own invoices or they were able to issue their invoices to this nonprofit. The nonprofit was just paying them just they said, ok, this isn’t approved, everything looks fine. They posed as the CFO and the coo to like give the approvals, sending an email on their behalf and giving the approval stamp and just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars just walked out the door over a six month period and no one, no one realized, right? So there’s, you know, the there’s the aspect of, hey, you should have had multi factor authentication configured to protect those accounts. So the attacker couldn’t even get in from the beginning. But there’s also the side of, hey, what is your, what is your vendor approval and uh vendor invoice approval process look like and how, how could an attacker use that process and take advantage of it to issue their own invoices and get the money sent to their own account. So there’s, there’s a bit of a traditional cybersecurity and it portion of this incident and how to recover from it and as well as a more financial and a financial process and accounting process that, that we help them improve um to make it less vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. Once the crisis is over, then make it less likely to happen again. So that money was never recovered, was never recovered. Um Do, do nonprofits typically co-operate with law enforcement or would they rather just let it go, make it go away and, and, and the uh end the nightmare? Yeah. Uh it’s about 5050. We find um you know, there are some, there are some nonprofits that have an obligation to report something like that if they’re working with say health data or something like that, really something to be truly sensitive. Um A lot of organizations we talk with them about that of like, hey, you know, it’s worth reporting this. Like you’re not gonna get in trouble for being attacked, you know, it’s, and uh I, we, we almost always recommend going to talk with law enforcement. We almost always recommend that we submit the, the technical indicators of the, of the, of the attack. Like how the attacker, what the attacker did, how they did it to the, the federal law enforcement authorities so that they can go and cross analyze that information and try to help more people and try to, in some rare cases, go and track down the Attackers and, and do things like make arrests and disrupt the operations, rare cases though. Ok. So at least contribute to the, the FB I’s database of forensics and then maybe not pursue prosecution or. Well, it doesn’t sound like there’s prosecutions very likely not. Like, can nonprofits participate like that? Like, anonymously, the FBI is not just not gonna reveal the identity. You could go to your FBI field office that’s in, that’s in your state or your city and go and make these reports if you need to. There’s, um, a federal cybercrime task force that has a forum open that we use pretty regularly. If you wanted to submit something anonymously, you could do that through that, that, that manner. Ok. Um, and do you do the forensics, can you, can you figure out how they got in what they did? Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, we kind of the process and the workflow of the incident is after we get called or we see that there’s a potential incident happening. We start in the stage called identification. We’re really trying to profile what the threat is, what they’re doing, what they start to understand what the impact is so that we can go start taking steps to say, hey, let’s make a plan for how we’re going to contain the attacker. So the attacker cannot, we want to essentially put a force field around what they currently have access to and kick and start to limit their ability to escape out of and, and pivot away and gain more access to the environment. So after we are able to contain them, we work to eradicate their presence. So we, we remove access to accounts, we will pull computers from desks and erase them and reformat them. Um We’ve, we’ve done a lot of work. This is when the attacker knows now that, that they’re being, they’re being surveilled typically. Yes. Yeah. We, we, we’ll look under cabinets behind desks up in the drop ceiling in closets to make sure there’s no computers or devices that are hidden in those areas that the attacker is maybe using to. They’ve gained some physical access to the organization. It happens. Yeah. There’s sometimes there’s physical access. Oh my God, it’s even creepier. It’s way creepier. Where have they been? Right? Have you seen that? We’ve seen that damn. Is that, is that a disgruntled employee could be a disgruntled employee could be an attacker that, you know, they’re wearing an orange vest and they have a tool bag and they walk right in, you know, there’s a lot of these ways to, you know, just kind of walk waltz in and uh with Verizon, you optimize your, uh your wi fi we’ve seen evidence of degraded signal. We’re very proactive. Come on in. We’d all have, we all love higher performing wifi all. Oh my gosh, physical presence, man. Ok. Um Alright, so the takeaways from that, let’s just, just go a little more detail. That’s a, that’s a bad story, a couple, couple 100 1000 dollars. What do we take away from this? So what we take away is that you really have to understand the, the the impact of the incident to really understand what are the goals of the attacker? Is it opportunistic? Are they being specifically, is the organization being specifically targeted? We’re finding these days it’s more opportunistic of like the Attackers are not specifically targeting an organization. They’re just sort of, you know, hoping they get into any organization. And the question we get from a lot of nonprofits and any organization that we work with on an incident is like, why us, you know, and, and it’s unfortunately like it’s almost impossible to say, right? Um And they’re like, who would do this to us? I’m like, well, it could be anybody. Right. It’s, these people are all around the world. You know, it’s hard, they’re hard to track down. Um, even, even for the government, it’s hard to track these people down. And so we kind of help redirect that energy and it’s like, ok, you know, we, we may not be able to tell who did it or why they did it. But let’s get you to a better perspective. Let’s get you to a better place. Because what we end up doing after we’re able to remove the attacker is we, we have to work to help the organization recover and get back to business as normal. Now, most organizations that do this on their own without any help, they sort of kick the attacker out and then they just go back to doing business as usual without fixing the underlying reason. The attacker got in, in the first place and that’s a tough thing to come back or to return to somewhere or to get called in later or say we thought we had it under control, we won’t get struck by lightning twice. Exactly. Right. You know, if you’re not a, it’s not a good strategy if you don’t lock your front door, you know, it’s kind of like this happens again. Shame on you. Right. It’s like you gotta take the time. And so we work with the organizations who say, hey, how did the attacker get in? What are the things that we can do to close that method of access in the future. What are the other security capabilities that you can put into place the policies, the technology and what people need to be involved to make it so that you’re prepared for the next time. Um And then what we, what we always recommend and this is a thing that uh a lot of organizations skip as well is we, we have a very lengthy uh lessons learned session and the lessons learned sessions are really critical because you really want to bring in all the stakeholders from the dealing with the incident after everything is done while everything is still fresh in your mind. And you want to start understanding what did we do? Good? Like what do we do really well in the incident, we communicated, we bought pizza for everybody. So no one had to leave the office like simple things like this, right? And what, what didn’t we do? Well, like, ok, well, you know, it turns out the attacker was in the network for six months like that we should have known five months or 5.5 months ago. Um You know, things like that and then what we recommend is giving specific, having specific action items with specific due dates assigned to specific people so that things get followed up on. And that every time you have to step through this process, you’re improving a little bit more, you’re reducing the impact of future incidents and you’re just better prepared for the next time that it happens. What’s the, uh, proportion that you see that, uh, nonprofits take that proactive step after the crisis to mitigate the likelihood and the impact of a future crisis. Um, these days, the rate is much higher than it used to be. Five years ago. We wouldn’t have seen many follow through unless they’re quite a large organization. But people feel the pain and people see this in the news all the time. Right. They, they see major corporation Southwest. Yah. I don’t want our providers pipelines. Right. It’s always in the news. So people are a lot more aware of it. Want to have the conversation. It’s less of like, oh, no, we’re totally secure. Nothing can ever happen to us. Sort of just like hoping that nothing happens. But they, they want to engage more deeply and say, like, what do we really need to do? You know, what are the, what is the foundational things we need to put in place that we just don’t have. How did you come up with Riprap security? What’s the significance of that? Yeah. So, Riprap is a type of shoreline protection on, like, in a bay or on a river. It’s all rocky and the erosion patrol like those sort of not really rock walls but little rock islands or mounds that riprap. That’s exactly right. So you’re protecting the nation’s coastline, like our Coast Guard, our silent warriors. We’re not, we’re not quite as seaworthy, I think, but, uh, get nauseous sometimes. Um, let’s see, being able to hold the incident, incident, preparation discussions and leadership. Is that why we talked through a lot of that? Um Have you seen, I, I feel like I’m, I’m speaking to law enforcement, you know, like, uh about uh crime trends in the nonprofit community. Have you seen ransomware? Ransomware is a common one? We see you got a ransomware case story. You can tell we, we deal with these a little bit less these days than we used to. Um You know, honestly, the fact that people are more organizations are more fully remote means that the ransomware has trouble spreading to other devices on a network. So that definitely is a, is a nice thing to work from home or work remotely. Um But we’ve had cases where um we, we, we worked with one, this is one company. They’re, they’re quite small and um they’re 50% manufacturing company that we worked with and they called us up one day and they said, hey, we’re having this ransomware incident and our production floor of like they made um like metal machine parts, our production floor, everything is encrypted by ransomware. All the business side of the network was encrypted, everything was fully offline. They sent out most of their employees home and they’re just, you know, they turn the lights off right. They’re like, what do we do? And so we’re there, we’re trying to understand. We’ve identified obviously that there’s ransomware. We’re trying to understand, you know what it is, how they got in and the it director comes in and he’s like great news. I have backups like, oh, this is great. No one ever has backups. Right. Because if you’ve got backups, you can restore the data, you can get back to normal. No problem. So he stored them at his house in a little safe in his house, brought him back. He takes them out of the box and the, the, the backups are, they’re a week old, so it’s not ideal, but a week ago is better than nothing or two weeks. Um And he opens the box, it’s like an old tiny, like lunch crate, metal lunch crate. And they are tape drives and tape drives are uh like almost like a cassette deck. Um But they’re, they’re, they used to be used very frequently to store a large amount of data, but the downside is, are very slow to help move data on and off those tape drives. So I’m like, ok. All right. So he’s gonna say, oh, I’m gonna go restore the data to get us back up and running. He comes back a couple of hours later. He’s like, it looks like this is gonna take 14 days to restore our data. Like that’s a, that’s a really long time. And so ultimately, the leadership of the organization decided to pay the ransom because it was gonna cost them less. I think it was four or $500,000. It was gonna cost them less to get, to pay the ransom, to unlock the computers than it was for them to be down for two weeks. And that’s a hard choice for an organization to make. We’re paying the bad guys, but it’s a business decision. It’s a business. You see, are these foreign actors? Not this one specifically. But do you see a lot of foreign actors as the bad guy when you can identify, maybe, maybe, sometimes you can’t even identify where in the world they’re located. It tends to be pretty geographically spread. Um You know, there, there is a whole business model and, and business life cycle for these ransomware attacks. So an organization, uh 11, malicious organization will go and they’ll perform the initial um exploitation of a, of an organization. So they’ll go in, they’ll get access to a computer or an account and they do that tens of thousands of times and they’ll, they’ll collect all these logins and then they’ll sell them to ransomware Attackers. So there’s almost, they’re almost like a data broker providing these account credentials and this access to the ransomware Attackers and then the ransomware Attackers will go and they’ll install the ransomware on the computers that are associated with these accounts and they’ll just see who calls them back. And so there’s this whole ecosystem of, hey, you know, uh the Attackers know, like they need to be pretty, pretty quick to respond to their customers email, right? Their victims emails. Otherwise people aren’t going to trust that they’re going to provide the key if they get paid. And so we tend to, we tend to say that they’re so they’re good on customer service, customer service because there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. They, they, they’re great communicators, some big corporations, I promise we’ll get back to you within 15 minutes. Uh Crypto are they, are they typically paid in Cryptocurrency, typically paid in crypto? Um And they have a variety of different cryptocurrencies that they’re using almost as many as you can count. Um And they take pretty significant steps to once you’ve paid them, they typically give you one address to send the money, the, the, the, the digital currency to and from there, it’s almost immediately um essentially like chopped up into smaller chunks and sent out to, you know, potentially hundreds of other, you know, digital currency and Cryptocurrency accounts. So it’s very difficult to trace