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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with pseudo member anus still mastitis if i had to form the words to say you missed today’s show hyre beware don gene is ceo of focusedbuyer dot com he’s got tips for buying smarter from accounting services to zoo animals what belongs in your procurement policies and how do you compare alternative suppliers also managing your big spike after a big event gala run walk open house ice bucket challenge you’ve got lots of newly engaged people how do you break them down into manageable sets for cultivation? Maria simple is our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder on tony’s take two get off! Ellis is back, responsive by generosity siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that don jean is with me, he’s, a ceo and co founder of focusedbuyer dot com, he has many years of experience with big us and uk businesses routinely buying billions of dollars of goods and services. He’s, a member of the institute of supply management and cornell university’s athletic hall of fame dahna jean welcome to the show. Good morning, tony. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you and your non-profit radio colleagues. Cool. Thank you very much. My pleasure to have you. We’re talking about buying buyer beware, but you like to call it procurement. What? Why is that? Well, procurement takes in all the aspects of purchasing from the time that you’re thinking about purchasing a product or service for your organization to actually contracting for it, to the performance of the suppliers around the contract, to the payment of the invoice that submitted by the suppliers to the warehousing of the data around the actual transactions. So it’s the whole process, then so buying would be very limited. Part of will be one part of the entire procurement process, i guess. Is that right? Yes. The buying the buying process tony’s is just the actual transaction of saying i want to buy this and a supplier saying i’ll supply it and then that happening. Okay, so there’s a rationale, because on non-profit radio we have jargon, jail and right out i didn’t. I hate to put you in. Jargon jail. So i’m trying to explain why we were going to use the word procurement instead of just buying oh, okay. All right. So you’re not in jargon jail. You could have been, but i i i was i was lenient. But what? Your step? All right, why do we need a procurement policy? Well, first of all, any organization or business needs a policy which is a statement of principles or intent or protocols to run the organization and business and these policies, they include the fundamentals of operating in a foreign organization or business such as who’s in charge. Uh, also includes well established best practices and or guidelines such as who raises money. How is money raised? How is money spent? It includes the procedures than that. I’ll allow you to carry out the policies, and it applies to all the state color’s involved. So this was the leadership board members, employees, customers and suppliers, and it’s, a clearly documented policy and communicated to everyone in some cases, uh, people who received the communication are actually asked to sign and acknowledge that they received it. A purchasing policy is really a subset of an overall policy. And it’s around how employees and volunteers spend money for products and services needed to run the operations and administrative functions of organizations or businesses, and the purchasing folly should include managing the money to be spent accounting for the money that has been spent and ensuring the money is being spent as wisely as possible. All right, don, we’re going, we’re gonna have a chance. We’re gonna get into the details get too far ahead of ourselves. So even a small mid size shop, i mean, if they’re not spending tens of thousands of dollars on on purchases, do they still need to have a procurement policy? Yes, they do, tony and the reason for that is if you look at television or radio, listen to radio and read newspapers, you’re fine, and i’m looking at stuff on the internet. You’re finding that even in small businesses small organization, small non-profits there seems to be a trend where someone is being cheated, either with in the organization itself or a supplier is cheating the organization. Oh, and it all comes to buyer beware and it’s important that everyone have guidelines and rules so that the buyer beware process does not come into play regards to the size of the organization. All right, so organizations need to be thinking strategically, carefully about purchasing, even if we’re talking about just like paper, and, um, i don’t know, maybe some consulting services and, you know, small, small purchases that typically now they’re probably just going online and buying from a source that they’ve been using for a long time, or they go to the store and use their credit card, even even in those cases, they need to be thinking more about this whole process, right? So from from a standpoint of small purchases in my investigations, i’ve found across a broad range of organizations, including non-profits that somebody could be paying anywhere from nine dollars, a ream for a ream of paper, five hundred sheets of paper down to three dollars, and oftentimes it’s, you know, people say, well, nine dollars, i can pay nine dollars, but you maybe should be paying three dollars, and that all is tied up into making sure you have a process in place, the other the other issue is how do you generate economy of scale? So just because you’re a small non-profit doesn’t mean that there aren’t other small non-profits that are not in competition with you in terms of what you do, where you could, uh, collaborates and increase the economy of scale of your purchases in a blanket order process a process where each individual non-profit could buy from it, but get a better price for everyone. Alright, so that would be like buying club you’re saying? Well, it would be it would be a buy-in club, and it could be organized among the non-profits or it can be organized by