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Linda Lysakowski: Corporate Coffers
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE, is a development consultant with nearly 30 years of experience. She wants you to systematize and formalize your corporate appeals; pay attention to small companies; and be more strategic with cultivation.
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Gene Takagi: Committee Confab
Gene Takagi returns. He’s our legal contributor and principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations law group (NEO). He’s all about committees this month! How are board committees different than advisory committees? How much authority should be delegated to them? What are the pros and cons of executive committees?
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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 very glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of a calcula if i had to shoulder the burden of knowing that you were going to miss this week’s show corporate coffers. Linda, listen kowski a c f r ee is a development consultant with nearly thirty years of experience. She wants you to systematize and formalize your corporate appeals. Pay attention to small companies and be more strategic with cultivation and committee conned fab jean takagi is back. He’s, our legal contributor and principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo he’s, all about committees this month. How are bored cities? Different than advisory committees? How much authority should be delegated to them? And what are the pros and cons of executive committees between the guests on tony’s? Take two. I have an abundance of alliteration. Were brought to you by rally bound peer-to-peer fund-raising and by telephone bill reduction consulting. T brc. Getting your money back from phone bill screwups. My pleasure to welcome to the show, linda. Like kowski, she is. One of one hundred professionals worldwide toe hold the advanced certified fund-raising executive designation. She has thirty years in non-profit development, and one of her many books is raised more money from your business community. She’s at linda lissa kowski dot com you could follow her on twitter where she’s at l listen, kowski llc linda, listen, caskey, welcome thanks, tony it’s. Glad i’m glad to be here. Happy to be with your audience today. Thank you very much. I’m glad you are too, and i i think it’s safe for me to speak for them to them, for them that that they’re glad you’re here too. Tell me about this cfr lots of lots of people are cf ari’s certified fund-raising executive, but you’re in advanced certified fund-raising executive right, and they’ve been certified fund-raising executive i used to be able to say i was one of fewer than one hundred, but just recently, with unless couple of months, we accepted number ninety nine and number one hundred into the fold on and it’s really an honor to be counted among the cfr ese it’s. A long, grueling process but i think it’s well worth it in the end. It’s it’s a process that you go through your really dedicated to this profession and a hundred of us at least are on. Did you have to be invited? Teo too do the work to get the a before your c f r ee. Well, the processes that you have to be a c f ar e already. Andi, i have been in the profession ten years or more. And then what makes us a little bit different from the cfr e to see if our reprocesses you take an exam and the review committee looks at your exam and make sure there’s no ethical violations on your record and then you’re automatically approved with e f r ee it’s really a four step process? It’s the application itself, and then you do take a written exam, which is obviously a little bit harder than the cfr e exam. And then you put together a portfolio showing your work and at least two a p f r ee piers will review that portfolio and then the third part of the fourth part of the process is an aural exam. Where again, about three, of your peers will take you through. About a three hour process where you give your oral answers to questions that are thrown at you by this group. So pretty grueling process. Ok, i happen to be a u a c f r ee ultra advanced there’s there’s. Only one of us, though. Come on, that that’s pretty cool. I guess i’m gonna have to try to get to be number two in that group. I don’t think you’re qualified. I’m sorry. Probably not. It’s the next level up, but it sze very secretive. Yeah, like the masons for, like free masons. Usc fr ee. Okay, so i have to learn a secret handshake that well, if you’re qualified. But i don’t believe that you are. I’m sorry. Okay? We’re talking about corporate giving. And specifically, i think small companies. But but before we get into big versus small there’s lots of forms of corporate giving, right, but it’s way beyond just just money. Yes, yes, there is, you know? And i think sometimes we kind of forget the many ways that corporations do contribute to the non-profit world besides e-giving cash, which most of us are familiar with cash or grant, there is in-kind there’s corporate. Volunteer programs, which can be really magnificent for a lot of organizations. And some corporations like to do sponsorship. Not so much of sponsorship of events, but other sponsorship may be sponsoring one of your program. Something like that. So there’s a whole variety of pockets you can delve into. Yeah. There’s also giving of inventory, right? Gif ts in-kind right. Right. Okay. And i’ve had some clients really be very successful with gifts. In-kind i could also tell you a bunch of horror stories about gifts and well, okay, we’ll hold the heart stories, but just, uh well, maybe, but we know that just want to set the ground work. We know there’s lots of different ways that we could be approaching cos on dh. You also want people to think broadly about the kinds of companies they approach. You will identify a lot of under the radar businesses, right? Right. And i think a lot of times we tend to always look at those big companies in our community whether their banks are hi tech