that, that kind of that kind of thing. Have you seen a case where the ransom was paid? And the key was not provided, the encryption key wasn’t provided. We’ve seen, we’ve seen where the attacker has provided the wrong decryption key by mistake. Uh But email them back back, he made a mistake they sent the customer, they got back to you. So you don’t have to go through a gateway or anything 800 number. Just go right to the right to the principal and then they provided the correct key. Now, now you do have to be careful. Right. We don’t, we don’t recommend paying the ransom. Not necessarily, but if it’s a business decision, um, you do have to be careful because, uh, the Department of Treasury and law enforcement agencies, they, um they’re very closely tracking these ransomware Attackers and what they do is they’ve placed some of these Cryptocurrency wallet addresses on the sanctions list. So the same sanctions list that has uh Russian oligarchs and um you know, um Chinese hackers through financial crimes enforcement network, Department of Treasury. I know exactly. So, what’s the, what’s the caveat there? The caveat is that you could potentially be in sanctions violations by paying one of these ransomware hackers. Um If it’s, if it’s a track sanctioned uh uh Cryptocurrency, it’s the Russian hacker or the Indian hacker and the Treasury Department are both, it’s not a good position, you want to call your lawyer for sure. All right. That’s a, that’s a great caveat. Alright. So what can we take away from this, uh, this uh lessons learned from this particular ransomware account at the manufacturer? Yeah. So I think the key thing is make sure you have ongoing current backups and uh and a lot of organizations they’ll set up backups, like in this story or they say, ok, we’re taking backups every week. That’s probably fine. But the downside was, they never tested it. Right. They never verified that the data was complete and they never made sure that they understood how long it was going to take them for them to recover. That if they had known they would have probably chosen a different, a different way to back up because it doesn’t cost that much more uh these days to not back up on a tape drive. Say, um are there where in the world are these, are these uh bad actors clustered? Are there, is there parts of the world like II, I mean, I mentioned India and Russia but I’m, you know, I’m not a cybersecurity uh professional. Where, where are these, can you say generalize where these folks might be clustered? So, so they, they tend to be pretty geographically spread. Um You know, the, the, the, the reality is that it’s, it’s no longer that hard for someone to gain the skills that are necessary to do, to perform some of these attacks. And we’re seeing more and more of these organizations of very young people going out and committing these types of crimes and, you know, ultimately being successful in a lot of cases. And so, you know, youtube is great for learning all sorts of things, you can learn how to hack and do all these things on youtube and by research there’s a lot of great information out there. Um, but the reality is like, it’s almost impossible to know who’s doing this in a lot of cases. Right. Either the Attackers are using all kinds of intermediaries and bouncing their communications off other computers all around the world and it’s very tricky to really track them down unless you’re a fins or a large government organization. Um Is there truth that if, if you, if you are a victim of a hack, uh let’s say it’s your credit card, you know, your credit card company says that uh your, your, not only your credit card number but your, your address and maybe your date of birth or something, you know, was, may have been, it may have been, may have been compromised and you know, they’ll typically give you one year in one case. I saw two years which double but still my question gets to the value of all this two years of like credit monitoring and you know, the suspicious monitoring alerts and things like that. But I’ve also read that the, the real value comes more comes longer from the, from the incident because because it’s harder to track back to where it happened, what the source of it was. So like 3 to 4 or five years later, your birth date hasn’t changed, your address might have changed, but a lot of people’s addresses haven’t, so they’ll use what they’ve got and they’ll get lucky and in a lot of the, a lot of their, uh, ill gotten file. So, is, is that true that the, the longer the time, the more value valuable your data is on the, I guess on the dark web in the black market. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think it speaks mostly to the following impact that can have. Right. If someone steals your data, that’s, and there’s a big breach, that’s one thing, but that data gets repackaged and sold to a variety of other people on the, on the dark web and, and, and the reality is that most people, they’re not going to be able to pay attention that long. Right? They can’t change some of these core things about them, like their phone number or their social security number, you know, some of these things. So you really have to be mindful all the time and really watch your accounts and really understand like, what is the impact here, you know, the one year of credit that they give you. I just don’t, I mean, yeah, sure, I’ll take it, I’ll sign up for it, but I don’t see the value because so my, what I’ve read is, is accurate, the longer, the longer the time, the more valuable actually. And the more likely it’ll be used after, after one or two years from the incident. Um, we got a little more time. You want to tell us one more story. And, and some lessons from it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we, we have, you know, we’ve, I’ve told a lot of, like, kind of dark stories, you know, but there are bright spots. Right. So, you know, we, we come in a lot of times, come in an organization, they, they’re having an incident, we work with them, we really, we help, you know, kick out the attacker and the leadership, they really get it right. They really want to understand they really want to learn because, you know, we hear things at conferences and read about online and hear on the news that all these bad things are happening, but it’s not until you really feel it and you’re really in it that you’re like, OK, this is, I understand this, you know, and that that’s a hard lesson to learn certainly. Um But we, we in a lot of cases have been able to say, hey, here’s how you fix the underlying root cause that caused the incident. But you know, here are, here are another 10 things that you could do that are low effort, low cost, very minimal business impact that you can do to really reduce the chance that this is gonna happen again. And it’s those organizations that tend to understand that security and it and operations and the success of their organization are all very deeply linked and that it requires, it’s not just like an activity for it to be worried about or security to worry about. It’s a whole security is a team sport. Everyone has to be involved and be a stakeholder. The reality is that an attacker is they’re gonna, they’re gonna target the CEO and the leadership of the organization when they’re trying to get in. Um And so by bringing all those people all together, it’s just, it leads to better outcomes um to have them involved and have that buy in um in a continuous way. So, is there a bright story? Yeah, the right story is that they were able to kind of plug the holes that they had and, and go on this journey where they were able to modernize their, their it stack and their tools that they’re using and their processes, um you know, really embed security very deeply into that and we’re able to reduce the, the likelihood of, of these kinds of incidents happening again. And we, we, we’re in a spot where we can watch the Attackers attempt these types of attacks and that’s what we really want. So you get early warning that there’s an attempt happening, we can take some additional steps without having to wait six months to learn that you’ve been compromised for six months. Steve Sheer. Thank you very much. He’s CEO and co-founder of Riprap security. Thank you for sharing, Steve. Excellent. Thank you and thank you for being with our coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits next week, more 24 NTC Goodness with intergenerational communication and the four day work week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech, you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms blocking support, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org daughter box. It’s obvious. Well, who else would it be? It’s daughter Box to Box. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. 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It’s a new form of decision making you might want to try out. Justin Birdsong from Skeleton Key Strategies introduces us to circle structures, domains and aims, and linking roles, as he acquaints us with this more equitable and inclusive, sociocratic decision making method. (Recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. This is show number 691. That means we’re only nine weeks away from our 7/100 show and 14th anniversary. Not that we are wishing the summer months and weeks away. Certainly not, but we are close to the big one. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of Burrito Genesis if you got under my skin with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce what’s coming. Hey, Tony, this week we have two more conversations from 24 NTC Sociocracy. It’s a new form of decision making. You might want to try Justin Birdsong from skeleton key strategies. Introduces us to circle structures, domains and aims and linking roles as he acquaints us with this more equitable and inclusive decision making method and attract more donors. When your development and communications teams work collaboratively with strong relationships, you’ll draw more donors and increase your fundraising revenue. Our panel shares their strategies. There’s Shannon Bowen with Monsoon leadership and Emily De Frisco at Center for environmental health. Antonis take two through infants. Eyes were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and the marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is Sociocracy. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know what it is, you know that it’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. You know that we’re at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, beautiful Portland, great food city. And you know that we’re sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. What you don’t know is that I’m now with Justin Birdsong, founder and principal of Skeleton Key Strategies. You’re now informed fully, Justin. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much, Tony. I’m so glad to be here. Pleasure, pleasure. Thank you for joining us for our coverage where we are, you and I are going to talk about equitable governance and consent based decision making an introduction to sociocracy. That’s it. All right. I think we better start with a definition of sociocracy. Absolutely. So, sociocracy is a peer governance system that is based on decentralizing power and hierarchical power structures and uh more equitable distribution of decision making in organizations. What do we say? To the CEO S who think they just heard a definition of the word anarchy um to a certain kind of CEO with a certain kind of, um you know, power centric mindset, they wouldn’t be far off. Um I think the difference is that it’s the opposite of anarchy in the sense that sociocracy actually has really strong uh process and governance procedures. So it’s not that there’s no rules of the road. It’s that the rules of the road are about integrating all voices, making balance for dissension and um objections to certain kinds of decisions and making sure that everybody has a voice in the kinds of major decisions that drive either an organization or a team or uh it’s also used extensively outside of organizations and more informal kinds of settings like cohousing communities. Oh, interesting. OK. Or maybe we’ll get to some of those other settings. Sure. Uh But we’ll be focused on our, our listeners are small and mid size nonprofits. Yes. So I think they would be fertile ground for, for your ideas. I think. So I think an important thing I can say right up front is that sociocracy is a really different methodology from most of the kinds of power structures we are used to having, especially in businesses and nonprofits. They tend to be traditionally hierarchical in nature. There’s nothing wrong with hierarchy. It’s just ultimately decision making rolls up to a certain kind of level of decision making and the buck stops with one ultimate decision maker. Some smaller nonprofits are a little bit more flat in nature. We’re a little bit more democratic. We’re sort of, everybody gets to weigh in, but there are pros and cons to that as well because that can make it really difficult to make a decision and to integrate everybody’s different perspectives when they are in competition with one another. And so sociocracy attempts to sort of balance the things that are useful about hierarchical methods and flat and democratic type methods into a consent based approach where that balances all of those voices and seeks not just to have a sort of one decision maker or a consensus or a majority of decision makers who agree with one thing, but that every single member of a decision making group will be able to consent to a particular way forward as you alluded. Uh This is going to require leadership. Yeah, buy in. We’re not going to be able to, we’re not going to be able to do this without the senior leadership being on board 100%. Um you sort of made the case but let’s make it explicit. So, uh what, how would we make the case to maybe to our vice president to bring it to the CEO, maybe our CEO to bring it to the board um help us make the case? Yeah, absolutely. I think that ultimately depends on what the organization is struggling with. So when organizations and I think I’ve seen this in a lot of nonprofits, both large and small is how easy is it to make decisions? And then even if it’s relatively easy to make decisions, how brought in are people to those decisions? How easy is it to manage people through change? Because those conversations may have happened when they weren’t in the room, or somebody may be moving forward with something that they think the right thing, even though they may not feel like their perspectives or objections were heard. And so ultimately, that can sort of slow down or impede the success of a major project or a new initiative. Um And what sociocracy is designed to do is to level that playing field just a bit while still having an active facilitation role to make sure that everybody is being heard, make sure that um when somebody raises an objection that has to do with the effectiveness of the mission or the aim of whatever it is that we’re trying