a third party supplier. Okay, cool. All right, well, i’m going toe to spend some time talking about that. Let’s, let’s, get back to the procurement policy, which we were starting to get into. Why don’t you just take off? What? What? Some what belongs in that policy? Sure. So, uh, purchasing procurement policy should include being in line with the financial controls of the organizations. So for instance, the financial controls may say we want a three way matching process to assure that there’s no fraud or illegalities in the procurement to pay process. And we know that the fraud and evil of gowdy’s they happen on a regular basis. But the three way matching process is something that says a person. Who’s authorized the purchase. Creates the purchase order someone else who’s authorized to receive the product or service. Actually documents that receive receipt and someone else who is involved with finance and the accounts payable process actually transact the payment of the of the envoys. Right. Wait. I have a purchase order in place. And when they have a receipt covered dahna done way too much into the weeds. I just want you to please just take off. Just take off major items like like credit cards. I’m sure belong in there. You know, just just what s the major time from competition belongs in there buying from competent. Okay. Okay. With competitions when i mean it was competent. Okay, conducting negotiations belongs in there buying. How do you buy from supportive stakeholders buying from employees and their affiliates, such as family members. Latto how do you define relationships between suppliers and vendors and the persons who are buying? What are some of the conflicts of interests? For instance, two employees have some type of ownership privately in a supplier or is there they have some public ownership where they own some stock in a public company? Also around the security of information in terms of how information is communicated to suppliers back and forth and whether there needs to be a non disclosure agreement, things such as gratuities and quid pro quo. You know our crew tootie’s accepted by by employees and quid pro quo meaning employee says, hey, i’ll give you this contract if you give me four tires for my jeep, okay, meals and entertainment no, if you’re invited to a ball game or a golf outing, or maybe you’re going out weekly for lunches and dinners and there’s no real business reason for that it’s just become habit trips to places of business, the cross and reimbursement of that when you go visit a supplier and compliance with rules and regulations around safety, health, environmental and governmental types of regulations, and then how do you capture the content, the data in the information around all of your procurement transactions, and last but not least settling disputes and disagreements? How does that process work and unfold between buyers and sellers? All right, we’re not gonna have time to cover all that, and i hope you acknowledge thiss can be kind of boring stuff. Do you realize that you realize you do? Realize that okay, i do realize, ok, we’re going. We’re going to hit just a couple of those that are probably the most popular let’s start with credit cards, which, you know, you don’t even call them credit card, you call them procurement cards? Yeah, this is a credit instrument that is used the organizations and businesses want to cut down on the actual, uh, transactions inside the procurement process. So they used credit cards where stuff happens on the phone call between the buyer and seller, and i’ve been involved in credit card purchases that have reached thirty thousand transactions a year in one hundred twenty million dollars worth of procurement. And in those scenarios, the difficult part is determining that the credit card’s been used appropriately by the holder of the credit card. In one particular case, i recall that a particular employee every month was buying oil, and we couldn’t figure out why there was a need for this much oil. So we said we’d look into it a little bit, and it turns out that the person was actually buying horse liniment forces for their horse farm horse liniment the horse. The horse liniment story. Yeah. Okay, that’s a good one. So what? We have just about a minute or so before first break, so keep that in mind and then we’ll have more time after the break. But what? What can we do to make sure that credit cards, procurement cards if if you prefer, are used appropriately? The details around the transaction are most important and what happens with a credit card? You get a summary statement at the end of of each month, and then employees and sometimes financial people are asked to latto to audit those to make sure it’s correct. But the problem is that summary statements don’t give you a lot of detail, so it would be helpful if you could come up with the process a business process that makes it easy for people to create a ghost purchase order and send it to accounts payable with line item detail so that the accounts payable, people can match it one for one with the accounting summary statement let’s go out for a break, and when we come back, don, you’re not going to keep talking about that. You’re talking about different levels of control and i want to you. Want to talk about how that fits within a small organization that it isn’t gonna have made very well, not have accounts payable, so stay with us. We’re going to keep keep talking about buyer beware. Thank you didn’t think getting dinged. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get me to thinking. E-giving cubine this’s. The way we’re hosting part of my french nufer city guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back french is that common language. Yes, they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it comes tires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their story, join us, pardon my french new york city every monday from one to two p m. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll duitz welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent sorry, i can’t send live listener love were pre recorded today, but i do love our live listeners, and of course, i send pleasantries to those who are listening to the podcast. All right, don let’s, let’s continue with the credit cards. So your concern is that there be oversight of these purchases, but what if we don’t have an accounts payable office? Well, normally the small non-profit will have someone who is responsible for the financial aspects of the business and what it would, what you would do there. In that particular cases, you would put a policy and procedure in place that the person who was using the credit card had to generate the ghost purchase order and do the match and send the documentation to that one person for a final review. All right, so there has to be some review of these procurement card or credit card purchases. Yeah, i mean, like i said before, tony, every day you’re seeing people have stealing thirty thousand dollars or embezzling one hundred thousand dollars or doing something illegal for ten thousand dollars and when you get involved in looking at how that all happened, it happens in the procurement of payment process that’s where the controls breakdown that’s where the opportunity to at least do some cursory auditing is is possible to prevent that. At one particular case, i’m aware of a a small company who i had a system in place, and i suggested that they do something different. And they said, now we’re happy with what we’re doing. And just recently i read in the paper where they were embezzled for about six hundred thousand dollars in their procurement payment process. Oh my did you send an email saying i told you so? I did not know i would have i would have that would have been the subject with capital caps with a exclamation marks. I told you so. Yeah, it’s amazing tony. Just what? What folks are doing these days? I’m not sure whether it’s the economy or or whether it’s the state of you know how we live these days, but everybody’s looking for an angle and everybody’s looking for finding something for free. And unfortunately, in the procurement to pay process, lax controls give you ability to come up with what people say this was found money for myself? Six hundred thousand is about right? I mean, i would i would do it. I would risk my reputation for six hundred thousand it’s the five and ten thousand. You know, the twenty thousand? I just don’t. I don’t think it’s worth it. If you’re gonna do it, do it big. You know, it’s got to be deep deep into six figures before i would risk my reputation. I mean, everyone’s got their price. I’m giving people an idea where mine is. So you know, you know howto get my attention on. Be suspicious of people zoho own horses, right? Right. Right. Let’s move. Teo buyers, this idea of a buyer’s club. What could’ve non-profit do? How would they reach out to affiliated do or what? Not not even affiliate? Just other non-profits too joined their purchases and and have some leverage. Well, it’s an interesting question. So in the world of chambers of commerce, many of them, whether they’re local or state, have sub chapter’s are set up for non-profit. And they meet on a regular basis to discuss various types of opportunities and processes were together they can improve. Their businesses, they go through legal aspects of setting up a non-profit how you, how you go after funding in terms of better ways and to how you can join together for economy, of scale of purchases. So that’s one way another way is from time to time there are expose, which are just for non-profits in fact, i just attended one this weekend here in the lehigh valley of pennsylvania, where there were probably twenty five non-profits who had tables in a large mall right shopping mall, and i visited each one of the tables, and it became clear to me that when i asked the question around the economy of scale, they all had the same answer. We don’t know how to generate economy of scale, and i said, well, we could do it with just twenty five non-profits here in the mall and, you know, we’ll work on that with you, and they said, wow, that’d be great, you know, give me a follow up call so there’s a number of different ways where economy of scale can be grown all right, do you object to me calling this a buyer in a buying club? Is that? Ok for you with you. I find, you know, some people call it cooperative supply. Yeah, that doesn’t sound it’s cold. You guys have a way of making this sound dull. I mean, there’s there’s good information here, but cooperative supply. I don’t think you’re gonna get too much people too many people’s attention, but if you call it a buying club, i think that people that’s something people can grasp a little easier than cooperative supply. So i’m okay with buy-in club. All right, thank you. So, do we have to weigh reach out to non-profits whether they’re in expo with us or that we just know them, they’re in our community, whatever. And we just say, you know, maybe we can collaborate on buying together and save some money, isn’t that easy? It’s that simple, but what it takes is that in a non-profit it takes a decision around, you know, who is going to take that charge? You know, you know, who’s doing the buying currently in some small non-profits you have several people in several different areas making the purchases and doing the procurement for for the non-profit and other non-profits you have one person and all that stuff is filtered through that one person to make the procurement, so a lot depends on the organizational set up. And but once the organization set up is determined, okay, it’s a matter of reaching out to those people cross the non-profits and facilitating a buying club atmosphere, i think that’s great, i mean, there’s there’s considerable money to be saved in day to day purchases if if non-profits collaborate that way. Yeah, there’s there’s no question that there is and i would say hundreds of millions of dollars are left on the table because many non-profits don’t act in that mode. In fact, i know i know non-profits who are organized locally, but they also have st chapters. In some cases they have national chapters and there’s. They’re not currently