companies. But there’s, every community has a couple companies that everybody thinks someone it’s like. Okay, how can we raise some money from the business sector and they all tend to think of a big company. I called the willie sutton theory that’s, probably because i spent a lot of years in banking before i was involved in the nonprofit world. But, you know, they one day it’s really sudden white, he robbed banks and he said, because that’s, where the money is and sometimes that’s the impression that we get some of those big companies about us for all the money is i have no live near las vegas and in our community, it’s, let’s go after the big casinos because, look, i have all this money, and we just kind of roll up with our little plastic cup and asked him to fill it with money, and it doesn’t always work that easy, right? So let’s, identify some of the the under under the radars and you like your name, like pest control movers, landscapers, right? Small, small companies that are often get overlooked by the way that that willie sutton story according to wikipedia, he didn’t really say that. That’s a pocketful. You know, i just heard that recently to that it was actually a reporter who described that statement. To him, but by still called the willie sutton xero describe doing me whether he said it or not, i don’t think we’ll take away your cfr designation because i hope not it’s, not that that’s, not really an ethical breach. It’s, just a little fib a little fairy town not doesn’t reach the eye to the level of ethical oversight, i guess in the next edition of the book will have to say that statement was described to willie said it or not, ok, let’s, talk about some of that well, how to get started with this. I mean, i would think now we have lots of different size companies on we have lots of different ways that we can approach various sized companies, so that creates a lot of variables. Should we be starting with what our goals are? Starting with gold is always important looking at how many companies, realistically or in your community, how many you think you might be able to reach and that’s going to be based a lot on how many staff and or volunteers you have to reach out to that business community, and i really stressed the word volunteers because sometimes the staff people think they have to do this all by themselves, and i have found that the best way to reach the corporate sector is tohave appear make that peer-to-peer solicitation. So if you have volunteers on your board, your development committee, a special committee that set up just to do a corporate annual appeal, you be able to use what i call the five to one rule, and this is a pretty common thing and fund-raising that no one volunteer is to make more than five calls when you’re talking about going out, personally visiting with someone and that’s what we’re talking about because personal solicitation is really the only way to get to the corporate community. I find direct mail doesn’t work, and most of the time, phone calls don’t work because the decision makers don’t take phone calls or open mail, okay, you through a lot of stare in terms of volunteers and how to approach and whether events versus one on one is best. So we’re going to unpack that we’re going to take a break for a couple minutes when we come back. Linda and i well, keep talking about corporate coffers stay with us e-giving thinking, duitz co-branding you’re listening to the talking alternative network duitz waiting to get a drink. Duitz nothing. Cubine do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe right groat for your business, call us at nine one seven eight three three four eight six zero foreign, no obligation free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com oppcoll 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 lebowitz, 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. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Time to send some live listener love stew start domestic new york, new york, minneapolis, minnesota, new bern, north carolina live listener love to you, seoul, korea got many people in seoul and others that are whose city is masked. So soul i wonder if you know the three or four people in seoul who are listening. Or do you ah, do you all know each other? I wonder. Can non-profit radio bring you together in soul? And of course, for our korean listeners on your haserot many in japan, tokyo, ujiie and one or two others were not sure who are who are masked japanese sorry to our japanese listeners. Konichiwa. Ok, linda, listen, kowski let’s unpack some of that stuff that you let us into let’s begin with how to approach the companies. You you suggest in in your book a cultivation event? Yes, i think cultivation events are a great way to get to know the business leaders and have them get to know you. Lots of times. The organizations think they just go knock on the door or send a letter and suddenly they’re going to raise all this money from the business sector, but these businesses a run by people, we have to remember that, and people need to get to know your organization before they’re going to support it. So i’ve had some very successful cultivation events were business leaders are invited in, always hosted by another business leader not hosted by your executive director or someone within your organization. And i think that’s one of the keys to success here is who does the invite king? I remember one working with the homeless shelter group, and they had keep business leader in their community, invite other business leaders in they thought they’d get about twenty, some people. They sent out seventy five invitations, and just about everybody they invited showed up mainly because of the host so that’s a big teo successful cultivation event. You profile that example in the book and then go a little further and talk about how how moved the breakfast attendees were yes, what we did was we started this it’s seven thirty in the morning and on the east coast, especially of the united states, i think you know, if you want to get business. Leaders