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Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host. What a coincidence that i found this show. We’re talking big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, always with small and midsize non-profits in mind last week we were minimizing money management mayhem. What upmifa means for your ceo, your cfo and you’re bored. Kathy boyle of shaping hill advisers distilled the requirements of upmifa for non-profits in the forty seven states where the uniform prudent management of institutional funds act is law this week, we have sashadichter in the studio, sasha is in charge of business development for accufund a non-profit that invests patient capital in enterprises that combat poverty. He’s, also a popular blogger and speaker. We’re going to hear how accurate is work and sasha’s body of personal work can translate to lessons for your non-profit and your own career and your own personal motivation. At thirty two minutes after the hour, it’ll be tony’s take two fundraisers is your multi tasking turning people off? Share a block post with you that was based on an experience i had in the last couple of weeks. With couple of multi taskers while i was on the phone with them, and this is not really only for fundraisers, but that’s, who my block post was was directed to, and also we are media partners for next-gen charity two thousand eleven that’s going to be in town hall in november of this year. I’ll talk more about that. Both of those on tony’s take to roughly half at roughly thirty two minutes after the hour. We’re taking a break now and then after this break, sashadichter with the acumen fund, stay with us. They didn’t think the tubing getting tempting. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Nothing. You could. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. 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I’m tony martignetti, host of tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m joined now by sashadichter sasha is the director of business development for acumen fund, where he leads a team that puts him, as he says, puts his head on the table to raise capital for acumen fund, and we’re going to talk about where that capitol goes. Before acumen, sasha worked as global manager of corporate citizenship g money, his responsibility there was expanding financial offerings to underserved communities globally, and also he’s had worked as senior program manager at ibm, spearheading the company’s corporate citizenship strategy. He’s, also a popular blogger, you’ll find his blogged at sashadichter dot wordpress, dot com and the blog’s on generosity, philanthropy and social change. I’m very glad that his work it acumen and his personal body of work bring him to the studio and to the show social welcome. Thanks a lot, tony it’s. A pleasure to have you let’s talk about acumen fund to start. Why don’t you explain why it’s unusual among non-profits? Sure. Well, accufund is a nonprofit venture capital fund. Whenever you say that to someone, they say well, what does that mean? S so what we do is we take philanthropy where incorporated is a five a one c three and then we turn around and make a patient capital investments in companies that are serving the poor in india and pakistan and sub saharan africa explained patient capital we have on the show, we have jargon, jail, yeah, i don’t want i wanted parole you quickly from jargon jail. What is patient capital? I appreciate that. So the idea is that, given that the problems of the world on the problems of poverty, you’re going to count, the number of people who don’t have safe drinking water don’t have sanitation don’t have access to health care in the hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, how are we going to solve these problems with philanthropy alone? And and we feel like a document fund-raising not the only tool that we have in our tool chest, and so patient capital investing is saying, can we take the freedom, the flexibility and the risk appetite that philanthropy can have but then turn around and make det r equity investments in companies that themselves are directly serving the poor, but the support is not. Only financial that’s. Right. So we spent a lot of time working with these companies. So, you know, to give a typical example. In two thousand and four, there was a company in india that was interested in providing safe drinking water to people in villages. They had a system whereby they could purify water very quickly. And that was that water healthy national latto health international and so water, health international had a way. They what they wanted to do was charge low income people in rural india very, very reasonable rate for safe and clean drinking water. And rather than do this as a non-profit, they wanted to do this as a for profit company. So accufund found that company and got to know them when they had a couple of of their systems. Each system serves an entire village of a few thousand people. I rather than make a grant to them. We made a six hundred thousand dollars equity investment in the company. So we earn. We owned a part of the company, and with that ownership stake, we had a huge investment in mid helping them to succeed. So we took an individual from our team sent them to work very closely with water, health international and really rolled up their sleeves and was side by side with them and who were some of the people or what types of expertise are you providing? You know, it really will depend on the company and what their needs are it could be, you know, very often there’s needs for financial and accounting expertise, marketing and sales operations. You know, one of our companies in india needs to go from about one hundred employees about two thousand employees in the next couple of years, so we either try to provide that directly try to provide a service provider that they confined locally, or we have a very broad network of supporters and advisors who bring a lot of expertise to the table and clearly those of the elements of venture capital that’s, right, that you’re infusing into the non-profit model that’s, right and it’s, not to say that you know many official non-profits don’t also roll up their sleeves tremendously with their grantees. But these are businesses that themselves are more often than not charging the end customers a small amount and to make the business work. And our hope is that over time, the