doing any buying club type of collaboration let’s move to exploring multiple suppliers because that’s something that a buying club could do. But even a non-profit acting on its own should be doing why better tohave multiple suppliers of the same thing? Well, one of the reasons is that many suppliers have different types of products and services that give you the same end result, but in some cases are less costly because they’re more efficient and how they accomplished making the product or providing the service so it’s important to reach out to a number suppliers to make sure you you have a cross section of the suppliers, capabilities, and and the innovations that they have in terms of bringing products and services to you. It’s also a good idea to be planning your purchases so that you don’t end up in a crisis buying situation. Yeah, that’s one of the major miscues of, uh, many folks who are in the world of procuring and who were doing purchasing, whether you’re a small company organization and non-profit social organization, people do not plan their purchases. So what happens is you get to the end of the line when he i really need this tomorrow or needed a few days, and they find out that, you know, in order to get it, they have to pay a premium or they can’t get what they really need, and they have to substitute something that is okay but doesn’t do what they needed to do. It’s it’s the worst aspect of procurement when you do not plan for the purchase and you run out of time. You’re in a negotiation weakness every time with the supplier, vendor or seller who you’re going to and say, i need this. Tomorrow, you’re going to pay more money for it, it’s, just that simple. So you’re either going to spend time planning or you’re going to spend money, but you’re going to spend one or the other exactly that’s, exactly right, tony in. And unfortunately, yeah, waiting to the last minute is easy. Yeah, okay, sitting down and planning something out takes a little bit of time and takes a little bit of moxie in order to say, ok, what do i really want? But don? Yes. Okay, alright, i’m sorry. So so yeah, so you’re like a sari is going to plan ahead of time. And as as you are trying to find alternative suppliers, how would we go about doing that? I mean, we buy all our office products from staples dot com. We’re going to find alternatives. Well, alternatives that alternatives can be found in a number of different places. The’s, air capable and qualified potential suppliers. Of course, whenever you reach out to look for suppliers, not only do you have to find out who they are and where they operate from, but then you have to find out if they’re capable and qualified to be able to supply to but there’s without giving anybody a plug there’s something called thomas register dot net, which has i think that was a plo. Thousands of suppliers, thomas registered dot net. I think that was a plug done and the other the other areas are the chamber of commerce members. When you belong to a chamber of commerce, you can be involved in just buy-in doing work inside the chamber and getting to meet all of the different members who can be the pliers and cellars and it doesn’t mean that you have to buy everything from staples stables that doesn’t necessarily have have the best prices. I can tell you that just from my own research, staples and other large big box stores have good prices, but not necessarily the best prices and not necessarily the best merchandise. Three other place you could go is you can use search engines such as yahoo, google or being which khun khun xero you in on particular suppliers in particular areas, there are a number of small business expose that happened regularly. In fact, i attended one in new york city not too long ago at around peered ninety, which was an excellent place to meet new suppliers uh, with new processes and products on then there’s a number of diversity organizations and expose where people are trying to, uh, improve and increase the amount of spend that’s happening with diversity suppliers such as minority suppliers, women, own suppliers, veteran own suppliers and so forth. So on there’s something called mcrae’s book, which is another listing of suppliers it’s like thomas register and, of course, there’s always the angie’s list for services both local. And statewide. And then there’s something called institute supply management, of which i’m a member of which, which has literally hundreds of thousands of members across many types of products and services. And then there’s the referrals from, you know, friends, and and also from fellow non-profits i have i have a referral for office supplies. I happened like w b mason and so in i like them that their prices are lower. Yeah. W donations a great, uh, great supplier. And there very good competition to the other big box stores. Yeah, for sure. All right. We have just about two minutes left. Done. Once we have all these alternative suppliers in just a couple minutes. How do we decide between them? Well, the first, the first step, tony, is too. You need to create. They clearly defined request for proposal that levels the playing field so that everyone you reach out to knows exactly what you want to buy. That’s, that’s really important and and there’s. Lots of things you need to consider in terms of putting a request for proposal together. You know, for instance, let’s say, you’re putting a roof on your house, you know, you could get single warranties that air. Twenty, twenty five, thirty years. Okay, but in addition to that, you can get warranties that cover mold and mildew. So some singles, you know, we’ll give you a ten year warranty inside the long warranty for moldy mildew damage, and some will give you curling damage against sun damage. So you need to, uh, make sure you have a clearly defined request for proposal. You need to take into account the things that you need, uh, and want okay to get the best value for your money. And then once you do that and you get it out and you get the offer’s back, the next step is to make sure you do a standard kind of an evaluation of those potential suppliers. No, some