Karolle Rabarison, Laura Guzman, Leana Mayzlina & Aparna Kothary: The Essential Craft Of Leaving Your Job
This provocative panel shares their real stories to inspire you if working at your job, isn’t working for you. They recommend you leave well, and share their advice for your handover plan along with tips for setting up your successor or team for future success. They also help you manage your emotions. They’re Karolle Rabarison from Online News Association; Laura Guzman at DevGlobal; Leana Mayzlina with The Aspen Institute; and Aparna Kothary, an independent consultant. (This was recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)
Kim Snyder, Lauren Feldman Hay, Jonathan Gellar: Data Privacy
Kim Snyder, Lauren Feldman Hay and Jonathan Gellar remind you of the fundamental principles of data privacy, as Jonathan reveals his tragic story of data not adequately protected. They encourage all of us to be good data stewards. Kim is from RoundTable Technology. Lauren and Jonathan are with Fountain House. (This is also from 24NTC.)
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of tetrachromacy if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, returning to the 2024 nonprofit technology conference, we’ve got the essential craft of leaving your job. This provocative panel shares their real stories to inspire you if working at your job isn’t working for you. They recommend you leave well and share their advice for your hand over plan along with tips for setting up your successor or team for future success. They also help you manage your emotions. There are Carol Robberson from online news association, Laura Guzman at DEV Global Leanna Masina with the Aspen Institute and Aparna Kari, an independent consultant then data privacy, Kim Snyder, Lauren Feldman, Hay and Jonathan Geller remind you of the fundamental principles of data privacy. As Jonathan reveals his tragic story of data not adequately protected. They encourage all of us to be good data stewards. Kim is from Roundtable Technology. Lauren and Jonathan are with Fountain House on Tony’s take two. If he can go to the gym were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is the essential craft of leaving your job. Welcome back to the Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are all convened together in community at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. Our continuing coverage is sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for non profits with me for this conversation are Carol Robson, Laura Guzman, Leanna Masina, and Aparna Kari. Carol is director of communications at the online news association. Laura Guzman is director of Communications at DEV Global Leanna Malina is a senior project manager at the Aspen Institute and Aparna Kari is in an independent consultant. Carol. Laura Leanna Aparna, welcome. Welcome. You can talk into the mic. Yes, thank you. Yes, we’re sharing. It might be some jokes might be a little loud because we’re sharing. There are three microphones and four people, but I did not want to four guests. I, I make five but we didn’t, I did not want to sacrifice this sub just because there’s one mic, fewer than there are a number of panelists. So we’re gonna make it work because nonprofit radio perseveres and they all know each other very well. And so we’re sharing it’s communal and it’s gonna work perfectly because the important topic is the essential craft of leaving your job. All right, let’s start at the far end from where I am with Aparna. Ok. What was the genesis of this topic? What brought the four of you together around leaving your job? I might ping it to Carol as our fearless leader and panel organizer if that’s ok. Ok, Carol, you were the impetus for this. Please tell us why. Yeah. So I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions. I’ve had the experience of leaving a call jobs. Uh, one time with something lined up another time without anything lined up. And in the past year I took a leave a few months leave from my current work. And this happened at the same time that three other colleagues out of a team of 12 were also going on leave within a few months and we had a leadership transition. So the question of how do you leave your job? Well, when do you do that? What do you need to do everything from, um, the sort of very tactical pieces of that process to just how you feel about it has been keeping me up at night or getting me up in the morning, maybe both? Ok. And, and how did you uh convene these three? Uh, well, I just, I, Laura and I know each other from, I think we met at a conference years and years ago and sort of, you know, connected and had followed each other’s work over time. And, um, we caught up recently and I learned that she had recently left a job and I thought that’s perfect because I’m looking for people who had been in an organization for several years and um wanted to invite people to share their stories and use that as part inspiration, part provocation to invite other folks to think about conversations with their team and conversations with themselves about these transitions. Yeah. Your session descriptions, talks about inspiration and provocation. Yeah. Um And then from there, Laura introduced me to Liana and a partner and I recently met a couple of weeks ago. I think we recently connected. Um So, yeah. OK. So let’s turn to Laura. I want each of you to tell your stories. Inspiration provocation. Laura, why don’t you begin? That’s a, that’s a big one. But I’ll start with the role that I most recently left, which was uh I had spent about six or seven years at a nonprofit that I loved and continued to love and support, but realized that my road was kind of running out and I was in a leadership role and a moment of a lot of transition within the leadership of the organization itself. So it was pretty tricky and emotionally loaded, I would say. So I left in September and shortly thereafter, I heard from Carol to speak on this. Prior to that, I’ve kind of left roles in different ways and overseen a lot of transition. So I came at this with a deep care for wanting to talk about how we can do it well and how we can build cultures that support individuals and kind of the resilience of the organization. So you’re saying in your last role, there was a leadership void, but your road wasn’t uh wasn’t toward those leadership positions. I wouldn’t say that there was a void, but we had, we had someone leave for health reasons which just kind of precipitated a few years of just a lot of transition and shifting and changing. We were experimenting with co leadership, which was really powerful for us. I had a co deputy director at the time that I adored working with and I saw myself, the organization kind of going in slightly different directions in terms of my own interests and knew that the best thing for me was to figure out how to exit. And also honestly, the best thing for the ORG was to figure out how for me to exit. So I think it all came from a place of growth and longer term resilience, but it was still, you know, emotionally tough to leave a place I cared about for. So long, yeah, we’ll talk some about the emotions. Leanna please. My most recent transition was about a year ago. I had been at N 10 for almost eight years and left for a new role at the Aspen Institute. Um And, you know, in, in reflecting on sort of all of the prior transitions as well, I realized that in pretty much every single role I’ve held, I’ve been the first person in that role, meaning there were no transition documents for me. Um I was on boarding myself, I was creating a new role for myself. I was sort of establishing what the responsibilities are, what the structure is, cetera. And it made me much more mindful of how I wanted to leave a role um to make sure that my successor in whatever role I might be in actually has some documentation, has some tracking of relationships um so that they’re set up for success when they step in and they understand what the sort of the expectations are. Um the goals are and everything that sort of comes with the role that’s very altruistic of you to be concerned about your successor. I don’t know, I don’t know how common that is. Maybe it’s more common than I realize, but still altruistic Aparna. Yeah, I had a transition about a year and a half ago where I left an organization where I was for 10 years. So just taking stock of the responsibility of all of that information. Similarly just was the only person in the role, didn’t have anybody to necessarily hand off that role to at the time. And so I just, I was interested in this topic because I think there’s so much to say about how you, how you leave. Well, but how you take care of yourself as you’re leaving. I just think it’s so important because we do care about the mission in the organizations and I think sometimes it happens at the expense of our own well being. Um And I just, yeah, so 10 years long time, the organization love the people of the organization. I think also just the perception of leaving a place that you love can feel like what am I missing? Who said this in the panel? But what’s underneath and sometimes there’s nothing, sometimes it’s very personal. But I think there’s just such so much conversation that happens around someone leaving after a long time, Carol. Do you want to share more detail of your story? You just said you had left and been in transition and felt strongly about what, what would share more. So we’re going through a lot of transitions. So some of the, some of the challenges they were just really tactical on a small team and you have four out of 12 people who are not going to be in the roles over the course of six months. Um And they hold a lot of responsibilities and then you have um a transition at the, you know, top leadership level as well. And so some of these challenges are just figuring out what documentation do you need. How do you, how do I talk to my boss about who’s going to cover these things when I’m not there? Um Again, altruistic, I don’t, I don’t know how many people think about what’s going to happen after they leave, they just leave and they figure that’s the organization’s responsibility. It’s not mine. I was leaving temporarily. So I went on, I went on parental leave for three months and we had four, taking those leaves at the same time that we had people leaving permanently at the leadership level, including my boss. So, um so, yeah, and, you know, being in the coms role, I’ve had to think through, um it’s not just handing off my, my role that works across the organization, but also thinking about helping other folks communicate about those transitions that they’re going through. Um So that, that was been top of mind in the past year. The other little piece um in my story that has sort of stuck with me and why I think why this keeps coming up is that at one point, I had a manager who from day one told me, you know, you’re here for a reason and this is, you know, we’re going to have this working relationship for a set time and all I want to know is when you’re ready to go. I don’t, I don’t want it to be a surprise and I didn’t believe that at the time is this person actually serious. You know, I, I would never just go to my manager and say I’m looking to leave my job. Um, but they really were serious and over time we built a kind of relationship where, um, I was able to go to them and say, you know, here are some of my goals here. Um Here are some things that I’m interested in. Can you help me talk about the impact of my work in this organization with other people beyond this work? Um And that, that stayed with me so strongly and that’s sort of how I work with folks that I manage now and why I feel so um why I feel so strongly about needing to have these conversations even when you’re not, you don’t even know yet that you’re ready to leave and building the kind of um the kind of culture, the kind of team where people are OK, talking about it that you’re not going to be there forever. You all call this in your session description, a handover plan. The handover plan is that does that is that put into place before a person is thinking about leaving? If it’s for like, like uh almost like a job description, there’s a handover plan when the person is not anticipating leaving, we were mostly um we were mostly talking about the, the plan for when you are leaving, like when you’re ready to go. So the, the session today, um, we split it between, here’s some things to think about to build the kind of team that can handle these kind of transitions. Well, before you even know that you want to go and then we sort of dove into the tactical pieces of, ok, you know, you want to go. here are some things to consider. When um who do you tell, when do you tell them, how much detail do they need? What kind of documentation do you need to put together? And I know a partner has done pretty extensive memos around the work that she led. Ok. Well, I mean, we’re not just going to talk about what you talked about, we’re going to talk about the details that because you’re not going to hold back on nonprofit radio listeners, I’m not gonna have that happen. So we’re not just gonna say, well, this is what we talked about, but we’re actually gonna talk about it. So, Aparna, are you the right person to start off with? This is, so this is what goes into your, your, your handover plan. Is that what we’re talking about? We identified some resources that folks might want to think about putting together before they leave. Some things we talk about were a succession plan, not just for leadership, but for people across the organization, regardless of position. What happens if you leave? What are the things that people need to know more concretely? We talked about an exit memo and different elements to consider an exit memo that are big picture and zoom in on the details and to make sure, yeah, you can hand something over and I don’t know if it’s altruistic. I think that even the fact that we’re having this session is unique to the sector. I think if it was more in the corporate world, it’s like more traditional, not traditional, but just outside of the nonprofit sector, I think you’re right. People do, they leave and they give notice and they’re out. But I think it’s just inherent in our sector that we care about the organizations and the mission and the people beyond just ourselves. And so maybe that is ultra, I don’t know, but I feel like there are so many people in the room, so we’re not alone in how we’re thinking. And so I think that carries forward to the resources that we put together. It’s for, we’ve been in position where we were handed nothing. And so thinking about, ok, someone walking into this role, what do they need to know about the things I’ve set up? So let’s talk about what the things are. What are those things? Ok. In the weeds. I would say things like contractors and consultants we’ve worked with before. How did it go? Would we work with them? Again? What went? Well, what didn’t, where did they leave off? We did a review. Are there introductions to these people if they like you at the time that you’re now, now we’re, now we’re hypothesizing. Now you’re getting ready to leave you, you’ve given your notice, you’re leaving in a month or six weeks or you know, whatever. Um Are there, are there introductions made to these vendors, consultants people you work with on the still live or potentially will need to be reactivated in the next year. So introductions to colleagues making sure people have the information. So the way I split my exit memo up was strategy initiatives and tools and in the initiatives, it was like, what are all the things that we’re doing now that still needs to be carried forward? So for example, we were rolling out our cybersecurity plan, password manager, like fishing, testing, like all kinds of things that we’re doing with a partner. So I hand that relationship over. So all the initiatives that are happening and then the tools we went into. What’s the tool? How do we use it? How much is it? When does it get renewed? Do I think we should use it again or what, what else is in there in the world? And then the strategy was the big picture around what’s the history of our technology program where, what’s what’s the future recommendations I have around staffing? How do I think it should be staff, if I could wave a magic wand a little bit, it’s like visioning. If I could wave a magic wand and you had all the money in the world and here’s what I think you should do. And here’s maybe a middle tier version of that, but big picture initiatives and tools for what I covered. And this is a written document as well. Do you have conversations with the successor? I guess if the successor is known, you’re able to make these introductions. We just talked about the successor is not known, this was more of a shared resource. Uh Laura, did you have contribution? That’s Laura, I’m sorry. Um Leanna, did you uh did you have contributions to the to the handover plan? My handover plan was pretty similar to Parnas. The one thing I would add is my role was or has been in many different organizations, very engaged with community organizations and partners. And so in addition to sort of handing off the relationship, a lot of relationship tracking. So, um you know, writing down the names of all of the community members that were engaging or the community partners and giving some background information, not just like this is the mission, this is the person, this is their email, but some context around this person never responds to emails. You have to pick up the phone or this person is really busy. Don’t ask them for anything unless it’s really critical and then they will step up. So just providing some context and then some historical knowledge of that relationship because people don’t, they don’t love it when someone new steps in and they have no idea about their importance or their relevance. So filling them in on this person has been in the community for 10 years and this is all the ways that they’ve engaged with us. And this is why they’re critical and this is who they partner with. So that relationship management piece um is really important. And then, you know, we, we’ve also talked quite a bit about how the handover document is one thing, but ideally in our organizations, we’re creating all of these, not specifically the exit memo, but a lot of the documentation during our time there when we’re not even thinking about leaving. So documenting how we do certain processes where possible building in redundancy. So like having someone shadow you when you do something so that if you have to step out, someone else can step in um making sure that you’re not working in a complete silo, which I know is really hard in a small organization because everyone is so busy, but just as much as possible trying to build in some crossover. And um like a partner, I was saying sort of succession planning where like once a year you sit down, you look at, you know, your job description, the responsibilities you have, who can back you up and just making sure that’s up to date because at any point, even if you’re not planning on leaving, anything could happen and you really want to leave, not just the organization a good place back to the altruism comment, but also you want to make sure that the people that you’re supporting, like the community and the partners and you know, your fellows, in my case, you want to make sure that they don’t get dropped and they feel supported in the transition. Did you Leanna, did you meet the person who was going to take your place? Take your job? I knew the person but I did not know they were going to take my role. So they were the person who ended up in my role and is currently in my former role, was a fellow. So I had connected with her as a fellow, which was awesome because she was the right person. She knew the programming, but we didn’t get to do a handover just because, you know, that hiring process took time. And so all there was at that point was sort of documentation. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world. And in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to the essential craft of leaving your job. Laura, do you have anything to add to the to the holdover plan guidelines? I think kind of the direction Lena was taking it of there is that document I put together plenty of shared Google Docs as I was exiting. But ideally, that’s just kind of the icing on top. And ideally you’re building on a culture where it is just normal to keep things documented and to work in the open is a value that we had of, I’m not supposed to be working in a document that only I have access to because I eventually want my colleagues to be able to feed in whether it’s to contribute or just to understand and be able to check in. So I think again, circling back to the initial question of why even this topic, I think places that are resilient and healthy places to work often are places where it’s OK and normalized to leave because we’re individuals with vibrant lives and vice versa. A place that feels like awesome Carol’s moving on to something new. That’s fantastic. Probably also has already existing. A lot of processes like the redundancy Leanna is talking about or the documentation culture or just openness and frankness. So I see it all as very, I don’t know, connected to well being of people and organizations. I still think that’s altruism. Laura, did you, did you know who your successor was going to be? And did you talk to that person about the job? I didn’t, I was in a co leadership role at the time, like I mentioned, so I knew that she would be taking forward a lot of things, but I didn’t meet my immediate successor yet. Did anyone, did anyone ever in any job? Never? Ok. I don’t know. I was wondering if that would be awkward but, but you’re all so generous and altruistic that it might not be awkward at all. Um OK. Well, we don’t know, we, we’ll just say that it wouldn’t be awkward because you have the, you have the best interests of the organization in mind as well as your own best interests. That’s why you’re departing, right? Ok. Ok. Um Have we said everything about the Hold the, um, thinking of the movie, the movie The Holdovers? So I was thinking of Paul Giamatti and the Holdovers, the, the Academy Award nominated movie that the handover plan. Have we said everything that you said in the session about the handover plan? Did we leave anything out? Ok. I don’t want nonprofit radio listeners to get short shrift. We covered the handover plan. Well, we created a couple of templates and gather some resources that are related to that documentation piece. And so we did share that out with attendees on the collaborative notes for the session. Um just as an example of what we’re talking about to make it, would that be possible to share with the public or it’s just, is that like just through the NTC 24 NTC app, it’s in the app. But I mean, if someone listening to this wanted to reach out to one of us, I’m sure we can just send a link and I think the URL is public anyway, so anyone can access it. OK. So what would you search for N 10? I think there’s usually after NTC, a list of all the collaborative notes from the sessions, but I don’t know the Exactly right. Right. OK. Yeah, because I saw it for last year’s 2023. Right. So if you go to N ten.org and you look up 24 NTC, you’ll find the list of publicly available resources there because I know it’s available from last year’s so. Alright. Um Checklist of what I’m just drawing from your session description. I’m not imposing these things on you. You, this is I’m taking from you sample checklist of what to address in your job handover. Well, we kind of covered that. Yeah. Right. Right. OK. I wanna make sure we cover everything, tips for setting up your team or successor for success. Yeah, we talked about that. Alright, but we’ve only been talking for like 23 minutes and we did a 60 minute session. The emotions. Thank you. Yes, the emotions how to leave. Well, let’s um ok, uh Laura, you brought up, you mentioned emotions. So why don’t you? I suspect that I would get caught. You volunteered. You were gracious enough to volunteer the idea. So thank you for sharing. Well, I mean, I hope my lovely folks here in because what I realized actually through the process of getting ready for this panel was that the emotions I had to deal with were my own, were my own fears that I decided after a long period of deliberation that I needed to leave and not directly to another role, which is sometimes harder to talk about. It’s easy to say, look, I’m going to this really cool shiny place. It’s a little harder to say, I’m going to my couch now, like I’m going to rest and recharge and all of that, Lena, you had that because you were, you knew where you were going to the Aspirin Institute at the time you left. So you experienced that, right? Yeah. So I had the first step for me was validating my own feelings and recognizing that going to nothing, going to rest, going to myself was valid. And once I got past that. There was a lot of concern about how is my co deputy director going to take this? I love working with her. If I could, I would work with her forever. I don’t want her to feel bad. How is the rest of the leadership going to feel? How is the team going to feel? And that’s all on me, that’s all on the person who’s ruminating on these things more so than the actual departure. Guilt. It sounds like departure, guilt. Yeah, I think we talked about guilt and shame as well, particularly perhaps in the nonprofit sector where folks have a sense of identity and like uh see themselves as their work or their work as themselves and take it very personally. So for me, the biggest bit was my own emotions that anybody else want to share about. I’m not going to call anybody, anybody else want to share about the emotions they felt in the, in the transition for themselves, for the for family, pressure from family, friends, a partner, I think similar to what you’re saying, I think I realized so many of my emotions around it were not misplaced but blown out of proportion by myself. Like when I actually announced that I was leaving and people were really happy for me. Like I, I just, I had assumed that I don’t know what I assumed the worst, right? You assume the worst you hope for the best, but they were such on opposite ends of the spectrum that end up being, ended up being really great, I think for me, because I was taking a leap to not another organization to independent consulting. I think there was just a lot of fear and it was a realization of how much of my own self worth I had tied up into having a job like a traditional 40 hour a week job. And I was like, who am I? If I don’t do that? Am I worth worth less to who? I don’t know. It just now that in retrospect, when I think about it, it feels silly. But at the moment, at the time, I was like, I don’t know any other way and it felt like a huge leap to say, I want to try something different. So it was more, you’re right. It’s so much internal pressure. And once you make that decision, once you announce it, Carol is talking about a comms plan of like, who do you tell first? And then who do you tell? And what’s that whole list? And I feel like with each little bit of telling, it feels a little bit more freeing and like, oh, this is real and it’s ok and life will go on, someone will get hired and the work will happen and it’ll be fine, Leanna Yeah, that I think, you know, announcing it to or sharing it with your colleagues, some will take it well and encourage you and others might not take it well. And part of my learning was that if someone did not take it well, or they felt like why are you abandoning us? This is your loyalty is here. You know. But I think we think about nonprofits as like family, we’re going to be here forever. And so even I think unintentionally sometimes someone’s first reaction might be like, but why I don’t understand, it just doesn’t compute even if eventually they get to a place of like, I’m happy for you. I get it. But I think for me, it was a learning to, like in the beginning, I was very much trying to manage their feelings and justify and be like, wait, wait, wait. But don’t be sad. But let me explain, but let me make you feel better. And then at a certain point, I realized that wasn’t really up to me. It was not my responsibility. I still as a good colleague and friend wanted to be there for folks, but I couldn’t really control what was going on for them. You know, they might have, I don’t know, maybe they were also wanting to leave and they felt like a little, I don’t