to do that, we’re able to hear and balance that and incorporate any of those objections through maybe altering the proposal a little bit or saying we’re going to extend the timeline of this so that we can give it a try. But then we’re going to commit to checking back in and making adjustments if we need to et cetera. So you just referenced some of the symptoms of less than ideal decision making that we might, that we might encounter slow processes, people not feeling bought in, um, anything else that would sort of trigger, you know, maybe we can, we can be doing a better job of and, and could be more successful at decentralizing our decision making. Yeah, I mean, I think the types of organizations that are drawn to something like sociocracy are also generally doing it from a sort of equity perspective. They’re just generally interested in decentralizing decision making, maybe making things a little bit less top down um organizations that are close to organizing or social justice tend to respond to this type of model because it’s about sort of disrupting traditional power structures in a way that just generally appeals to people while also understanding it’s a big shift and sort of putting it into practice is uh is complicated and um it involves a lot of letting go of uh the traditional sort of seats and, and controls of power that people are used to in organizations. Hence, you know, the senior leadership has got to be uh has got to be willing to have some fun with uh decision making but make decision making more equitable, exactly less flat as you, as you already explained. OK. Um We need to have a foundation, there’s some things we need to learn like circle structures. Yes, some things. OK. So set us up with our foundation. Yes. So this is, and this is by the way, also how there are bits and pieces that you can borrow from sociocracy, even if your whole organization is not ready to sort of move uh part and parcel into a socio cratic model. Um Essentially the way that we sort of take the hierarchical structure and adapt it for sociocracy is by having a relationship between sort of parent and child circles. And you can think of the core of those being a general circle, which in most organizations is kind of like your C suite, you sort of executive leadership and decision makers and then governing that is a mission circle which in nonprofits is typically akin to the board, may or may not not be all internal folks, but which are trying to make sure that the organization stays aligned with its declared mission and purpose in the world. The general circle is about managing the organization and then stemming off of that central circle are sub circles which are equivalent in many ways to teams and departments. And the thing that’s a bit different is the model by which these circles are linked. So as opposed to being sort of purely top down, there’s a system of double linking where there’s a leader and a delegate that is a member of both every parent circle and the child circle. And part of what that enables is for there to be two perspectives that get shared in both the parent circle and the child circle. And that the leader is making sure decision making happening uh or influence or questions happening at the parent level circle are being communicated down to the sub circle. And then the delegate is doing the same thing in the reverse, making sure that what’s happening in the sub circle is reflected back to the parent circle. And the explicit delegation of power is that rather than all of the decision making happening at the C suite level, that executive general circle level, anything within the declared domain and aim, which is an explicit sort of set of standards that get defined when you create these circle structures is, you know, my marketing sub circle has an explicit aim that is about, you know, publicizing and communicating about the role of our organization. And their domain includes potentially things like the website, the email list, anything that falls squarely within the domain of a sub circle, they have the autonomous decision making power to make decisions and recommendations at that level without necessarily always having to run things up a chain to a uh a general circle for buy in. OK. All right. That, well, that’s the big shift. They, they have the autonomy, they, they have the, they, they have the authority and they also have the responsibility, the accountability, responsibility for their, for their decision. OK. Now, at one point, you had said the parent child and the, the, the parent circle and the child circle. Uh I don’t that, that still sounds hierarchical. I, is there a better? I’m, I’m not trying to revolutionize sociocracy. I just learning about it for the past 9.5 minutes. But uh I don’t know that, like I said, it still sounds hierarchical. Well, there, there are different words we can use. Um I think it’s not wrong to say that it is, it is taking the thing that is effective about so about hierarchy, which is the fact that there are different levels of domain and oversight that are needed when an organization is handling both high level strategic and mission level impact type things and then all the way down to the weeds of the operations. So I think it makes sense that there’s still relationships and gradations of responsibility. Um And they are still related to one another in that sort of binary relationship that we can think of as hierarchy. But typically hierarchy stacks power and decision making at the top and the farther down in the hierarchy you go, there’s less decision making and that’s explicitly inverted in sociocracy and some decisions do need to go up to the parent. Exactly. I mean, there’s always the case where a sub circle itself, even though there’s a lot of uh rich process around decision making and how you get consent and how you integrate objections. There’s always the case that a sub circle can’t in itself integrate all the objections and make a fully consent based in which case that’s part of the reason why we still have the parent circles. Ultimately, things can be escalated up. If they can’t be solved at the sub circle, they don’t have the data, whatever information can’t resolve the conflict, they may not have the relationships to make their decision effective. It could be that it could also just simply be that there’s opposing viewpoints that are both valid. So when someone has an objection, it, first of all, it really needs to be based on something that is related to the aim and domain. I think this proposal that’s on the table, say it’s about a certain kind of marketing channel that we want to open up and somebody may have a really genuine objection that can’t be about their sort of personal feelings and preferences. But it is about, I genuinely think that us going into tiktok is going to erode our aim, it is going to make us less effective at our aim and domain. And therefore I am going to withhold my consent from our ability to move forward with that. And the group can try to integrate that objection by again, sort of saying, well, we can try it for a period of time and then check back in, we can amend the proposal and say we’re only going to do tiktok for certain kinds of campaigns, there’s ways to sort of balance that out. But if the group cannot ultimately arrive at consent rather than consensus full consent from everybody involved. Then worst case, that’s why you have parent circles to escalate things up to. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits go generosity. Virtuous believes a generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only response of nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous is CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to sociocracy with Justin Birdsong. Le let’s shift away from the theoretical for a minute. Tell, tell me a story, tell me a, a success story of uh sociocracy decision making. Uh Sure. So I think one way that I have been able to implement it in a very small way is with um some colleagues of mine who were putting together uh their own sort of strategic plan for their new consulting company. So it’s a small, tiny, tiny group, group of three and they were looking for some sort of system of power that would enable the three of them, two founders and the sort of first hire underneath them to equitably balance the decision making power between them and then also position them to grow as they imagine they’re bringing on eventually mother staff. How could they do so in a way that continues that same method and doesn’t kind of concentrate all of the power and decision making in the hands of the founders. And so this is actually a really good example of where, you know, we went through the sort of whole model top to bottom. And there were lots of things that they were like, you know, I don’t know that we’re going to fully adopt that, that that sort of feels like in some ways that’s impeding us. We might not need quite this level of process and decision making. But we really, for example, liked the uh the circle structures because it gave clear aims and domains that could be distributed and it allowed them to then divorce in some cases themselves from one of those circles and say, OK, I’m going to step back and let these two other principal consultants take the operations circle and they have full aim and domain about that. If they need my input, they can come to me because all three of them are in the general circle, but I fully trust and delegate all of my trust responsibility to them. And it’s enabled them to um understand where they need all three of their decisions versus where they can move faster by making autonomous decisions themselves in smaller groups. And how long has this start up in uh engaged this way? They are in their third year and they adopted this early in 2023. So about a year and change and they’re still successful, they’re finding that it’s easier to, again, they sort of, they can move faster without anybody feeling disenfranchised because there are explicit agreements up front that these two individuals are double linked into this parents circle. They have autonomous decision making power over this particular domain and aim if it’s operations, if it’s product development, et cetera. And um and there’s no overhead of having to constantly run things back up the chain. I can see how this would make an any organization more, more nimble, you think more reactive in, in a, in a good way. I don’t mean knee jerk reactive. But you know, like the three of us in our circle can huddle and we can make this decision maybe in 10 or 15 minutes where we might have to wait for the next meeting with the vice president or the, or the CEO and that’s not scheduled for another whatever 10 days, you know, we can resolve this right now. That’s the best practical application of it is that it just allows people to move swiftly and it puts into place agreements of I at the time we set up the circle, we imbue it with this trust if you’re in this circle, otherwise I would be in the circle if I didn’t trust you to make the decision, I’m going to delegate explicitly this power and that allows us all move a little bit quicker. Plus, it tends to raise this sort of sense of morale because everybody has a voice at the table and has explicit ability to influence whether or not decisions get made and move forward. Now, what is your role in sociocracy? Are you, are you, is there a certification for teaching this and implementing it for organizations or skeleton key? What are, what are you doing around sociocracy? Well, at skeleton key, it’s mostly a thing that we have imbued in certain scenarios. Like what if we’re setting up a kind of committee? We are always kind of looking at like power dynamics and what’s going to enable an organization to move fast. Sometimes we are calling it sociocracy. Like with the group of consultants, I was mentioning other times, it’s more like principles of equitable decision making that we just try to weave in. Um but there is um there’s a number of organizations that do this, but I spent all of last year working in and training with an organization called Sociocracy for all that is an international NGO. But it’s based in the US. And their whole mission is about sort of spreading education about socio cratic models. And I trained in their sociocracy. Sociocracy academy for all of 2023. And um and that is where I learned a lot of this content and was able to practice it with people all around the world who again are using it in some places in the sort of eco permaculture sort of movement, cohousing movements. There’s lots of places where this is being used that are outside of sort of formal nonprofit organizations. And so now do we have our foundation set? Can we move to the next step of process? There’s, there’s something called rounds and integrating objections. And so do we have our foundations we’ve created? OK. Uh So what does it look like in practice then? And so this is where we’re, we’re sort of, we’re inner circles, right? We’re in our, our meetings and we’re trying to have more effective meetings. And one of the ways that we facilitate, there’s a strong, strong facilitation role at all levels of sociocracy and most meetings are run through what are called rounds. And that’s essentially whoever is in the facilitator role in that particular meeting, which is often rotate. Yeah, is going to make sure that every single person in the room or in the circle gets a moment to talk. That’s explicit. It takes some of the pressure off because everybody knows that at some point they’re going to get called on, they’re going to get to say their piece even if they have nothing to say and they can just pass. So it takes some of that pressure off of people feeling like they need to insert themselves. When, when does my chance come? I, I didn’t get a chance yet. The meeting’s gonna end. I’m not gonna, everybody gets an explicit chance. Exactly. It also helps to balance voices because then you don’t, it’s the facilitator’s role to make sure everybody’s being heard. It’s sort of the reasonable, roughly equally, nobody’s dominating that contrary to our purpose here. Exactly right. And so we are facilitating things through rounds. And so for example, when we are making a decision, there will be a proposal on the table. That’s the sort of traditional way that we talk about whatever the topic is the proposal. What is it that we’re deciding on and somebody might run, the facilitator would run us through first is a clarifying questions round. So we’re going to go around. Everybody gets just a moment to say, is there anything about the proposal you don’t understand or need more information about? We can go through that as needed once all the clarifying questions are asked, there’s a second round that is about reactions and that’s when people can start say like, you know, I am hesitant about this or I actually think this is a really good idea or, you know, I have some real concerns about this particular proposal as it’s articulated. And then that would be followed by an explicit consent round that is literally going