type of format that allow youto lineup the proposals next to each other and evaluate them. I’ve used something called critical success factors which say, these are the important things that need to happen and does this supply or meet them? And then what are the key performance indicators or how do they meet them? And then i line those up across the different suppliers. It’s a it’s. A formal process. But again, it’s like planning. Okay, if you plan it well, you have the opportunity to save money. And if you evaluate supplier proposals well, you have the opportunity to save money. Don, we have to leave it there. I know you want to leave people with your email address. If they’d like more information. What is that it’s done at focused buyer dot com. Alright. And the site is focusedbuyer dot com. Check that out, don gene. Thank you very, very much. Thanks very much, tony. My pleasure to have you take care, everyone. How thoughtful. Yes do take care. Thank you. Don generosity siri’s they host multi charity five k runs and walks. You know them? They have a charity support team as part of the process when you are one of their charity partners and that support team helps you with your fund-raising the’s are people that you talk to on the phone. You talk to them. You don’t have to email them. You don’t the chat with them. You can talk to them. I like that. They will help you get more runners and help you motivate the runners that you get. So that there’s more donors for your non-profit that’s the whole purpose of this event. Talk to dave lynn he’s the ceo see about becoming one of their charity partners. They have events coming up in new jersey, miami, new york city and philadelphia. You can talk to dave at seven one eight five o six. Nine triple seven or the web generosity siri’s dot com can we get off? Alice’s back second week in a row. I’ve asked that question. I kept the video on top at twenty martignetti dot com for another week. I’m interested in what you think about the way l s has been treated in the media. What do you think? I think we should give them a chance to manage this enormous spike in money and donors let’s see how they do. What do you think i’m interested? Please comment on the video. Tell me what you think. It’s at tony martignetti dot com and that is tony’s. Take two for friday nineteenth of september thirty seventh show of the year. Maria simple. You know her she’s, the prospect finder she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot. Com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt, cheap and free. You can follow maria on twitter at maria simple glamarys simple. Welcome back. Hello there. How are you? I’m doing very well. How are you? You’ve been sailing. I have been sailing. It’s been a fantastic summer. How is yours? My summer was very nice. You were you were sailing for a couple of weeks and it occurred to me that when you’re sailing your pretty. Um all right, what i want to say you’re at the mercy of the weather. I definitely hear priorities completely change and focus when you’re on the water. We spent about ten days on our sail boats, of course, over the course of time, anything could happen with wind and weather, etcetera. So we got very lucky. For the most part, it was very good. How do you know you’re going to get back home on time? Well, way build in plenty of extra buffer time to have to stay an extra day or two someplace if the weather doesn’t get bad. But we do have a built in gps, so it kind of tells us what’s how long it’ll take us to get from point a to point b do you also have a built in engine? Oh, definitely built in and you do aren’t. So is that considered cheating for sailors? If you if you resort to your engine or now, not if you need to get out of a storm. That’s for sure. It’s not okay, that’s a good thing to have. All right, you have some thoughts generated from the l s ice bucket challenge what’s on your mind. Well, you know, i was thinking about it and thinking about how you know that that happened on such a magnitude and scale that, you know, most non-profits are not going to experience, but i was thinking about how this could sort of applied in non-profits who we’re getting into a season now in the fall, for example, where you might be hosting a run or a walk or your galas are coming up, certainly in the fall and spring there’s a lot of them. So i was thinking about, you know, how do you sort of manage this hopefully new influx of names that are going to be captured by your organization so first and foremost, i hope everybody’s capturing all of that information when people register your collecting those those critical data points that you want to make sure that you have obviously, you know, name, but address a cz well as where they’re employed. So if you can at least collect that piece of information that’s going to fill in another piece of the puzzle for you, should that person kind of moved through your pipeline to be more of, ah major gift prospect or a plan giving prospect at some point? And of course, you’re also going to collect email address kapin absolutely, and i want to stay engaged with them and, you know, people are usually feeling pretty good right after interacting with your organization through a walk or a run or a gala so it’s an opportunity to really capitalize on their good feelings that they have for the organization, so i would recommend that you actually have a smaller, maybe syriza’s two or three cultivation events, at least one cultivation event. But if you’re you’re a larger organization or, like a less for examples national in scope, right? So you’ve gotta have the a regional affiliates getting involved if you are a national organization, but you want to think about what could we be doing to host smaller cultivation events and get these people further engaged with the organization? So certainly people that are going to show up to a subsequent event, you know, as far as i’m concerned, all right? They’re showing additional interest in the organization on dh they are probably worthy of of doing a little bit more in depth research on before coming to that second