have it first thing in the morning because they want to come in, get out of there and get back to their office before the day gets away from them. So we had a seven thirty eight, fifty eight, fifteen very brief agenda. We just kind of explained a little bit about what the shelter was homeless shelter, what they did, but the figment really sold these people was a tour which was led by a former guest of the shelter who was now gainfully employed at his own apartment. And when he took these business leaders around and showed them the shelter and said ice asleep over there in the corner, it really hit home that this organization was doing something valuable for its community, that it was turning people’s lives around, then it was making the business environment better. So of course they were really eager to support the organization, and some of them wanted to write out checks immediately, even though we had said that we’re not asking you for money at this event, and we actually didn’t take their money. We said, no, we’re going to come back to you later, but you know, we just want you to see the shelter and see what we’re doing here, and it really made a huge impact on that community talking about business leaders, companies what’s your experience with professional practices like lawyers, maybe dentists, orthodontists i think that’s another category i usually often call it business and professional again. I think the best way to get to doctors is through another doctor in the best way to get the lawyers is through another lawyer. These are all really busy professional people, and they don’t often have a lot of time, but they will make time to speak with a calling. So the key is getting your volunteers who can open the doors to these people and that’s, how you’re going to be successful and what’s our next step then after this cultivation event, which moves people i love the idea of hosting it on site that’s, that’s just so brilliant instead of having it at a restaurant or a hotel or something having if you have a facility where you can tour people around, i just think that’s a very is you cited that could be really moving what’s the next step after the after the event the events over now, okay, after the event, then one of the things that i suggest people is that they hold an annual corporate appeal involving volunteers, and what we did, for example, with that shelter is the volunteers who were so excited about it. A zay said some of them wanted to write out a check. A lot of them said, hey, when you’re ready to go out and talk to people about contributing to the shelter, count me in. I’m ready. Teo, help you with this project. So we developed a list of volunteers based on that cultivation breakfast and those volunteers all set. Okay, i’ll see these five people. I’ll see those five people. And we organized a really well honed annual corporate appeal and there’s a whole chapter in my book outlined how you go about doing that, it would probably be take up the rest of your show. And maybe the next three shows teo, tell everyone how it worked. But the key is involving volunteers letting them choose who they want to go see and seeing their peers. Because that’s, what gets you in the door and that’s what’s going to get you? The money. You need a long run. I would like people to know, too, that the book is very detailed in terms of how to go about these steps that has a planning timeline and a sample invitation and a questionnaire for after the after the event. So there’s there’s. A lot of good advice in the book and detailed advice. And linda, i think, did you wantto offer a listener discount? Tio? Anyone who’s interested in the book raised more money from your business community and within the next couple of weeks also have an accompanying workbook. Be released. Raised more money from your business community this year. That gives you step by step directions on and that code. If you go to charity channel dot com and look at the bookstore you just put in the code all lower case, linda al i n d a twenty fourteen books, and you’ll automatically get a fifteen percent discount not only on that book, but on any other books that you order at the same time. So okay, so you go to charity channel dot com and the code is linda twenty, fourteen books. Right? Okay, usually i like to see, that could be non-profit radio or tony rocks or something, but linda, think about linda twenty fourteen books we’ll work, it’ll get you the fifteen percent. Of course, if used tony rocks, you get thirty five percent. But buy-in but not this. Not this time around. All right, so we’re talking about volunteers. Volunteers are critical to the success of this. Do we need to train these volunteers? Oh, absolutely. Even though volunteers maybe radio i’ve done this a zillion times you want to i sort hesitate to use the word training sometimes because nobody thinks they need training, but we always had a kickoff celebration where we invited all the volunteers to come in. Somebody in the organization made a compelling case for support, and when i worked in the university, for example, we would have a student come in and talk about the fact that they were not there on scholarship, they wouldn’t be able to afford the university. So we have somebody that makes a compelling story for why we’re doing this, why we’re raising money and then you do need to give people some basic guidelines about, you know, how to make the call and how to fill out the pledge forms and when to make a report back to you. So it is there’s some work involved in it, but i think it really can be very, very helpful if you can get these volunteers in twos and excited just again remember that these are business people, they don’t want toe meat for three hours at a time, they want to come in, probably first thing in the morning and have a meeting that’s over within about an hour to an hour and a half and make it is easiest possible and keep your timeline short don’t give people a six month time frame, they’re only making five calls, and they should be able to do that and about a six week time