revenues from the business world replaced the funding that were providing as the main source of capital to help it grow, you give the example of water, water health in india. Why don’t you share the example of toileting in kenya? Well, that, you know, ah, gentlemen named david korea, who himself actually had worked at a non-profit called practical, practical action for a number of years was in the sanitation space, and we have gotten to know david over a period of years in madam it’s unconference is, and he was very excited about the idea of creating a for-profit business, and i was talking to accufund about kind of finding an entrepreneur who would be interested in doing this. And, of course, what we understood overtime was that david was that entrepreneur. And so what david started doing was building toilets in downtown nairobi, both in the central business district in the slums, because there’s very, very limited access to sanitation, diarrheal death kills literally millions of kids a year, and so he wanted to, in his own words, make sanitation sexy by, you know, talking teo, you know, public. Officials were going put bright, clean, beautiful toilets with piped in music and everybody’s gonna go in there and really change the conversation around what was possible in sanitation. So he’s built a t east thirty of these toilets throughout nairobi. They were you six million times just last year accufund and made alone to david’s company, which is called ik attacked. And the toilets are called eco toilets of about seven hundred thousand dollars, which was, you know, very, very risky loan at the time. But the success has been, you know, incredible. David has been nominated and named as the african entrepreneur of the year for two thousand ten. I believe so it’s something that’s been, you know, really wildly successful beyond, you know, our our hopes that our aspirations and has really start to change the conversation about what’s possible in terms of providing large scale sanitation solutions in kenya. Scalable and innovative, scaleable, innovative and lots of interesting business models that go around the toilet. So he’s got a shoeshine business unit was renting out space, so lots of different revenue streams on at the same time. Really trying to figure out how to make this model work all across the income spectrum. So whether it’s in downtown nairobi, near the government offices, or in the slums, whether in meth, ari valley, which is one of the toughest looms globally, to try to find a way where, instead of paying every time to use the toilet, you can pay for every month to make it more affordable. Dahna that’s those were those examples in india and kenya, how much does acumen fund have invested currently around the world? So globally? It’s, about fifty five million dollars on our average investment is about one to one and a half million dollars so it’s in about forty different enterprises, and we, we threw it through our own metrics. We can say that they’ve created a total of about thirty thousand jobs globally and about, you know, somewhere between twenty twenty five million people have been affected like this. Yeah, we’re going to take a break and when we return with sasha will talk about his responsibilities that acumen and then, of course, diving into his personal body of works to stay with us talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day, schnoll are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. 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. 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Welcome back, i’m with sashadichter in charge of business development for accufund and blogger and popular speaker um sasha, the the responsibilities that you have at acumen as as director of business development would explain what you’re up to. Sure, you know that as as you mentioned in the in the in the bio, my, my head is on the chopping block for the resources were able to mobilize to support our work. So i’m in charge of all fund-raising primarily philanthropy, i worked with a guy in our investing team on are we raise a little bit of invested capital as well on dh, then? Ah, everything that has to do with our presence online and, you know, broadly speaking, what i really think of myself being responsible for is the health and vibrancy and level of connection with our community, starting with our partners who are core funders and moving out two chapters that we have and other people who are, you know, advises and, like her closely connected document funds, work, how much money is document raising in a year? The’s days were raising about fifteen to twenty million dollars from two thousand seven to two thousand. Eight we did a big growth campaign where we raised about a hundred million dollars over two years. So based on the reflection that it’s so hard to grow a non-profit and rather and if you want to think about a five year growth plan rather than raising that year to year to year, if you could raise a large amount of capital to grow on idea that was really working, that that would give you the perspective and the ability to plan for the long term. And when the document start its work accufund found in two thousand one it’s actually ten year anniversary this year on dso we’re gonna be celebrating that in early november in new york. We’re excited about that. So it’s significant? I think your your title is not director of institutional advancement or director of development. Well, director of business development. So it has clearly asai mentioned and you explained acumen has this business and venture capital mission really and court to it. But you’re tight. So your title just, i think, is reflecting that director of business development. Sure, i mean, you know that the title p predated me, but i like a long time ago, i you know, i asked my readers to think of a word better than fund-raising because i said that i think it didn’t have a whole lot of mojo and you know what? I you know, i came originally from the for-profit sector and have a lot of conversations about, you know, what’s the difference between of sales and business development and business development really is about creating long term partnership, so if you’re, you know, a startup company, your business development relationships are going to be with a, you know, supplier somebody’s writing software, but the’s air long, long term relationships that are mutual benefit, and i like that concept a lot