follow-up say cultivation event that you would be having all right? So events very good for cultivation. What else? What else? How else can we sort of breakdown this file of hundreds, you know, because we’re going to keep it to scale the audience hundreds, maybe even into the thousands? How else can we sort of figure out who did continue to cultivate among this big, big news spiking in donors? We’ve got or or yeah, donors or runners, walkers, whatever. So if you happen to have a relationship already with a ah company that provides elektronik screening of your database, this would be an excellent opportunity to screen some new names very similar to what a college or university does every fall, right? They take the names of all the incoming parents and the students, the parents of students, and they make sure that they’re there screening that to try and figure out, how are we going to start engaging these people from their point of entry with our organization? So you want to kind of have that mindset? So if you have, you know, ah, relationship or maybe this is the time to start one with an electron ic screening company, that would be the ideal right? Just screen all the names and try and let those best prospects filter to the top for you that way, and those would then be the people that we would invite to the cultivation events you’re suggesting i would definitely invite to those top prospects to your follow-up event something you want to extend an invitation to a many people, as you can obviously, um, uh, depending on space and so forth is to where you’re going to be having these follow-up events. But if it’s going to be okay in a in a boardmember home, or maybe a boardmember has ah. Ah, a membership to a local country club and would be willing to host a small cultivation event there you want to think about, you know, managing your audience sizes, but for sure it’s an opportunity to screen them, try and figure out, and and if you don’t have a budget for doing a screening of paid screening service, you know, think about there’s, you know, a few sites that you could go to that are either going to be free or very low cost that are going to at least point you in the right direction and try and help you figure out, you know, where you want to start prioritizing this new pool of names that have been interacting with your organization? Um, you want me to kind of go through your arse, and i would do if i didn’t have a budget at all and screen some of those names on manually? Yeah, you’re are doi end of dirt, cheap and free. So you gotta you gotta live up to it, and then and then now these may very well be sites that we’ve talked about in the past, so if we have, you know, don’t don’t you have to go into a lot of detail, but definitely that’s ah, share a couple of sight, right? So obviously google, right? So you want to definitely google their name, make sure you’re putting parentheses around their name so that you’re researching their name as as an entirety, as opposed to any place that maria or simple would be mentioned on the web. You want to make sure you’re you’re researching the name as an entirety? You don’t mean you want to try and figure out, you know, somebody’s property where they’re living their primary and secondary properties. Certainly their primary property is probably, in most families that’s going to be the largest asset that is owned by by sea, individual or the couple. So you want to try and figure out a little bit more information about the value of of the home that they’re in. So whether you’re looking at a property assessment database to try and figure that out, or if you look at something like zillow dot com again, if you’ve collected that address information at the point of registration, you’ll have that so, you know, it is possible to manually do a lot of what thes elektronik screening services do it’s just going to take manpower so you might want to think about in advance of that event. Well, who’s going to be available, what hands do we have available to us as volunteers? Maybe you’ve got some board members who would be willing to step forward and take a list of, you know, names say, you know, we’re going to be assigning you a list of ten names to research, and we’re going to give you a set of sites that we need you to go to after the event and then start doing some of this research on our behalf, and so certainly property assessments would be one of them, okay, you want to try and figure out something about their property? Um, lincoln would be another good place try and figure out where the person might be employed, and so that would be giving you some information about whether they have their own business, whether they are tied to a larger corporation that might have matching gift opportunities that might have other opportunities to engage that corporation say through, ah, corporate giving program or a formal foundation, and certainly, if that individual happens to come up as a corporate insider. Now you’ve got a pretty good prospect there, because now this is somebody you can tap into for a gift of stock to the organization and gift of appreciated securities, and that benefits them by donating that. And, you know, we’ve we’ve talked about that before in terms of seeking out those types of corporate insiders to engage with your organization. Yeah, a couple of things, maria, you said, putting names in parentheses when you’re searching, you use google is example, but i think you meant quotes, right? Putting them oh, i did mean quotations. Yes, i didn’t mean to say parentheses sametz quote, yeah, sorry also you you read my mind thinking about boardmember xero there a couple of ways that board members could be involved or other volunteers don’t have to be, but but i was thinking of board members, especially for hosting the cultivation events. But then, as you said, also doing some of the from this follow-up research, these could be very good tasks for key volunteers board members? Absolutely, absolutely, because this is something that they could do on their own time from their home and justice if you’ve got that that pool, that manpower