around. Do you consent to this, do you not consent for this? And within that the sort of range of tolerance of consent, you know, there’s gonna be people who love it and they like, yes, this is perfect for me. I’m super enthusiastic about this and then there’s other people who are like this is fine, like it works for me, maybe it sort of falls into this sort of neutral territory and both of those count as consent. Um And then the third option is I object, which again, I have something about this proposal. I feel like it’s going to interrupt or be counterproductive to our aim. So I have an objection. I’m going to clearly state what that objection is. That’s that sort of last round. If there are objections, then the group is going to attempt to integrate those objections by potentially extending the timeline. Um Saying, you know, can we modify the proposal in some way that accounts for this or can we agree to move forward with this proposal as written? But know that we are going to check back in at some specific point and revisit it and what ultimately we’re trying to get people to consent within, to move whatever it is into that range of tolerance of at least being able to say like, OK, this works enough. It’s good enough for now. OK. So I have to be heard. Yes, my, my objection has to be heard. If, if, if that’s where I that’s where I start out precisely. OK. Um Say a little more about the role of the, the person who has the dual uh the dual appointment. They’re in the, they’re in, they’re in the, the parent circle, but also the child circle that is the liaison is that the leader and the delegate, the delegate, the delegate has the two, the dual role, dual assignment, let’s say yes. So the circle leader, you know, which may or may not always be the circle facilitator by the way, but they are the sort of designated leader of convening that circle. They may be the one that’s calling people together or sort of managing outcomes, et cetera. Um leader. Less likely to be rotating, it’s selected. Actually, there’s a selection process that’s similar to the rounds where somebody gets nominated. We discuss qualifications, people can amend their nominations and then the group decides on who the leader and the delegate are and the delegate is another participant who is explicitly not in the leadership role, but they sort of represent everybody else. And so their job is is to again, sort of keep in some ways, keep each other honest, right? Like if you and I are both in our marketing sub circle and then we have to go up to our general circle because we are double linked and you’re the leader and I’m the delegate, you may be reporting out on something that our decision making group did in the sub circle. And I’m another perspective. So I can even just sort of qualify sort of what you said is like, actually, there’s something else, I think the general circle needs to know about how that decision was made. We had to integrate this particular kind of objection and this was the nuance about that. And so it makes sure that there’s two perspectives being represented in every conversation, which helps again, sort of make sure that there’s no one person’s perception or, um, you know, allegiance to a certain kind of outcome that is going to prevail in every case. What else? Uh, what else should we know? I mean, you have some, uh, things that you’ve suggested about the, the, the topic, um, understanding how it improves equity and inclusivity. I mean, I think, I feel like we’ve talked about that at the outset even. But what, what else, what else should folks know about this, this process? I, I think ultimately the thing to know is that it is, um, it is a set of tools and I think one thing is people see it and they may have a really, well, they have a really strong reaction one way or the other. Yeah. Right. It’s unlikely to be neutral, talking about the neutral in the decision making. But I like it’s ok, you know, I could live with it. It’s probably gonna be, I think it’s very positive or very negative. I think that’s exactly the case. And so, um and while that is true, and I think even, you know, a thing that sociocracy for all that organization that I was training with, you know, they do implementations of this in organizations and they are frequently unable to move forward because if there’s not the kind of buy in and alignment about the kind of seismic change it represents, if you are an existing organization with a traditional hierarchical structure and you’re planning to upend that, that is not something to be done lightly. Um But the thing that I think I want to reinforce is that I see it as not just a monolith but a whole set of practices and tools and um sort of micro processes that can be used and adapted, especially when you are in an operational or a technological or project project based kind of role because you are constantly making decisions in agile projects, technology implementations, you’re constantly trying to like get stakeholder buy in to be a level in a certain way and make sure that decisions are soundly informed by different, maybe even competing perspectives. And you want to be able to integrate objections from different stakeholders and project members because they may have something really valid to say that you may want to adjust a little bit. And so I see it as a whole tool set from which people can learn and take pieces of it that they can implement. Even if you’re going to do it within a traditionally hierarchical organization? Is it difficult in uh sort of the, the delegation of where the authority ends for each circle? I mean, there, you had, you had said at the outset, there are certain things that are not gonna be conducive to this or the CEO is just not gonna give up uh uh give up sole authority over. Um But say a little more about delineating the, the boundaries of each circle. How do we, how do we define that? Sure. It’s when you, when you’re creating a circle structure of any kind, even if you were going to sort of just do this within, uh let’s say you have a technology department and you have a couple of different teams and you sort of, and you want to be able to adapt this just even within a department, you could sort of the thing that you do when you’re defining it is you first are articulating the mission that unites the whole group together and then you are delineating the aim and domain. The aim is what we’re here to accomplish. And then the domain is the set of things, usually multiple things that then fall into our responsibilities and oversight. Like for example, one group may have the domain of the website, another group has domain over technology infrastructure network desktop. Another group has domain over project management and applications, things like that. Um And so you define those things at the outset and you are clear about what does and does not fall into the domain and you try to make sure everything is captured somewhere. And then of course, you know, organic organizations are constantly changing. New things will come up and when they do come up, it’s the job of that parent circle to figure out. OK. Whose domain does this fall into? Does this stay with ours? Does it move into one of the sub circles or do we even need a sub circle of off of that? Do we need a new sub circle that has a clear domain? And that’s the way by level setting right at the beginning about who has, who gets to decide who decides, who decides everybody decides at the beginning? Ok. OK. Leaving it there. You feel like we gave it adequate coverage? I think so. Thank you very much, very interesting sociocracy. Um Justin Birdsong, founder and principal at Skeleton Key Strategies. I love the company name too. Skeleton Key. Thank you so much. That’s brilliant. I appreciate it. Thank you, Justin. Thank you Tony and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us. It’s time for a break. Donor box, open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere. Anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit Donor box.org to learn more its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. A couple of days ago, I was on the beach. Uh I just sat myself down, still not warm enough to go, you know, sit for six or eight hours under an umbrella, not quite that warm yet we’re getting there. But uh I was just out uh walking and I decided to sit down and there was a little infant, uh I’d say 23 months old or so and she was being held by, I’m not sure it was mother or grandmother. I think it was her mother and the, the so the mother was facing the, the, the sand and the dunes and the houses and she had their baby facing out uh to the ocean and this little infant was just so captivated by, you know, the vast ocean. I guess the waves and she was just like serene and uh they were like 20 ft away or so, you know, it’s not, not really that far. And, you know, the baby wasn’t fussy, just calm and, I don’t know, h, I don’t know, I don’t know if babies think, I don’t know what, I don’t know what infants think about. Do they even have the capacity to think or what they, they, what, I don’t know what they’re doing in their minds, in their brains. But she, she was just so calm on her mom’s shoulder over her mom’s shoulder and I was just thinking, oh man, that the ocean and you know, she could feel the breeze and maybe smell the salt, although she doesn’t know it’s salt air. She just knows it smells a little different than, than her house. Uh unless her mother cooks with a lot of salt, but all the senses from a little infant from like a two or three month old infant. And I was thinking just how unusual it must be for her, the wonder, you know, and just to sort of seeing it through the infant’s eyes too. I was enjoying it myself, especially like more than usual that that afternoon, but just, you know, through an infant’s eyes, the world or in, you know, and just the ocean for the first time. It was, it was uh it was really moving, it was really something uh and it went on for many minutes. Uh the baby was just captivated, we can all be captivated by life. See the world through infants eyes now and then, and that’s Tony’s take two K. I would love to go back in time and look at the world through like five year old Kate’s eyes because I’m sure it was so much more colorful and bright and just exciting and I really like, didn’t take anything for granted, you know, at that age. Right? Because so much was new, like this little infant watching the, watching the ocean and hearing the waves and uh yeah, you know, we get a little jaded so take time to smell the roses. We’ve got Buku, but loads more time here is attract more donors. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. We are all together in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center. Nonprofit Radio is SCHED, is sponsored by Heller consulting at 24 NTC Heller does technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me for this conversation conversation like I’m 14. My voice breaks are Shannon Bowen and Emily Def. Frisco. Shannon is founder and CEO at Monsoon Leadership. And Emily de Frisco is senior Director of Communications at the Center for Environmental Health. Shannon Emily, welcome. Thanks for having us. Glad to have you on nonprofit radio. So we’re talking about your session topic. Have you done your session yet? We did it, you did it all right, as you’re fresh off the stage. So all the questions maybe we asked some about, about some of your questions that came up your session is full court press harness development and communication teams to attract donors. Alright. Sounds like we’re breaking down silos. Uh Emily, let’s start with you. Why do we need? I think it may be uh it may be widely known, but I want to make it explicit why do we need this session? We need this session because it’s never been more clear that there are silos, you can absolutely collaborate and work together to achieve your shared goals. So we had a lot of fun in our session, taking a lot of questions from folks who were learning just how to collaborate across the teams and how to really achieve their goals. Uh Shannon, what what happened? Why, why are we in this situation? Development and communications. They, they seem like ideal partners. Why are we siloed? What happened? Well, I think it’s hard for humans to work together in general. So that’s just across the board. Um But Emily and I worked together at Center for Environmental Health and really, we harnessed all of the different vehicles to connect with our donors. So not just donor emails, but also using social media website pop ups, you know, earned media, everything to really attract new donors and engaged at a deeper level with their existing donors. And so we really wanted to share that story because it is actionable and you can do it today at your organization. All right. So, so how we got here is just human nature. Well, I don’t know what happened, what happened to the, what they seem like symbiotic partners. I think that sometimes people put a lot of pressure on development because you got to bring in the money and you’re paying for people’s salaries. And so sometimes in organizations, it’s like, oh, well, development is more important than communications. But really what Emily and I saw as they are part and parcel, working together to increase the brand reputation and that brings in your major donors. So really, instead of working in opposition coming together and co collaborating on campaigns can increase your impact exponentially, which is what we did at ce H Yeah. And sometimes there can be a little tines as Shannon mentioned, you know, between communications and development. Um but we really valued each other’s expertise, respected each other’s expertise. And that really set the tone for collaboration for our teams as well. Ok. All right, Emily, let’s stay with you. How do we start to break down the silos? How do we start to collaborate, see each other as, as equal partners? What do we do? Yeah, it starts with communication with setting up meetings, brainstorming together, creating campaigns together. Really soup to nuts, sit together and work on something in a collaborative way. Instead of having, oh, my team is working on this, your team is working on this and never the Twain shall meet. Um really collaborate from the get go and that you will have a stronger campaign meeting together and from the beginning and then sharing success at the end. So it’s not just development going and presenting to the board, you’re bringing communications along and saying, hey, we did this great campaign together. I’ve never seen that. I mean, I always see development, presenting development outcomes. OK. All right. What, what else can we do? Yeah, I mean, I think communications serves a vital role in the organization and just having communications needs to have the humility and respect of the development team when they approach the development team to understand that um you know, fundraising for the organization is so it is so challenging. So sometimes communications folks can get kind of a little bit set in their ways and just really from