of how the relationship can be between a philanthropic thunder and a non profit organization. So i think the title works and every non-profit wants those kinds of relationships of course they do, and i do think i mean there’s, nothing particularly wrong about the title fund-raising per se it’s just has gotten a lot of baggage over the years. I was a little tough to shake that off. So what do you think of sort of lessons that more traditional? Non-profits khun takeaway. From from a human’s work, maybe in terms of risk taking or but i don’t want to put words in your mouth either. Um, i mean, i think from accufund work, we, um well, i think that there’s i mean, i think there’s a lot that others could learn from us, i think a lot that we can learn from, okay, but but for us, what we want to be open to is the broadest array of solutions that we can bring to bear on the problem. It happens that we take a patient capital investing approach because we think that has a lot of potential to help things really grow, but a lot of non-profits and a lot of social problems are not going to be dahna not could be solved with that kind of capital that we solve a grand capitol. I think that the lessons that i have found most instructive for me, a document fund is starting with this community and starting with the way in which they are connected to our work in a very, very profound way from the earliest days of accufund and really that they’re part of the or organization this idea. Of separation between the kind of the funders and the organisation is something that we really tried to do away with from day one, and i think that that’s, incredibly powerful and that’s what a philanthropist is ideally looking for us to have a full expression of themselves through their philanthropy, through their money, through their help through there, rolling up their sleeves and to really feeling that they are part of the organization. I’m jumping a little ahead, but you you blogged about something that that reminds me exactly what you’re talking about the semi permeable organization and how defining what the organization is that any day or any month can be very different that’s right now, you know, it’s, a it’s, a term that i borrowed from nico can er, who was aa partner it katzenbach partners, which is a wonderful consulting firm based in new york. Now part of booz allen and nico really shared this idea with us originally about the virtual organization that was his term to say that, you know, the people who are on the payroll of accufund or on in any non-profit are not the not the only people who doing the work of the organization by any stretch of the imagination, but when you shift your thinking to think it’s, not us, who are doing the work and then who are funding us, but instead think of this is this work that we’re engaged in together, then you start to behave very, very differently. Then you start to when you’re reaching out to funders, you don’t treat them with kid gloves, right? When you’re having conversation with them, the dialogue, the tone, you know what? If this is appear that i’m working with fully, how do i talk to them that then rather than let me tell this donor, you know, the things that they want to hear, i think that easy trap to fall into because it’s hard to raise money and it’s also easy to define yourself in fixed terms, it is there, it is much comfort, you know? I mean, the early days of accufund and really our founder is a woman named jacqueline novogratz on dh, she wrote a book called the blue sweater, which talks really about her journey towards creating acumen fund. And when she’s talking about that, you know, it was created out of the rockefeller foundation, with a five million dollar founding grant but very quickly, was funded by a group of twenty founding partners of accufund who provided the seed capital to start the organization, and in the early days, those people in there are more of them than they were of us, you know? So when we would get them together for annual investor gathering could be as many of them as could come and sort of the few people who worked at accufund we kind of throw every problem on the wall and say, hey, you know, how would you tackle this? How would you tackle that? Obviously, we’ve grown is an organization that probably, you know, seventy people work for accufund in our partner community has grown to nearly three hundred people, so our investor gatherings have gotten less intimate and more professional, kind of by necessity, but that spirit really pervades the organization from the early days, and we really recognize that it is from those people and their vision for what we could create, that the organization what was born, i’m with sashadichter he’s, director of business development, that acumen fund, and you’ll find that at acumen. Fund dot or ge he’s, also a popular blogger and speaker, and you’ll find his block at sashadichter dot wordpress dot com and his last name is spelled d i c h t e r so let’s, move a little two year your your personal co-branding i guess before we get to your body work that i think traditional non-profits would be a little intimidated, maybe by someone who spends so much time and developing a personal brandon has a personal voice as you do in in your popular blawg human obviously doesn’t feel that way any any ten now, let’s not talk about the tension, any reflection there? On what someone who has a personal brand brings to an organization that also has its own brand? Sure, you know it’s interesting when you use the stupid words. I’m very excited about the idea of having a personal voice and kind of not particularly sitting having a person. Okay, man, you know that i mean, the story was, you know, very organic. I had been traveling to india and pakistan for accufund work had seen some interesting things. We hada blawg. We continue to have a blogger accufund bloggers wonderful. Blogged about the work that we’re doing in the work in this sector, and as part of that trip, i wrote a few block pose on got, you know, they got put on accufund zb log, but then a few other folks, you know, from the magazine and india and the like, i wanted to re post them, i kind of got my attention, and seth godin is a blogger, thinker, marketer, advisor to accufund wonderful, wonderful friend his block is very inspirational to lots of lots of people, and so that was in my mind as well, and so i kind of started blogging really without much of a plan and it’s easy