know who knows what they call survivor guilt, right? And so it’s hard because you feel like I’m the one that’s creating the hurt. So I also need to manage the hurt, but really it’s not up to you to do that. And it’s hard, it’s hard to sort of set that boundary and be like, I understand where you’re coming from. And also I can’t, I can’t fix this feeling for you. Emotion, Carol, we talked a little bit about, I mentioned the coms plan maybe because I have my coms hat on, but we talked a little bit about um actually having a huddle and thinking through and writing out here’s, here’s who needs to know about this internally. And before a public announcement goes out, here’s who needs to about this, what level of detail, um what level of detail or context that they need to know how is it going to be delivered to them? And so what we found is that sometimes for, for one person, it might be that it needs to be a phone call or one on one conversation with someone you worked really closely with for a very long time. And it would be really shocking if they found this in a public announcement, even though you hadn’t been in touch with them the past year. For other folks, it might be, it might just be a group email. You, you were in touch with this organization at one point in Fy, I, you know, um the transition is happening in this role and, but in all of that, I think you can, you can do a lot of homework and planning how you share it. But in the end, humans are humans and they will really surprise you and sometimes they will surprise you and how supportive they are and how, you know, they, they help you navigate some of those questions that you’re struggling with yourself and sometimes they really might just not take it very well. Um And I think so you can do your homework, but in the end, humans will be, humans will be humans. And that is, that’s not on you. And you know, it’s not your responsibility to figure out how um how the role is going to be filled once you’re gone. I think we’re taking on. We feel like it’s our responsibility to leave it well, but it’s not on us to chart out what it looks like beyond our time there. I think one thing we don’t talk about enough and even I am guilty of hiding. This part is I made the decision to leave when I was on parental leave and that happens to so many people. It’s such a monumental change in your life. And I think there’s so much shame attached with like, oh my gosh, but I owe them X amount of time, whoever it is or I have to go back. I don’t want people to think this is what happens when you go out on parental leave that you don’t come back. And there’s so much complexity that goes into that. But we don’t honor the actual huge change in your life that it feels like for some people. And I think we live on Congress may repeal parental leave. If I abuse, if I abuse it, it may, it may be withdrawn from the nation if I Yeah, maybe like it will affect the policy. The ORG policy. I’m like, you don’t want people to you. And then at the end of the day, I was like, but it’s, it’s my life. I have this one beautiful life to live and I don’t want to make stay for the wrong reason. I want to be there and I want to be present. And so I made the decision kind of halfway into my leave and I didn’t just not go back. I went back part time. I phased out there’s ways to do it with care and compassion that you feel. So it wasn’t betrayal to myself. But I think we just, it feels like an all or nothing like you have your leave and you go back and you just pretend nothing happened in your life. And I think in this age of social media, I was looking at so many people that do that and I did that with my first kid and this is my second kid. And I was like, I don’t want to repeat that for myself. It had to be such an individual decision. And I was like, oh, but all these other people, they can do everything and they’re so happy and they make the home cooked meals and they work outside the home and why can’t I cut it? That is what I asked myself and I had to really let go of that. It’s not me, this is such an individual decision and we owe it to ourselves to really think about it as carefully as possible. Anyway, I didn’t want to not mention that. Thank you. I’m glad you did. Thank you. What about the role of family, friends? Is that, uh is that important? I mean, a lot of you are saying that it’s in, well, you’re all saying it’s individual so you don’t not that you need the support. You, you’re, you’ve made the choice for yourselves. Um And you’re, and you’re learning, you come to respect it but family and friends, any, any role, uh doesn’t really matter what they think you can say that I don’t want to put out a directive that you must discuss with your family and friends. I think, you know, we all have different kinds of relationships and, um you know, I have friends who are peer mentors in a way that, you know, people that I can discuss some of these transitions or questions with, um, in a way that’s really where I can be really safe and vulnerable because they’re not in, you know, involved in the work that I’ve invested in. Um And I’m sure there’s a lot of conversations with families about what it means if you’re, especially if you’re leaving without something. Um one thing that came up towards the end of the session is someone, uh, one of the folks who were there, asked, you know, did you have a, was there a particular thing that made you realize I got to go like this is the moment and I raised my hand and I was like, very easy. I’ve left a job because of money and, you know, if I, if I can’t, um, you know, if I don’t see a way that that can change at all, that’s, that’s me sacrificing something for myself and for my family. So Rihanna, we also talked about how not all um situations leaving a job are by choice. Sometimes leaving a job is also because you’re getting laid off, right? Um And in that case, like you can’t really prepare for it necessarily by talking to your family and friends. But um having been through a layoff, like your friends and your family are your number one support system. Um And it is so critical to be able to lean on those people to sort of figure out both from a logistical aspect like your finances and your insurance and all of that, but also just the mental and emotional support of how to deal with um leaving a job when you’re also like, have maybe even more feelings about it than you would had you made the choice on your own. Ok. How about a closing remark? Uh Carol will let you book in since you were, you were the impetus for this. You kicked us off. Uh Leave us with uh some closing thoughts on the essential craft of leaving your job of leaving your job. I love how you call it a craft too. You could, you could have chosen art. I don’t know if you consider it art. Uh But anyway, you chose craft, the craft of leaving your job. Leave us, leave us with some closing thoughts. And then um I guess my main thing is talk about it, talk about it, talk about it from day one and towards the end of the recession, a few people came up and um some folks said, oh, I’m, I’m thinking about leaving my role. You know, I, I’m so glad I sat through this. Another person said, I just left a role that was not working out and sitting here felt so healing to be together with other folks who are sharing about their experience and speaking with us. So I think um in the lead up to this session, I had connected with other folks about it as well and even arriving here when people would ask, oh, like, are you presenting? And I would mention this is the session that I was, um I was speaking on. Most people had a pretty strong reaction to it. Like I think we just don’t talk about it enough. So, um you know, sit with yourself and, and think about it for yourself, but also talk about it with your team as you build out those teams. Thank you. That’s Carol Robison, Director of Communications at the online news Association with her is Laura Guzman, Director of Communications at DEV Global. Also Leanna Malina, senior project manager at the Aspen Institute and Aparna Kari, independent consultant. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you for sharing. Thank you all. So that’s you’re gonna leave us book ended. You remember I was like, I’m gonna stop talking. People have better things to say than me. Thank you all very much. And thank you for your, for being with us for the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for non profits. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. It’s time free break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more its time for Tonys T to thank you, Kate. There’s a new Jim guy. Uh I’ve been overhearing. Uh I haven’t seen the previous gym guy, I’m sure he’ll be back. The one who, uh, gave me the, the lesson in motor boat, uh, engine troubleshooting and, um, the, uh, narration for the Blue Angels, uh Memorial Day show. I haven’t seen him, seen or heard him. I haven’t heard him lately. He hasn’t been in the same time that I go, but there’s another guy a little loud, you know, loud, uh, older easily. I’d say 75 or so. Uh And he has recently been diagnosed. Uh, of course, I’m learning this as I’m forced to listen to him at the gym with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Now, I knew right away idiopathic means the, the doctor can’t determine the cause. It’s just an unknown cause and pulmonary fibrosis, I wasn’t so sure about. So I, I mean, obviously I knew with lungs, pulmonary lungs, but uh, so idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, they don’t know the cause but your lungs thicken and harden. Uh and, and they sort of grow these fibers, they become fibrous and lung tissue is supposed to be uh loose and expandable and contractible and flexible and permeable. So he’s got a serious and it’s a serious disease. Um, he comes to the gym with a supplemental oxygen tank, he’s got a tank strapped across his shoulder like a, like a woman might wear a, a purse in a crowded subway or, you know, in a, in a busy uh in, in a busy city, you know, like, so you don’t want it to be taken off your shoulders. You’d wear it across your shoulder. And that’s the way he wears his supplemental oxygen tank. And I was thinking if this guy with a supplemental oxygen tank can get himself to the gym and he’s working his ass out, he works on a bike. Uh, that, that seems to be all, that’s all I saw him doing. I think that’s all he does. He’s on a bike, but this guy’s got supplemental oxygen and he’s, he’s pushing himself to get to the gym and work out. So I think if idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis guy can get to the gym, we all can do some form of exercise, whether it’s go to a gym or run or yoga or even meditation is exercise. What, whatever it is, pick your, pick your workout, free weights, Pilates, whatever, Peloton, whatever it is. If this guy can work out, I think he’s an inspiration for all of us. And that Stony take two Kate. Now, I feel inspired to go to my Monday yoga class. Now, I wish it was tonight. I’m gonna go do yoga now. You, well, maybe there’s two classes a week you can go to. Now, I gotta figure out if there’s Thursday night yogas. All right. Do it. It working out if, if this guy can do it, any of us can. We’ve got vuko but loads more time here is data privacy. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit. Radio coverage of the third day of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference you might be able to hear in my voice just a little bit that this is the third day we’re sponsored at 24 NTC by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. For this conversation are Kim Snyder, vice president of data strategy at Roundtable Technology, Lauren Feldman Hay, the Chief Information Officer at Fountain House, and Jonathan Geller, a member of Fountain House, Kim Lauren, Jonathan, welcome, welcome to nonprofit radio. You’ve done your session already? Have you or is it this afternoon? Ok. Ok. Very good. First day you took care of it. So maybe we’ll talk about some of the questions perhaps that emerged from there. We’re gonna talk about a little more privacy. Please diving into data privacy for nonprofits. Jonathan, let’s start down the end with you seated. Uh furthest from me. Well, you know who you are, but for the folks, uh folks who don’t have the advantage of video, Jonathan is seated uh furthest. Why do we need this? Why do we need the session, Jonathan, what, what was the impetus for this? Well, for me, uh being a member of Fountain House, uh first of all, something that I that I’ve been screaming, screaming about from the mountain top for over 20 years is data privacy just personally. So once I became a member of Found House and I saw how seriously they treated my data. It was, it was refreshing. All right. So you, you, you saw the impact of uh Fountain House’s scrutiny, scrupulousness, scrupulousness, not scrutiny. Um Alright, so Lauren, why don’t you share a little bit about what, what fountain house is about and uh why, why you are so scrupulous about your members data. So um Fountain House is an organization um that was one of the first uh the first clubhouse for folks with serious mental illness. Um It was formed by members um for members and so staff and members work really closely alongside each other, which means that members and staff um work with member data. And um and we want to make sure that members and staff um know about data privacy and know why it’s important um especially when dealing with really sensitive personal information for folks. Um And I guess, yeah, that would sum it up. We’ll go into more detail. That’s a good, that’s a good kick off. Thank you. And um Kim, can you uh add your your perspective to the, to the overview the why for the topic? Um Well, besides for the fact that data privacy protects data that belongs to people, and I think that’s what we need to remember. There have been numerous data privacy regulation, numerous laws passed in, in states and we’re seeing an increasing number of that, of those kinds of laws. So it does speak to something that nonprofits need to think about being compliant with or being able to answer to at a time when people are thinking about their own privacy more and might be asking questions about it. Privacy is very aligned on in terms of ethics with a lot of nonprofits and nonprofit values and very human centered approach to data. But now it is entering the kind of we’ll call it regulatory world. Um So I think it does need to, it, it has implications for how nonprofits work with data, the regulatory world. So you’re referring to the pi i the personally identifiable information and, and states, I mean, there are a lot of states that are enacting laws uh that what we’re referring to. Yeah, they’re, they’re picking up steam because federally we haven’t been able to pass a law. So GDPR, which is the general data privacy regulation that came from the EU really created a framework for data privacy and what it means that an individual has rights to their privacy. So if I give you my data, I have certain rights, my data does not become your data. So that, that comes with certain implications and in the absence of a federal regulation, we’re seeing more states pick it up. And in 2023 7 states pass privacy laws, they’re all a little different and not all of them will cover nonprofits necessarily. But in a time when people are more privacy focused, you need to be able to answer to the kind of data practices that would allow you to comply with these regulations. Are there some state laws that exempt nonprofits? You, you just, you just mentioned some don’t apply to nonprofits. Are, are there states that exempt nonprofits explicitly? Well, I’ll say I won’t say they exempt them explicitly as well. There’s a, there are carve outs for nonprofits in some states. Yes. And because some of these laws will are more designed around higher revenue, for profit sales of data, things like that the law might apply to a certain threshold of annual revenue that a lot of nonprofits wouldn’t meet. But that said there are other laws that apply to nonprofit organizations and as we operate in a more boundary world, uh uh in terms of different states and, and also collecting data of people who live around the world in different countries, we need to be thinking about the implications of these kinds of laws. So while there may not be a law in your state, um it still is relevant because these laws cover the residents of the States and the countries um for the people whose data that you collect doesn’t, doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with where your place of business is. Also. Some of the laws also deal with that. So, so it’s based on the individual’s state of residence and uh your and or your, where you’re doing business. OK. So in other words, you need to be acquainted with what your state law is around privacy and data protection. That’s because we’re not gonna be able to, you know, we can’t, we can’t survey the whole country. You need to know what is, what applies to. But it’s also to your states where your, where your folks are, where you are. And yeah, might include donors across the country. Might include donors in Europe and other folks too. So you might not naturally think, you know, Fountain House is a New York based nonprofit, but we’re starting to do work with more clubhouses around the country. We have a history of working with clubhouses around the world. Um But when, when a lot of folks think about Fountain House data, they might first think about our own member data or employee data and having that based in New York. Um But really, you know, we are collecting data about people um donors like from, from around the country around the world. So the law would say you’re doing business in all these states where your, where your donors are. Ok. And that gives them that gives the state jurisdiction over your practices. Yeah, I’d like to add something though about um not getting too state focused but thinking of the framework that was laid out by the GDPR because all the laws are based on that. There’s some variation of GDPR thinking of that instead as a framework for trust and responsible data practices because it may not be in a state that you’re in today, but it could come and we’re in a time of more, the, the term digital trust speaks to do people trust what places are doing with their data. And I think as nonprofits, we want to be able to have the most human centered data practices and be able to answer to questions say, if a donor, um whether or not their state has a law says, you know, II I would like my data deleted. Do you want to be the nonprofit that says, well, if it’s a donor, then you legally are obligated to hold on to that data. But so that then you can say that. But if it’s just like a marketing or, or something that you’re not, you’re not legally required. Do you want to say, well, you know, you’re not from a state where that applies. So we’re not gonna do that. So it, it, you want to start thinking about this because it is and it’s the right thing to do the right thing to do. Jonathan, let’s go back to you. Take it from the organizational level to the individual. What, what were your, what were your concerns? What are your, well, you’re still concerned. Fountain House is treating you right? But other organizations, companies that you deal with may not. What are your concerns around data privacy? Well, my concerns stem from the fact that as someone that was the victim of identity theft and uh poor data practices. Um um I’m very concerned about what organizations are doing with my data. And even after being uh becoming a member of Fountain House, after dealing with my own mental health challenges, I certainly wanted to be more aware of what data was collected and what, what they’re doing with the data. Um So one, once I became a member and then within uh the unit that I’m a part of which is the research unit, we do a lot of work with other members, data, not just uh my own. So it was required that we get hi, a trained hi A certified so that we handle the data in the appropriate manner and that we treat other people’s data like our own data. Um What was your own story that uh of the the where you were victimized? Um Basically all of my information, people would just approach me and hey, this is your social security number. Hey, this is where you live and I’d be sitting there saying how did you get this information? There was some bank account stuff that happened and it all just some of that contributed to my declining mental health? I see. All right. Thank you for the personal side of this. I don’t think people think of that at all, you know, they think about the the credit report impacts the, you know, the credit worthiness impacts. Thank you. Alright. Um Lauren, let’s turn to you. For some I’m taking from your session descriptions. I’m not, I’m not imposing this on the on the three of you. That’s what you wrote up. Uh fundamental principles of data privacy. We started to touch on some, but let’s go into some detail. You’re our Chief Information Officer representative. So um like Kim said, I think starting from a culture of trust is really important, knowing the regulations, important, but also not getting overwhelmed by the amount of regulations because there are a lot and working at a nonprofit, you have limited resources, you usually have staff and constituents members who have varying levels of digital literacy and digital understanding and comfort with technology. So you have to meet people where they are. Um and, and, and have conversations about data and about keeping data secure, you know, which has a relationship to cybersecurity as well and learning about things that could compromise your data, conversations with. You’re talking about employees, volunteers, anybody who’s in touch with other people’s data. So it’s useful especially to have conversations with folks because whether you’re a new employee, be a new member, you might not know the types of information that are being gathered, the pieces of data that are being gathered to accomplish your everyday work. You know, because our organization Fountain House is complex. We’re growing, we’re growing quickly. Um We’ve been around for a long time but things change over time and, and how we process our membership. Um app applications, how we um either share information with external stakeholders or partners like health insurance, um managed care organizations that evolves and we need to have the conversations to be able to know, you know, what does this department or area of Fountain House want to do with information in order to serve folks better or outreach to more folks. Um And if you don’t have those conversations and if we don’t communicate, we don’t always know what’s going on aside from conversations. Can you share another best practice with us for, for listeners? Yeah. Um I would say um I really like documenting things in different ways because people learn in different ways and especially working in an organization where um you know, folks are at different levels of digital literacy, it really helps to have maybe like a visual a diagram um and some written documentation and then conversations uh we have a very verbal culture, I would say at Fountain House. So being comfortable with conversations, but then also having other ways for folks to learn and absorb information or go back. Um And, and see the, the documentation about, oh, now I know when I enter information into this system, it’s also used by this other system because I can see the visual connection between the two systems in this diagram. Whereas just interacting with them on the computer or on a tablet, I thought they were completely separate. So that type of thing II I found has been helpful as well. Kim. Can you add to our list of best practices for data privacy? Sure. Well, one of the things that’s really important to is to, well, first of all, getting to know what data do you collect, you can’t protect that, which you don’t know you collect. So, and it is a lot about, that’s adorable. Sort of a poem. Data privacy poem. I’ll work on a better one for you next year. Um But uh where was I? Um you can’t know how to protect what you don’t know that you? Um So, OK, so one of the things that’s really important because this is overwhelming, maybe you can come back with a haiku next year. I will do that. In fact, I’m sorry now. So, one of the things that’s really important is getting to know what data you collect. And I’ve been working with nonprofits for um 30 years and data actually got my start at Fountain House, which is interesting to be back working with them. But um um data in nonprofits tends to, tends to be by its nature rather siloed because a lot of nonprofits are program driven. So there isn’t a sense of what all do we collect? Whose data do we collect that might be sensitive. So the first real task in any of it is getting to know what data you collect. Well, how do you do that? That’s kind of for people who have a full plate. That’s, that’s a lot to also take on, right, the data inventory if you will and that is done or that is that job is made easier when you have what’s known as data stewards or different people. Departmental champions of data, they don’t have to be data analysts. There are people, in fact, sometimes it’s better if they’re not. Right. It’s more important that they know your organizations, what programs, what’s happening with programs and what’s going on in each of these different areas and departments, you kind of appoint folks as a data steward. I those are anointing with Excalibur like King Arthur and the round. I was thinking of what is uh uh from the Lady of the Lake that’s from um Monty Python, the Lady of the Lake. OK? Not like that. Um But, but you ID these, you identify them, they’re not always like the, the the program director, right? It’s people who find they have a, they kind of get along with data. You find those people, those are your gems and the fountain house. It’s, it’s, it’s so great because it’s members and staff and it’s, and those people will know your data stewards will know what you collect and you engage them in the process of understanding what you collect, understanding how data moves, right? Lauren was talking about diagrams but understanding like how do we get this data and then what happens to it and what are the steward’s responsibilities. Why are we anointing these folks? We are? Well, I don’t officially have an anointing process. That’s my word, but I encourage every organization. What do they do? What do our stewards do they get to know the data? They, um we actually have templates and things like that. These are the kinds of things we gave out in the webinar. Uh They document what it like the flow of information through their various area. It could be very specific to one program. It could be a department. Um It really depends on what their perspective is, but they there and there’s a certain template for interviewing kind of to understand mapping, start to map the structure to the flow of data through your organization. And at that point you can identify. Wow. OK. We’re collecting very sensitive information in XYZ program. OK. Wow. What are we doing with that? How do we protect that? Where is it all going? Do we share it? Do we allow people to download it to their computers? Hopefully not Jonathan. What does, what does Fountain House do specifically that you as a member? See? And that reassures you. Well, again, I’m just basing this off of my experience. Um This is as Kim was mentioning before about the data stewards. It’s something that I wasn’t anointed. The Lady of the Lake did not know it didn’t happen in a way at all. They basically said you seem to have an apt some some level of aptitude for this. So you need to get HIPAA certified. And I said, sure I’ve had experience with that in the past. Um Basically, now again, this is more from the member side, not so much the donor side. Um Anything from processing the nece uh the necessary membership applications as Lauren was mentioning before just uh inputting the data within into certain systems, sometimes migrating that data over to other systems. And then for me, what’s the most important part about it is I treat everyone’s data like I’m handling my own data and you feel like others in Fountain House do the same. I’m looking for, you know what reassures you about what they do. It’s just again, as Kim was had mentioned, just the conversations you have with people, they’ll sit there, privacy is something that’s very important to me. So they’ll sit there and due to