frame. You recommend a five call limit because i presume you don’t want people to be overwhelmed by a list of twenty or twenty five names or something exactly what happens is something you all we have, some over enthusiastic volunteers payable. I know this person and i know that person and give me fifteen or twenty calls, and what happens is they never make any calls because fifteen or twenty just too intimidating. They pull out their list and they say i’ll work on that tomorrow. I don’t have time to think about it today, so if you give them five it’s a very manageable number now, i wouldn’t say we never she sometimes we have somebody who only makes three and that’s fine. If they’re three quality calls, sometimes we have somebody who could do six or seven, but i try to keep it to five to one because that’s a pretty realistic number and it’s proven to work. What if the person comes back and says i’ve done my five tonight? Can i have five? Five more were ready to do what? Okay, yeah, so you will give them or after their dahna naralo e-giving five to start with, okay. After they’ve done their initial, they can they can come back with more. Okay. And and what are they asking in these calls? Well, they’re there, then, presenting a case for support, which shows that you have various ways that businesses can support you. They can give a gift. They can restrict a gift, maybe, for example, to scholarships for school. Something like that, they could give a gift in-kind i’ve had some organizations that have been ableto build about a third of their building because they had everything donated from landscaping to excavation to furniture, toe windows to cement so you could get gifts. In-kind you can get cash, you can get other volunteer support, but primarily we’re looking at things in effect, the bottom line, so we’re looking at cash and give in-kind mostly all right, why did you tell one of your gift in-kind disaster stories? If if it’s not too long, well, i could give you a couple of them just one one took one pick the most of that, i think is probably the most interesting one because i live in the state of nevada, i had someone offer, give this wasn’t really a gift. In-kind it was a cash gift, but they had a real struggle was trying to determine if they should take a gift in-kind from a brothel because here, it’s illegal business in many counties so that they’re not offering gift in-kind are they okay with things that would really be quite interesting? Yeah, i mean, but gives in-kind i’ve had gifts of land offered which needed a half. A million dollars worth of oil remediation, that’s a gift in-kind you probably don’t want to take well, yeah, because you don’t want to have contaminated soil. Tohave teo remediated, but you’re glossing over the brothel example, but i we’re going to linger on this for a couple moments. I thought you might find that one interesting. Yeah, well, you were right because i go to the lowest common denominator. You know, mike sense of humor’s generally basin lowbrow in the gutter. Andi, i’m proud of that. S o have have you had clients offered gifts from from brothels? I have and some have taken them, and some haven’t, because they said they’re not doing anything illegal in that particular county, but others don’t take them because they feel like it flaunts the mission of their organization. But the pto gifts in-kind and unusual gifts like that are you have tohave gift acceptance policies in place that say what you’re going to accept and what you’re not going to accept. Interesting. Right there is the issue is do we want to take money from organizations that are contrary to what are companies that are contrary to what our beliefs are? What our mission is about that could apply for, well, really could apply in just about any circumstances, but i’m thinking particularly of, like domestic violence, possibly or health related charities, certainly any of the faith based religious charities and that’s where, you know, you really need to be careful about what you’re going to accept and the things that volunteers need to have before they’re asked to go out, make calls, they need to know what kind of gifts you’re going to accept. What other kind of support does the organization have to give two volunteers that are making these five calls? Well, i think they need to have a staff that’s going to support these volunteers because volunteers are going to i guarantee there’s a volunteer they’re going to call you say, oh, i’m supposed to make this call today, but i lost my my information that i was supposed to hand out can you send me another fact sheet, or can you send me another pledge card? I don’t have one and i have an appointment this afternoon, those of the kind of things that staff need to be there to support people and i think most importantly, what you need to give here’s a program that’s worthy of support. If they feel in food that your program is really doing a lot of good in the community, they will be proud to be part of your team. That’s going out asking for money so that to me is the most important thing that you need to provide volunteers. How about the chair of this annual business appeal? How do we how do we make sure we have the right chair person? Well, that’s a really important that because you wanna have a chair person that is well respected, well known in the community, can command respect is enthusiastic themselves. I had one gentleman wants to volunteer for a volunteer firefighters group, and he showed up at a meeting with and this is a top ceo in the county. He showed up with a fire helmet and red suspenders because he was so into what this would do it. He didn’t even take the time to change that e one to make his commitment well known that he supported the volunteer firefighters. He thought they were doing fantastic work, which they were, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Everybody else got excited about the campaign because he was excited about it. Outstanding. Okay, um, we have just a couple minutes left. Linda, tell me what it is that you love about the work that you