to start blogging the beginning because, you know, your mother reads and my wife might have read a little bit. I mean, they’re kind of felt like there about twelve different people who were reading, um but then over time, it started to become more important and in the process of doing, and i figured out what it wass and why i was doing it, so it wasn’t it was it was it was easier because it is a small decision in the beginning on dh. To your original question, i think that having, you know, we have this opportunity to have a voice in the work that we do, but i think again, going back to this question of fund-raising and how fund-raising works in the context of a non-profit it’s very, very easy to pigeonhole that kind of the fund-raising group into this little corner of this necessary evil that has to happen for the real work toe happen, and i think what one of the things that’s been very different about the way we have approached this is that, you know, no holds barred that’s just not the way we think about it at all. And so how do you if you’re going to be a person who is responsible for helping philanthropist put their philanthropy to work in a productive way? You need to really be able to have a powerful, substantive conversation with those people, and i feel like the soul all kind of is reinforcing a lot of that conversation is your own personal voice, right? That’s, right? And you’ve been blogging now three years, roughly three years on, and your voice emerges, as you said, it’s easier in the beginning, but over time you find your space, right, that’s, right? And i do think it’s been organic. You know, it’s. Not a lot of time, actually, you know, i live in westchester county, take the train home every day and that’s the, you know, twenty seven minutes, threat of block post and that’s pretty much on dh that’s, actually. Good. I mean, there’s, a lot of things. And i grew up playing classical piano for many, many years, and so i knew what i welcome in the morning that before i went to bed at night and have toe practice piano for an hour, two hours, three hours. So i think i grew up a little bit, that mindset in that discipline. So it’s, very easy to wake up in the morning and say, oh, well, one of the things they need to do before i go to bed is right a post and that comes a little bit naturally as well, but, you know, you get better at everything over time and there’s, no doubt that i feel the way that i’m blogging the ease with which i’m doing at my understanding of what a post is and what it isn’t for me has evolved just by doing the work, i think more often than not, that’s the best learning, at least for me, i think a lot of what you’re saying is subsumed in one of your more recent posts, which was have have personality don’t be afraid to show you personally. That was a great picture on that block post and again you’ll find sasha’s blogged at sashadichter dot wordpress dot com we’ll talk about personality have a personality, you know, it’s funny i wasn’t fairway market there’s one now in pelham i grew up on the upper west side of new york. City’s so i remember fairway from forever, and they had a coffee grinder that said, you can put your organic coffee beans in here, but it also will be mixed with non organic coffee. You know, these machines are really expensive and it’s getting a little ridiculous. And i thought, you know, we as marketers as communicators, ahs ceos and non-profits our hope every single day is to stand out because there’s so much noise and it’s so much volume there’s so much stuff coming at people yet, i think there’s this fear of messing up by speaking in an honest voice. And so we hide behind the way we think that we’re supposed to speak and supposed to communicate and it’s risky. Because if you speak in your very honest voice, you might like something not supposed to say well, your post as piss people off that’s okay, yeah, well, i mean, i think that, you know, the days of, you know, getting, you know, mass mass mass attention for your work, especially if you work in a non-profit are behind us, and that kind of always been, but once you let go of that idea of appealing to everybody, you have the opportunity to appeal to a small group of people and make them rabid fans and rabid fans can only be rabid if there’s something you rabbit about, you know? So i love this and i hated this was going to start a conversation, whereas i didn’t remember this, you know, it’s not really. Do you think your personal voice would have emerged if you were still at g money or ibm or or consulting booze? No, i mean probably in a different way, probably in a different way i mean, i think one of the joys of working on non-profit that everybody feels is that they could bring their whole selves to work. So i think part of the reason is institutional, you know? I mean, when i was a g, there was limits on what websites you could access, so to say that let alone what you could contribute to let alone if you contribute, but i think more importantly, i think that my own, my own voice has emerged as a result of having such a strong connection between what i believe in what i’d like to see the world be like and my day job and my day job is an all day job in an all night job because i love it and i’m so passionate about it. So i think that the one of the many opportunities people have at non-profits which, again, it doesn’t always seem to play out is we have a different value proposition to give to people who come to work for us because we can’t pay as much as everybody else, but people are putting their whole selves into that and that’s something that you know doesn’t happen in a really big company, and so how do we use that in in a very genuine way to make this work more meaningful and make us able to attract the best talent, which i really think we need to do? And i think we deserve and because the missions are so compelling because the missions are so compelling, but i think what i think, what often i know for me and i specifically remember when i was deciding to leave ji what i was deciding to do is leave the private sector, and this is tremendous fear that you kind of crossed this threshold and never go back, and my fear wasn’t about not going back to sort of the obvious reasons. I was worried that i would never find a professional environment that was a stimulating this is challenging as fast paced as what i was looking for and to the contrary, i mean accufund filling is poor, stimulating, more