the fact that it’s just it’s an open culture, but it’s also a respectful culture. So it’s someone sitting there saying listen, is this something you would like to talk about in private? Come here, let’s talk about this in private. So we could go over this, we could find out what to do. If you have any questions, there’s, there’s boundaries put in place and their unspoken boundaries. But it it’s I think it’s more of a respect than anything else. Respect, respect for the person and, and their data. I mean, and this could be as simple as like address. I mean, I’m thinking of maybe an animal shelter. Well, they need to have your address, they need to know where they’re placing adoptions, right. I mean, it doesn’t have to be social security number and credit cards and children’s names necessarily address and phone number, email. All of that is considered personally identifiable information and we want to make sure we protect it. Um, we in our clubhouse locations, uh we have members and staff working together with contact information of other members reaching out um conducting outreach, phone calls, emails, texts, and people take that information seriously. Um And um they want to engage with the member and they know that other members also will be engaging with their information and reaching out to them. So I think that participation, that direct participation really lends itself to both understanding why it’s important to protect information. Um because data is information, you know, it could be on paper as well. We haven’t really talked about that aspect of it. Um And, and also identifying and working with, with people’s strengths. Um That’s something that’s really important in our culture too, to identify people’s strengths and come from that approach. And, and that’s kind of a similar, a nice parallel with identifying data stewards, identifying folks who, who might be doing things and they don’t consider themselves a data person at all. Um They might be really focused on, on helping folks find employment or housing. Um And then they learn more and more about data and then, you know, a new, a new phase of their partnership and membership in Found House emerges, which is pretty cool. What came out of your uh your session? Like what, what questions that uh you remember uh were, were poignant, interesting questions or comments or comments from the audience. Uh One that stood out for me was there was a gentleman who informed us that he, he became sort of the accidental techie at his organization. And he said, how do I start this conversation? And it’s a simple question because is, is there, you know, it, it sounds like is there a specific approach, is there a way to do this? And I’ve had experience in sales and marketing in the past. So I just, it stood out to me as a very unique question because the answer is just simple. Just start talking to someone. What do you do? What’s what throughout your workflow day? What is it that you do? What is it that you handle? What is it that you come across? What do you use to? What do you use to navigate this? What do you use to complete it? Just ask a question. That’s all you have to do. And I think I was thinking of that same, that same person and that same question because a lot of times if you end up being the accidental techie or the person who’s, you know, maybe the first person to, to start talking about, about data privacy and, and the risks that we have as nonprofit organizations having lots of personal information on, on lots of different folks. And how do you, when you’re say a small nonprofit, especially where you don’t necessarily have someone in charge of operations as a whole or technology as a whole. Um How do you start having those conversations with people, you know, who aren’t necessarily on your team? They might be on a different team. Um You know, working in finance or you might be working in like marketing and like keeping all the social media accounts up to date. And so having having conversations can then help you start to have a venue like a regular, you know, meeting series where you talk about things like data privacy that maybe didn’t have a home before and then by, by having these conversations, you start to build a home for it and more and more people begin to learn about it and realize its importance. Anything else from the session that stood out comments, questions that maybe questions you weren’t anticipating. We didn’t have that much time. I will be honest um in the side because it was a full plate, let’s put it that way. Um Wish we had more time for people’s individual questions. I think one of the, I can talk about one of the takeaways that we wanted people to have and I think both Jonathan and Lauren have spoken to this already. But the idea of this is a journey and you can find a way to mesh it with your culture. This does not require lots of technical tools, getting to know your data is by and large, not a technical task. It’s one of having conversations, it’s talking to people and often people want to sit down and have these conversations and to build that knowledge base in your organization to start to, you know, educate your staff, your colleagues on this is what we collect. Well, these are kind of the policies we might wanna put in place in order to make sure that we’re handling data uh in a way that’s, you know, both respectful and enables us to get our work done. Jonathan, I’m gonna ask you to close us out as the, as the person who was uh sounds like devastated by AAA breach of, of data. So talk to our listeners in small and mid size nonprofits and remind them how important it is and what you want them to take away. I think um when you’re dealing with sensitive data again, as Kim had mentioned, no, and Lauren has mentioned, know what your data is, know what it is that you, you have your hands on and take the necessary steps to ensure that you treat others data like you would treat your own data. That’s Jonathan Geller. He’s a member at Fountain House with him is uh Lauren Feldman Hay, the Chief Information Officer at Fountain House, and Kim Snyder, Vice President of Data Strategy at Roundtable Technology, formerly of Fountain House. All right, Kim Lauren Jonathan. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you a pleasure. Thanks for having. Thanks for sharing and thank you for being with our coverage of 24 NTC where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us next week. Use your tech to enable generosity. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and go giving virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. II, I can’t get over the alliteration. Love it and I didn’t write it. You know, they write it. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our report guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 percent go out and be great.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of laryngeal FRAXs if you obstructed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, I’m on it. Gen Z career challenges. After a deeply personal episode, Ray Sherry devoted himself to helping Gen Zers like the one who saved his life with their careers. He channels his 40 years of experience in financial services and consulting to share his advice. So younger professionals take charge of their careers. Ray is CEO of Zind on Tonys. Take two more chatty gym guy were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Here is Gen Z career challenges. It’s my pleasure now to be with Ray Sherry following a liver transplant. And on learning that his donor was a young man. Ray dedicated his work to aligning young individuals with careers that amplify their innate talents. He has 40 years spanning sectors like financial services and consulting. It was recognized in the UK with the best digital start up award in 2022 for ID INFO Limited. He’s now CEO of Zind Zynd. The company is at zind.co.uk and Ray is on linkedin Ray Sharry. Welcome to nonprofit Radio Tony. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. My pleasure to have you. You need to tell us the story to get started. Uh This liver transplant was transformational, not only for your body but for your thinking too, not only for your physical body, but your, your, you, you blossomed from there into something new. I think that’s a, that’s a great way of putting it, Tony. Uh I’ll, I’ll wind the clock back a little bit. Give you a little bit of uh history. So about uh 2005, I was diagnosed with a very rare liver disease called primary sclerosing Cholangitis PSC for short. And I was informed at that time by the consultant doctor that I was working with that at some point in my life, I would need a liver transplant. So unlike many people who need organ transplants, I was given quite a long heads up as to what I would have to go through at some point in my life. But the, the unusual thing about PSC, it’s not something that you can predict how quick it will actually evolve as a disease and how quick the liver will deteriorate. So, wind the clock forward to 2020. In fact, March 2020 I was on an interim uh contract with, uh, with very good payments company here in, uh, in the UK. And the pandemic came along and everyone got locked up from, from March uh 23 March 23rd. Uh At that time, I was already um working towards a AAA major, a major goal in my life, which is actually to do an Iron Man for the very first time. I was already, I was already doing half marathons. I was already swimming over a mile and I was already cycling 75 miles on a, on a regular basis. So 2020 was going to be my breakthrough year from a, from a personal sports perspective. Um And in parallel, I was obviously looking at what can I do after spanning a career of 40 years, what can I do to help my community, help my country whilst we, whilst we go through a pandemic. And that’s when I began to think through what are the challenges that young people face. Um As I went through my own personal challenges of working towards this Iron Man, then the pandemic came and everything got canceled. So like many other people, um I had to stay at home. I had to look out for my loved ones and my friends and, uh, make sure that I wasn’t, wasn’t exposed to the, the COVID virus. Uh, like many others. Um, I continued to cycle. I continued doing my sports and that was one of the, one of the great things about, it was a great time to cycle because all the traffic disappeared from the roads around, uh, Cardiff and Wales where I live. Um And it was a great time. And later that year, uh by the time we got into the September period, there’s a, there’s a race that we do here in Cardiff. Uh It’s called what we call T 10. It’s uh it’s what we call Cardiff to Swansea. It’s 100 and eight miles in a straight line from east to west in, in South Wales. And we were due to do that uh in September, but because of the pandemic, it was canceled in October. Uh we decided as friends to go and do a cycle ride. Anyway, we were allowed to. And at the end of that October ride, I, I’d cycled 100 and 25 miles and then everything changed again within literally two weeks. Um I, I became jaundiced, I became unwell and uh I had to go and see uh my consultant to find out what was going on and it transpired that my liver had gone from regularly, you know, evolving in terms of the pace of change based on the diagnosis I had in 2005 but had gone and, and had dropped off the edge of a cliff. Um, anyone that knows anything about liver function test, my bilirubin was over 100 and 60. That’s 10 times what it should be. Normally. Um Within six weeks I had been through transplant assessment and, um, made the UK transplant list, um, December and January 2020 20 going into 2021 was incredibly difficult for me. I, I’m not really sure how I got through it but I fought um mm mainly probably because of my sports strength and my mental strength that came from all of my sports activities, uh my experience and just knowing myself and my body and, and how I was feeling. Were you in hospital at that time? December, January, you were still in hospital. I was still home. You see, you see Tony, this was the height of the pandemic in the UK. So here in the States too, that’s why I was asking if that was the time that you were in the hospital. But you, you were, you were able to stay home or, or you needed to stay home, stayed home. I, I stayed home uh through that, through that December and that January and actually I was still, I was still cycling, although I was the color of a, of a tangerine orange. I was, I was still cycling. And, uh, the weekend, the weekend before I got my first transplant called, uh, I’d been out and I’d done 25 miles with, uh, a friend and had helped relatively good. I’d, I’d had antibiotics for the infection that was causing me to feel very, very unwell. And I’d sort of recovered from that. Um, then by the end of January, which the pandemic was really, really getting to grips, uh, with, with the UK. Um I had a call from my transplant hospital to tell me that they had closed. So I’m on the waiting list for a hospital that’s 100 and 60 miles away in London. And they tell me that they’ve had to close because of the pandemic and they were transferring me as a patient to Newcastle. Now, Newcastle is a good 250 miles from where I live and it’s about 200 miles from London in particular. And I needed to go and have an assessment with the Newcastle Transplant Hospital in order for them to accept me onto their list. So I had to jump in the car literally within 24 hours drive all the way up to Newcastle through the snow, do the assessment and then wait again, I had to come back to, to cardiff and wait again. Um Literally within a week, I was back on the transplant list in London. Um The, the COVID restrictions have been lifted, things had been cleaned up and they were accepting patients again and it was literally within a week of that, that being lifted, uh which was at the end of February that I got my first call uh for um for a liver. Um I was actually out walking in the local park and they called me and said, Ray, we’ve got uh a transplant or potential transplant for you. The ambulance will be with you within the hour, You need to go home and uh pack your bags and go. So to cut a long story short on, on all of that, uh literally within 15 hours of me getting to London getting prepped, they came with the news that unfortunately the liberal wasn’t suitable for me. There were, there were challenges with it and it wasn’t suitable. So I had to turn around, jump back in the ambulance and go all the way back to Cardiff. Um You know, it’s, those are the sort of things that I was warned that would happen. And uh you know, I was feeling better than, than I had through December and January. So I, I shrugged it off said those are the things that happened and I was forewarned. So I wasn’t too concerned about it. My, my time would come in a week, a week later on the third of March, I had a call 730 in the morning and said, right, we’ve got you another liver, but we’ve got you another donor and uh we’ve checked out the donor. Everything seems good. We need to get you up to London for the transplant. So, that was the third of March. It was early in the morning. By the time I got to London it was two o’clock in the afternoon. Um, by about six o’clock, I was beginning to, you know, twiddle my thumbs. Uh I’d been playing games with the family on the, on the phone just to keep me occupied and keep them sort of, uh informed. And around about eight o’clock, I asked my first question about my donor. I said, how’s things going with the donor? And, uh there was very little information about the donor. Uh, and, and to be honest, we being very selfish and very focused on what I needed to get through. II, I didn’t really think much of my donor. I didn’t, I think I didn’t think of what the family was going through. I didn’t think my donor was going through. I, I really didn’t get paid much attention to that. I just had the focus on myself and get through what I was going to go through basically. Um, and I think in the end that was probably the right thing to do. So at one o’clock in the morning, I was taken down, um taken down to the operating theater. I, I said a little prayer, you know, just a few minutes before I asked for a minute from the nurses and just said a little prayer. And 30 seconds later, I was sort of almost hopping. Seriously. I was almost hopping. Um, quite joyful on my way down to the operating theater. I arrived there, talked to the east, the test I could see into the operating theater room. It was a great big white room, lots of machines everywhere, lots of lights everywhere. And I, I didn’t once feel anything other than this is something I need to do. And I’m really happy that I’m going through this because I’ve waited effectively 16 years since that original diagnosis in 2005. So they put me to sleep. And uh about 11 hours later, I was woken up, the consultant plays a little trick, you know, the main surgeon, he plays a little trick. He actually wakes you up for a few moments, takes out the mobile phone number that you gave the family and he calls the main contact number and he has a little conversation to say everything’s ok. The operation went very well. Let me, let me have a little chat with my mother at this point in time. Apparently I swore, which was not a good thing to do at the time, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. So they call me back to sleep and I was, I was, I was sedated for a further 24 hours. This was then um late on the fourth of March. So I’d been asleep. I’d been in the operating theater since the early hours of the fourth. Um, gone through the fourth and I woke up on the Saturday morning, um, and was, was chatting quite happily to the nurses who were still looking after me in critical care unit. I asked a question. I asked a simple question. Um, do you know anything about my donor? And no sooner had I mentioned those words? I was, I just collapsed in a pile of emotion. I didn’t know, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know his family. I didn’t know anything about him. But what struck me was the fact that he was a young man, um most likely in his twenties and through the whole course of 2020. And even before that, in 1919, I’d been working in my mind up a story up a journey, something that I wanted to do, having have a very successful career in technology for 40 years. I wanted to do something for people. I wanted to do something for my community. And it was that it was that moment thinking of my donor that it struck me that I needed to do something for young people. I needed to help young people because my donor, he wasn’t able to reach his full potential in his life. Therefore, it’s something that I needed to do for him and in his memory and for the for for as many young people that I could possibly do. Thank you for sharing. Uh That’s, that’s a, that’s a moving story. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtues believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers, responsive. Fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow, impact virtuous.org. Now back to Gen Z career challenges. So that led you then to Zind and you are taking advantage of the, your 40 plus years and you’re helping young folks embark on and, and grow their careers. Yes, that’s absolutely right. I had been harboring in my mind. These are the sorts of things that you uh you have taken over in your mind all the time that you get an idea. You think about the idea, you part the idea, you then come back to it at some point point in time. And uh 2020 give me, gave me that opportunity to begin to document some of that thinking and it wasn’t until I learned about my donor and his age. And uh the fact that he was a young guy that it really became quite clear to me that helping young people, helping all people who are going through a journey, whether it’s from school, college, university and into the workplace for the first time was the right thing for me to do. Uh Even those people that have been, you know, taken redundancy and, and want to change and move into a different industry. I wanted to be able to help those people to anyone that was coming back to work, whether it was through maternity leave or whether it was long, long term sickness. Um As I was facing, it’s something I wanted to do. So I create in uh along with a, a co-founder uh in January 2023 we started out by um thinking about, well, what are the, what are the, what is the goal here? What is the sort of vision and goal here? And it was really just all about helping young people, helping them navigate what is a very difficult journey from the safety of the educational years or the academic years into the ultimately the crazy world of, of work and the the the 2030 40 years that, that people will face as they enter that for the very first time. So we started researching um in more detail and trying to confirm through research um some of the challenges that young people would be facing. Um anybody would be facing as they, as they approached the workplace for the very first time. Um And there, there may be there, there’s value here also for older folks who might be mentors to, I know you’re, I think you’re, you’re working specifically with or you’re thinking mostly about Gen Z but anybody older who might be uh mentoring Gen Z or even just to be empathetic to what younger folks are facing in, in the, the beginnings or the uh yeah, in the beginnings of their careers. So it may not be the very first job, it might be second job or third job. But you know, as you get yourself launched, uh I think there’s value for folks who are older than Gen Z to understand what the challenges are for these folks. So let’s, let’s again, you know, let let’s go a little broader so that we can help our Gen Z colleagues as they’re as they’re coming along. Um You, you, you say that uh one of the, one of the challenges they’re facing, the early challenge is just un understanding your skills are, are, are folks not introspective enough or do they, do they not understand what skills are needed in the marketplace that they should be emphasizing what, what’s your advice around understanding what your value is, your skills? Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So, so this is, this is probably the the most critical part of this whole process. So when a person writes their CV, for the very first time, um, what, what will they have on there? The question is, what, what can they put on that CV? For the very first time, it will be mostly academic in nature. They will go through whether they’ve been at college, whether they’ve been university and so forth. Ok. So that’s if they’ve got any work experience, they’ve been very lucky. And they’ve done like a, like a, what we call a thin sandwich course where they’ve managed to have a few months in industry whilst they’re going through university, they can put some experience on there and a summer internship as well, perhaps. Exactly. Exactly. That, so, so, so there is a, there is a sort of set of things that you would put on the CV. The last thing they tend to put on the CV is their skills. They don’t tend to identify the skills that they have because they don’t, they’re not trained to think about the skills when they’re going through their academic years. They’re told, they’re told to learn, they’re told to research and, and, and pick up new knowledge, but they’re not really taught about their skills and how to use those skills in particular. Ok. So for that reason, they don’t think about skills when it comes to their, their resume or their CV. And they don’t identify them clearly on the CV. So when you got to be a skills section, very much so, very much so. And, and I would also, I would also advocate that they should identify at least try to determine the level of skill that they’re at. So for someone who’s coming on to the job market, for the first time, I would suggest they probably got a basic level of understanding of communications. OK? Unless they’ve done something in particular to uh forward or improve those communication skills that may have been through work experience, it may have been through a summer internship or it may have been through upskilling and training. OK. So identifying the basic uh or the level of skill that they have is, is incredibly important. It’s also very true on the employer side that they need to do the same. Because if they, if they just advertise a job, we’re looking for someone with good basic uh communication skills, we’re looking for someone with uh teamwork ability, et cetera, et cetera. If they don’t specify the level that they’re looking for, even at an entry level job, then there’s gonna be an automatic mismatch between the expectations of the employer and the expectations of the individual applying for that job. And this is what happens they don’t meet in the middle, they completely miss one another. OK. So what you end up finding is that a lot of young people apply for jobs, a lot of people apply for jobs and they haven’t got a chance even from the outset of matching the expectations of the employer. Not even at that early prescreening prescreening stage. Are they able to meet those expectations? It’s only when the employer shortlists and interviews can they begin to close that gap and understand? Where does that? Where does the applicant sit in relation to the expectations of the employer? All right, I guess if I was gonna summarize that, I would say, know your value, you, you need to know what it is that you bring even, even if you’re right out of, uh, you know, right out of college, you know, what, what is the, or, or even, uh, you know, with a two year degree, four year degree, you know, or even no degree. If it, if, if you’re right out of high school, what is the value that you’re bringing to the workplace and, and, and how does that match what the needs are of the, the organization? So, you know, uh, and I understand your advice from the organization perspective, you know, to be clear about what the needs are, what the expectations are among among applicants. Uh, but there may be some research required as well. You know, you, uh, on the individual side, what does the organization do? What, what do they write about? You know, that, that’s, that’s how you could sort of suss out what, what their needs might be so that you can match your value. To what their needs are. It’s exact, that’s exactly the case. Um uh you know, from experience. Uh and I’ve done this time and time and time again, I’ve picked up a copy of a previous job description. I’ve uh with technology, I’m able to copy and paste it into another job description. I’ve changed a few words here and there and I put it out onto the internet. Haven’t really thought about what it is. I’m really looking for. So the challenges are quite lengthy. There’s quite a long, long list of challenges on the, on the jobseeker side, on the applicant side. But there are failings regularly on the side of the employer as well. They don’t help themselves, they don’t publish enough information about them and their company, their values where they’re going as a company, what their history is, um what their policies are. What do they stand for in terms of a brand? They don’t do enough to publish that information in the right place for the applicants to be able to go? Oh, that looks like a good company. Oh, I would love to work for them. So the applicant is uh, is more inclined to put the effort in to make sure that they get an interview with that particular employer. Ok. So the employer needs to do more. Ok. But, but, and I agree, but the employee, the potential employee needs to work with what they’re, what’s out there. So you gotta do the research, you gotta do the leg work to, to find what, maybe it’s even what other people have written about the organization, you know. Uh, but, um, certainly starting with what the, what the organization says about itself in its, obviously in its website, in its annual report, in its, in its social, uh, networks in the social networks. What are they saying there? Uh You know, you wanna, you wanna, you gotta ally yourself with the work of the organization. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Its time for Tonys. Take two. Thank you Kate Chatty gym guy up to it again. This week. You may recall that last week. Uh He gave me a or gave all of us. It’s not just me, he’s not talking to me. He’s, he’s uh bestowing his gift upon everyone in the, in the town gym. Uh Last week, it was a short course on uh motor boat uh engine troubleshooting this week this week. Uh There’s a, this guy, there’s a Blue Marlin fishing tournament which is a, a, it’s a very big deal apparently all up and down the east coast. Uh, it’s at a town about a half an hour from where I am. It’s in Morehead City, North Carolina called the Big Rock Blue Marlin fishing tournament where, uh, mostly guys, not exclusively it, it seems like, but, uh, mostly go out and, you know, in these expensive boats and try to catch big fish and who, who’s, who gets the biggest fish and, you know, you win money. So he’s got, so I’ve known about this. This is not news to me. It’s, it’s, it’s an annual thing. It’s been going on, I don’t know, like 50 or 60 years or something. So I’ve known about it since I’ve been here. I’ve heard of it and I’ve, one year I got stuck in the traffic of it. You know, you can imagine how excited I was by that. Now, of course, you avoid the town anyway. Uh, the guy’s talking about the Blue Marlin. He’s all jazzed up about the Blue Marlin tournament. Uh, and, and, uh, the, the winning so far they, it’s a multi day thing. It goes on mid day. I don’t know, it’s like five or six days or a week or something like that. It’s these guys go out, uh, uh, and you have to go, this is one of the things I learned from this. Uh, this, this, uh, Blue Marlin fishing tournament, uh, Savant that, uh, you know, that you, you go out 60 miles, I think. You, you, you can’t, it’s not near the shore. You, you take your boats out like 60 miles and then you fish and then you have to come back, you know, and weigh your fish, whatever, whatever you’ve withdrawn from the ocean. So, the, the winning fish so far now, so we’re only like four days. I think he didn’t say, uh, I think it’s all this week. So, you know, we’re like four or five days into it or something. Uh, £516. You know, I was, I was very elated to hear that. Uh, someone caught a £516 uh, marlin fish, whatever. Marlo. I don’t know how, I don’t know how you tell the difference between a marlin and a trout. But these guys know, you know, it’s a marlin and it’s not a swordfish or whatever, it’s a marlin. So it’s £516. That’s the winning fish so far. But there are, you know, of course, there’s days more days coming. Um, and Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, the, um, the, the football star he played for the Mets, um, and he was with them in the, uh, the, the Stanley Bowl something. Uh, Michael Jordan brings his boat out there and, uh, uh, he’s apparently he’s not a winner yet so far, but this, this, uh, this guy. Uh, so Michael Jordan is out there somewhere. Um, you know, it’s all very exciting. So, and then the guy is telling us about, uh, the Michael Jordan boat is, uh, is $8.9 million boat. It’s not a $9 million boat. This, this guy again, he’s a savant. You know, he knows everything about fishing and, uh, you know, he, he shares it. We’re so grateful that he shares all his uh his wisdom and, and expertise with us. Uh $8.9 million boat that Michael Jordan has. And uh oh, it, it, it must have a 2000 gallon tank, which, you know, so that means that uh as, as I learned, uh that every time Michael Jordan fills the tank on the boat, it’s probably about, it’s about $8000 that Michael Jordan has to spend when he, I’m so glad to know this and he has a crew. The crew probably costs Michael Jordan $5000 a week, all the details. Uh So, you know, the II I, meanwhile, I’m just trying to do my Pilates sit ups. That’s all I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to do my sit ups, you know, sit up 11 vertebrae at a time, sit up, lay back down one vertebrae at a time, back down on the mat. That’s all I’m, I, I’m just trying to, I’m in the corner. I couldn’t get any further away from the guy if II, I wait, the room’s not big enough. I am as far away from him as I can be and he still is. Like, it’s, he’s broadcasting in my ear. His, uh, his genius. So, yeah, Michael Jordan, the big rock blue Marlins. That’s a big thing. Oh, you got to catch the Blue Marlins. Chatty gym guy. I, I suspect there’ll be more. II, I can’t get away, you know, II, I go early, I, but I have to II, I wanna work out early in the morning and unfortunately, so does chatty gym guy. You know, I’m not gonna alter my schedule around this gentlemen. I’m destined to hear more of his wisdom. And that is Tonys take two Kate. I think you need a pair of airpods or something to cancel them out. Airpods would work. I have a pair. I have airpods. I just, I’m not accustomed to listening to music. I mean, you’re right. I could put it on just silent or the, the air, the cancellation mode. Whatever. That’s true. I could do that. I could think about that. We’ve got Vuko but loads more time. Let’s return to Gen Z career challenges with Ray Sherry. Ray. I wanna move to uh like the, the uh lack of feedback that you might get uh upon submitting your application to be prepared. Yeah. And I think this is the, this is the cliff edge that I think most people uh when they enter the job market for the first time. Really don’t get, they don’t really understand why. When they send their CV in for a, for a job, it, it just disappears effectively into a black hole, it just disappears. That’s the sense that people get, um, it, they, they rarely get feedback. In fact, there was statistic um published by the recruitment Employment Confederation here in the UK, which is the, they, it was like a governing body for recruitment across the whole UK industry that 97% of all job applicants in July 2021 we’ll come back for a couple of years, but it hasn’t changed a great deal. 97% of all job applicants in the month of July, which is about 66,000 people did not receive any form of feedback. None. Now, that’s probably in my language in Zin language. That’s a little bit of a crime. If you ask me, you know, a young person, any person coming into the job market for the very first time, really motivated to find their first job, really keen. They spent maybe a few good years in, in university having a great time and now they’re all motivated and ready go for it. And they take that first step of applying for a job and that second step of applying for another job on the third and the fourth and the fifth and the 10th and maybe 30 or 40 applications later, they still don’t hear anything, I think, I mean, it’s uh both frustrating, demotivating soul destroying. There’s lots of language that, that you can use as such. So the biggest challenge that’s faced the recruitment market, not just in the UK, but worldwide for decades is this inability to provide useful and helpful and guiding feedback to job applicants every single time. Now, I’m pleased when we worked on this uh through through last year that we can now do this 100% of the time for every single, every single applicant at four different levels. So when they apply for a job, they know exactly where their application is in the process, which is, you know, the first, the first, the first area of feedback because I, if I’ve sent a CV in for a job and I don’t know what’s happening with it. I don’t even know if the process is fixed, you know, but that’s, that’s if we’re using the Zinn platform though, you know, our, as I said, most of our, our, our listeners are not going to be using the Zinn platform, but we’re trying to suss out the lessons, you know, that you, you want to share with Gen Z uh about this process. So, you know, what do you do? You OK. Uh 1520 40 applications later. It is a, it has been a black hole. How do you not get dispirited? Well, I think the way the W I mean, I, I can only talk about Zin in terms of sort of how we’ve solved this problem, how we, how we make sure that people get feedback every single time when they make an application. I think the first thing the candidate can do without, without um using the Zin platform is they can ask for feedback if they’re, if they’re lucky enough to remember where they sent that application to in the first place. And it might have been several weeks ago. They’re lucky enough to remember which recruitment agency they went to with, with that application, they should really ask for feedback just to not do that is just uh continuing the momentum down that path. And it has done for decades. I’m guilty of it. Like, like most other people, you send, you send a CV in you, you wait for feedback, you get no feedback, but I don’t go back and ask for feedback. And I think that’s the first thing people should do is they should go back to that recruitment agency and ask for that feedback uh however small. Uh and however um useful it may be, they should go and ask that question. OK? Because eventually that recruitment agency will get the message that people are asking for feedback. We need to do something about this. OK? I think the second thing they can do is is, you know, share their experiences with their friends as well. I think uh community is a really good thing. Um social media is very powerful in many ways and it can be very positive. Um So if there are organizations out there that are taking literally thousands of applications and no one’s hearing anything, I think, call it out, call it out. These, these companies will soon realize that they need to do better. II I think especially your, your, your second bit of advice around your support, you know, community so that you can help each other recognize that you’re not the only ones each facing this black hole. It’s not, it’s no reflection on your submission on your resume. It’s a reflection of the lack of civility that has emerged over 1520 years or so of. I in the hiring process. Uh in, in long three dates, you submitting your application to XYZ nonprofit. Uh It, it’s, it’s just, it’s become an uncivil process, uh a heartless process. So it’s not just you, it’s not your resume. Uh It’s millions of applicants and tens of millions of job applications um asking for feedback I think is a good idea. I, I, I’m not, I’m not sure in the US what kind of reaction you’re gonna get? You, you might get the same uh black hole uh feedback that you, you got when you submitted the application originally. But I think it’s a gutsy thing to do. You know, you, you’re no worse off with respect to that employer uh or the recruiter. Uh uh I, I think it’s more apt, yeah, more, more likely to be direct to the nonprofit. You, once you’ve been rejected you’re no worse off with that nonprofit for politely asking. You know, how did I come up short? Uh, WW, what, what, what did the, what did the, um, but the person who was hired or the folks who were hired have that I, that I’m lacking, you know, this, this, your feedback could be really valuable for me and I’d be grateful to have it. I mean, there’s a simple email, uh, uh, that, that resumes that you have an email address to send it to. I realize you might not. But if you have any kind of contact, uh, information, it probably is worth asking for feedback. You might only get it in 10 or 15% of the time, but that 10 or 15% could be helpful. And, you know what, you’re also distinguishing yourself as somebody who doesn’t just walk away. But, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m interested enough in this whole process and in your nonprofit that I value your feedback and I’m hoping that you’ll be willing to share it with me. Yeah, I think the, another piece of advice I would certainly give job seekers is that when they do apply for a job, make sure they keep the contact information, uh, whether it’s nonprofit or whether it’s a commercial organization, keep, keep the original application information so they know who to go back to, they know who to go and ask that question. What happened to my application? Can I have some feedback? How do I do keep that information because it is very easy with job boards the way they are today just to submit that CV. And wait. And before you know it, the job post has come down from, uh, from the job board, it’s, it’s gone away and you don’t have that information available to you anymore. So always keep a copy of that original job advert. So you’ve got something to refer to. Yeah, and it’s probably going to give you the name of the recruitment agency on there or the nonprofit organization. Keep that information. It’s vital that you keep that awesome. Yes, valuable. Um All right, let’s say, um le let’s say we’re at the stage, we, we’ve gotten through the application process and we’ve been hired. Uh you, you have some concerns and, and advice around um the job not panning out to be exactly what you thought it was gonna be like broken promises from the employer potentially. Yeah, I think the, the, the problem with um let’s call it, retention of, of employees starts in the application process. When you start looking for a job, it starts with your value you mentioned earlier on to, it starts with the applicant understanding his or her value in this whole value chain. Ok. So if they’ve applied for a job and they managed to you know, use some language blag their way through the interview and they, they, they got a job, they got an offer and they got a job and they, and they started, and they didn’t ask enough of the right questions and they didn’t work out their value and they didn’t check that value against that of the employer. But the time they get into the job, they’ll soon realize that this wasn’t for them. You know, the, the whole process starts with me as an individual understanding who I am, what I am, what I like, what I don’t like what I want. Um, the type of organization I want to work for. Ok. And there’s a, there’s a common thread that always runs through, um, people that leave organizations relatively soon after joining is that they were made promises around training, development, rep, progression, coaching, mentoring, you know, the, the list will go on really they land in this new organization and then there’s a, there’s a little bit of a cost cutting exercise or something’s changed and the manager didn’t get the budget, whatever it might be. But invariably, one of the first things that goes is the training, the, the learning and development. Um, and that’s, that’s quite tough for a young person who may have based their, their half of their decision or a good part of their decision on joining that company based on the fact that they were going to be upskilled further trained and they would have some sort of career progression and, and, and employers. I mean, I’m honest, the, the employers face a lot of challenges these days. It’s not easy for the employers and sometimes they have to, they have to go back on their promises or put those promises off to a later date. I, I completely get that but it’s, that’s no good for the young person who’s now in a six months into a new job career and hasn’t had a single training course. Um an upskilling course, this just this distinguished the difference between the two. So you’ve got training which most employers will provide because that allows the person to do the job, ok? Which is valuable to the, to the employer upscaling is going beyond that. It’s going way beyond that. So it’s, it’s learning above and beyond what you need to do the job and that’s where you are able to go for promotions, um and progress your career upskilling allows you to do that as such. So most employers will provide on the job training. But when it comes to breaking promises, it’s typically around the upskilling because that usually costs money, usually costs time and that usually reduces things like productivity and so forth. That results in a higher attrition rate in the uh in the overall um uh number of employees and therefore the, the retention drops uh as a consequence. So people will then leave their job. Uh typically within 6 to 12 months of joining that company for the very first time. There is a, there is a third dynamic which, um, which is sort of linked to value, which is sometimes, sometimes people just get it wrong. Sometimes people just get it wrong. You know, they, they’re not quite sure about who they are and they just want to go and try a few different things and, um, six months, 12 minutes into the job. I go, oh, this is not for me, this is not something I want to do. I, I I’m more interested in artificial intelligence or I’m more interested in working in the environment. So, so thank you very much, Mr Bank. I don’t really want to work with you anymore. I feel as though the green economy is somewhere where I want to be. So it is normal for people to make those decisions as well. Ok. Well, so we’ve set up the what, what might happen or suppose we’re in the second situation. You, you, you explained where the, the employer is not following through on uh promises around progression that upskilling. Wh wh what’s the, what’s the young gen Z employee to do? I think, I think the first thing is go back, go back to the hiring manager, whoever, whoever that was, it may even not be the same hiring manager. But I think it’s very important to go back and, and uh have, you know, an adult face to face conversation with him about, you know, when I was recruited, when I came into this organization, I was, uh, I was promised that, uh, that there would be training and upskilling. Um, go back and hold them account for that. Ok. They may still get a flat. No, but at least as an individual you’ll feel better for following through on the promises that you were made. I think the second option you can go through is look for ways to upskill yourself outside of your employer environment as well. There are some, there are some really good schemes around today where you can, you can go and get, you know, additional training courses uh on, on careers that, that you may be following through on and, and, and that’s perfectly a viable approach as such. But I think the first thing to do is make sure the employer is held responsible and accountable for any promises that they’re making. And I’ll just make a finer point here. There’s a very good chance if they’ve broken the promise to you as an individual, they’ve broken the promise to a bunch of other people as well. So again, this is where the the community of uh employees can actually have a stronger voice by, by getting together to raise the the lack of training or the lack of upskilling with the employer. So sticking together, it’s also a good way of being safe in that employment environment as Well, if you, if you’re working with a bunch of people that all have the same, let’s say grievance, we’ll have the same grievance. Then, um then hopefully, then someone won’t get singled out for, you know, for being a bad guy or whatever, it helps a lot to have allies in, in whatever, whatever you might be trying to move the organization to do. Um And look, and you, you know, if you get that flat, no, at least, you know where you stand and that may be a different reason than you were describing why this is not the right nonprofit for you. It’s not the right fit. They a they didn’t keep their promises and b they’re not um helping us progress in our careers. And, and if there are more than one of you making this case, then there, you know, we go back to uh an old adage that dates me, I guess, but there is strength in numbers. It does help to help out have allies that there are a number of you that are raising this professional development issue and how the organization is not following through on its promises and not investing in its the future of its employees, not just the job they’re in now, but your futures then, you know, it may not be the right place for you. OK? Go ahead. Well, I was gonna, I was gonna move to maybe the biggest overarching theme. So you, you continue on this. Please go ahead. Thank you, Tony. I was just gonna add one more thing really look, I mean, typically employers will look at the cost of training as a, as purely a cost when you start to look at as a value add to your organization and the ability to grow and scale and develop your organization to be better at what you do to provide better customer service, to buy better products, to buy better services. If you look at it in terms of value that, that training gives back to the company, you might make a different decision. It’s an investment II I, it’s an investment in the people in your most valuable asset, which is the people who are doing the work for you. And if you’re not willing to invest, then maybe this isn’t the place for me to work or even better for us to work. All right, I’d like to wrap up. Well, you know what, before we do that, I, I want to explain what Zzynd, what, what it stands for. Well, uh I know it was like in the, in the US Tony but you know, in, in, in the UK, we have something called company’s house. And uh the first thing you do when you set up a new company is you go to company’s house and you put in a name and you pray and hope that no one’s thought of that name because if that’s the first name that you come up with the company. It’s probably one of the better names that you’re ever gonna have. I did that, I don’t know, a dozen, maybe 20 times. Uh, at the beginning when we started setting up the company in the end, you know, I went to good old Chat GP T and, uh, I asked Chat G BT, give me, give me some options for the name of a modern day company that might reflect uh today’s generation a and came back with a list of 10. I can’t remember. I think the other nine, but there was a list of 10 and Zinn Zynd was the name that stood out and it stands for gen Z youth, no discrimination, which is really at the core of what we’re trying to do with Zind, which is that Zin is for everyone. It doesn’t matter what your background is, it doesn’t matter what your religion is, isn’t what you, your sexuality is Zinda for everyone. OK. And we don’t put any barriers uh in, in front of anyone to, to prevent them from applying for a job. Well, I love that you, Gen Z. The company is uh artificial intelligence derived. I think that’s appropriate that uh that the youngest folks have um have a, a company name that uh was derived by uh chat GP T. Um I, I wanna wrap up with taking control of your own destiny that throughout your career, starting with the very first job. And for the next 4050 years, it’s your life, it’s your destiny. What do you have to say about that? Well, it started for me, Tony back in uh 19 nineties, this whole thing, this whole um area of taking control of my career. Um I was working for a really, really good progressive organization. At the time I had the opportunity to apply for an internally sponsored MB A program. I was one of the top performers within the organization and that my performance reviews reflected that my appraisals reflected that every single year I applied for the NBA. I didn’t get it and the feedback was poor, you know. Uh But I said to myself, look, OK, this next year, I’ll apply again. So I applied again next year and I didn’t get it again and still top performer within the organization. So I said to myself, well, that can’t be right. I’m not gonna let anyone else decide my career from now on. So I immediately decided that over the next five years, what I wanted to be where I wanted to be in terms of my career. So I think I was around 3233 years old at the time. And I said that by the time I’m 38 I want to be an IT director. So I picked the senior guy in the organization said I want to be in his position within, within five years. Um I had to move the organization, I broke all the rules and I applied for a job within the wider organization, the financial organization I was in at the time because my boss was blocking my career progression, which is, you know, she was controlling the shots, not me. Um So I applied outside my division and I got a more senior job than my boss, more senior job than my boss and for more money. Ok. Um Within uh within three years after that, um I was running the second most profitable area of the bank, the bank that I was working with at the time. Uh and I had taken them through all the, you know, all the millennium bug and the year 2000 program changes. And we’d put some new products out to the market. Three years after that, three years after that, I was running an organization with 650 people strong. We were, we’re generating revenues of 40 million a year with a very nice uh uh net profit at the end of it. So I took control of my career because I wasn’t able to make the decisions about my life. That’s what it boiled down to. It was about my life and my family’s life. So I had to be, I had to take some risks. Of course, I did, I had to take some risks. I had to decide what I wanted. And um based on the decisions I made I would have to live by those decisions, good or bad. But I was very, very focused and very, I would say somewhat lucky as well that I chose the right path for myself. And it all boiled down to the fact that I really didn’t want anyone controlling my life. Uh, and since work and your career, there’s a huge proportion of the time that you, you, you, you spend each day very, very important that I had control of that. And that’s something that I would certainly uh advocate to anybody these days is be in control of your own destiny as far as you possibly can. Ok. Sometimes it’s in, you know, the hands of God. Sometimes it’s in the hands of um who you are and what you are. But um if you make those key decisions and um live by them and learn from them as well, it’s very important to learn from them as well. Then, uh I think it can lead to a happier career and a happier working career and a happier life as a consequence. I’d like to add, don’t do something because lots of other folks have done it before. You. You don’t have to follow a career path. Indeed. Even a, a life path, a personal path that doesn’t feel right for you just because lots of other people have done it before you. There’s the, there’s life is rife with people who have made mistakes and done things just because lots of other people did it before them, whether it’s a personal decision to marry, uh, and, or have Children, uh, or it’s a professional decision to go a certain path just because lots of other people have done it before. It is, it is your life, it is your destiny. You decide it, you decide what’s right for you and don’t base it on millions of people that have come before you because that may not be right for you. I mean, that’s a great way to sum it up to me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna sort of just give you one image to, to think about, you know, I, I was in London uh late 19 nineties and I remember this very, very clearly because it was very, very, not long after I made decisions to take control of my career. I was crossing London Bridge. This was during the rush hour in the morning, it was about 830 in the morning. I was crossing London Bridge, pretty much every single person was going in the other direction. And that image has stayed with me for the rest of my life. The whole of my life. I had chose a different path and that sometimes means going against the flow of humankind for a period of time until you find your new flow. So for me, that was confirmation that I was, I was on the wrong path or I was moving in in a different direction, which was, was suitable for me as an individual. And uh I remember it was just thousands of people crossing London Bridge and I was just going in the opposite direction. I was bumping into a lot of people as a consequence, but that’s sometimes what you have to do. Ray Sherry, he’s CEO of Zend. You’ll find the company at zind.co.uk. You’ll find re on linkedin Ray, our first Welsh guest. We haven’t, we have not had a, a Welsh guest before. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tony. I’ve very much enjoyed it and thank you to all your listeners as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you for sharing next week back to the 2024 nonprofit technology conference with the essential craft of leaving your job and data privacy. If you missed any part of this weeks, show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. That’s gonna be interesting. Next week, the essential craft of leaving your job leaving it. Yes. Very good one. Well, they’re all very good that, that one’s just ex exceptionally good. Were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporter generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate T Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
Vishal Reddy, Karim Bouris & Pattie Carlin: Your Four-Day Work Week
This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference panel introduces you to the national campaign for a 32-hour, 4-day work week. They’re the executive director of the campaign, a company that made the switch and a nonprofit that did, too. They’re Vishal Reddy from Work Four, Karim Bouris with Mixte Communications and Pattie Carlin at NTEN.