do and you’ve been doing for for thirty years. I think what i really love the most is being able to help people fulfill their missions and so many of the things that, you know, i can’t just take off and run to africa and help dig wells or do a lot of different things, but i can help people raise the money to do those wonderful things. That’s what i enjoy about it the most. Because when charities come together, they can do when people come together should say into charities they khun do enormously good work that individuals can’t do that government and corporations aren’t suited for right? Absolutely. Ok, linda, listen kowski i want to thank you very much. Why don’t you remind people how they can get the discount on the book, go to charity channel, dot com right, and then put in the when you look at the book list, just put it in. It’ll ask you if. You have a discount code and you put in l i n d a all lower case. L i n d a twenty fourteen. Okay, linda, on the strength of this conversation we had i’m going to promote you to ultra cfr. So you are now ready. Well, thank you. I’m going to put that in front of my initial see if anybody recognizes. Thie organization is small but distinguished. You’re now you’re now using u a c f o r e. You will find linda. Listen kowski at linda lacey kowski dot com. And on twitter she’s at l lacey kowski llc. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise. Linda. Thank you, tony, for having me been a pleasure. Okay, bye. So long. We are sponsored by rally bound. You know them? You’ve heard me talk about them. They do software for peer-to-peer fund-raising at rally bound dot com. And we’re also sponsored by t b r c telephone bill reduction consulting. And they find errors in phone bills when ah, the phone company has charged you for things that you didn’t ask for or overcharged you. From what you were quoted, they will find those errors and ah. Get reparation, get money back for you. Who needs that fancy word? Reparation, that’s, not it’s, not really. Even a reparation. They get your money back from the from the greedy phone company that miss build you, and they’re being they’re at t brc dot com, the the show segments today, corporate coffers and committee conned fab, remind me of a ah, a bit. That was on the johnny carson show in nineteen sixty eight, and johnny’s guest was jack webb. He was the star in creator, a creator of the nineteen fifties and sixties tv show dragnet, and his character on the show was dependent joe friday. So i want to play this for you from johnny carson show nineteen sixty eight. Money kottler hyre general robbery when i got a call from the acme school bell coming dahna in a robbery. Yes, sir. One. My clappers, yes. Yeah, yeah, you know those things inside of falik makes a claim. The players that’s, right? We called flappers in business, okay? What’s that nothing, sir. Not gonna have the facts. Glamarys were stolen on this kayman napor copper clappers. Where were they kept? Buy-in you have any ideas who might have taken the copper clappers from the floor? Well, dahna fired-up managed for e-giving. What was his name? Latto cooper. You think that’s, right? I think. Latto cooper got my cover. You know what his plot cooper is from? Yeah. Upleaf. It makes it worse. They were clean playing copper clappers. Treyz what do you think, cleveland’s plus, hoover would cop, you’re clean spurs. Only one what’s that kleptomania. First discovered, the copper clappers were coming. My cleaning woman hyre. See if i got the facts straight here. Clolery clipper discovered your old copper clappers kept in a closet. We’re coming by. Clark cooper. The kleptomaniac from cleveland now, is that about it. What what’s that fiver mental maniac krauz upleaf kopperman clean copper clappers. Look after the club again, bob collaborating. Excellent. Nineteen. Sixty eight. Johnny carson and jack webb. That is tony’s take two for friday, seventeenth of february sixth show of the year. Jean takagi is back. He’s a manager. Tony, you know what to say. Hello, eugene. So, look, the guy doesn’t even know the protocol has done this. I don’t know forty times or something. Hang on there, gene. But but hello gina’s managing attorney of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blawg dot com and is gi tak at g tack on twitter hello jean takagi it’s been nearly that’s, right? Your it’s, your excitement, enthusiasm i it’s exudes the audience and the and the guests. We can’t help it. Okay, we’re talking about committees this week. You are concerned that whether where you’re questioning whether there should even be bored committees right aboard doesn’t necessarily have tohave committees. I’m just questioning the concept of whether every non-profit should have committees, and particularly for small non-profits with small boards of directors, committee’s may make sense, and sometimes they may not make sense, but there are a lot of kind of misconceptions about whether you have tohave committees. Okay. And what what is what governs? Whether you, whether you have to or not basically, i mean, you know, the usefulness of a committee is where aboard has got a lot to two, got a lot of governance responsibilities, and they may want to delegate some of those off two smaller groups that might be able to address the civic issues with more focused expert teeth. And, you know, it may be particularly helpful to be able to recruit persons outside of the board, to participate in committees as well. So those are good reasons for having committees but it’s not a good reason to have a committee. If you largely just bring people in without much direction, they sit around talking, you know, come up with a few pieces of advice and share it with the board, who sort of disregard that advice and decides on their own what to do. And a lot of committee members feel very disempowered and not very productive feel that it’s not a very productive use of their time to participate on committees, and they largely become ineffective. Yes. So there are clearly issues of efficiency on dh or inefficiency. Let’s, get some some terms