challenging, more path, fast paced, and what you want to say in terms of cliches is, oh, it feels like a private company or you don’t start up, but i don’t think those labels serve us at all. What? It is is an incredibly compelling and challenging please to work, and that i think, is what people are looking for and there’s no reason why every non-profit that has a passionate, great leader and that can bring people together around that mission cannot feel as exciting is dynamic is any other place, in fact, more so and no reason that every person who has that every person who has a passion, which we all do and a dream shouldn’t pursue it. And you even had a mentor discourage you from going into fund-raising yeah, well and it’s probably longer story, but but absolutely, i mean, there’s this incredible stigma and you, you know, look at the back of the chronicle, philanthropy or any kind of non-profit job board and the only boards that are the only jobs that available are fund-raising jobs because nobody wants to do that work, and i was found that, you know, curious and compelling because where i had just come from, you know, the c e o g jeff immelt came up through sales the ceo sam palmisano of ibm, came up through sales you go across the fortune fifty fortune one hundred fortune. Five hundred. Most ceo has come up through sales rolls because the job of the ceo is to understand the customer and to be able to communicate with the customer and meet that customer’s needs its amount of non-profit sector. Nobody feels like being the head of development is a pathway to running a non-profit. And so, you know, i think that we need to really rethink a lot of these things. Sasha is reading my mind because after this break and after tony’s take two, we’re going to talk about his manifesto for non-profit ceos, the first line of which is i’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money. We’re gonna take a break when we come back from the break. Tony’s, take two, and then more with sashadichter stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. They get non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to the show, it’s roughly thirty two minutes after the hour time for tony’s take two multitasking i wrote a block post asking fundraisers, do you seek us to suffer seven symptoms of selfish multitasking? Fans of the show will know that i’m a fan of deliberations multi tasking. I had the sort of really unpleasant experience of being on the phone. Ah, on two calls recently in the same week with professional fundraisers, andi was these were pre arranged calls, so not a surprise, and the people were clearly doing other things while i was on the phone with them, the their papers were shuffling, but but not related to the call. Keyboards were clicking and there were sounds of computing, you know, chimes and things, and, um, that was pretty off putting, and it happened haven’t happened twice in in in in a week, and i mentioned that those were pre arranged calls, i really don’t think that matters. If you pick up the phone, i think you deserve i think the person who is calling deserves your attention, so it doesn’t really matter that they were pre arranged or not, just i think, probably makes it a little worse that they they were, they were scheduled calls, so i just want you to be conscious of the attention you’re not giving people when you’re multitasking and especially if you’re profession is fund-raising where your your objective is to be building strong, meaningful relationships based on sincerity, ah, and honesty, i think you’re being insincere and dishonest to people if you’re not giving them your attention, but sort of think you’re getting away with it under the guise of productivity. So just be careful about multitasking on again. My block post was do you seek us to suffer seven simpson’s seven symptoms of selfish multitasking and my block? Is that m p g a d v dot com? I also want you to know that we’re going to the media partners for the next-gen charity two thousand eleven conference that’s on november seventeenth and eighteenth this year is going to the town hall theatre in new york city, a much bigger venue i’ve had as guests, and we’ll have again the two cofounders ari team in and join a helper. You interviewed him at the the inaugural conference last year, and we’ll have the men on. This show leading up to this year’s conference, but we’re very pleased that tony martignetti non-profit radio will be a media partner for next-gen sze second conference two thousand eleven that is tony’s take two for friday, march eleventh, back with sashadichter development director of business development of the acumen fund and a popular blogger and speaker acumen fund is it acumen fund dot org’s and sasha’s bloggers that sashadichter dot wordpress dot com sasha before the break we were you had ah ah, an inspirational and mind reading moment you’re leading into where i wanted to go next, which was your your manifesto for non-profit ceos on the first sentence in it is i’m sick of apologizing for being in charge of raising money. What’s the problem that caused you to write the manifesto but, you know, it was it was a funny story and again, you know one thing leading to another, but i have been on the road for, you know, the better part of a month, and i was coming back from the social capital markets inaugural conference is so cap conference in san francisco, and i was probably this before there was wifi on the plane probably halfway through, kind of emailing people and catching up. And i was just exhausted. And so i started reading seth golden’s book, i guess two books ago of tribes bond, as i was reading along going on page one hundred or so, he said, you know that the concept of the book is that the subheading is we need you to lead us to the the idea is that anybody can really lead a tribe, and the tribe is a group of people have shared common interests or passions, and that with the internet and our ability to connect with people directly, that is easier than ever to find tribes identified them and lead them. And so somewhere along the way, when describing that set rights, you need to you should write a manifesto. I think any other moment in any other day i would have looked at that and thought that’s a really good idea. I should do that some point, but because i was a thirty five thousand feet and i was just spent on doing anything else, i kind of closed the book and open up my laptop