Dr. Lauren Hopkins & Dr. Carla Torrence: Intergenerational Communication
Our panel of two Ph.D.’s discusses common communication challenges in the workplace and shares its strategy for overcoming them. They are Lauren Hopkins from Prepared to Impact and Carla Torrence at i.D.R.E.A.M. for Racial Health Equity. This is also from 24NTC.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with trauma Tonia if I had to breathe while you told me that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, we have your four day work week. This 2024 nonprofit technology conference panel introduces you to the national campaign for a 32 hour four day work week. They’re the executive director of the campaign, a company that made the switch and a nonprofit that did too. They’re vishal red from work for Karim Bori with Mixy Communications and Patty Carlin at 10. Then Intergenerational communication. Our panel of two phd S discusses common communication challenges in the workplace and shares its strategy for overcoming them. They are Lauren Hopkins from prepared to impact and Carla Torrance from Ire for racial health equity. This is also from 24 NTC on Tony’s take two summertime planning time were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms, blocking supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Here is your four day work week. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. You know that we’re coming to you from Portland Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. What you don’t know is that the conversation we’re about to have is about a four day work week. And with me to have that discussion are Vishal ready the executive director at work for the national campaign for the four day work week. Also Karim Bori, principal at MD Communications and Patty Carlin Finance and operations director for our host at uh N 10. Vishal. Karim Patty. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks Tony Pure. Alright. Alright. I’m glad um you gave me like, like excited to be here, but you were smiling. I want, I want folks to know you were smiling when you said it. So I am very excited to be here. Yes, maxing out the volume and everything. All right, outstanding. Now. Thank you. The four day work week, Vishal, since you’re the executive director of the campaign, the national campaign for the four day work week, why don’t you kick us off? What, what are we? I think we know what we’re talking about. Why should we be talking about it? Why should the nation, the national campaign? Why should the nation go to a four day work week? Yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to say really excited to be here and, you know, when we talk about a four day work week, we want to be really crystal clear about what we’re talking about. We’re not just talking about a four day work week with 10 hour days. We’re talking about a four day, 32 hour work week with no loss in pay or benefits. And that’s very important to know. Thank you. And the reason we’re really excited about this is because, you know, there’s been a whole host of research and organizations, as we’ll hear from Patty and Cream that have shifted to a four day 32 hour model. And, you know, over the last few years, what we’ve seen is that this is a win, win, win. This is a rare triple dividend policy for workers, for companies and for society. And so what we’ve seen for organizations is that, you know, 91% plus of organizations that shift to a four day work week are piloted, stick with it because of increased productivity, improve retention, better work life balance for their employees for workers. 95% of employees that get to try a four day work week want it. And 80% of people in public in the public want it because, you know, better work life balance, you know, and more time to care for their loved ones. And then for society, this really is a policy that has potential to improve the environment, advance gender equity and give more time to people so they can participate civically. And so, you know, we’re really excited by what we’ve seen, you know, hundreds of companies already do across the US And we believe that this is a policy that can be scaled uh through, you know, public policy and through more and more workplaces implementing it. And we really believe that, you know, the evidence and the research is on our side to show that this is something that all workers in all workplaces in America should have. All right, Kareem, why don’t you just give us uh an overview of what it’s been like at uh mix the communications for uh for a 32 hour four day work week. Sure. Um So Tony, Tony would, it’s probably worth knowing is that our industry, the digital marketing and public relations space is often in the top five of high burnout industries, we’re dominated by the news cycle 24 7. We are addicted to the social media platforms, algorithms and we feel compelled to be on all the time. So high turnover um in industry where folks just don’t necessarily have this balance, we work in the social justice space. So as an employer it is super important for us that we practice what we preach. So we always look at our habits and our practices to make sure that what we say we fight for is what we do in our own company. So when the four day work week happened, it was the perfect or not happened. But when we realized that there were all these pilots with data around the world and especially in the UK and we started seeing data in the US that was showing what Vishal just mentioned. 90 plus percent. We just kept compiling and making the case internally for it. And there was no doubt that it was the right move. So we didn’t just move into it overnight. We took six months to plan it and it was a fundamental rethinking of everything we do and how we do it. Um I’ll probably point to three things that we did that helped us a lot. We tested and measured and surveyed our employees um every month for six months and we were measuring what’s working, what’s not working. The one thing we know that our employees all agreed on and we had 100% results from the get go was that nobody wanted to go back to five days a week. So as hard as it was to try to figure things out about how we communicate about how we run meetings about how long we do things and how we’re, we’re measuring productivity and efficiency. Nobody felt compelled to go back to five days in the grind mentality. The second thing we did is that we figured out that the model that worked for us was staggering. So half of our team is off on Fridays, half of the team is off on Monday. We use group emails for all our clients so that it doesn’t matter when they email everybody on that account. Team gets the message so that if you’re there on the Friday, somebody else on, if um on the team who’s out will know what’s going on on the Monday. But there’s never a loss of coverage for our clients. And then the third thing that is worth mentioning is that we actually didn’t tell our clients for a year and no client knew that’s, that’s a great test. All the black box test. You’re, you’re unaware. All right. And no, no, there were no complaints and no nobody really Patty Carlin at N 10. 00, I do have, I’m sorry, one more question. Um How long ago did you uh did you make the final transition? We did in January in January of 2023. And in 2023 we finished a year, a couple of months, we finished a year in 2023 hitting a record revenue first time in our 13 years. Um We intentionally decided that the year was about um rethinking all of our operations and systems. So the, the investment for us was prioritizing this transition. So we weren’t letting profits dictate what we were going to do. So we intentionally went through the year expecting single digit profits, which we hit still because that was the biggest investment for us. We are a fully digital and remote company. So virtual company. So our largest asset are people. So we needed to make sure that we prioritize them. So um it worked. Sorry about that, Patty. Not at all. Please tell us the N 10 4 day work week experience. Well, we started July 1st of 2023. So we’re not quite a year in, but I think that was there a transition the way Kareem was explaining or six months. No, it was a couple of months. We spent a couple of months talking about. Do we need all these meetings? Do we can we just not have a staff meeting if no one really has anything to say, we don’t have to show up and talk about nothing. Is it still a meeting if no one comes and is it a meeting that could have been an email? You know? Yeah, don’t, don’t have it. Uh Thinking about what’s really important to us as a finance and operations director. Maybe bookkeeping is not the best use of my time now. So I’ll hire one. Um What else we do? Um Monday through Thursday, we’re closed on Friday. There’s the whole team. You’re not staggering the way mixed up. And, um, the person in me that was raised to believe that someone should always be there. Wishes we staggered, but we didn’t. And I’m ok with it. Now, was it a conscious choice in the organization? Did you consider the staggering? I don’t think so. Not seriously. But when said they did it, I went. Oh, no. But, um, it’s been great. Uh, and basically I think that this very conference is a testament to what you can do on a 32 hour week. We did this. I did not know that we were talking about a 32 hour week. I’m glad you explained that right from the get go. Um Yeah, I just assumed that we were talking about a 40 hour week in four days. Um Patty, what happens on Fridays when work emails? Uh I know N 10 does have an office. I don’t know how many calls they get but you have an office here in Portland. No, you don’t get calls. We don’t have the office in Portland anymore. We are, you know that IP O box? You used to be on North Aldert, you on OK. No more. Just a po box. Just a po box where 16 people in eight states. What happens on Fridays when, if an urgent email comes from a member or no vendor? Basically, we also have shared customer service emails but on Friday, an out of office goes up and says, and tens closed on Fridays. We’ll see you Monday and all of our staff does that every Thursday when you log off your out of office goes up and it says antenna is, is a four day, 32 hour, 100% pay 100% benefits. See you Monday. So this is very hard for me as I pointed out in our session. I am gen X. I was, I’ve been a nonprofit for years and you are expected to be there first in the morning out last at night, never take a break, you know, don’t eat, don’t sleep. And this was a big deal for me. What was the impetus at N 10? It was just, you know, we’re, we’re always looking at social and racial justice. We’re always looking at what it’s like to bring your whole self to work. What is it, what we want to be the world that we want? You know, we’re gonna be what we want to see and, you know, at any time, we’re really into modeling those things for everyone. So it’s just like, you know what, this is the right thing to do and we’re gonna do it and it got done and it wasn’t that easy. I make it sound really easy. It wasn’t that easy. And I think there were some of us that were really nervous, but like I said, this, this conference happened because 16 people committed to each other and trust each other and did this on a 32 hour work week and it’s been less than a year. Alright. Alright. Um Michelle, what’s the, what’s typically the impetus for a company or a nonprofit? Doesn’t matter whatever a workplace to to embark on the at least at least the consideration of a of a four day, 32 hour work week. And what kind of factors are, are creating the the the discussion? Yeah, I think you know, one place to start at this is a lot of organizations look at their employees and you know, they’re looking around and you just realize a lot of people are burnt out, right? So I think there was a study that came out last month from our partner center for work time reduction. And they showed that organizations that are on a five day work week schedule, typical five day work week schedule, the burnout average burnout at those organizations is 42%. And meanwhile, now organizations that are on a shorter workweek model, the burnout is 9%. So I think, you know, 99, yeah, so 33% difference. And so I think what people are realizing is the way that we structure work is weird. You know, this is just sort of like this. Um the work that we have right now is, you know, it’s a relic from the 19 forties, right? And so, so much of the way we work, how we work when we work has changed in the last 80 years. And, you know, when we see an epidemic of burnout, an epidemic of stress or, you know, just the sort of instinctual feeling, you know, you go to meetings and you’re like, what the hell is the point of that? Right? And so I think people are recognizing that there’s a way to, you know, make our work more efficient, more effective and also meet people’s needs. And, you know, right now, I think one of the really powerful stuff that’s been happening is four day week global. They’re in organization in New Zealand and they’ve been doing these incredible workplace trials over the last few years. And so, you know, like from Cream and P’s perspective when their organization see these studies and trials and they see, oh, this is, this really is a win, win for both, you know, workers at the company and the company. It can be a really powerful impetus to, you know, explore and pilot the change themselves. Kareem, you said you planned for six months, I think before you actually flipped the switch, what kinds of things are you planning for? What were we working through in those six months? It’s a good question, Tony. Um Finally, jeez, it took, how many years have you been doing this the second day of the conference? It’s the end of the second day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um Let’s see, we wanted to make sure that it was not an edict from the two principles that this was something that our staff wanted. So we had a group of staff get together and be part of the planning committee at every level. So they thought through all of our operations. So how many meetings we have? How long do they have? Why do we have them? How many touch points internally do we have to share information? So we went through all of the exercise and the fun one that we mentioned this morning at our, at our session is for a whole month, we removed all meetings from the calendar. We canceled all our client meetings, we believe we did that, but we did, we kicked off, we kicked off the year and we had told our clients when we come back, we’re not going to have meetings in January. We’ll plan our work differently. We’re going to communicate with you, but we’re not having the meetings that we typically do and we usually meet with clients twice a month. So wipe the calendar, clean, internal externals, everything. And we basically had staff work on a rebuilding from the ground up. Why do we have this meeting? How often, how often do we need it? And that was part of the process. So the second thing was the measuring and the iterating. We did this monthly survey and we looked at the data, we shared it internally, we discussed it. Um But that was part of the kickoff part of the planning looked at our budget as well. So we went into the year, as I said earlier, anticipating that this was an investment in staff. So we didn’t get to a single digit profit just because we switched the four day work week. Part of the, the switch was making everybody a salaried employee. So we reorganized and we let three of our more junior staff go. So everybody now is a manage manager and above, we only have 18 employees. So it help, it helps to be at this scale, but everybody’s now an a salaried employee. So the reason that mattered is because if we’re going to move to a four day work week and we need to be efficient. We need our people to be trusted and autonomous. So we could not have folks who were waiting on someone else to tell them what to do. So part of that was changing the salary structure and changing the job descriptions to match that as well. So all that administrative work as patty knows, it takes a while of rewriting job descriptions of having conversations with the team of saying, ok, with this what we’re doing. We so for some of our team, we said, we think you could be a fit for this new role and some of our junior people, we, we let three of our people go and we transitioned through the year. So you don’t make those decisions lightly. And it’s why it took us six months to go through it, Patty. So your transition was, was quicker, quicker. Um Your head was exploding when Karim said that uh they canceled every single meeting for a month. Um I don’t know. But you, but you mentioned there was I, I want, you wanted. So that’s sort of leading into something that you said uh earlier. It wasn’t that easy. No, it wasn’t that easy. Talk about some of the challenges maybe and, and how you overcame them as an organization. We had a lot of meetings, we had meeting on top of meeting on top of meeting. And it, it seriously was about, do we need this? Can we make meetings optional? You know, if you don’t have something to say, don’t and you have something to do. You had meetings about meetings. I said that in our session, I said we had a meeting about meetings and then we formed a subcomittee of people that wanted to talk about meetings and then they came back to the group so we could all talk about meetings again and then meetings were done and you scaled back a lot of meetings and we do have um every other week on a Monday, there’s like a placeholder. And if you go in and say I wanna talk about this for 15 minutes, everybody will show up if nobody needs, has anything to talk about, we’re not just gonna get on their so anybody can call the meeting. But, but it’s, it’s just a placeholder. If no one calls a meeting, there’s no meeting that week and we do and, you know, some of that is complicated at N 10, we have live captioning for every meeting, even staff meetings. So, you know, somebody has to remember to call off the caption and all this and that. But it’s really just to be able to say I have work to do and have everyone trust you that you’re not just going off to hike in the woods. It’s, we talked about that a lot in our session about how we trust each other. We have a commitment to each other to support each other and do what we’re meant to do. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. It’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now, back to your four day work week with Vishal Reddy Karim Bori and Paddy Carlin K you. I would love to jump in because the meetings are one element of how we work. I’d love you to jump in because your voice is so base. You have a voice for some people. Tell me I have a face for radio. OK? I’ve heard that about 1500 times. You have a great voice for radio. Thank you. So I’d love for you to chime in. I promise I won’t do the only other time I did a voiceover, I started doing voices and the folks in the studio did not like that, we could probably skip that. I would love to jump on to something. Patty just said meetings are one element that suck our time there. We looked at the other things that our employees do that are also indicative of waste. And um and just just this rabbit holes, two tools we use internally are our Asana, which is how we communicate on threads, on different channels, on different topics for clients, operations, marketing. So we have all these threads. It’s basically a chat, right? So if we’re a virtual company, this is where we go for the communication in between meetings and then there’s Asana, which is the project management tool we use. So those are two places where we do a lot of exchange of information. One is organized on projects and we have to say, ok, I’m working on this part. We’re all doing this. Here’s my piece, here’s my update and those are basically nonstop updates. So we have an average of 25 to 30 clients on any given month and we are 16 to 18 people. We’re 18 now, that’s a lot to balance. So it’s not just how many meetings you’re in, in a day, but it’s how much of your time gets sucked. Every time you that chat function dings with a notification, how often you’re on, you’re checking your email, but you also have that slack open and you have a sauna and you’re watching the projects change and you go watching notifications on one and two and three things that’s overwhelming. And we work in the digital marketing space. So we know how these algorithms create um this toxic dependency and mental health breakdowns. So we’re super aware of it. So one of the other things we did is that we told nobody on our team can have their sauna and their slack notifications active. You cannot get a ding or you shouldn’t be able to see when it’s coming. You should be able to shut that stuff off and focus. So it takes a lot of habits to undo. And the one thing we talked about this morning that one of our former employees said was he called it The Great Unlearning. And I think that’s a beautiful umbrella for what it means to transition as a company and as an employee love that the great unlearning Michelle, why don’t you add some larger context to what uh what Patty and Kareem are sharing? I mean, I think their journeys are so indicative of what’s happening nationally, right? So in the last four years, hundreds of companies have shifted to a four day work week in 10 states have introduced bills that help shift, you know, mandate companies shift to a four day, 32 hour work week or, you know, create incentives for companies to shift to a four day work week. Last fall, the United Auto Workers Union led by Sean Fein proposed a four day 32 hour work week in their contract demands. With the big three automakers. Just this morning, my colleagues were tested in front of the Senate. Uh the Senate Health Committee had a hearing about the four day 32 hour work week. So, you know, this is a movement and you know, and a cause that is bubbling and we’re seeing, you know, really courageous workplaces that are, you know, led by courageous people like Kareem and Patty, you know, lead this effort and you know, take it to a place where, you know, it’s going to move in a direction where every worker in every workplace has this. And you know, we really see this as the future of work and not out of our goal isn’t to just make this a thing that is a nice to have, but a must have for an organization. And so I think one of the really amazing parts about this work that we’ve seen on our end is just that, you know, when organizations take the dive head first and they jump in and do the four day work week, when they are on the other side of it and they have a four day work week and everything is humming along nicely, they become really powerful advocates for it, right. So to us, that’s really proof that this is something that works and can work in even more places. And you know, one of the ways that we’re the most helpful too is often connecting similarly situated workplaces to each other, right? So we’ll often have organizations reach out to us and say, hey, we’re really interested in a four day work week. But, you know, just as we know, the five day work week is not a one size fits all model, the same is true of a four day, 32 hour work week. And so what we often do is connect similarly situated workplaces to each other. So that, you know, somebody who’s in a similar field is another field can sort of connect with that organization directly. And what we’re is the organizations that have already shifted are just always so excited to share their insights and best practices from what they’ve learned. And so, um this is something, you know, that’s organically grown so fast in just a few years. And if six years ago you were talking about a four day, 32 hour work week, people would have just laughed at you. And now people are like, they’re like, wait, that sounds amazing. And I know organizations that can do it. And even today during our session, we, um, I think cream asked people, you know, do you know any organizations that are on a 32 hour work week? And I want to say a third of the room maybe raise their hand, which is just a really powerful testament to what organizations can do when they think about their workplace. In a non zero sum way. You talked about gender equity earlier, you, you mentioned gender equity, say more about that, please, Michelle. Yeah. So, you know, a really important part of our work is really couching the advocacy for the four day work week. And our goal to build an economy that gives people time to care for their loved ones and care for their families. And we know that, you know, traditionally and disproportionately, you know, women hold the double burden. They often work full time jobs and then have to do unpaid domestic labor at home too. And so what we’ve seen is that, you know, one way we think about the four day work week is that it gives people more time to care for their loved ones. And one of the really amazing things is that in the trials that we’ve seen, there’s actually been, it’s not just about, you know, giving the people that are already doing the unpaid domestic labor more time to do more unpaid domestic labor. But actually, what we’ve seen is that, you know, amongst heterosexual couples, there’s actually a, a balancing too. So in those couples, men take on more of the domestic labor. And so, you know, part of what we’re seeing is, you know, this is we don’t give people enough time to care for their loved ones, to care for their families to do the necessary care, giving work. And what’s really amazing is just that it’s not just about giving people more time to do that, but also rebalancing it. So that work is better distributed amongst more folks. I’d like to spend more time. We have uh we have more time set aside. Uh Let’s uh I I’m going to your session description um how to ensure productivity and business outcomes are still achieved. I mean, we’ve touched on some of that accountability metrics measuring Kareem. You’ve been, I mean, are you still measuring productivity