pool waiting, post event and knowing that they’re going to be having ten to fifteen names, whatever it is, however many names you’re going to be, kind of, you know, giving each volunteer to manage just pulling together some research on this is a great way to get them involved, you know, especially those board members who say, you know, i’ll do anything for the organization just don’t make me ask for money. Well, this’s a function that totally supports the fund-raising function, however, they don’t have to get involved in making the ass oppcoll now i’m not trying to get boardmember zao out of doing that, of course, but you do have some people who might just be better on that behind the scenes, providing you with that back-up and now you’ve got some board members who are going to be engaged at a different level and might say, well, gee, got, you know, i didn’t know we could so simply find out this this additional information that’s going really leverage and propel our fundraising efforts to a whole different level, so i would imagine that just getting them involved. In a small pool of names like this for them to research that they will then say, you know, what else can i do to help our development efforts with? With regard to research? I’ve had so many guests on saying how beneficial it is to plan your after event activities before the event, and i think that that benefit is emerging, because if you’re thinking about what you want to do to cultivate people who were engaged at this event, if you’re thinking about that in advance, then you’re going to know what data points you’d like to know in advance, and you can include that in your registration. So for instance, you might then asking the registration, where do you work? And some people may refuse to tell you for some reason, but a bunch of people probably won’t refuse. And so if you’re planning in advance to know what you’re going to do, then you know the data you’re going to need. You can put that into the upfront registration and other activities early on, right? Right? I mean, in this day and age, there’s absolutely no reason why any registration process for an event should be. Done manually at all he’s got so many different event registration systems out there, but you know, you’re able to collect every one of these data points, and like you said, you can make something like collecting their company data anon optional field, not a a mandatory required field because don’t forget, they’re there might be a lot of retired people right attending your event so it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to be filling that field in any way. So definitely always provide that optional field of collecting that data point because you just don’t know where, down the line that data points going become crucial for your your development efforts. The very best of the sites that will help you with your events, of course, is generosity siri’s, and you’ll be able to capture all this at the front end and with the help of their support team, you’ll figure all this out in the beginning so you can have valuable cultivation after then. All right, maria was very important. We got to take a break. When we come back. You and i will, of course. Keep talking about managing this big spike in donors. Stay with us. Dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll hyre have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige, no knee author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Dahna i still wish lawrence would pronounce his name panjwani be so much nicer than paige nani like martignetti i would never do that, but martignetti panjwani would be beautiful. Maria semple, we can’t do anything to change your name to make your italian, but no, but i am one hundred percent italian. So mei mei my maiden name is mackay. So i’ve seen that right. Maria mattei. Sam simple. I’ve seen that around. Yeah, so i totally agree with you. Yeah, tony, he should definitely be saying it panjwani i have to petition. Lawrence, do you know lawrence panjwani ideo yeah. Wait. Maybe if we just start using his name that way, so he forced into it. He won’t know. We’re talking about him. He’ll think we’re talking about some other larry. Larry panjwani sells salami down the street. All right, what else have we got for managing this big spike in and donors or attendees to our to our event. Well, you know, i was just thinking as we were going to break about, you know, you were talking about, make sure you have that follow-up event sort of planned and so forth beforehand. And i was thinking, well, you know, one of the things that you’ve heard, i’m sure in the past before either from mayor from other guests is that if you ask for money, they’ll give you advice, but if you’re bringing people in to ask him for advice will ultimately want to give you money, right? So you’ve heard that i’m sure a ton of time, so it would be really fun may be at this event tohave, you know, you’re photos and videos you’ve had a guest on in the past that turned me on to something called an emoto that you can pull together photos into these really cool videos afterward, but you bring them together and then just get them into an environment where maybe you’re asking them about what did you think went really well with our gail? Oh, our walk, you know, you’re kind of, you know, playing off of the good feelings that they’ve had engaged them further, but, you know, in terms of additional research, we were talking about corporate stock, for example, you know, try and determine if there are corporate insider and then before i get thrown into jargon jail just to remind everybody if you’re a corporate insider at a at a public company that means that you are considered to be a you know, on the board of directors or the top executives at a company, or you have been owned ten percent or more of the outstanding stock of that company. That means you’ve got to report all your trading activity. So all of this data is available on the seas, database, securities and exchange commission, so that’s sec dot gov or on the corporate website itself, there’s usually a tab called