down. We could have standing committees. We could have ad hoc committees. We can have a task force. Can you help explain these? Sure. Well, typically, you know, standing committee, the committee that has a perpetual existence until you know the board or some body decides that that committee doesn’t need to exist anymore, but talking generally perpetually existence and ad hoc committee is usually organized to address a specific task on dh at hot committees are often referred to his task force taskforce is although i don’t really see the difference between the two. They have defined life spans, and usually, when the assigned task is completed or can’t be furthered anymore that’s when when that committee saw what would be an example of something that an ad hoc committee would would be working on, they might work on the capital campaign or ah, particular event, for example. Okay, i saw some examples of leadership transition to if they’re if we’re in search of a new ceo. Yeah, absolutely. That’s. Another great example. Okay, it was just a good but now it’s just it’s. Just a good one on important. Well, thank you. Okay. Let’s, see, eso now weaken also have board committees and advisory committees. And you mentioned having people outside the board on committees. So can you help us understand this? This distinction? Sure. You know, i think it’s a really common misconception that you can have somebody that’s not on the board served on a board committee. The first distinction is that a board committee is made up of on ly board members and nobody else you can have other committees that are not bored committees. And they could be delegated with authority to andi, those other committees, non board committees all refer them to right now, khun b, composed of both directors and bond directors or simply just non directors. People from the outside and why i actually prefer the term non board committee toe advisory committee is that these committees could be delegated with management authority and they can have significant authority. Um, but the difference between the board committee and these non board committees is that only a board committee can be delegated toe act with all of the power of the board and there’s certain limitations to that authority as well. But boredom it ease khun act. In place of the board, in many, many circumstances where as a non board committee could not actually do that for pete’s sake. Okay, so non board committees, though, can be can be authorized by the board. Teo, do some narrow function or something, right, but not but not be delegated all the responsibilities of the board is that is that is that correct? Yeah, so they can actually have substantial authority, but they can’t act in place of the board. So where aboard action is necessary. Often times it will say a board or a board committee can take this ac action, but a non board committee would not be able to do that. What a non board committee might be able to do, though, is tio make decisions on fund-raising or on policy advocacy or program decisions. They might be able to approve a lease or something else. The board may wantto ratify those actions later and board oversight over committee actions is really unimportant. Part of governance, too, okay, and all the authority given a committee, whether it’s, a board committee or non board. And i guess even whether it’s standing or ad hoc all is given. From the full board. Is that right? Yeah. Generally that’s, right? So so the board of directors is going to delegate certain authority to to these committees, and they’re going to want to get some sort of report back from what these committees, if they’ve been given any sort of authority to take action so that the board khun khun, monitor and provide oversight over those committee actions. Now, i think the standing committees aren’t those aren’t those fairly common. Yeah, i think it’s it’s very common for organizations dafs standing committees, although, you know, i might venture a pretty aggressive guess and say that a lot of standing committee’s it’s not the majority of standing committees are pretty useless. Uh, okay, to be careful for a lot of smaller organizations, a lot of standing committees are again not very useful in acting in place of the board, and they might be good for giving advice. But then there there might not be a need for perpetual existence on dh they’re off. They’re obviously gonna be many, many exceptions to that, i would say generally, boards have to be very careful about having standing committees that are not active in that air not tasked with specific duties that feels very, very empowered to carry out those duties and provide recommendations to the board or take actions in place of the board if they’re bored committees or take management actions if there’d been delegated without authority. Yeah, otherwise, if these committees become ineffective and boardmember start to feel their time is being wasted, you’ve got a big donor relations problem among your most committed or formerly most committed volunteers. Yeah, absolutely. That’s. I mean, if you’re a boardmember tony, would you like to sit around at a committee meeting for two hours and then report back to the board and the board just listens to the report and then just move on carrying on businesses normal without taking any action on those? You know that reporter recommendations let’s, let’s, talk about the executive committee on di. We pulled listeners and you helped pole gene before the show. Thank you very much. One of the questions was do you have an executive committee of your board? And ninety percent looks like maybe a little more than ninety percent said yes, and and the remainder said no? Nobody said not sure. So thes executive committees, at least for listeners of non-profit radio, are very common. But there’s pros and cons yeah, absolutely on dh. So, yes, i think executive committees, they’re probably the most common form of committee. Um and they may make a lot of sense for a larger organizations, especially if they’ve got boards that have difficulty meeting on a