the get go valuing fundraising and really just putting your best foot forward and valuing the expertise will set you up for success. What if development and communications are both under the same, let’s say vice president is that that’s not sufficient. I mean, you still still the two teams should be meeting together. I mean, I, I can see a scenario where they, where they don’t even though they’re under the same vice president. Exactly. I actually am also a Chief Advancement Officer for an organization in Seattle. And so I oversee development and communications and still even within that, you need to bring everybody together to say, OK, how are we using each vehicle to achieve our goals. And so we’re not just, oh, we’re only going to send print appeals, we’re only going to send email appeals. How are you incorporating social media? How are you incorporate video or I currently work with genetic scientists. We’re talking about podcasting because they don’t really like to be on camera. You know, I think that we have to be creative about those different mediums to increase the brand recognition, but also to talk to the donors about the content that they’re interested in and really it’s coming together brainstorming that we get our best ideas. All right. And that, that’s a great transition to another one of your learning outcomes from your description, expanding social media as well as earned and traditional media who speaks to is that this is my favorite topic is press and media. I still believe it’s the best way to reach the most amount of people when you have a piece in the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or the Chicago Tribune. Um You know, you’re reaching millions, tens of millions of people at once. So it’s very important to develop in your communications team, a robust press and media strategy, develop that calendar and then keep some of it flexible for breaking news and then work with your executive director, your program directors, your science director, whomever you have at the organization who’s really moving and shaking and come up with a way that you can develop news for your organization and you can use one of the fancy platforms that there are to pitch journalists like Cision or Meltwater. There’s other ones as well help a reporter out Harrow. Is that still a thing? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, I think so. But you can also be scrappy about it and build your own press list using an Excel spreadsheet. Um, that’s a possibility to build relationships with journalists that way. And then when you have, have a press release, ready to go, you pitch the journalist and you make a splash with that news and try to connect it to current events and then once you have that piece that you landed, um then you can approach your development team and say, hey, we’re in the San Francisco Chronicle today on the front page and that is so validating for donors um and for board and for everyone who cares about your organization’s mission. You said something that I want to flush out a little bit with, um have a relationship with journalists before you’re pitching before there’s a news item, news hook related to your work. Say a little more about developing that relationship, you know, like uh building the digging the well before you’re thirsty, you know, building the relationship before you want to pitch the journalist. There’s so many ways to do it. You can follow journalists, you like on Twitter who are reporting on issues that your organization works on, you can tweet at them and say, hey, thank you. I read your piece. It was great. I would love to connect with you. Um You can build that press list, as I mentioned and you can proactively share with them the work your organization is doing in our session. We talked a lot about virtual town halls, basically a fancy phrase for a webinar. And you can invite journalists to your webinars, invite them to your virtual town halls. They might write about your work. At the very least they’re going to get educated about the work your organization is doing. So all of those are things you can do to build relationships with journalists and to the extent that there’s still local journalism, which is not, not nearly what it was 10 years ago. Uh that includes local journalists, not only the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. Absolutely. We just had, um Fox News come out to our office in Oakland yesterday. They came out at like seven pm and interviewed our CEO about a report that we launched yesterday. So local journalism is still alive and well, although it has, you know, as you said, there’s been some setbacks but you can still reach local journalists and they’ll still report on the work your organization is doing ok. All right. So you’re earned in traditional media, uh social media, Shannon. Do you want to flush out social media a little bit. I’d actually love to hand this over to Emily because she has an amazing hot of depressed story um about tiktok. Yeah. So we released this toxic fashion report yesterday. Um We have tested a lot of consumer products for toxic chemicals and we found over the period of the last 10 years, high levels of lead in purses and other accessories at Ross and Burlington stores. So of course, we’ve sent them legal notices, but it’s kind of like a persistent problem. So we released this report yesterday, detailing kind of our results and the legal actions that we’ve taken. And we did a Tik Tok video on it um which we didn’t expect to get a lot of traction because it’s really um like kind of a slide carousel with music and as of today, it’s reached over 300,000 people. So social media there is, is still a wonderful way to reach people. Ok. Uh Is there a broader lesson that uh our consultant from uh Monsoon wants to extrapolate from the, the, the tiktok breaking news? Well, I think that you have no idea which of those 300,000 views is going to be your next major donor and major donors are looking for causes that resonate with their values and they’re looking out in the world. They’re watching Tik Tok and we had an experience at Center for Environmental Health where we had out of the blue, an email to our info at Ce h.org started con connecting and talking with them and they turned into a $300,000 over a three year donor and you just never know who is, who is reading, who is watching. But you, you have to find a way to engage them and bring them in. And then once they’re there using all of your communication strategies to steward the donor and bring them even closer and increase that gift. And so I really think that all development directors should be savvy in communications and be open and willing to new communication channels like tiktok, you know, Twitter was the hot thing five years ago and now we know it isn’t. So you gotta be open to linkedin Tik Tok all the different ways that people are engaging now because it could shift and you don’t want to be left behind. Now, these were two anecdotes that both called up the number 300,000. You’re not making this up, are you? I guess it’s just our lucky number, I guess. So, skeptic in me, I’m sure you’re being very truthful for non nonprofit radio listeners. I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t lie to you. A scout. I was a girl scout for a long time and scouts on her counts, otherwise it would have to be a pinky pledge, but scouts on her counts. Um Anything else you want to say about media, whether social traditional earned? I think social media is a great way to showcase your organization’s work. And what we do at ce H is we have a comprehensive editorial calendar. We keep some of it flexible and we do different strategies across different platforms. Um linkedin is growing really quickly right now. So is tiktok Instagram a little bit? Um So definitely diversify your strategy across social media. The news is very hard, it’s very depressing. Our work is sometimes challenging. So I always encourage um social media strategists to celebrate the wins. So when you do have a piece of good news or you are part of some legislation that passes, you know, really celebrate that on social media and you will find that, that those are some of the most highly engaged with posts that you create. And I’ll also add that in our session. We talked a lot about email strategies with donors and segmenting your list and really talking to your donors in different ways in different places. Glossing over here we go. So when I came to ch there had been a two year vacancy in the director at V Monro. So our donors hadn’t heard from us. So the first thing we did is we set up a what we call our three things email and this was a monthly email from our CEO to our major donors. It came from his name. It looked like a normal email to the point that people respond back and be like, oh, it’s so great to hear how you’re doing. Here’s my, my wife, how it’s like, oh, this is the development team, but it looked like it was, it was fresh off his email. Exactly. And we had huge engagement with it and we actually ended up, we were writing a story about, uh, toxic chemicals and exercise. You wouldn’t think that’s how you’re gonna get back, one of your biggest lapse donors. But we did and she wrote back and said, oh, I’m using this brand blah, blah, blah. We had it tested by our toxic team wrote back to her, not only did she come back as a lapse donor, but then she for the first time ever introduced us to her family foundation. And we got a second gift from her family foundation and it was all because of this email and the interaction, the opening the conversation through that email. And so we really believe in the power of segmented emails, talking in different voices, providing different content that all aligns with your brand, but really speaks to the donor. And how does this align with our bigger purpose of bringing together? What do you say? Harnessing the development and, and communications teams? Well, and I think that’s because we would repurpose content from the communications team. And we would hear, oh, this is what’s hitting really big on social media. This is what you know, reporters are really interested in and we would tailor that content to the major donors based on what was hitting and lo and behold, it would engage in conversation. And our donors would say, hey, I want to hear more about that report, you know, how did you guys even think to test lead in purses? You know, and so I think it’s like if you don’t know the data of the other team, you don’t really know what your audience wants and we need to deliver the content that our audience is actually interested in. So you got to entertain too, purses and exercise bands and socks. We did a whole Safe Socks campaign in clothing, high levels of BP A in all of our workout clothing, sports bras, leggings, shirts, shorts. Um Yeah, so this is one of the issues that we’re tackling with our public interest litigation, telling companies get the BP A out of the clothes. Ok. Um, we still have more time together. You, you did a what a 60 minute session, right? So we’re not, we’re not flushing out some things. We’ve only been talking for about 15 minutes. We, we’re not flushing out some things that you did for your live session. Well, I think one thing that we talked about is really about validating your brand, that there are a lot of people that are tackling the same issues that you are and you also have a great mission, but you really have to your brand to attract top donors. And so using her media using virtual town halls where you’re your CEO in line with other stakeholders that builds a trust of your brand and validity that you are actually the right person to be delivering this mission that all increases the dollar amount that you’re gonna get from donors. So you really have to be thinking about all of these things working together to validate your brand because there’s a lot, a lot of great missions, there’s a lot of great organizations, but why are you the right person to do this work? And that’s what’s going to get a new major donor or a larger gift from an existing donor? What were some of the some of the questions that you got? We got so many great questions. Let’s see. We definitely talked a lot about virtual town halls. People were very excited about that topic and exactly what Shannon was just saying about bringing together different stakeholders to kind of validate your brand. Um We talked about a lot about press and media coverage and talked about how you don’t have to have a huge budget and you don’t have to have a super comprehensive plan. You can get started just sitting down with your executive director, your program directors, your science director, whomever you have, who’s really moving and shaking at the organization and create a piece together and what you want to do for that is think about what the work your organization doing, what what’s happening, what has changed because that’s what reporters want to talk about is what has changed in your organization or what has changed in the work and then connecting it to current events, what’s going on in the world that you, that’s connected to your organization’s work. And then you can write an op ed together hooks we talked about and you can pitch it to different reporters or you can publish it on your website, you can publish it on linkedin and that’s a way of really driving thought leadership forward. Absolutely. We also had an interesting question about how many staff we had and who’s actually watching the metrics and who’s reporting back the metrics and why we were inspired to do this session is we both have small teams. So Emily had two staff and I had three staff and it really just takes a dedicated portion of one person’s time to look at the metrics and to discover the gems. I told a story of, I had a staff who would look at who opened and who clicked on the emails and she brought it to our team and she said, hey, there’s this donor that’s been, they only give about $500 but they’re opening and click everything. And when I looked at them, they’re actually a producer in Hollywood, maybe we should re engage them, guess what we did. And it turned into a $10,000 donor. And so by having someone just take a minute and look at those, bring that data back to the team. You can actually optimize your process and get a bigger result. And so, you know, we’re not a huge shop, we’re small shops, but we just kind of work smarter, not harder and really by working together, even though it’s monsoon consulting, you’re not enormous, you know, creating tidal waves and tsunamis. No, just little lightning bolts, you can create a tidal wave with a few amount of people. That’s true. That is true. Well, our 300,000 on Tiktok today. There you go. That’s just today, that much breaking news that we didn’t make it to our slide show because it just happened. Is there any more questions that came that you think could be instructive for us? I think there is definitely some people that just felt really frustrated, you know, that they wanna do things this way or they want to try new ideas and the other team member doesn’t