and started writing and what poured out? Of me was this manifesto that basically came fully formed, but really was the result of of two years of the experience of doing this job. Um and, you know, as you know, as i came into the role, never having thought about doing this kind of work, i always wanted to be in the non-profit space, but, you know, being a fundraiser, i remember there was a guy back when i was doing consulting who had at booz allen, who was a sales person before he became a consultant, and he kind of sold copiers door to door, you know, this is a guy at ten pm after we had worked, you know, for fifteen straight hours with, you know, go to the bar and kind of go to my room, you know, i just i thought that you had to be, you know, to be a sales guy, you’d be the kind of guy who went to a bar at ten pm because you’re just so thrived on that kind of social interaction twenty four seven um when i came to accufund i was excited and somewhat petrified by the idea of fund-raising and i think i talked myself into the idea that i could do everything but the actual fund-raising piece, right? I could support our dynamic ceo, and i could work with our board, i could do everything i’ve never actually have to sit across from someone who could write us a check and ask them to write a check to us, which is incredible delusion kind of gargantuan proportions. Um, and it’s true, my mentor at the time when i was talking to you about taking this role just said, don’t do it because once you go into the non-profit space, if you start being a fundraiser, you’ll never stop being a fundraiser, and when i got there, our ceo, jacqueline novogratz, we were just kicking off this what was the sixty million dollars fund-raising campaign became one hundred million dollar campaign, and jacqueline kept saying to me over the first six months, we’re going to reinvent fund-raising fund-raising non-profit sector is broken, and we’re going to fix it, come and do it in a totally different way, and i remember continually kind of nodding and saying, yeah, yeah, absolutely and what i was taking with no idea at all what she was talking about. But you know what you going to do but say yes? And on ly at the end, i guess was in two thousand eight, so two years in when we had raised kind of eighty of one hundred million dollars, did it click and did i have something to say about how fund-raising is broken and how we need to think about it? And my dream was that this manifesto would be read by literally every non-profit ceo out there and every member of the that they would use it as a tool to hand to members of their board toe just flip this whole thing about how we think about fund-raising and mobilizing capital because i think it’s our attitudes that are really holding us back and what are some of those bad attitudes, the attitudes of that, you know, fund-raising a separate from the core mission, the attitudes are that you have to be apologetic because somebody, you know, somebody has a lot of money and you don’t, and so there’s this power dynamic of, you know, kind of tin cupping and going to someone saying, please, would you support this combo and apologetic fundez pompel unapologetic instead. Of, you know, pounding the table and saying, i have devoted my life to this work that’s how valuable i think it is, and i’m going to try to explain to why it’s my passion and i hope it’ll become your passion if it doesn’t, then you should go find your own, but not this sort of, you know, supplicant relationship where a funder is someone who is more likely significantly more wealthy than, you know, the person working at the non-profit maybe has more access, maybe has, you know, all these sorts of things that we bring into that ourselves, whereas most funders don’t are not looking for that kind of relationship, it almost funders air looking for authentic jenny relationships where they can take their financial capital and use it effectively to solve important problems and express themselves through that. So if anything, i think the fault is with us and kind of creating that dynamic by thinking that that’s, the dynamic we need to create rather than creating a relationship that is generative between an organization that’s doing really powerful work on an individual who wants to make create a lot of change and how stifling of our own passion, it can be when it’s ah, so that that’s, that’s, supplicant, senior relationship that’s, right as your passion will come out that’s, right? And i think that people people are looking for that i mean it’s so incredibly difficult. You know, unless you have, you know, months and months and years and years they’re going to sit on the board to really, truly understand, you know, at a level of detail that’s totally necessary how effective a non-profit is. This is another another. Another is so hard. You know, you are when you sit across from a potential funder, you are the brand. You are everything you are that non-profit and through you and through your passionate through how you can describe what’s being done, a lot of the decision about whether or not to fund is going to be based on that. So the idea that you’d put anybody but the best person in your organization in front of the potential donor is again very, very broken. It’s not to say that there are fabulous, wonderful, great fund-raising out there, there are thousands of them and i, you know, learn from them every day. But i think as a sector, there is a little bit of a pathology of fund-raising is this necessary thing that we wish we didn’t have to do? You buy-in bringing out your own personal voice and your personality created something called generosity day. Don’t you tell us what generosity day was about? Well, it was ah, you know, his honor to get to speak at social media week together with the ceo, malaria no more non-cash andreessen, who writes a non-profit marketing blawg which, if anybody was listening, doesn’t re conscious book you should read catches, bog and ellen regard. He is a writer for fast company. I had done a generosity experiment in the end of two thousand nine, where in the beginning part of that month, asai was rushing home to work, a guy in the subway asked me for money and i didn’t give him money, which i often don’t do because i feel like, you know, intellectually, i can justify why should give to a homeless shelter rather than to a person, and i just felt like i’ve done the wrong thing and i felt like i’m going through