relatively frequent basis and executive committee is a good way to continue to provide oversight over the organization in between board meetings and the executive committee may be ableto act in place of the board. Teo, you know, past what bank resolutions to open up a bank account and and do some of the sort of ministerial duties that that boards need to do some time. So for those reasons, executive committee’s could be very valuable the danger or the primary danger. I think with executive committee that if you over delegate authority to the executive committee, you could empower the board. So the executive committee could be the core leadership group that sort of takes hold of the organization and just creates a power discrepancy between the executive committee, board members and all the other board members so that the executive committee pushes through its agenda and takes all the action’s necessary to push through its agenda, leaving the rest of the board disempowered and feeling inactive and not very helpful to the organization at all. And just as he said before, with no disengaging your your your biggest donors which typically include includes many of your board members, you could do the same thing by giving too much power to an executive committee than dis enchanting those boardmember donors who are not part of that committee, where do you draw the light? Well, not where? How do you draw the line about? If we are going to have an executive committee, how much authority that committee should have versus the full board or other committees who decides this well, it should be the board and that’s where way commonly don’t see anything defined in terms of limiting the executive committee’s authority and that’s, one of the sources of problems often by-laws say that the executive committee just can act in place of the board in between board things and that’s the limit of the authority that’s been given to the executive committee, so they’ve got almost blanket authority to do almost anything in between board meetings and that’s, not a good governance structure so e-giving specific tasks or limiting executive committee, too, performing only certain tasks and maybe acting maura’s a reporting body to the rest of the board. Maybe the way too structured for most organizations, there are some organizations where the executive committee needs to be given a little bit more authority, but the board has gotta be ableto exercise oversight over those executive committee actions as well. So getting reports back at the next board meeting ratifying perhaps the most important executive committee actions taken after vetting the supporting information is really part of a board studio. All right, we’re going toe go out for a break. I want to send some live listener love, too. San francisco, california, rocklin, california state college, pennsylvania and at least one person is masked in the u s so if i haven’t sent live listener love to you, you’re you’re masking yourself, and we know that you are the national security agency in in in suburban washington, in virginia, stay with us, jean, and i’m going to keep having our committee confab. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. 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New year cerini inquire chaillou. Okay, jean takagi. Um let’s say there’s a woman who wants tio these heir, not her words. These air. These are my words. There’s, a consultant who wants to basically kill executive committee’s. Eliminate them in all cases. Simone joyo. Do you are you familiar with her work? Or have you seen her around? I you know, i think she writes for the non-profit quarterly. I believe that’s where i saw it on, by the way. She’s a safari also not a u f o r e. She has not attained the ultra designation yet. I have. Not bestowed it upon her, but i don’t know her that dragon tail for you, tony. I know you, weren’t you, jeanne. Now you were not listening in the first half of the show. Jean, you were, i snagged you. If you were listening the first half of the show, you would know that the ufc ari, is something that i hold, which is an ultra advanced certified fund-raising executive. I hold it. And now, in the first half of the show, i bestowed it upon guest linda lacey kowski. But i have not bestowed upon anyone else but that’s. Okay, gene, i’m sure you were prepping for the show. I know you were. I know you were busy thinking about our our committee conned fab conversation. So there are people who, well, simone, anyway, she feels very strongly about there should not be executive committee’s at all. I think it’s ah, great discussion toe have come for some boards. But, yeah, i think that’s, really just being provocative and stimulating, whether executive committee’s should really be granted with broad authority. I think for the most part, especially with larger boards and boards that may be spread throughout the state or throughout the country. Executive committee’s still can be very useful. Okay? But it’s a worthwhile discussion to have and your point earlier was that it’s the full board that should be deciding this, not just the chair and the and the ceo, right? And it should be in a good note that only the board can create a board committee and and executive committee should be aboard committees. Executive committee should be a committee that’s composed of only board members. And if that that’s the case again, the board is the only body that can create an executive committee to chair the executive director they can’t commit. Create the committee themselves. Okay, how about staff support for board committees? What should that look like? Well, first reference, there’s. A great article in blue avocado that came out recently on staffing committees. And i recommend that all your listeners staff support of committees is is just so crucial it really important to make sure that the committees are well equipped with the information they need? I had to carry on their duties and connected to what the organization is actually doing on the ground, and not just in theory and in documents so