want to. And I think that Emily and I are both early adopters of technology. We’re both really open minded and it’s like you have, everything is moving so fast right now. You have to be open to new technologies and new ways to communicate with your donors. And if you do things, the same thing over and over again, you’re gonna bore your donors and you’re gonna see attrition. And so I think that just one of the main takeaways is be creative take risks. You talked about an idea that failed and you have to be open to failure to be able to be successful. And I think that both of us have that same ethos and we brought that to our teams and that’s why we could create so much success in a short amount of time. You know, while I was there, our development team brought in close to him, million dollars over our goal. We could not have done that without the support of the coms team and all of their creative ideas and immersing our donors in this message that what we’re doing is important and vital and urgent. And that’s where I feel like you’re missing out. If you’re not harnessing your communications team, you’re missing out on the bigger ripple effect you can make for your donors. I’m dying to leave it there because that was a beautiful closing. However, there’s a story that you teased a story of a failure that was, that’s instructive. Why don’t you tell that story? Yeah. So sometimes your op ed that you craft that you spend so much time on does not get picked up. So we have had, you know, an op ed on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. And then there was another time that we spent a lot of work on an op ed on the very sexy topic of leaded aviation gas. I know people are falling asleep already. So this is actually a big problem because in this small little municipal airports where the small aircraft are flying, a lot of leaded aviation gas is released. And then the folks living in that area have high blood lead levels. So we wrote this op ed about this California airport and how the Children living nearby had blood lead levels on par or worse than those in Flint during the height of the lead poisoning crisis. So we had a lot of facts and figures and a lot of solutions that talked about our litigation kind of making, you know, unleaded aviation gas more prominent and prevalent. Um and nobody bit, we pitched it out a bunch of different places and nobody bit, but it was ok because what we ended up doing is posting it on our blog and um kind of made lemonade out of lemons and that page has been one of the most viewed pages on our website. So it all worked out in the end even though we failed along the way to place the op ed. How about we leave it there then? A good uh a willingness to share a failure that resulted in a highly viewed page. And uh also uh Shannon’s uh two minutes ago, very good wrap up, which I was, I was, I was very tempted to end there, but I wanted to hear the story. You can’t tease the story with failure though, but that’s why it wasn’t a failure. That it was the most red page on the blog and on a linkedin article which, you know, really harnessing all the linkedin tools is a great way to reach your audience. And I don’t think people should be afraid of failure because if you’re trying new things, you will fail and you should embrace it and learn from it and it’s going to work out, especially something that’s outside your control. Like whether newspaper accepts your op ed or not. Exactly. Exactly. But if you don’t try, you’re certainly not going to get published, right? And then you balance out with things. You can control your blog, hosting your own virtual town hall, hosting your own panel event, you can control those things. So yeah, you have some percentage of stuff you’re thrown out into the world and hoping it sticks and the other half you’re actually controlling and make sure it fits within your strategy. That’s Shannon Bowen founder and CEO at Monsoon Leadership with her is Emily De Frisco, senior director of Communications at the Center for Environmental Health. Shannon Emily. Thanks very much. Thank you. I’m glad. Thank you. And thanks to you for being with nonprofit radio’s coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week, more from 24 NTC with strategic meetings for teams of one and cyber incident cases and takeaways. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supports, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org past flexible friendly fundraising forms. Love it. 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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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite Hebdomadal podcast. This is show number 690. That means we are 10 weeks to our 7/100 show and 14th anniversary as a podcast. Cool. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with whipple disease if you fed me the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, this week we have experiential fundraising. Let’s take lessons from the experienced economy to create meaningful memorable experiences for your donors. Britain Stockert from donor box, walks us through her thinking on events, membership programs, challenges, sponsorships and more on Tonys. Take two sad neediness were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and the marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Gosh, I love that alliteration. Here is experiential fundraising. I’m with Britain Stockert. Britain is the fundraiser strategist at Donor box. She has over 15 years experience in organizational development, fundraising and program development spanning nonprofits, social enterprises and NGO S. You’ll find Britain on linkedin and the company is at donor box.org Britain. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Hey, thanks so much, Tony. Very great to be here. Oh, my pleasure to have you. Experiential fundraising. Let’s jump in. What, what is this experiential fundraising thing? Yes, let’s do it. Right. Um I’m gonna throw out the bad news first. The doom and gloom. That’s how I roll. We’re, we’re no strangers to fundraisers, right? Um We know the data out there charitable giving, right? It’s hit a four decade low giving. Tuesday saw 10% drop. Donor trust is kind of on the decline. And, you know, in February, the chronicle of philanthropy talked about this crisis, right? A lot of nonprofit executives are jumping shift from the sector when demand is extremely high and they’re trying to find better work life balance, um, and consulting roles. So we have all of these kind of macro level crises, right? And in the midst of everything. Um, we also know, you know, we were hoping during the pandemic that we would take some of those tidbits of slowing down and baking bread and being more intentional and everything we’re doing. But we’re not seeing that at all. Right. And we’re seeing this in terms of fundraising, donors are being pulled from every which way from different nonprofits. And that’s kind of where we’re at. We’re, we’re witnessing a shift Tony um in terms of how we fundraise. And I know you’ve been in plan giving, Tony, we’ve relied so hard on all of these very usual fundraising tactics, right? You’re in giving campaign, all of these in person events. And we need to step back, we need to really be asking like, are these kind of one time fragmented tactics we’re using, are they really engaging our donors? Are we capturing their attention? And so that’s kind of where experiential fundraising comes into play. Many fundraisers know it as relation, relational fundraising, completely, not a new concept, right? We’ve been doing relationship building for decades, but in kind of this hustle of this fast paced paced moving society, we’ve completely lost sight of slowing down and really building forging those deeper connections with our donors. And so it’s all about kind of just re embracing this mindset of relationship building, engaging the five senses of our donors and setting aside aside these usual fundraising tactics that we do to be more intentional and, and how we build those relationships. So you’re looking for, you know, meaningful memorable experiences and not necessarily around events. Right. Right. It’s, it’s all of the things that, you know, we get so caught up in the scramble of sending out those mass email blasts, right? Or those generic appeals or the annual galas and live auctions. It’s really kind of shifting to those multiple touch points that happen all of the in between and these are in between things about um in getting past barriers and that, that might be, that might look very different to different nonprofits. It might be a community uh focused group, it might be a neighborhood block party. Um But it’s all of these multiple touch points that really kind of engage those five senses of our, of our supporters and really get them to buy into what we do. OK. So how do we create these uh memorable, you know, remarkable meaningful experiences? I know the uh on, on your blog, there are seven different categories or events, competitions, et cetera. Do you wanna talk through those? Well, let’s for the sake of time. Tony, let’s keep, let’s reduce it to three things, right? And again, these aren’t rocket science or whatever, but they’re built on three principles. One of those is a shared journey, right? So again, I’m talking about being intentional and thoughtful traditional fundraising. We send out a generic appeal letter. It’s not personalized. We’re just thankful, we got it out, right? We got it out on time. We did it, what a shared journey looks like is, you know, instead of an in person event or a gala, it might be an event um where we segment it, we, we look at our data and we look at our supporters within our specific neighborhood and we create a segment where they’re all providing feedback in terms of the programs that we do. Um It’s, it’s inclusive, it’s very community centric. So it really shifts from sending out mass emails that are not personalized to individual donors and moving to these creative really informal events that happen regularly where we’re creating space where our supporters are, our supporters, not just include donors, right? It’s very inclusive. It’s including our bene bene beneficiaries, it’s including our volunteers, but it’s creating a space where they’re able to provide some sort of buy in, in terms of just feedback, in terms of all the programs of what we’re doing, shared journey. That’s one principle. The second part of it is really getting creative with the types of events that we host, right? Um A lot of our annual fundraiser events, think about the barriers that we create from the get go, right? Um Our venues may not be accessible to all the the pricing, the the different tiers of registration to sign up to these galas and auctions are probably out of touch for a lot of people. I live in the Pacific Northwest. People don’t really like to, you know, we’re not really big on the black t uh black tie attire. So really shifting from those um types of events that create barrier barriers upfront to a digital event and that what that might look like. I can give you one example, one of our customers um called Cornwall Man down in the UK. Instead of devoting so much money and overhead into a gla an auction, they, they really tapped into donor boxes, peer to peer feature. And they created kind of a competition where they let go of the guard rails of their marketing of their brand. And they let people set up these fundraising pages and kind of fundraise in meaningful ways that really connected with them. So they created, they created a competition exactly, basically just a virtual competition. Um They include the challenges um prizes and, you know, a very small pool of about 216 fundraisers raised over 100 and 50,000 all through this kind of Gamification feature um per se. Now, this is going to vary, you know, by organizational culture too. I mean, I, I’m the first person who to say that events are often overly relied on, right. On the other hand, there are organizations where the, the the people expect the annual, you know, whatever golf outing gala, you know. Uh and I, I under I again, I, I, you know, I appreciate that events are burdensome in terms of time. And I think a lot of AAA lot of that money could or all of it could be captured in through individual fundraising if we were having, you know, like meaningful conversations with donors and, and elevating their giving sort of an investment level conversations. Um But, you know, but by, but by the same token, you know, we can’t just eliminate all the, eliminate all the events because there are people who count on those events in no way. Right? And I, I hear you, Tony and no way am I saying to do away with these in person events? We really do rely on them, right? We, we all know, so there’s nothing like that in person, the face to face um touch, I think in terms of the the format of these events, what I’m saying is let’s get creative and how we engage the senses of our, of our donors. Um Again, thinking about breaking free of those barriers and that might, that might have to do with rethinking the type of venue, rethinking the type of attire um the pricing that’s offered you, you probably know this as well as I incorporating technologies. We saw this with charity Water, right? Not every nonprofit is going to have a massive Hollywood budget. But yeah, yeah, they’re, they’re an outlier. They, they’re enormous, right? But we do have a customer um refugee hope partners in terms of kind of reimagining an in person event. They, they kind of did away with the Gallant live auction. They hosted a three hour community neighborhood event. Um it was family friendly um right after work hours and how they kind of really brought to life, the mission of, of who they serve, which are refugee and immigrant families. They tapped into local chefs who kind of they, each, all of these chefs represented different communities that the nonprofit served and through the ingredients in the, in the in the meals that were served, they kind of used those ingredients to kind of tell the story of the mission. And so I guess that’s what I’m just trying to say is yes, we still need to do these in person events, right? Um But oftentimes we know this with galas and auctions automatically from the get go. There are those barriers before you register and then even thinking about it, Tony, when you show up to these galas, you know, you have one or two people on stage right behind the podium, the proximity, thinking about the proximity. And so just thinking about ways that we can really create these immersive experiences and tapping in a technology to kind of get created creative in how we connect with our supporters. So sort of more experiential maybe and less passive for the for the folks who come, who come to an event, precisely less, less passive observer spectator, more thinking about ways where the supporter is not just hearing about your mission, right? They’re really living and feel it and feeling it and these could be large or small events too. I mean, you, you we might be able to do something