the world talking about social change. I’m going through the world, asking people to themselves be generous and was i being true to that way that i wanted to live and i felt like i just wasn’t. And so the next day i announced the generosity experiment to spend the entire month of december saying yes to everybody who asked me for anything in particular, anybody asking for help, people in the street, musicians, whatever the case may be, my goal wass, is to practise a different reaction in myself, so tohave it become reflexive that if somebody comes to me, it looks me in the eye and says, i need your help, the first thing that i would think is i’m going to say yes, because i think i’ve gotten to a point where analytically until actually i thought, you know, there’s always a good reason to say no, and the reflects was no, and so i wanted to change that reflects and, you know, i find the only way that i can change myself to do the same thing over and over again on so that was the idea, the generosity experiment, and i always had this sense that it could be something bigger and not just about me and something i share with my readers. So that morning, as i was going to social media week, i had started thinking about well, maybe we should have a generosity day for everyone, but it was kind of one of these latent thoughts, and i e mailed my team and i think that they, you know, got the email and thought i have real work to do snusz is that him? Yeah, and and so i went to the panel and i was talking teo ellen mazarene talking to katia after the panel, and i said, i think we need to do this thing at some point. What do you think of the idea? She said, i think it’s great, and i think we should do on valentine’s day, and i said, well, isn’t that three days away? It was, you know, friday at eleven and, you know, valentine’s day was a month under on dh she said, you know, a mentor of mine has been pushing me to act mohr and to think last, i think you should do it so fast forward, you know, ran back to the office, started emailing people. My team started emailing wonderful group of folks that they had gotten to know through a website that they had launched called search for the obvious dot com, which is another great conversation for us to have, and then over time, you know, over the course of that day and over the course of the weekend, it completely exploded, and the idea was let’s reboot valentine’s day as generosity day and let’s make it not just about romantic love, but about love for everyone and connection to everyone. And if you can spend the whole day being generous, that would be the truest expression of love. And so we threw this out into the web of my readers to lots of other folks, people fast company wrote an article huffingtonpost jonathan green, but wrote a wonderful piece, and it got blogged, you know, something like fifty five different articles were written about four thousand different tweets. Nick kristof, alyssa milano. You know, millions and millions of people saw this, and the most exciting thing to me was people started tweeting, here’s, what i did to be generates are here. I saw this act of generosity, and we sort of did it in seventy two hours. We for, you know, a few million people created generosity day as valentine’s day, and, you know, we’re going to do it again next. Year after this, we’re going to come back and talk about exactly what sasha describing what he calls it, his blogged collective effervescence. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio with sashadichter. Stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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. 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Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking. Welcome back, i’m with sashadichter director of business development for acumen fund in a popular blogger and speaker, and we’re continuing the conversation about his experiment generosity day, which was on valentine valentine’s day two thousand ten before the break, you were talking about what you later called two weeks in a block post. Two weeks later, you used the term collective effervescence around this idea that people want to belong that’s, right? So, you know, last week i got to be at the ted conference in california and there’s, a guy named tony salvador who is an anthropologist who works at intel, and he studies pilgrimages, and he said that his experience even coming to a pilgrimage as an observer is impossible not to be taken up and swept away by what he called this collective effervescence, this joy that the pilgrim’s experience when they got to holy site on and then, you know, later in the day, a guy named aaron cho blinn was talking about i was talking about his work online, a bunch of really incredible things, but getting people all over the world to participate virtually in some sort of task, i mean, erin first had ten thousand people draw a sheep, and then he made this kind of piece of artwork. And now he’s done this beautiful video in memory of johnny cash, where johnny cash fans each drew an individual cell that was picture that was played it eight frames a second to make a three minute video and what i realized, what was amazing to me about generosity day was first that that it spread so well and so quickly, so clearly was tapping into something on i think the tapping in is i think people want to do good, but they kind of don’t feel like they have permission to or just feel like they’re so busy in their daily lives that they’re not really sure where it fits in. Um, so there was this need that i think the day tapped into rather than create it, and i was fascinated by this because i thought of this people all over the country who heard about this idea in a tweet or in a block post or something and changed the way they acted, and i think the way they change their why they changed is because they felt like they were part of something bigger than themselves. I think that notion of collective effort benson’s is interesting, because the worry about the web is that it’s so impersonal, you know, your facebook friends aren’t real friends, and i think that’s that’s a real risk. But at the same time, the fact that an idea can spread and khun give people around the world a sense of connection to something bigger than themselves is incredibly powerful. I think we has non-profits if we act the right way, and we really understand this medium, have this potential to create