investor relations, and right there they’re going to be listing all of the corporate insiders and so forth. So again, if you’ve collected that data point to find out that a person works for x y z corporation, visit that corporate website, go to the investor relations tab, click into their their their latest proxy statement that they filed usually comes out once a year, very often in the in the late spring or summer is when people are filing the company’s heir filing these proxy statements and look at that last proxy might be known on the website as by its technical number, which is death d f fourteen, eh? So look at the proxy and try and find that person’s name, do a search to a control f on your keyboard, input the person’s name and see if their name shows up on that corporate proxy. All right? And that is all for the potential of generating gifts of stock from that person that’s, right? That’s, right? So and if the person is listed on the corporate proxy, their age is going to be listed there. Toni and so you know what that could mean for planned e-giving purposes? Well, if they’re sixty or over that they could potentially be a plant giving prospect long, longer term. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So then you would think about ok. Well, if you’ve got a database that’s allowing you now to do that level of segmentation and tagging and flagging, he’d be able to at least say, okay, well, we you know, because seen that he’s listed on this corporate database that as an insider we’ve got an age listed of, you know, say, fifty eight, fifty nine whatever, you might want to flag them as somebody who could be a potential that you would want to start talking to are cultivating in that direction for for plant giving down the road. Okay, that all sounds very good. We still have ah, a couple of minutes left. Any other ideas that we haven’t talked about for managing this big spike? Well, you know, you’ve got your local newspapers write, um and you’re actually or your previous guest was talking about local chambers as being ah place to look for individuals, so find out, usually through your library website, you can have access to the local newspapers in their entirety for free, so run their names through the through the newspaper database to see if they’ve been profiled by another non-profit or maybe they’ve been given some sort of a citizen of the year award. Those types of biographical articles are great because they’re going to point you to information about those familial relationships, whether they’re married, how many children they have, what communities they live in and so forth and give you a lot of great background information. So, um, i would say, make sure you’re also researching as one of your stopping point if they’re mentioned in any of the local press you’re thinking about this was all generated by the ice bucket challenge for ah amigo, traffic, lateral sclerosis, what’s what’s your thoughts on how the media that the media is just reporting, but how people are critiquing a less what what do you what do you think? How do you and how do you feel they’re managing this enormous spike that got foisted on them? Very, very, very luckily very luckily indeed, yeah, it’ll be so interesting to see, i think that, you know, everybody, as you said, has their opinion about what should be happening with all of this, and and i agree with you totally let’s let’s see what they do because i’m quite certain that they’re going to be very capable of handling this in the appropriate manner and, um, it, you know, certainly, if they weren’t already engaged with using an electron ic screening service, they will be now. But, you know, it’s it’s an opportunity for us as as professionals who work in the fund-raising arena to kind of look at this is anabel lutely wonderful case study going forward, however it’s going to be handled one way or another, and i’m sure it will be handled very well. I’m part of the american marketing association they have a non-profit conference every year. Ah, and next june or actually july, i think when they have there their conference, i’m really hoping that there’ll be somebody there from this organization speaking because this will be so long, it will be a year after the, you know, the challenge really happens that i’m sure there’s going to be so many wonderful lessons learned even from a marketing standpoint of what to do for further engagement. So i’m taking very much a wait and see approach i’m eagerly awaiting to see how this will all come out myself. Maria simple is the prospect finder you’ll find her at the prospect finder dot com on twitter she’s at maria simple maria, thanks so, so much. Thank you, pleasure always next week your development committee is critical. Greg cohen is from cause effective also an interview from the non-profit technology conference. Or maybe fund-raising day start to bring those to you from fund-raising day back in june. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com remember generosity siri’s, you can have this big spike that marie and i were just talking. About they are at generosity. Siri’s, dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting dink, dink, dink, dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, wanting to get me to thinking. I think. Come, join us for the thirteenth annual vigil for international peace and ecology on sunday, september twenty one. From nine a, m to six p, m celebration of live music and dance performances spoke a word human-centered ein art installations in a world peace flag ceremony that celebrates the united nations international day of peace. That’s sunday, september twenty one from nine a, m to six p, m central park numbered band shell by the bethesda fountain. For more information or volunteer, go to www. Dot vigil number four. International peace dot org’s that’s, the number four in the earl, or call to want to chip in to five, four, three two that’s a two one, two, triple two, five, four, three two we’ll see you there. Hyre you’re listening to talking on turn their network at www. Dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking.