with just 25 or 30 people, you know, and not again, not to replace AAA larger event but makes it easier to experience. Maybe you know what’s going on in your office, if you have something that you can show something that people can touch, uh, in a, in a smaller, in a smaller group. Well, and it’s, it’s also thinking beyond the annual fundraiser. Right. I mean, let’s be real with the, with the annual fundraiser, with even a year end direct mail campaign. Think about it. Um, they’re very surface level, right? Do they? What’s the follow up that happens after often times from my personal opinion, it’s, it’s very limited. And so thinking through these other experiences that are baked into your fundraising strategy, again, that might be a um community led focus group where you’re inviting your donors and the people you serve to kind of, they may be, they may be compensated. They’re giving really great feedback on the design of your programs. It might be behind the scenes tours of, let’s say you have a food bank. Um But it’s all those things that need to happen in the in between from the year end appeal that you send out to that annual fundraiser. And that’s what I’m trying to say is we really need to be, we need to slow down. And if you think about it with your, with our loved ones, right, with our family and our friends, it’s not a one and done type of thing. Obviously, it needs to happen regularly and it needs to be really organic and oftentimes really informal, it’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity, virtuous beliefs that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual virtue is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to experiential fundraising with Britain Stockert, you have advice to around membership programs, how they can be more engaging. Why don’t you explain some of your thinking there? Yeah, membership programs are, you know, we have a customer in San Francisco and they have a museum um focused on media censorship and they have a beautiful high quality print publication. And so they basically set up just a membership program with different uh membership tier levels. Basically, if donors wanna sign up, uh depending on a certain price point, it can be $50 donation to 200 per month, depending on that membership tier. They, they get to feel like they, they’re exclusive members. They, they have access to very exclusive types of perks and benefits. Um That is a great way to generate sustainable income. Um I would say it’s very similar to monthly giving only, only that it is a membership program is really set up for nonprofits that, that have the capacity to deliver very specific and exclusive benefits to this group of people. Like you really need whatever you’re promising, right? You need to make sure you have the capacity to deliver. But I would say it is a very popular tool with a lot of our customers um as a way to create that sustainable income membership, membership. So it, it’s sort of, you know, it sounds like um you know, a lot of personalization, uh connection, connection to the mission, connection to your values, maybe even uh you know, thinking through something that’s again, memorable, experiential, you know, personalized. Um Let’s take a little digression. You know, you, you uh you have some thinking about what, what we’re all experiencing outside nonprofits. Now, the the experience economy, which is where your, your thinking kind of comes from. Let’s take a little digression before we talk about more, more strategies for doing this in our nonprofit. What, what uh we, we’re all experiencing it, the experience economy help us recognize what we’re, what we’re living through. Yeah, I mean, I can speak to you as a full time mother. I, I was hoping from the pandemic that we would slow down a little bit slow down in terms of in all of our interactions that we have, whether it’s at work or personal. We’re very thoughtful. We’re, we’re just intentional on whatever we do. We’re not seeing that it personally. And I hear this from a lot of nonprofits that I coach, they’re being pulled every which way and, and you know, I mentioned those kind of macro level challenges that our sector faces. But thinking about it from a donor perspective, we know demand for social services is at its highest, right? We also know that nonprofit executives that are needed in our sector are jumping ship to more consulting work. Donors at the same time are their attention, right? We have, we have shorter attention spans. Donors are being pulled every which way by I wouldn’t call them competing but many nonprofits that are really in need of their attention. And so in my, in how I’m feeling the world is not slowing down, it’s it’s a very fast paced world and we really need to be strategic and how we capture donors attention, how we’re more discerning as nonprofits in our interactions and thinking about how we’re engaging all of their senses because like I said, our attention, I think I heard it one time, Tony, we have the attention of a of a goldfish which is like 30 seconds. So. Right. Yeah, but uh but I’m trying to go bigger picture the the experience economy. What is that? What is the experience economy that we’re all experiencing. We, you know, personally the experience economy, we’re, we’re feeling fatigued, we’re numb. We also live in a world of filters and a lot of noise. And so I, I think about it watching a Netflix movie if I don’t have my glasses and I’m, and I’m watching the movie. It’s very monochromatic, it’s very flat. I need to be fully engaged. I need to have surround sound. I need to have all of these other elements that are tapping into my five senses to wake up and to pay attention. And so I think when we’re talking about experience, economy, we need to be smarter in how we’re engaging with people because people are fatigued, we’re tired, we’re very distracted and we have more external forces really vying for our attention. OK, cool. Thank you. Um Sponsorships, you have some thinking around sponsorships, how these can be engaging, share, share some of your, your thoughts there, corporate sponsorships, you know, I live in Seattle. We are home to big tech and engineering and you know, if you are a start up or emerging nonprofit, really taking a look at uh where you’re located. Most local businesses, most larger companies have great corporate social responsibility programs, um particularly new companies that have just launched a CS R program. They’re looking for nonprofits to partner with um to really support and to really kind of position themselves from other companies in their communities. You know, here in Seattle Microsoft has a month in October of giving and many nonprofits host on site volunteer events. And we partner with a lot of Microsoft teams. And for every hour Microsoft um donates not just $25 per their employee, but for every hour that their employee volunteers. And so a great way to build those event sponsorships is starting looking at your local community and looking at the companies that are there, getting out there, speaking to their teams and doing some sort of on site project to kind of loop them into your pipeline. Ok. Well, we, most of us don’t have the value of the benefit of a Microsoft, you know, in our, in our, in our neighborhood. So, you know, smaller, smaller local companies, uh businesses, right? Might be a dry cleaner. Yeah, it, it doesn’t have to be a Microsoft or Boeing or Expedia. I mean, look at local realtor offices or, you know, it’s a small to medium size businesses that they’re right situated right in the community. They’re feeling the need, they’re seeing a lot of the same social issues that your nonprofit is tackling. They wanna give back and that would be a great place where to start. They’re also uh a lot of companies are interested in engaging their employees in sponsorship that not just that it’s, you know, a $500 donation of services for a silent auction or, or a cash donation or something, but, but engaging the employees because e especially younger folks, uh millennials, gen uh maybe, you know, Gen X. Yeah, you know, they’re looking for experiences uh beyond there, we’re talking about experiential fundraising. So there may be value in engaging employees of the business in uh in, in your work. Yeah, Tony, I mean, you call it out, especially with Gen X and millennials. We’re looking for workspaces that really align with our values. Um And I’ve read quite a bit of research on this more so than competitive pay and benefits. And so yes, this is a great recruitment retention tool if you’re a company, no matter your size to offer a few days of volunteering. And uh you know, your employees really wanna be a part of, of that as well. But from the nonprofit perspective, you know, pitching that to a to a local company that, you know, that we have experiences or, you know, or, or would that or questioning whether that would be valuable for your company, that’s something your employees would be interested in. And if they have younger employees, millennial, Gen X um that, that may very well be giving back to the local, to the lo to one of the local nonprofits. I mean, and it goes hand in hand, you know, we’re living, many of our communities are facing issues with affordable housing and inflation and the cost of living and small to medium size businesses. They would love to provide even more competitive pay, but they may not be able to. So, again, this is a great kind of add on to the company brand, the values in terms of, hey, we, we, we, we not just have a corporate social responsibility program, but we allow you as an employee to take some time off whether that’s one day, five days a year, that’s, that’s a really great selling point to recruit top talent to your team and then also retain them because it, again, it’s really about we’re talking about experience, but a lot of this has to do with that humanistic component that a lot of gen X millennials are looking for uh in their workplace. And it’s important when nonprofits are approaching companies of any size. And, you know, I’m, I’m thinking more of local small businesses um that they recognize that they have value to offer the company, the business, you know, you’re not going hat in hand humble, you know, would you would you give but that you have value to add to the, to their employment relationship. Like, you know, you and I are talking about the potential of volunteering. Um You know, I don’t, I don’t, I mean, that could take different forms, you know, like you said, it could be a day a month or it could be several hours a month. But you want to recognize that you bring value to the sponsorship relationship. You’re not just humbly asking. Yeah. And I mean, to to your point, I can give an example. I was a start right in the heart of downtown Seattle, we have the third largest homeless population. And you know, here I am needing tech services. I needed a tech team to implement AC RM and to customize it. And there’s a tech company called Slalom. They’re big, they’re huge. And you know, I, where I found value and confidence in approaching them was Slalom is located in the heart of downtown Seattle. The need that we’re addressing, right? And so I think when it comes to, if you are a small nonprofit, find where the alignment lies. It doesn’t matter if it’s a large company. If that company has any type of close proximity to the issue that you’re addressing, then more times than not, they will be bought into what you do. And you know, that was just an example, a big tech company, small tiny nonprofit start up. But because we had this shared visibility of family homelessness, right? And where we were located, it was an automatic alignment. And slalom was like, heck yeah, we’ll provide you with those consulting services for six years. So have confidence if you are AAA smaller nonprofit find where that alignment exists. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in-person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors. Make giving a brief and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I had something happen in the gym just today. Uh The, the guy I know um his name is Tim and that, that helps me. It helps me remember his name to say Tim in the gym. Tim Tim from the gym. Um And I don’t talk to him that much. I’m not a chatty gym goer, you know, I don’t need 57 minute breaks between each different um different machine that I’m doing or different exercise, you know, with the floor or whatever, you know. So we just, it’s brief, you know, hey, how are you? You know, that’s it. Uh But today I was already exercising when, when he came in and I heard him talk to someone uh who he apparently didn’t know and he said, hey, you know, how are you? And uh the person didn’t hear because there was no response. So he says again, hey, how are you today? And then this woman replies, oh, I’m doing great, you know, hi, how are you? And then he says, Tim says, oh, I’m, I’m great too. Especially because it’s my 67th birthday and I’m, I’m on the elliptical. I’m thinking, oh, my eyes are rolling. I’m thinking, oh, Tim, you know, you had to, you had to get the woman’s attention twice just so that you could share that. It’s your 67th birthday. I’m, you know, thinking why so needy, why? You know that? And it’s not that big a gym, it’s a town fitness center. So, you know, we all know now that it’s Tim’s birthday today. Uh, and I’m thinking, you know, Tim, you know, I, I, it was sad. Um, I would wish for him that he would have friends and family that would know it’s his birthday so they could call him and text him. You know, and, and that he doesn’t have to go to strangers. This was a woman. It was clear. He, he, he had never met her, he didn’t know her. He has to go to strangers twice. And so, so he can make the point that it’s his birthday. So, um, makes me think of, you know, our social networks too. You know, if you haven’t, if you haven’t shared something, uh, you haven’t done it right? You didn’t, if it’s not on Facebook that you, you made this great dinner, then it never happened. Like if he doesn’t tell everybody it’s his birthday, then maybe he feels it’s not a stranger, you know, strangers. So, you know, have friends have, have friends who know you well enough that they’ll call you on your birthday. Right. And, and you can share your joys with them without having to do it, you know, publicly feel bad for Tim. I, I, she was not so needy. She had more friends and that is Tony’s take two Kate. Happy birthday. Tim. So sad. I hope he got a birthday cake. Like, I hope he went out and treated himself and got a little cake or something after the gym. Well, even better. I hope somebody got him a cake. Exactly. But II, I don’t, there doesn’t seem to be enough of that in his life. Well, we’ve got just about, about load more time. Let’s get back to experiential fundraising, holidays and Awareness Day, fundraising. There’s, I don’t know, there are probably 1000 awareness days a year that there might be more, there’s, there’s more than 1000 because that would only be like three a day. Some, you know, some days it’s, uh, you know, you, you