providing that support understanding for it, for the staff. That better involved in providing support to the committee’s, understanding why the committee members are there and are looking to help the organization and understanding how to best communicate information to them and facilitate the way for the community committees toe act including, you know, figuring out how to get the information to them in the right form, within the right amount of time, in advance of a meeting or an action that needs to be taken, providing them with the right facilities and, you know, even providing the right food and drinks that that’s the incentive to bring the committee together, all of those things could be tremendously helpful. We talked earlier about the advisory committees on another poll question for listeners was, do you have advisory committee or committees? And about sixty three percent said they do and the remainder well, about thirty, thirty percent said no, and then the rest weren’t weren’t quite sure so, like two thirds do have advisory committees let’s explore this little deeper than they could be valuable, you suggested it, but let’s go deeper in bringing outside expertise into the into the into the organization and supporting the board. Yeah, and i can’t emphasize enough that i think an advisory committee and non board i’m sorry, non board, i meant non board, i know you, you prefer non board. I screwed that up. Non-cash well and advisory committee khun b ok, for the bombs were committees that are delegated with management power, so if they’re going to strictly have advisory privileges, i like advisory committee. I don’t particularly like advisory board because board suggests that their board members with fiduciary duties, if you have a fiduciary duties, you have potential exposure to personal liabilities for failing toe live up to those duties, and we’ve talked about that. Yeah, so the great thing about being an advisory committee members if it’s truly advisory, you don’t have any fiduciary duty, and that makes it much easier to recruit individuals who might not have the time or it might not have the desire. Teo sort of meet all of the fiduciary duties of being a boardmember but really like the organization which case, you know, you can recruit them on an advisory committee. That committee might just meet once every six months, or it might meet even less than that, or it might just be a body of people who executive director can phone, you know, phone every once in a while just to bounce ideas off of on get they’re a pain in perspective, so in that way you could just really widen your resource pool, forgetting expertise, piri instant perspective that might be missing from the board. And i just think it’s such a valuable tool that many organizations are able t utilize, but a lot of organizations are really not taking advantage of the ability to do that. I think that’s a shame if they’re not not utilizing that that very valuable cool it sounds very valuable for the, uh well, here we go. Very valuable. Yes, it sounds really useful for the for the ceo have that that list of advisors that he or she can call and pick their brains and, you know, sort of be even in, like, an off the record discussion because we’re not in a board meeting and we’re not talking to someone who has the fiduciary duties. Yeah, think it’s, so valuable to be ableto have that for for the executive director and the executive director might have know their own sort of clos closely. Held advisory body and the board might actually have its own advisory body as well on dh it’s, nice for the board to be able to participate and network amongst themselves and, you know, boards have fund-raising responsibilities, as you often discuss with some of your guests. But acting is ambassadors to the organization and bringing in not just financial support but expertise to the organization and introducing them to people who might be interested. It can also result in future donors as well. And so i think advisory committees are just fabulous ways toe teo grow the resources of an organisation just about a minute or so left jean i think i saw on your blogged link to a site called board cafe. Yeah? Are you familiar with that? Is that that? I presume? I’m pretty sure it was your board. Your your block. So it’s. Not a resource that you’d recommend. Yeah, i think board cafe was adventure initially launched by compass point non-profits services, based in san francisco. It’s, a management support organization that’s recognized widely is is one of the best in the country on dh. It may have been taken over by the the online magazine blue avocado i mentioned earlier, i’m not sure that board kapin still exist. The blue avocado doesn’t that some edited by jan mathos oak of the california association of non-profits and is a fantastic online journal highly recommended for a number of non-profit issues, including h r and committees and what’s the name of that site again that she edits at blue avocados, it’ll be on, i think, blue avocado dot org’s okay, we have to leave it there, gene, thank you very much. Great, thanks durney always a pleasure. Jean takagi, managing attorney at neo non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco, you’ll find him at non-profit law blawg dot com and on twitter at g attack next week, it’s valentine’s day i heart foundations cindy gibson will be in the studio to talk about the details of building relationships with larger public, private and corporate foundations remember rally bound in your thoughts and prayers, rally bound and telephone bill reduction consulting, of course, joe magee and yourself rabinowitz they support non-profit radio, you know their stories, you’ve heard me talk about them, you’ll find that rally bound dot com and t brc dot com our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is on the board, as our line producer shows. Social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two, point zero and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein of brooklyn. 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