or it’s not necessary anymore anymore? We’re done, we’re done. All right. So that we put a lot of metrics and we say we’re not measuring that anymore, but that’s a lifetime journey. Very rare. Although we are, we are, we’re not measuring the four day work week anymore. What we are continually measuring is how are we using those tools that suck our time? So this slack tool, we are regularly going back to it and we just finished a three month pilot of how do we limit it? So we are constantly saying, are we seeing the small signals that tell us that our staff are reverting back to those bad habits and old habits? So let’s put a pilot together where we iterate test again, do before and after te uh measurements, surveys of our employees and then see if it’s worth continuing. I also, I, I think in, in, in ensuring productivity and business outcomes are still achieved. Um I, I’d like to talk more about the trust. I mean, the trust between employees, between the team members. Um You know, I, I think some of that I from the pandemic, you know, eroded. We, we, we hired a lot of people that didn’t get on boarded the way folks before 2020 got on boarded and they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the benefit of that. Now you have to. So a team has to be very, very conscious about bringing those folks in. Um and, and engaging, but let, let’s, I don’t know, I don’t know what more to say about Trump, but you all are experiencing it. So Patty say, can you, can you say more about the, the, the trust factor? Where is that from a movie or something? The trust factor I don’t know. I don’t know. As long as it’s not a slasher film. No, we don’t want to go in that direction. But, yeah, employee trust. Yeah, I, I think that feeling like you have to be able to see each other to trust each other is something that we’ve actually kind of gotten through partially because intens been distributed for 24 years. We did have an office in Portland, but only eight people live in Oregon. So we’ve been distributed all that time. So there was already a little bit of you don’t have to be in someone’s face to understand that they’re there and have that um feeling like you can trust them. We hired, mm I think the last three or four people that we hired were complete virtual hires. None of us had ever seen them other than on a little screen from stranger to colleague without ever an in person meeting and I completely trust them. We did have to get very intentional about on boarding. Um making sure that everybody knows how to use those tools because it’s crucial. And the other thing that has been a goal of mine for the last almost two years and it started with the pandemic was making our asynchronous work work better. And a couple of people have come up to me since our session and said that might be the next session for next year is let’s talk about asynchronous word because we have people in every time zone and how do we make that work? So on boarding is important, trust is important and just committing to each other to do our thing. Part of that onboarding has to be the A AAA lot of discussions or maybe even before, maybe even be in the hiring process, the culture, the culture of intent, the culture of mixing what, you know, what we stand for. You know, we’re, we’re not, I’m, I’m getting a little misty here. I don’t know, this is so lofty, but we don’t only hire for uh for skills, but we hire for value and, and trust, um values, values and trust. Um I don’t know. Do you want to add something Kareem on trust and on boarding, I saw you shaking your head. I do and I want to jump on the soap box and I’m going to be singing the gospel of leadership and the role and importance of leaders because I happen to be in this capacity. And that’s, I think where it starts. If we want loyalty. If we want folks who are going to stick around, it’s on us to set the tone for what trust is, it’s not going to be given to us just because we hired someone and you can be really talented and this is probably the message for any other business owner, CEO or nonprofit executive director. You can be really knowledgeable in a certain field that doesn’t make you a good business operator and that’s on us. Culture starts with us to have the humility and the flexibility to hear ideas that we don’t know. So I don’t assume that people just because we give them a paycheck and hired them owe us anything. We have to set the tone for what transparency, accountability, honesty, trust looks like. So I get really irritated very fast when folks start saying, well, our employees, I’m like stop, We create the conditions that employees walk into and we get to choose the environment that we create for people and we get to choose if we want them to come to work from a place of love or a place of fear, period. And that’s something I will hang my hat on and I will go to a fight with any executive director or CEO out there who disagrees with me, please. I am super easy to find. Ok. Did, did you uh avail yourself of the, the advice and council of uh work for as you were as you were embarking on your planning, your planning? No, no. Where were you all my life, Michelle, I introduced them. I’ll take the credit for that. 10. Avail itself of work for while you were preparing Tristan and Amy and I met with V Tristan Penn Equity and Diversity director at 10. I have it was just a guest. I think I think I it’s equity and Amy s everybody here knows her. So as we were making the transition. We had a call with Michelle and it was just such a good, you know, you’ve heard the things that he has to say and he asked us how we were doing and how we did it. And so when, um, you and Jamie reached out to say, let’s do this, I’m like, I got the guy, I got the guy and, and so it was kind of like we talked to you because we were doing it and then it just all came together. I’m really, really honored to be sitting here with these wonderful people. And if I could just chime in quick time, just that, you know, I think one of the amazing things that, you know, I connected with both Cream and Patty after they had begun to transition. But one of the reason, the reasons that we had, I reached out in the beginning was just because the way they were talking about the four day work week, you know, hated all the things that they’re saying today. And so it was just really one of the things that we want to continue building is just, you know, building a network of organizations that are interested in this and it’s so exciting to be here with them because they’ve already taken such leadership within their organizations and want to take such leadership with this cause that um it made so much sense to connect and collaborate and um and you know, it is very helpful for organizations to have outside support as they’re going through this change. It’s not a prerequisite, you know, these organizations. And so it’s really amazing to sort of see, to show that organizations can do this with no outside support, but we’re also happy to be that helping hand if needed. Alright, so why don’t you uh let folks know how they could reach uh work for if they wanna, or, or reach the website, if they wanna explore some resources about, you know, they’re thinking about maybe possibly considering sometime in the future, a four day work week where, where do they go? Well, so our organization is called Work For and our website is also work for. So that’s work and then for the number. So four.org and so if you’re at work for.org, you’ll see a page that says for employers, if you’re an employer for workers, if you’re a worker and if you fill out a quick form, then it’ll set up a conversation with us and we can sort of talk through what makes the most sense for your organization, but really encourage folks to reach out and we’re always happy to chat with people that are really interested in bringing this to their organization or to do any other advocacy work as well. Kareem, if I’m working at mix to do, I get my choice, whether I want Mondays or Fridays off, you can ask and then we look at which account you’re going to be on and we want to make sure half and half is well distributed between both. So my preference is considered at least it’s consideration. Well, Patty Carlin, I want to thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. And uh Michelle Michelle, thanks very much for sharing, interesting conversation. Fun, valuable, a little touching too, Tony. There’s only one day that everyone in N 10 has to have off and that is the first business day after the NCC. That is the only day everyone is off. You must take off its mandate. So if we see you online, you are in trouble. Everybody’s off on Monday the 18th of March this year. Don’t call in 10. Ok. And Friday, Friday. Well, tomorrow is Friday tomorrow next Friday, 1920 21 the 22nd. So it, so it’s a three day week for everyone at N 10 next week and well deserved. I don’t know what day it is. I just want to make sure you’re not swapping the Monday for the Friday. It’s a complete capitulation and everything we just talked about, right? Antithetical to everything we just talked about. All right. Uh Vishal Kareem Patty. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for being with our 2024 nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller Consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being with us. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team a member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors, make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. Summertime can be a good time for planning. Uh I’m thinking specifically about planned giving, planning for a fall launch um or even planning in June and July for August launch because August is national make a will month. So that would be a good time to kick off planned giving fundraising or do a campaign if you’re already doing planned giving. But the summer months, you know, June, July uh and or August could be good, very good for planning uh for either that August or September launch. Um It’s not limited to planned giving, of course, you know, summertime, slower. Uh Now I know it’s harder to get people together because there’s more vacation. But you know, that’s, that’s overcomeable. We don’t, we certainly don’t wanna deny people vacation time and everybody calls it PTO now. Wait, I’m on PTO. You get the email messages. I’m on PTO. I’m away on PTOW. When, when did vacation become PTOPTO? Sounds, uh, I don’t know. It sounds like something military vacations, you know, vacation sounds like fun. PTO doesn’t sound like fun. Uh, I don’t know. It sounds like something is mandated. Uh, just, I’m on vacation so we don’t want to deny people their vacation so that you can do your summer planning naturally. Uh And that would contradict what I said a couple of weeks ago about taking time for yourself because you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. So summertime can do both though. It can be your planning time and it can also be the time that you take for, for rejuvenating for relaxing yourself so that when you come back, you can take care of others, right? Summer can serve two purposes. So thinking about planning this week using summer for planning for that uh maybe August campaign or, or something in the fall. And that is Tony’s take two Kate. I am so ready for the summer and I have all my vacation plans planned out and I’m, I’m so ready to hit the beach. It doesn’t sound like you’re gonna be doing a lot of planning for the fall. Sounds like you’re in the balance. Like if there was a balance, you’re weighted heavily toward the time off rejuvenation, relaxation side. Oh, yeah, I know. I mean, I’ll go pumpkin picking in the autumn, but that’s about it. Ok. That, that’s a pretty audacious plan you have. Uh, ok. Very, very. All right. Congratulations on that. We’ve got VCU but loads more time here is intergenerational communication. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon where we are thoughtfully sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now are Doctor Lauren Hopkins and Doctor Carla Torrance. Doctor Hopkins is social impact consultant at prepared to impact. And Doctor Torrance is consultant at Ire for racial health equity. Doctor Hopkins. Doctor Torrence, welcome. Thank you. May I call you Lauren and Carla? Would that be ok? Doctor Laura Carlin Car Lauren Lauren? Ok. I’ll do doctor Doctor Carla. No. Ok. Absolutely. Your names, your titles you earned them. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about your topic. Your session is strengthening organizational culture through intergenerational communication. Uh This struck me because uh I’m a baby boomer and I do a lot of work not in, I mean, I have my own company but uh I do a lot of work with folks who are younger and um and even, you know, I do planned Giving, which puts me with folks who are in there, seventies, eighties and nineties. So there’s that uh there’s that dynamic also for me. So uh so I guess maybe for selfish reasons. Uh, I was very interested in this topic but I think a lot of, I think a lot of folks are struggling at across all the generations working with folks who don’t consider work the way they consider work or don’t think about, uh, I don’t know, don’t organize their lives differently that they just, they conceive of work differently. The purpose of work, the reasons for work, they conceive of family differently. Are these some of the reasons that this session is uh critical Doctor Carlo for sure. And what it is, it’s our work, it is our community. It’s everything it has for the first time in history. Five generations are in the workplace. Traditionalists, baby boomers. Gen X millennials and Gen Zs, which they’re now calling zoomers traditionalists. Is that the silent generation also known A K A the silent generation traditionalists. Um Dr Lauren, do you want to sort of frame this up for us before we get into some of the details? Yeah, I’ll tell you how we got started. So last year at N 10, at the NTC conference actually presented a session. It was a workshop on teaching technology skills within an intergenerational workplace. And so it was a nice size crowd and Dr Carla was in there and really enjoyed the session and came up to me afterwards and we connected and here we are. And so we’ve done a couple of projects together and of course, when in 1024 came up. We wanted to create a part two for this year. And so we were really excited and we actually presented this morning. You’ve already done? All right. All right, good. So we can maybe talk about some of the questions that arose, questions or comments. OK. OK. Um So one of the I’m just taking from your session description in the, in the agenda, uh common communications challenges in the workplace. Of course, we’re talking about intergenerational. Um You know, why don’t we start with? Stick with you, Doctor Lauren. What, what, what are some of the common challenges? Yeah. And so one of the um it’s very interesting that with the various generations, how we just prefer um modes of communication best and so with traditionalist and the baby boomers, they prefer more face to face communication. Um Yeah, more face to face, more written memos and things like that. And so if they are able to get in front of someone um that is better or if they’re able to talk to someone on the phone, that’s what they prefer also for um Gen X. No, Gen Xers. Yes. For Gen Xers, they really prefer um phone or verbal communication also and they’re also very quick learners. And so with Gen Xers, if they’re able to integrate some type of technology in it, think about like slack or texting or what not, they’re very fast learners. Um I’m actually a millennial and so I, I did not even say that but um we are two different generations. So I’m a millennial and Doctor Carla is a baby boomer. And so which makes our um our relationship very unique. So will you expand in 25 NTC? Bring in, bring in a traditionalist or someone on the other end? Maybe a maybe a gen X maybe. So I was thinking maybe like a panel with all with representative. I mean, it’s all born of yours from last year. So how do we overcome these? I mean, so as the baby boomer, I would rather just get up and go walk over to your office, but you’d rather I slack you or, or pick up the phone. I wouldn’t mind the phone. But that would be my second choice. My first choice would be the more laborious, the more time consuming I admit the more time consuming, the more invasive to you. I’m, I’m admitting that I still would rather knowing all that. I still would rather just get up and go talk to you in your office. You would rather I slack you or pick up the phone. Well, it’s very interesting. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you personally your generation. I got you. Yeah. And so traditionally, with those generations and the stereotypes, the research says that yes, that is um that is normal and stereotypical. However, we really have to consider the person. And so for instance, like me, um like millennials traditionally, we prefer texting something quick. I prefer a phone call. And so people know if they need to get me, they should just pick up the phone because I’m probably not going to text back. And so, um, and that’s just not just because I don’t like texting, but I get distracted and things like that. So we have to understand who the person is and communicate and ask them, hey, how do you prefer that I communicate with you and adapt to their preferred communication style? So we have the stereotypes but then also, you know, the person and the human aspect to it. But then I have to ask a challenging question, a question that challenges that a bit. So if I prefer the in person and you prefer the phone, where, where, where are we, we need to meet in the middle somehow and, and compromise and um yeah, and just figure out, OK, how do we work on this? And so an example with myself and, and Doctor Carla, sometimes we’ll text but often times we will um she’ll call me if she knows if she trying to get me like pretty quickly is a call or she knows that, OK, if it can wait a little bit, a text will be OK. But it just depends on the relationship and the person and just finding a common ground and communicating that from the beginning. OK, Doctor Carla, what about the different conceptions about work? You know, the generations consider work. I think different, different purpose. Uh younger folks consider it, you know, it’s a part of my life, but it’s not that big a part where I think, I think older folks consider it more, you know, they tend to more self identify around their work, you know. So you get, does it make sense? Different conceptions of work across the generation? And I think that COVID um was, was definitely an eye opener for everyone for engagement. So what you’re talking about is actually engaging with the community at work or just engaging with a person? Whereas um for years, uh baby boomers being in the workplace, you know, everybody, you know, um you know, you know, their Children, they all, everybody’s grown up. Well, once COVID hit, then we were all sent home and some of us went back. Well, they saw a difference in engagement, engagement. Those who went back to the work workplace, they saw a little bit more engaging in the whole community of work. Whereas those who were remote didn’t really engaged. So they were, they saw different generations, for example, the the baby boomers are more engaged, but the millennials and gen Z are less engaged because they’re remote, they’re remote, they’re not connecting as much. And so that connecting and engaging is very important for well being for anyone that is, is, is is on a job. So what do we do to overcome the lack of engagement. And I think that that’s where it comes in where maybe a hybrid or meeting at least once a month that there is, there is a time that we all do come together um and see one another and that meeting that coming together in person in face to face is for real, not just zooming or teams, but actually coming together and meeting and talking. And how are you doing? How’s your family? Because sometimes even when we were just tell me about your family, you don’t even know about your family, right? Because a lot of times when you’re working remote, you don’t even have to show your face. So a lot of people are not. But what we’re finding is that is making you even more, less engaged. Research is showing that there’s less and less engagement and you need engagement for well being. So we have to be intentional. Leadership needs to be intentional, all levels of leadership, not just all levels from board members, all the way down to every person within the organization needs to be intentional of wanting to engage. Because I can, if I can work on four jobs, if I can work on four projects and just give you what you need and send you on your way, I don’t have to connect with your organization. Just get, just get the money, just give me the money, pay me. And here, here’s the end result, the product I still I’m not connecting. OK. OK. Um Other challenges. I mean, we’re just, we’re just getting started. Well, you know, when you’re talking about I’m modes of communication. Um Again, we can’t generalize, we can’t use the stereotype is that traditionalists are like this, baby boomers are like this, those millennials are like that and those, those, you know, Gen Zs are like this, we can’t do that because even in our relationship, um if I text her, I mean, I, I mean, I hear from her all day whereas if she texts me, I text her right back now. That’s not normal. I mean, it’s not normal as far as baby boomer versus millennial. It should be that if everybody is saying what everybody does, she should be able, she should be calling me and it’s, oh, hi. It’s so nice to hear from you. How’s your family? Because I’m a baby boomer. Right? No, we’re to the point she, she wants to and she’s different, but we have learned and I think we’re test tubes for this and that’s why this workshop was so good for us to work it because we, we’re, we’re showing the strategies and how helpful it is to learn one another and to respect one another’s mode of communication and not just say, oh, that’s how you are. That’s how your generation is. No, it’s individual. It is and it’s respect, it’s respect of whatever it is. Whatever your mode of communication is, let me respect it and let me see where we can drop our drawbridge down and where can we come together so we can really communicate otherwise we’re, we’re just sacrificing the productivity of the, of the office of the mission. Right. I mean, we’re, we’re just, if we’re not, if we’re not listening to each other and respecting communications preferences, it’s just gonna be, uh, it’s not gonna be as an effective or an organization as it could be. It’s robotic, it’s not human, it’s, it’s just not, it’s not personable, it’s the long lasting. OK. We have um strategies for strengthening intergenerational communications conversations. We’ve talked about some share some more. Yeah. And so um so we talked about um go ahead, we talked about the um the different modes is what you’re saying, the different modes. OK. Yeah. OK. So we talked about um in what type of mode, how we will, is that what you’re saying? What’s the best way to communicate with you, whether you, whether you like face to face or whether you like text or whether you, whether you want social media. And so finding out which one is best and how can we be more effective? How do we find this out? We survey everybody with a uniform survey and then share the results or? Well, I mean, you can do that but you can also bring that human aspect to it and one get to know people, you know what I mean? Oftentimes in the workplace and even in the community, but especially in the workplace, I feel like we’re so, you know, just stuck at our desks or, um, there’s a lot of assumptions and just ask the person, especially as you get to know them, it might come naturally or sometimes you might have to ask, hey, I noticed that you haven’t responded to my teams. Um, I noticed that you haven’t even looked at it yet because I didn’t see little icon come up. Um, is there a better way that I can reach you if you, you know, if I need something? I noticed that it’s been like five hours, you know what I mean? And so they might tell you, oh, I don’t use that thing. Ok. Well, that’s not the best way to. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And sort of adapt and, um, and then, and then, you know, and tell them what you prefer. Also another one of the challenges I was going to say was learning from each other. And so it’s not really a challenge but it’s one of the different strengthening aspects. And so we always can learn from each other within the workplace. And so especially intergenerationally and we all have various experiences and knowledge and we can all grow from each other. And so that communication piece is not just about being effective in the workplace, but it’s also about just growing as a person growing as a professional. We can all learn from each other. And so really honing in on that and even within the workplace, how can um organizations and employers really foster that opportunity for intergenerational learning. How can we encourage people to grow with each other and from each other? So is that a co mentorship program, maybe it could be a baby boomer being linked with a genzer or oftentimes in the workplace. Now too, there may be a millennial who is supervising a baby boomer. You know what I mean? And those are opportunities for growth. Also, next week, apps, tools and tactics to future proof your nonprofit. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech. You find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms blocking your support, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org, fast fund, friendly, flexible fundraising forms. Love that I just, I I can’t get over the alliterations. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that mission study. Be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.