look at, you look at lists, um, there could be AAA A score of them 20 in a, in a, in a single day. So there’s thousands, there are many thousands of awareness, so many and they, and they keep cropping up. Right. So, pick a niche, you know, National Pickle Day. If, if you’re, if, I don’t know, you know, if you’re, I don’t know, maybe I was thinking of if you’re fighting alcohol addiction, that’s that’s a bad choice or that, that’s probably an off color example. Don’t use that one. But, um, there are lots of, there are lots of awareness days. Um, and you also have advice about lesser celebrated holidays. What are the, what do you, what do you find the lesser celebrated holidays? I mean, again, it boils down to your nonprofit. What’s the scope of services that you provide? I oversaw a diaper bank. A lot of people have not heard of a diaper need. Well, sure enough, there was a diaper need holiday. So, you know, pick, pick your, your choice. There are so many out there. Um, personally, I’m very biased about giving Tuesday. It’s a saturated day. Every nonprofit is vying for a donor’s attention. So find, find a holiday or a day that better aligns with what your non profit specifically does. It doesn’t have to be popular day that everyone joins in on Valentine’s Day. And Halloween tend to be lesser celebrated by uh by nonprofits. So maybe, you know, those, I mean, you know, especially, well, not, especially either one, Valentine’s Day and Halloween tend to be less lesser thought of. Yeah, and you know, in terms of engaging with your donors and, and I’m, I’m redefining how, what, how we name a donor. You know, that could be someone that you serve. It could be a community leader, a city council member. These are all people that give you time talent, treasure and in terms of how you engage with them again, like we talked about Tony. Yes, those annual fundraisers need to happen. Yes, you and direct mail online year end appeals need to happen. But think about those regular touch points of how you’re engaging with your supporters, donor appreciation events behind the scenes, tours, workshops on whatever topic that you’re addressing, hosting some sort of community led workshop, people love to provide feedback and get and be compensated for that. Uh They can be compensated focus groups. So just kind of really opening our minds to how we build relationships with people. Here, I am with you, right? A late afternoon, we’re connecting. It doesn’t have to be this big formal thing. Like in many ways, we’re having a very intimate conversation. So local partnerships too, I mean, we, we talked about it in the sponsorship, something else that’s uh the another area that’s uh on your blog. Um You know, so we talked about it in terms of sponsorships but, but more like, you know, partnerships partnerships with um maybe recurring events like a farmer’s market, something like that, you know, something that’s iconic in your community. Yeah, I I think of partnerships in terms of advocacy. Um wherever you’re located, chances are there are government leaders, right, that have quite a bit of influence and power and starting to build relationships with your local city council members because they’re gonna also help you advocate to the higher ups at the state level and, and be able to help you pass legislation that really kind of complements the work that you’re providing. So partnerships tapping into partnering with city council members getting to know them closely. Um Obviously other nonprofit leaders thought leaders right there in your communities, small businesses, restaurants love to host fundraisers, restaurants love to, to do partnership types of events. Um There’s so many options like, you know, some, uh the 1st $5 of every dinner or the 1st $25 of every meal on a certain night, you know, goes to, goes back to the nonprofit. And so you’re giving them a surge because you’re gonna be inviting all your, all your volunteers and your donors and maybe your staff has a table, you know, so you’re giving them a surge for a night and uh some of the, some of the, the revenue comes, comes back to you, right? And, and partnering with other nonprofits in the same area of focus, right? Oftentimes because of funding, we’re pitted, we’re, we’re kind of pit against each other vying for the same funding. You know, that might be a donation drive if you’re taking in kind donations, physical items, instead of just your nonprofit, hosting a quarterly donation drive at your local grocery store or wherever, partnering with those other nonprofits providing similar services to kind of make it a bigger event. I know here in Seattle there’s a recycle and repurpose company called RWE. And we had a day our Diaper Bank where we partnered with three other major diaper banks. Like for a major campaign, we, we, we generated press. We were on the news and basically RWE. RWE has thousands of customers on a very specific day. RWE customers. I think about 4000 customers donated unused diapers. And basically, we got pallets. I can’t even uh 20 pallets of diapers where we were able to kind of split the inventory between four diaper banks. And the impact was huge, we were able to really expand our impact. So again, partnering with those nonprofits that you might see as competitors in terms of funding, but tapping into those, those relationships to figure out ways that you can better support each other. How did so many people have so many unused diapers around or they went out and bought them? Was it a campaign to, to, I mean, who, who I think? I mean, I’m the guy with no Children, but I would think you use up all the diapers you have and then you don’t need them anymore because your child has outgrown diapers. It’s a fair question, Tony and I, you know, I’m a mom and I would ask the same thing, apparently, Children from ages 0 to 3 outgrow diapers fast. And so they always kind of are on to the next size and families are left with boxes of diapers and boxes of diapers are expensive. So it was a day partnering with RWE where RWE customers could, instead of the diapers going straight to the landfill. You know, let’s give back, let’s, let’s re, let’s use them. I see how it works. Ok. So people, people hold on to the, the, the 0 to 6 months when, while their child is now like one or something. Oh, yeah. Ok. I didn’t know, I didn’t know people do that. I thought you were just, I don’t know, give to a friend or I never, well, actually I never thought about it so I, I can’t say what I thought because I never gave it a thought. Well, apparently there, there was not a venue, a place to donate that type of item. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, it was enormously successful for you. 20 pallets. I’m not, not minimizing at all. I just, uh, you know, I just never thought of, uh, unused diapers. I thought you would use them to capacity, like, squeeze your one year old into a nine month. But I guess parents don’t do. It’s a good thing. I’m not a parent because I would have, I would have had my, I would have had my one year old in a three month old diaper. I mean, if I got, if I got an extra box of three month old diapers around, you know, I’m going to squeeze you in. Yes. And they’re expensive. So, but, you know, that was, that was also in terms of partnerships. We were also by partnering with these other diaper banks. We were also able to form a coalition where on one day we went to Olympia, which is the capital in Washington, met with legislators as a team and we were able to pass what was called N diaper need where families get an extra 100 and $50 a month as part of as part of their TF so low income families got kind of a subsidy to help them pay for diapers. So again, tap into those partners, you know, other nonprofits doing similar work. There’s so much potential to really expand that impact, especially because we know the issues that we’re up against are massive and huge. And oftentimes are one nonprofit, no matter how well funded, how well staffed we are, we’re just kind of unable to address it alone. So, yeah, look for synergies. I was also thinking of community events like, you know, if there’s a Memorial Day celebration or 1/4 of July celebration, you know, can your nonprofit be a part of that somehow, you know, showcase, showcase your work, somehow expose the public at the, at the community fair around uh Labor Day or something like that. Yes. Yeah. Most cities again, going back to the city level, they, they do host those types of July 4th Memorial Day events. Um There’s gosh, we were talking about all of the holidays, Tony. There are a lot of those and at those events, they’re looking for not just businesses, but they want to see local communities show up and have a presence and get the word out about what they do because frankly governments can’t, they can’t fund these issues, they can’t tackle them alone. They really need those local nonprofits. So, yes, that’s a great idea. Tony. Look at all the events that your city is ho hosting, oftentimes to host a table is a nominal fee for the type of visi visibility that it brings. And it’s also getting to know it’s really connecting with your local neighbors. Oftentimes, I I know this as a former ed when I was leading a start up my initial round of donors, guess what? They were my neighbors, right on, right on Finn Hill. Um That’s kind of where I started really hyper local and then kind of expanded out. What else can we talk about around experiential fundraising that I haven’t asked you about yet? Well, what about the challenges? I, I’m thinking I’m thinking you might get a couple of questions that might say, ok, we would love to do this relational, slow type of relationship building, but the reality is is we’re caught up in the hustle of the day to day. We have a board that’s extremely resistant to change, you know, and so let’s just, those are some of the challenges, right? So I’m, I’m talking about this concept about needing to slow down needing to build upon the number of touch points that we have with our supporters, but we also know the challenges. And so, you know, I guess let’s talk about some maybe actionable ways that nonprofit professionals can do this. Um You named a great one. Let’s focus on uh for the moment, the board that’s resistant to change. How are we gonna uh defeat slay the naysayers? Oh, ah, you know, I’m still trying to figure this out. I, I would say when you’re recruiting board members, it helps to have board members that obviously have some sort of nonprofit experience, whether it’s a volunteer or, or they’re taking professional development training on how nonprofits operate. That that is a challenge. Oftentimes sometimes we get board members, well, meaning while loving very passionate people, they come from the private sector and with that they bring some very harmful perceptions about how do we operate, what things we should fund and so kind of tackling this re this challenge of a resistance, a resistant board is bringing on folks that have been there that have been in your shoes that get it. Um, people that are doing the work and just very open, very open to saying, ok, let’s, yes, let’s do an annual fundraiser. Yes, we still need to do in a gala in a live auction. Yes, we need to do year and giving. But yes, also let’s let’s come up with these really informal organic, not just donor centric, more community centric experiences. And so, yeah, it just comes down to just finding people that have been in, in the shoes of nonprofit professionals. I think that really helps with letting go of that resistance would also be a valuable exercise for your, for your board in fundraising. You know, if we’re like, you know, we’re talking about local partnerships, um challenges, you know, community, community engagement, that could be something that uh the board could help with, you know, what connections do they have? Uh maybe to other nonprofits to, to local businesses. You had mentioned, you know, political leaders, you know, how can the board help us expand our influence in, in any of those areas? You know, that could be something that, I mean, that this all falls under the rubric of fundraising, you know, for boards that don’t want to fundraise or board members that don’t want to fundraise their, their contacts can be valuable and so help in these ways around in the, in the community. Yeah, I think, and I think you alluded to something Tony is getting their buy in early, um really involving them in this process. And I think a good place where to start is would be in your strategic planning. Um Board members are well connected in many, in, in, in many ways, more than one, they might have some great ideas in terms of reimagining the types of experiences that we’re giving with our donors. And so in order to kind of change, change that resistant mindset involving them early on in your strate strategic planning, right? Um You might outsource that to a third party to facilitate that process, but getting their buy in allowing them to voice their opinions about what kind of experiences does the nonprofit wanna offer. And I think that will also help with the budgeting budgeting piece as well because once board members feel acknowledged, they feel heard they feel part of the process they’re bought into it early on, they’re not surprised. It really helps making budgeting for these relational experiential experiences easier, right? To really build a, build a budget for? All right, Britain want to uh just leave us with some final thoughts and motivation around uh experiential fundraising. II, I would just say we get so caught up in the scramble of sending out one digital appeal or in person appeal to the next. And I think just as a former ed, former development director is slow down, pause and breathe, it’s going to be ok and give yourself grace oftentimes it’s really those one on one intimate um experiences you have with your donors that are equally as important as that annual gala and live auction. You’re building extreme, you’re forging, you’re getting to the depth, you’re building really deeper connections with those really intimate experiences you have. So keep doing the great work, be gracious and give yourself a lot of credit because our sector really needs you right now. Britain Stocker, she’s on linkedin. The company is at donor box.org Britain. Thank you very much for sharing all your thoughts. Hey, thanks. Thanks Tony. I I loved your pickle comment earlier that that made my day. I might have to think if there is a holiday for around that. But thank you so much for having me, Tony. It’s been a pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you very much for sharing Britain. Thank you. Next week, we’ll return to 24 NTC with sociocracy and attract more donors. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Don Box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. I like the way you say that. Don a box. Like it’s obvious why do we even have to say it? It’s so obvious, daughter. A box. All right. All right. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Pernetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.