a level of connection to our work and to one another that is incredibly powerful. Um, what do you think holds people back from executing on their own dreams? Xero that’s a hard question, i mean, i think that, you know, at least quick, i think there’s a lot of fear of, well, we talked about fear of failure, failure, feeling starting, goingto talks a lot about that. I mean, i think that i think that it’s, it’s a you know, we don’t spend a lot of time working on our dreams, i don’t think we’re necessarily feel like we’re supposed to work on our dreams working on them, but but i think a lot of people, regrettably, who spend time thinking about them and not working on them and not executing well, i mean it’s difficult to figure out where your dreams fit into, you know, your life and your responsibilities and all these sorts of things. And so i think that there it’s, at least to me where where i have been, where things have gone the best is when i i talked myself into taking the first step or told somebody i was going to take the first step before i was ready to you know, even with generosity day, i specifically remember emailing folks, some of whom i knew well on someone why didn’t know saying we’re launching generosity day on monday. You know, sorry, it’s, only two days away would love your help and my hands, you know, physically kind of shaking, which is a crazy thing, because as a friend said to me, you know, friend ah, a woman named kathryn casey, who works in ghana for accufund it’s just longer, which is expanding into west africa on dh she’s, you know, went there with a suitcase in a laptop to open up our office, you know, raised five million dollars and execute a few investments, and she and in the email supports it looked the worst thing that happens is that you’re more generous for a day and that’s it right? But this idea of i’m goingto tell people this thing is gonna happen and it’s not, and i think it’s a fear of embarrassment, a fear of failure, fear of, you know, looking silly, but the thing is that people are very, very short memories on dso, and what happens is when what i at least have found is each time that i’ve done something that i found terrifying, the first thing that happens is, you know, whether it’s somebody like catherine casey whether it’s our ceo is jacqueline novogratz, whether it’s, seth gordon, whether it’s, my wife, people, the first thing that happens that people who are close to you and people who love you and want to see you succeed bolster you and push you and encourage you and try to help you because we recognize how rare it is this this this opportunity to do something really special? So going public great idea you you’re suggesting on public may not be necessarily blogging it to the world, but going public with maybe just ah, trusted mentor or or a spouse? Absolutely just, you know, the best way i’ve found to talk myself into doing something is telling five people that i’m doing it before i’m really ready to do it. S o i think often we just need to start, we need to fail really often we need to have lots and lots of ideas, most of which are bad, and we get into the habit of finding out that bad ideas don’t cause any heart on more often without they lead us to good ideas. And so what do you dream about? I mean, i dream i dream. About a lot of things, you know, i really dream within the context of acumen fund that we will, you know, we have pioneered a new idea that seemed to completely crazy in the beginning and now there’s an asset class around impact investing of, you know, almost two hundred funds. J p morgan to say it could be a trillion dollar asset class, which is exciting to us, but on ly exciting, inasmuch as tens of millions and hundreds of millions of low income people can’t have the opportunity to live better lives. S o we dream about having a global footprint expanding into ten geography is by twenty fifteen and really demonstrating that there is an opportunity for patient capital, a zey mainstream opportunity to solve large scale social problems and, you know, that’s what? I mean, that is really a thing that i wake up every day trying teo chip away at i’m trying to help make happen. You want to share something on the personal side, you know, my wife is gonna have a baby in about ten days, so it’ll be our third and, you know, knock on what it will be. Ah, as wonderful. As the first two of them congratulations. Thank you. I’ve been with sashadichter he’s, the director of business development for the act for acumen fund, a document fundchat or ge, also a very popular an inspirational blogger and speaker, you’ll find him at sashadichter dot wordpress dot com social. Thank you very much for going on the show. Thanks very much, it’s been a pleasure having you next week legislative look out perry wasserman of five o one see strategies of communications and lobbying firm in washington, d c will be with me. We’re going to talk about what’s happening in congress and the white house around non-profits and charitable giving. I hope you’ll listen next week with perry wasserman. Keep up with what’s coming up from the show. Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page. Facebook dot com tony martignetti non-profit radio while you’re there, click like please become a fan of the show, you know that you can find us on itunes subscribe automatic downloads, of course, listen, any time, any place on the device of your choice, you’ll be directed to our itunes page by going to non-profit radio dot net non-profit radio. Dot net, the creative producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio, is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz. Our social media is by regina walton of organic social media, booker t and the mgs composed our theme music. We’re grateful to them for doing that. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Hope you’ll listen. Next friday, one to two p, m eastern, always found at talking alternative broadcasting right here at talking alternative dot com. Dick tooting. Getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network because get in. Dahna cubine 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. 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Whillans i really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up dahna is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two, eight sixty five nine to nine xero, or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com talking.