As our 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage continues, Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader, rather than one person doing everything. Janice is at Shift and Scaffold.
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of formation if you made my skin crawl with the idea that you missed this week’s show. And if you think I said fornication, get your head out of the gutter, close the porn hub window. It’s formation. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony, we have strategic meetings for teams of one as our 2024 nonprofit technology conference coverage continues. Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader rather than one person doing everything Janice is at shift and scaffold and cyber incident cases and takeaways. We’ve got good stories about bad actors. You’ll also hear the practical steps your nonprofit can take to prepare for cybersecurity incidents to reduce their impact and will empower you to hold incident prep discussions with your leadership or staff, Steve S who says security is a team sport joints from riprap security. This is also from 24 NTC on Tony’s take two delightful nostalgic women’s names. We’re sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking support, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is strategic meetings for teams of one. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the third day of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. We are all together in Portland, Oregon. Nonprofit radio coverage of the conference is sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me for this conversation, a uh an NTC perennial for nonprofit radio, Janice Chan, you knew she was coming. She’s Director of Shift and Scaffold Janice. Welcome back to nonprofit radio. After many NTC appearances. Many thanks for having me back, Tony. Always good to see you and talk with you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure as well for me to be here in person with you. Not just on Zoom. Yes. Yes. Uh This year your session topic is strategic team meetings for teams of one. All right. All right. Before we get into that, I, I wanna, I wanna talk a little about, I knew that I remembered I was reminded that you were studying Japanese. I, I, when I read it, I had remembered from previous years. Now, you live in Japan? Yes, I, I have been studying Japanese because my husband and I were not realized. But we had decided to take this job opportunity for him, which was based in Tokyo. And so we’re like, all right, we should start trying to learn the language. So, you know, it would be helpful to live there if we’re going to live there. And so, yeah, so we moved about a year and a half ago in 2022 some delays due to the pandemic. Um but it’s been great so far. And yeah, working at learning the language at the place that I live in, I’m sure living there helps quite a bit. You’re immersed. Uh is, is, is English very common or not, not so much, you can definitely get around Tokyo in English outside of Tokyo a bit harder. Um I think they did a lot of things to prepare for the Olympics when they were supposed to be there in 2022. And you know, in terms of the train signage and things like that. So you can get, you can get by in the city, in the city. Actually Japanese people in school, study English for several years. But you know, studying in school is always a little different than talking to native speakers. So I’m having the experience in reverse of going to class and then attempting conversations and often just mangling my way through it. But people are very kind fortunate. You’re, I’m working at it. People appreciate the outreach. They, they’re happy to work with me too, which is nice and really helpful. Do you have Children? Did you bring Children abroad? We brought our cat, our 18 year old grandma cat. She’s lovely and sassy. At 18, she’s still, she’s more sassy now, I think. Well, I know some sassy, 8090 year olds. That’s not surprising. All right. And uh I also want folks to know that if you want to see some beautiful photography, go to uh shift and scaffold.com because you have one stunning one too. There are several but the one of the from the Metropolitan Museum, the Reflection the park is in the background in that room. Yeah. Is that the Egyptian room room? So there are many great photos that shift and scaffold that Janice took there. Alright. So let’s talk about uh team meetings for teams of one. What was the genesis for this uh this uh up the this uh this intuition, this uh creative burst redefinition. That’s what I want resurgence, redefinition, defining redefining one to be a team. So whether even when I’ve been in house and now I’m an independent consultant and so I work for myself. But even when I was in house, a lot of times I was the only person who did the technology, who did the knowledge management, who did the training sometimes. And so I spent basically my entire career mostly being a team of one. Um And, you know, there are certain practices and things that I’ve done over time that I find really helpful in that because sometimes I don’t always have somebody to bounce things off of. Or sometimes when I do, they have a really, they don’t have the same background that I do. Right. So they have a really different perspective which is useful. But sometimes I’m like, I just got to figure things out for myself. There’s nobody setting the strategy. Like my boss is a development director and I’m doing database management, for example, right? So, you know, they’re supportive, but they don’t actually understand my day to day work. And so I need to do a lot of that strategic work by myself. And there were some of these practices I developed over time. And one of them was that I would meet with myself before you have these good practices, which we will absolutely get to. When did you start to think of yourself as a team as a team that emerge? Probably. So I remember, I don’t know why this sticks in my head so much. I had this phone call with this director at my organization at the time and I was supposed to help her team with some and she had a team of like, you know, actual other people. She had about seven people on her team. And I was the grant writer at the time. And so she was like, we have some opportunities. There’s some partners we talked to and, you know, I’d love if we could get your help on applying for these grants, we have the opportunity to apply for these grants in multiple states, but they’re all due at the same time. And she was like, maybe you can get some help from your team. And I was like, listen, I am the team. You were talking to the entire team. I’m the grant rating team. So in addition to my other jobs foisted on you the redefinition, talk to get some support from your team, the rest of myself. So your best practices, these are things you’ve been doing through the years for yourself in your work. So a lot of times often, you know, either at times when I really needed to say plan for the year or I’m about to take on a big project or start something new or I really want to maybe make some changes. Often. I would kind of set aside some time and just sort of be with myself, but I would take notes during that time, right? I would have a little, ok, here’s the thing that I want to work on for this hour or two hours or something, right? I need to plan out 2024 or I need to figure out how to work with that stakeholder who is, you know, I’ve got some stakeholders that I have to manage. And I’m trying to get that on board. I’m kind of trying to come up with some strategies for that. And I’m kind of sitting down and having a little meeting with myself with an agenda because I would be like, wait, what was I supposed to focus on for this hour? Right. And so it’s like a little reminder to myself and I’ve always been a note taker And so it’s just kind of a thing that I kept doing and then I would do it for planning my week. I would do it for reflecting on things at the end of the month and I was talking to someone and I realized that maybe some other people do it, but not everybody thinks of it that way. Um And it was really helpful that I ended up just taking things that I sometimes did in meetings with other people. I was like, oh, you know what, this is really helpful to take notes this way or whatever it is. And then I would do that when I was still doing it just by myself. So that’s kind of where it came out of. What else should we be doing with our team of one. Um So I, so to back it up a little bit part of, I didn’t really think a lot about the practice of meeting with yourself in that I didn’t necessarily articulate it. I was just like, oh, this is what you do. Right. You had a to do list. I certainly had a, to do list, but you didn’t think of devoted time to specific tasks. Well, I did but I think I didn’t think of it as maybe a thing that other people didn’t think of. And I was so, I also like to do creative writing. I was at this conference last year for creative writing and I talked to someone and they were like, so I told my new manager that I don’t start work before 10. She works from 10 to 7, but I don’t start work before 10 because the first two hours of my morning are dedicated for writing. That’s my writing time. And I realized so I live in Japan and I work with clients in the US. And so sometimes I wake up really early for meetings. I have meetings at like six in the morning, sometimes five in the morning. But on days when I don’t have super early meetings, I’d still wake up, my body just wakes up at that time now. But I would just stay in bed, you scroll through my phone or something. Like I wasn’t doing anything at that time. And why would I get out of bed for, for clients or for other commitments? But I wouldn’t do that for myself and for my own work, my own creative writing, et cetera. And I think so I recently, at the end of last year, I was like, all right, I’m going to really make this a regular practice. Um Yeah, and I thought it would be a really interesting session and tool to share with other people at the ante community as well. OK. Um Other, I don’t know, other tactics for you say tactics to make time for strategic work as a team of one, you got to take care of yourself, you got to take care of your team, take care of your team of one. Exactly. So I think a lot of this, so there’s tools and strategies and then there’s the mindset. And so um maybe I’ll talk about the mindset first and then talk show and strategies. But I think sort of as that team of one, a decent host would have asked you about the, you’re suffering a lackluster host. You, you think the host would ask about the mindset and the culture of the team of one first before you get into the, the tactics and strategies. It’s OK. That’s why we’re here to learn. We’re all still learning. And, you know, I think a lot of times where we start, right is when we want to do something better. We’re like, oh what are the tactics we’re doing it better? What’s the technical stuff and not the organizational culture or the mindset, all the internal work that we need to do when we work with people or work with ourselves. And so I think one of the, I don’t remember what started it, but last year I had this epiphany one day of like, wait, who’s leading my team? Like, nobody’s leading my team. Wait, it’s supposed to be me and I’ve not been leading my team and it was a really big sort of flipping the lights of it, John in my head. And I think realizing also whether I’ve been an independent consultant or when I was in house, right. Yes, I could run around and do all of the things and I would do all the things but not necessarily in a, I think I assumed that because I was the same person that it was cohesive and coordinate, right? And it was in a unified direction, you’re only one person, right? So of course, clearly going in the same direction as myself, I would think. And then I realized at one point I was like, I don’t think that’s actually the case and the, and part of that, what does that feel like when you felt like you were not going in a unified direction, I felt really scattered. I felt like, ok, I’m doing these things because it seemed like a good idea at the time or like you’re supposed to post more regularly on social media or you’re supposed to, I don’t know, go out and meet people and network and things like that. But I wasn’t necessarily doing them all in a unified direction. And I realized that I was doing sort of the different job functions like business development and content development and my consulting work and things and, but I wasn’t sort of doing the work to actually unify them intentionally. And so part of that was, I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a team or as a business or as an organization. I just like, I’m just Janice, I’m just showing up and doing the things and, you know, that works, you can get away with that for a time. But I think also, and you see this also in people when they go from being an individual contributor to being a manager or they kind of step from the, I’m just doing the things that my boss told me to do. So now I have to set the direction even if I don’t have any direct reports. And I think really, I realized that it was, I was kind of lacking that direction and I hadn’t made the time or really put into place the practices to do that on a regular basis that I wasn’t leading my own team and that spot was kind of vacant. And I think that’s a really big shift, especially in small organizations where a lot of times you just get thrown into like, hey, we need you to do, you’re like, hired for communications, let’s say, and, and, you know, you’re the only communications person and so you’re doing the writing, you’re doing the graphic design, you’re doing all the digital things. Um And then you’re just, you know, fielding whatever people think is your job honestly, a lot of the time and there’s no, if nobody is trying to make all of that cohesive for, say your external audiences, who’s managing the stakeholders, who is making sure there’s a cohesive strategy, you know, it, it starts, you’re not as effective for your organization. And some of that is, it’s easy to get caught up in all the urgent stuff. But some of it is also just I think that a big part of that mindset shift is we don’t respect ourselves as leaders as teams in the same way that we respect other leaders and teams, right? Like if I saw this meeting with you, Tony, right? There wasn’t a time to show up here, right? There was a process, there’s things going on, you know, I noticed that I would show up to meetings with other people differently versus I will reschedule things on myself all the time. And I’m not going to say that I don’t still do that, right? But I think just being more conscious of like, OK, I’ve pushed aside, pushed aside my time that I set it aside to do the strategic work and I’m putting out fires for other people because they’re urgent, you know, and that happens a lot. But I think the, I think especially in the social impact space, a lot of us, we want to make things better for other people. We care about other people, those requests that other people are making are not unreasonable. But it can also be really hard to, you know, especially for those of us who are taught to put other people first or that we exist for the community, not only for ourselves. Right? And that’s a very common ethos in the nonprofits face as makes sense. And also, you know, depending on who we are, I’m a woman, I’m the daughter of immigrants. And so there are a lot of things that when somebody comes to me and ask me for my help to do something, right? I’m like, oh, let me figure out how I can help you. And it’s easier to keep putting my stuff on the back burner, put myself on the back burner. But then that builds up over time. So if you’re the only, let’s say you’re the entire technology team at your organization, your single team of one, then if you don’t make the time to do the strategic work, your organization is not going to be able to use technology strategically and effectively, you know, your organization is going to be a little bit hamstrung in advancing the mission because you’re not carving that time out and you’re not respecting the time and the energy you need for that. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity, virtuous beliefs that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys. That response to the needs of each individual virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact, virtuous.org. Now back to strategic meetings for teams of one with Janice Chan. I it’s interesting really, the realization that you treat others better than you treat yourself. Essentially, you treat others work more importantly and more respectfully than you treat your own. Like you’re talking about putting off your, putting off your own time, putting off your own tasks. Um Yeah, minimizing your own needs or the other, right? It’s just I’ll get to it. You wouldn’t do that for somebody. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t procrastinate like that you wouldn’t put off the work of others that you might have been asked to do or that, you know, as an individual, as a solo consultant, you realize you need to do, you wouldn’t do that to your clients or to your, to your organization that you’re where you’re a team of one, you wouldn’t do that, but you’ll do it for your own, your own stuff. We need to shift that. This is the mindset that we’re talking about. This is the mindset. And, uh, you know, and some of that I just completely lost my train of thought. That’s, that’s right. I think, well, you made the point and I just was, like, underlining it. So, how about some of the other things that you do besides have, you know, agendas for your, for your solo time? What are some other, some other tips? Yeah. So the, you know, a lot of the things that are about running effective meetings and I know we all have this joke about meetings that should be emails. Um But I think there are times when it’s important to when the meeting is the right tool, when you’re making a decision, you’re trying to get alignment or you’re doing something where dialogue is essential to moving forward with care often, you know, to building relationships um and maintaining trust. And so a lot of the things that are crucial for effective meetings with other people are also useful when you’re by yourself, meeting with yourself, the agenda, taking notes, keeping track of decisions that were made, keeping track of the action items, not just in the notes, but hopefully in whatever project management tool or however you normally keep track of your action items. Um I would say the big difference when you’re meeting with yourself is, of course, there’s not, you know, in a, in most meeting notes, at least the way I take them in a group, I note down who is attending the meeting. Right. There were people we invited to the meeting. We’ve made sure there was somebody from finance and someone from programs and someone from fundraising or whatever. And when you’re meeting with yourself you’re like, oh, yeah, I don’t need to. It’s just Janice. right? Um And something that I find helpful that’s different for a meeting with yourself is to think about the different roles that you need at that meeting because I, so this is a pet peeve. I have of in meetings with other people where they’re like, OK, we finished the agenda for, let’s say the project’s status update or whatever. Actually, this is the same group of people that, you know, for the data working group. So could we just throw that in right now? Right. And then you’re like, I, that’s a total mind shift. Yeah, it’s a total mind shift. I didn’t prepare like I’m not ready. And also, now this was like an hour long meeting that was going to finish faster. And now you’ve just messed with my head because now we’re going to be here for an hour and a half. Right? And so, and I think not part of respecting yourself, right? Is to not do that to yourself either. And so being clear about what is the purpose of this meeting. We use different meeting types for different purposes, right? It’s very different that we’re like a strategic planning meeting and a project planning meeting. And a team general team, weekly meeting should not look and feel the same, you’re not doing the same things. And similarly, when we’re meeting with ourselves, let’s not do that to ourselves either. Um And so naming those roles who needs to be there. So, you know, if I am the communications team and I am the writer and the graphic designer and the digital person and also the uh communications director leading the team, right? Have all of those roles been represented in that time and space. And even if it’s something simpler, like as an independent consultant, right? Is it consultant me? Is it business owner me? You know, or at a more basic level, is it decision maker, me or implementer me? Because if it’s only implementation, that’s just like me writing the report, I’m not making decisions, this is not a meeting, I’m just working on something. So I think calling attention to those um is a key difference that I would say for meetings with yourself. I, I like the idea of different roles because I, I think it helps make you accountable for, for the different, for the different uh areas of responsibility that you have and not only areas of responsibility but individual tasks that you have, you know, the the the business development person is gonna come down on, on the uh the writer who hasn’t done a blog post for six, for six weeks. Right. So III I see an accountability role. Absolutely. I love that. Calling that out anything else? So I think there are a lot of different uh like let’s be real, right? We only have so many hours in the day, but more importantly, we only have so much mental energy and mental capacity for things, right? And so part of that, you know, it’s some tools and tactics for protecting your time. It might be things like no meeting Tuesdays or it might be the last Friday of the month is always dedicated to strategic work. So I think some of it is like making time and actually putting it on your calendar to do that work, right? Um And it’s helpful if your whole organization does it and put it in the calendar, put it in the calendar, this is an important time exactly like you would do for a meeting with three other people. So if you know, sometimes life happens, you need to reschedule, but reschedule it don’t just cross it off the list and then never come back to it. And, you know, there are also other things that, um you know, I think that that time thing is one thing, right? There’s only so many hours, but that’s also a little bit more straightforward in some ways, it’s much harder to protect your mental brain space to do strategic work. So for example, I’m an introvert. I like people. I love hanging out with people at N DC. And also at the end of the conference day, I go back to my hotel room and I’m like, I just need some quiet time for a little bit. But also I know that at the end of the day, I can expect of myself to do strategic work, right? Like maybe I reply to emails or something, but I’m not going back and planning out some major initiative at night because it’s not realistic of where, how tired my brain is. Um And so I think that’s harder because that’s also individual what works for one person isn’t going to work for another person. And so some of that is figuring out what you need to be able to get into that, to have that spaciousness to do the strategic work and to figure out how to ask for that for your team. Um And you know, that could be, it could be things like the no meeting Tuesdays or working from home instead of working in the office. But it could also be things like, you know what I need to go for a walk. I need to actually, when I’m doing this type of work, I need to not be at my regular desk. I need to be in a physically different location so I can get into a different mindset than my day to day, putting out fires, et cetera. Sometimes it might be just like, you know, um, knowing that your team, knowing that, hey, the first hour of my day, every day, that’s like I do not take meetings, right. I’m working, but I do not take meetings so that I can make sure I do the important work, whatever it might be. So it’s really helpful to make sure that you’re asking your boss or your team or your colleagues for that and making that clear. But in doing that, you’re also modeling that for other people as well as you honor yourself and your team. There’s nobody else to advocate for you. You go out and do it. You know, I mean, if you, if you, if that team leader role has been empty, that means there’s no one else that means you need to step into that role. So, you know, I told people in the session, give yourself that promotion already. If you haven’t, how about we leave it right there? That’s perfect. Wonderful. Give yourself that promotion. If you haven’t, she’s Janice Chan director at Shift and Scaffold, Shift and scaffold.com. Always a pleasure. I hope to see you 2025. You think you might come, come back. That’s the I, I’m hoping I will see you all in 2025 Baltimore. My old home city. It’ll be a little closer for you. Five hours closer. All your old home. I used to live in Baltimore. I look forward to seeing you. I know you’ll have a good topic. I don’t have to say, have a good you will. You will you so much to my p Thanks for sharing, Janice and thank you for sharing in our conversation about teams of one where we’re sponsored by Heller consulting, technology implementation and strategy for nonprofits. It’s time for a break. Donor box open up a new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box like kiosk, the smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team and member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors, make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two, Alice Antoinette, Bernice Charlotte, Constance Deidra. Thank you, Kate. These are some of the delightful names that I’ve kept on a personal list for years now of women in their seventies, eighties and nineties. And there’s even one who was 100 years old on the list and I just II I just get nostalgic over names that are so uncommon now. I mean, these are women who were born in the 19 thirties and forties. So not surprisingly, you know, names change, of course. Uh, but yeah, I don’t know, the, the names just move me. Um, and so I’ve been keeping this personal list and I did, I, I posted some of it on linkedin and I thought I would share some of it today. Um, the, you know, it’s, it’s the names and, but it’s also the, the women’s stories, you know, growing up in the 19 thirties, 19 forties, fifties in the United States. Uh, what that was like, you know, education wise for some, some women went on beyond high school. Uh, a lot did not. Some women went on to marry and have families and some did not. So it’s, you know, it’s the combination of the stories and, and I guess the, the richness of the stories makes me love their names as well. Um, and just as I said, you know, get nostalgic for these names that we just don’t see anymore. Like Geraldine Gertrude, Gussie Hazel, Jacqueline Lenoir, Lottie Mabel Marlene Maxine. Many Myrna, Ophelia, Penelope, Rochelle Selma Veronica. All right. I’ve got a lot more on my list, but that’s just a sample of names that I find, uh, delightful and I get nostalgic about them. Have you got any if, uh, if, uh, if you wanna contribute your mom’s name or your grandmother’s name or maybe your own name. Uh, let me know. Love to hear it. Tony at Tony martignetti.com. Let’s see if the names you know, are on my list. That is Tony Stick two, Kate. I would like to add Carmella both with one L and then one with two Ls. Yes. All right. So share why the name Carmela is important to you is I had a great grandmother. You might know better than me. But, but that I’m, you know, my name is my first name is Carmella. Well, I know that, but listeners, listeners could very well not know that your name is Carmela. Kate. Mar uh Carmela and then Kate is, is short which I never understood. I don’t know how Kate is short for Carmella. Carmel. I could see Carmel what? I have an aunt Kate but I have like a grandmother. Caramel, right? So, yeah, but they’re two different, they’re two different women. So how does because Kate is not your middle name? No, it’s not. Anne is my middle name. Like great grandmother Ann or? Right. Where is your great grandmother, Anne? Who was my grandmother? Right? This Carmela was on your other side, on your mom’s side of the family. So I, I didn’t know, I didn’t know Carmella. I don’t know. I’m, I’m happy to call you Kate, although, you know, I often call you Carmela as well because nobody else does. So I like to be different and I think it’s a beautiful name but Kate being short for Carmela, I, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense. No, it’s been 21 years. It’s never made sense to me. Well, we’ve got VU but loads more time here is cyber incident cases and takeaways. Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio’s continuing coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference in Portland, Oregon. We are all convened at the Oregon Convention Center in downtown Portland and Nonprofit radio is sponsored at the convention at the conference by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me. Now to have a conversation is Steve Sheer. He is CEO and co-founder of Riprap Security. Steve. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Have you done your session? I have done my session. We were the first in the first session on the first day. So you set the bar high. I feel bad for the presenters that came after you. We just met a few minutes ago and I’ve already, I already know that you set the set, the bar high. Uh gave quite a challenge to the uh to the presenters that that succeeded. You. Your topic is cyber incident, uh preparation and what we can learn from real world incidents. So it sounds like you uh you are bringing some stories that we all are glad that it did not happen to us. Um Maybe these are major headline stories. I don’t know, maybe these are some of the big ones, but we can uh we can take some things away. Exactly. Ok. Ok. Um Why did you feel the need for the session? Yeah. So um I run a cybersecurity consulting company that’s focused on mission driven and purpose driven organizations and helping them improve their cybersecurity. And one of the key ways that we start working with new clients is that they call us and they say, hey, my house is on fire. We’ve experienced an incident, we need help and so we go and we help them and it, when we go in and we’ve never met them before and they don’t, they’ve not really prepared for an incident. The incident is much more severe. They end up incurring a lot more losses. They have a lot, it’s all very, it’s all much more stressful and the chance of recovery is lower than if they had prepared ahead of time to deal with an incident. And so the, the talk is all about how organizations can prepare ahead of time to make it less stressful, to make it cost less to respond to an incident and really reduce the impact of the incidents that happened to the organization. Ok. Iii I don’t think I’ve, I’ve thought about that or I haven’t heard it said that way that you can make it less impactful, less of a crisis by preparing. I mean, what I’ve heard is you should prepare because you can, well, you can never eliminate the possibility. You can greatly reduce the possibility of being attacked having an incident yourself. But you can actually make it less with preparation? Ok. Excellent, excellent. So um is it, are we just gonna share a bunch of unfortunate stories and, and take away lessons from each one? Maybe we can talk through some of the best practices and I can weave in some, some stories here and there. So why don’t we start with some of your, your best advice? Sure. So I think the primary thing that you want to do is when you’re preparing for an incident is really ensure that you have really good buy in from your stakeholders in inside your organization. So people that are working in the marketing and communications portion, senior leadership members of the board, so that they’re involved in the planning and the preparation process. So that when you do have an incident, they’re not caught by surprise. This is not the first they’re hearing about how to deal with an incident. And so, you know, we, we tend for organizations that, that have not prepared. We, we end up spending a lot of time trying to brief the senior leadership and the board about what’s happening and they were very nervous and they don’t, they don’t let the, the the people responding to the incident have time to actually respond to the incident. And, and part of what they don’t have in place is a AAA management plan for this crisis, right? I mean, uh um if it’s, if it’s become public now, we have APR issue. So, who’s the, who’s the public facing voice? Is it our, is it a, is it a crisis communicator that we’ve, we, we knew we would hire in an emergency or are we scrambling for that? Should it be the CEO, should it be the board chair? You know, uh, should it be the chief technologist or if we have one, our audience is small and mid size nonprofit. So the likelihood that they have someone devoted to tech, tech is, you know, off and on because I’m certainly not 100% don’t, but, but a lot don’t. So you know, who should even be the voice? And then what should we be saying? How much should we be telling the public and our stakeholders? So, all right. So we need to have a plan in place um as well as managing the expectations that you’re saying of the board, the C Suite. Alright. What else? I think another important thing is really clearly defined roles and responsibilities of who’s going to be involved and when should they be involved in an incident? Right. So you touched on it already is, when do we bring in the CEO or the board to talk with the public on our behalf or? Hey, when does it make sense to not have them do that? Who is responsible for taking the operational steps to respond to the incident? The hands on keyboard, very technical investigation that goes along with responding to an incident. What third parties do you need to bring in? Um, depending on the type of incident you need to bring in your web development team if you’ve outsourced the web development team, because the website is having an incident, but you wouldn’t need to bring them in. Maybe if you’re having a ransomware attack on one of your, your computers, right. They’re not probably the right people to bring in. So you really want to make sure that you’re involving all the right internal first party and third party people and assigning them roles, specific roles and responsibilities. So that, you know, hey, we need to do this thing. We need to go talk to this person who’s directly responsible for this activity. OK. Yeah. Um Who’s gonna speak and then you know who’s gonna speak to uh are there aside from the public, if this involves donor data, volunteer data, who’s gonna speak to those groups? What do we say to them? How do we reassure them? Um Yeah, I’m giving chills. I mean, my synesthesia is kicking in. Actually, I really did. I just got chills thinking about because I’m, I’m not a CEO of a nonprofit. This is I’m a one person entrepreneur. It’s not gonna happen to me like most likely, but to put myself in that position and to try to figure that out and now maybe we’ve got press calling perhaps. I mean, I’m kind of thinking worst case the press is calling, what do we say to them? Like if you say no comment, that sounds bad. Do you not respond at all? And then they’ll just say, well, we’re not, was not immediately available for comment. Maybe that’s better. I don’t know. But ok, I don’t wanna have to and then it’s a crisis, it’s a crisis and the whole planning you deal with these. I mean, we do, let’s take a worst case scenario. I mean, how do you, how do you walk in and manage the, I’m gonna make it even worse. Do you get called in by organizations you’ve never talked to before? And that’s the most stressful. You don’t know anybody. We know, we don’t know anybody, we don’t know their technology, we don’t know much about them. And what do you do? We, you know, you learn real quick. Uh You ask a lot of pointed questions and you figure out who the right people to have in the room are because we find that there tend to be too many cooks in the kitchen when we show up. Right. There’s too many people involved and they’re causing more uh rotation and more work to be generated than really what there needs to be. So we really focus on, hey, who are the key people we need to bring in and then the people that are kind of excluded from that group, say more senior leadership, we promise them, hey, we’re gonna give you an update every hour or every three hours or every day so that they know what to expect when they’re going through an incident that they should. Ok. At three o’clock, someone’s gonna come and brief me on what’s going on and tell me what are our next steps, right. So we, we keep, keep everything really communicative and what that also prevents is we also tend to go in and serve as a bit of a firewall between the upper leadership and the board and the very technical people in terms of blocking and managing access to the people that are trying to do the hands on keyboard work so that they’re not disrupted by someone saying, oh, I need an update. I need an update is calling and I can now I can’t deal with the crisis. Oh man, how do you, that was like promotion for riprap security. How do people find you in that kind of crisis again? An organization you’ve never talked to before? Yeah. So it’s a lot of word of mouth. It tends to be, you know, who, who knows an organization that can, that can help us. Um And you know, there are a lot of organizations that can, can help, but there are not that many organizations that are equipped to work with nonprofits that are attuned to their needs and the times of data and stakeholders that they’re working with. And that’s why we like to work with these mission driven organizations is because we have a lot of experience there and we, we really can feel like we help them because we’ve, we’ve responded to incidents, all sorts of incidents with all kinds of different nonprofits and other mission driven organizations. All. Let’s, let’s take it down a notch now from the, from that worst case, like somebody you’ve never heard of before and they’ve never heard of you and they’re calling panicked. Right? I mean, they are panicked. Alright. We can remove ourselves from that situation. Let’s go back, let’s go back to some of your uh your, your advice for uh for preparing. Yeah, so, uh, I, I think the next thing to really understand is you got to really understand what your capabilities are. What, what about incidents and managing incidents? Are you realistically going to be able to handle on your own? Do you have a very technical person that’s going to be capable of doing the analysis and the investigation to figure out how the attacker got in where the attacker is, what the attacker is doing? Or do you need to make sure you go find somebody to help you do those things? I mean, the reality is most organizations they don’t have a person like that. Um, basically forensics, forensic forensics, deep digital forensics. And you know, we, unfortunately, we, we’ve come in in a lot of cases where our nonprofit, our nonprofit partners, they think they can rely on some existing third party relationship that they’ve got say with their it managed service provider or their web developer to help them address the incident. But the instant response is like pretty specialized set of capabilities, right? So you wanna certainly include those people in the incident response, but you really need to know you have someone that can help take you through from beginning to end from identifying that the incident has happened all the way through recovery to help you through that whole process. And though understanding your who’s, who’s on your team, who’s responsible for what um and really making sure that there’s clear lines and expectations is really key to making sure that you can successfully recover. Can we, can we launch into one of our unfortunate stories? Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. Uh we, we worked with one organization. Um It’s about 100 person um company and it’s a nonprofit. It’s a nonprofit. Yeah. And uh what happened to them is that they, uh uh they didn’t have multi factor authentication configured for uh their, their email. And uh an attacker was able to gain access to the emails of the CEO the coo and the CFO and the attacker sat for months watching emails come in and out of these three mailboxes and they were able to understand what, what, what is the process this nonprofit uses to get new vendors on boarded. What is the process for the vendors providing the bank account information for how to pay the vendors. What’s the process for when a vendor needs to send an invoice to the nonprofit, for the work that they’ve done and what they were able to do. So they’re, they’re, they, I went to law school. Well, I used to be, I used to practice law. They’re lying in. Wait, I would say this is what, this is what makes it a first degree murder and lying in. Wait type murder versus a heat of passion. This is lying in. Wait. Exactly. Yeah. And Attackers will maintain access for a long time in an organization to really learn about them in the same way that I learn about an organization when I’m trying to work with them, right? I want to profile all the activity and understand how to make them more. Did you used to be a bad guy? Did you come over the other side? Luckily not my style. Um And so what happened was that the, the attacker understood this payment flow and this vendor approval process and was able to issue their own invoices or they were able to issue their invoices to this nonprofit. The nonprofit was just paying them just they said, ok, this isn’t approved, everything looks fine. They posed as the CFO and the coo to like give the approvals, sending an email on their behalf and giving the approval stamp and just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars just walked out the door over a six month period and no one, no one realized, right? So there’s, you know, the there’s the aspect of, hey, you should have had multi factor authentication configured to protect those accounts. So the attacker couldn’t even get in from the beginning. But there’s also the side of, hey, what is your, what is your vendor approval and uh vendor invoice approval process look like and how, how could an attacker use that process and take advantage of it to issue their own invoices and get the money sent to their own account. So there’s, there’s a bit of a traditional cybersecurity and it portion of this incident and how to recover from it and as well as a more financial and a financial process and accounting process that, that we help them improve um to make it less vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. Once the crisis is over, then make it less likely to happen again. So that money was never recovered, was never recovered. Um Do, do nonprofits typically co-operate with law enforcement or would they rather just let it go, make it go away and, and, and the uh end the nightmare? Yeah. Uh it’s about 5050. We find um you know, there are some, there are some nonprofits that have an obligation to report something like that if they’re working with say health data or something like that, really something to be truly sensitive. Um A lot of organizations we talk with them about that of like, hey, you know, it’s worth reporting this. Like you’re not gonna get in trouble for being attacked, you know, it’s, and uh I, we, we almost always recommend going to talk with law enforcement. We almost always recommend that we submit the, the technical indicators of the, of the, of the attack. Like how the attacker, what the attacker did, how they did it to the, the federal law enforcement authorities so that they can go and cross analyze that information and try to help more people and try to, in some rare cases, go and track down the Attackers and, and do things like make arrests and disrupt the operations, rare cases though. Ok. So at least contribute to the, the FB I’s database of forensics and then maybe not pursue prosecution or. Well, it doesn’t sound like there’s prosecutions very likely not. Like, can nonprofits participate like that? Like, anonymously, the FBI is not just not gonna reveal the identity. You could go to your FBI field office that’s in, that’s in your state or your city and go and make these reports if you need to. There’s, um, a federal cybercrime task force that has a forum open that we use pretty regularly. If you wanted to submit something anonymously, you could do that through that, that, that manner. Ok. Um, and do you do the forensics, can you, can you figure out how they got in what they did? Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, we kind of the process and the workflow of the incident is after we get called or we see that there’s a potential incident happening. We start in the stage called identification. We’re really trying to profile what the threat is, what they’re doing, what they start to understand what the impact is so that we can go start taking steps to say, hey, let’s make a plan for how we’re going to contain the attacker. So the attacker cannot, we want to essentially put a force field around what they currently have access to and kick and start to limit their ability to escape out of and, and pivot away and gain more access to the environment. So after we are able to contain them, we work to eradicate their presence. So we, we remove access to accounts, we will pull computers from desks and erase them and reformat them. Um We’ve, we’ve done a lot of work. This is when the attacker knows now that, that they’re being, they’re being surveilled typically. Yes. Yeah. We, we, we’ll look under cabinets behind desks up in the drop ceiling in closets to make sure there’s no computers or devices that are hidden in those areas that the attacker is maybe using to. They’ve gained some physical access to the organization. It happens. Yeah. There’s sometimes there’s physical access. Oh my God, it’s even creepier. It’s way creepier. Where have they been? Right? Have you seen that? We’ve seen that damn. Is that, is that a disgruntled employee could be a disgruntled employee could be an attacker that, you know, they’re wearing an orange vest and they have a tool bag and they walk right in, you know, there’s a lot of these ways to, you know, just kind of walk waltz in and uh with Verizon, you optimize your, uh your wi fi we’ve seen evidence of degraded signal. We’re very proactive. Come on in. We’d all have, we all love higher performing wifi all. Oh my gosh, physical presence, man. Ok. Um Alright, so the takeaways from that, let’s just, just go a little more detail. That’s a, that’s a bad story, a couple, couple 100 1000 dollars. What do we take away from this? So what we take away is that you really have to understand the, the the impact of the incident to really understand what are the goals of the attacker? Is it opportunistic? Are they being specifically, is the organization being specifically targeted? We’re finding these days it’s more opportunistic of like the Attackers are not specifically targeting an organization. They’re just sort of, you know, hoping they get into any organization. And the question we get from a lot of nonprofits and any organization that we work with on an incident is like, why us, you know, and, and it’s unfortunately like it’s almost impossible to say, right? Um And they’re like, who would do this to us? I’m like, well, it could be anybody. Right. It’s, these people are all around the world. You know, it’s hard, they’re hard to track down. Um, even, even for the government, it’s hard to track these people down. And so we kind of help redirect that energy and it’s like, ok, you know, we, we may not be able to tell who did it or why they did it. But let’s get you to a better perspective. Let’s get you to a better place. Because what we end up doing after we’re able to remove the attacker is we, we have to work to help the organization recover and get back to business as normal. Now, most organizations that do this on their own without any help, they sort of kick the attacker out and then they just go back to doing business as usual without fixing the underlying reason. The attacker got in, in the first place and that’s a tough thing to come back or to return to somewhere or to get called in later or say we thought we had it under control, we won’t get struck by lightning twice. Exactly. Right. You know, if you’re not a, it’s not a good strategy if you don’t lock your front door, you know, it’s kind of like this happens again. Shame on you. Right. It’s like you gotta take the time. And so we work with the organizations who say, hey, how did the attacker get in? What are the things that we can do to close that method of access in the future. What are the other security capabilities that you can put into place the policies, the technology and what people need to be involved to make it so that you’re prepared for the next time. Um And then what we, what we always recommend and this is a thing that uh a lot of organizations skip as well is we, we have a very lengthy uh lessons learned session and the lessons learned sessions are really critical because you really want to bring in all the stakeholders from the dealing with the incident after everything is done while everything is still fresh in your mind. And you want to start understanding what did we do? Good? Like what do we do really well in the incident, we communicated, we bought pizza for everybody. So no one had to leave the office like simple things like this, right? And what, what didn’t we do? Well, like, ok, well, you know, it turns out the attacker was in the network for six months like that we should have known five months or 5.5 months ago. Um You know, things like that and then what we recommend is giving specific, having specific action items with specific due dates assigned to specific people so that things get followed up on. And that every time you have to step through this process, you’re improving a little bit more, you’re reducing the impact of future incidents and you’re just better prepared for the next time that it happens. What’s the, uh, proportion that you see that, uh, nonprofits take that proactive step after the crisis to mitigate the likelihood and the impact of a future crisis. Um, these days, the rate is much higher than it used to be. Five years ago. We wouldn’t have seen many follow through unless they’re quite a large organization. But people feel the pain and people see this in the news all the time. Right. They, they see major corporation Southwest. Yah. I don’t want our providers pipelines. Right. It’s always in the news. So people are a lot more aware of it. Want to have the conversation. It’s less of like, oh, no, we’re totally secure. Nothing can ever happen to us. Sort of just like hoping that nothing happens. But they, they want to engage more deeply and say, like, what do we really need to do? You know, what are the, what is the foundational things we need to put in place that we just don’t have. How did you come up with Riprap security? What’s the significance of that? Yeah. So, Riprap is a type of shoreline protection on, like, in a bay or on a river. It’s all rocky and the erosion patrol like those sort of not really rock walls but little rock islands or mounds that riprap. That’s exactly right. So you’re protecting the nation’s coastline, like our Coast Guard, our silent warriors. We’re not, we’re not quite as seaworthy, I think, but, uh, get nauseous sometimes. Um, let’s see, being able to hold the incident, incident, preparation discussions and leadership. Is that why we talked through a lot of that? Um Have you seen, I, I feel like I’m, I’m speaking to law enforcement, you know, like, uh about uh crime trends in the nonprofit community. Have you seen ransomware? Ransomware is a common one? We see you got a ransomware case story. You can tell we, we deal with these a little bit less these days than we used to. Um You know, honestly, the fact that people are more organizations are more fully remote means that the ransomware has trouble spreading to other devices on a network. So that definitely is a, is a nice thing to work from home or work remotely. Um But we’ve had cases where um we, we, we worked with one, this is one company. They’re, they’re quite small and um they’re 50% manufacturing company that we worked with and they called us up one day and they said, hey, we’re having this ransomware incident and our production floor of like they made um like metal machine parts, our production floor, everything is encrypted by ransomware. All the business side of the network was encrypted, everything was fully offline. They sent out most of their employees home and they’re just, you know, they turn the lights off right. They’re like, what do we do? And so we’re there, we’re trying to understand. We’ve identified obviously that there’s ransomware. We’re trying to understand, you know what it is, how they got in and the it director comes in and he’s like great news. I have backups like, oh, this is great. No one ever has backups. Right. Because if you’ve got backups, you can restore the data, you can get back to normal. No problem. So he stored them at his house in a little safe in his house, brought him back. He takes them out of the box and the, the, the backups are, they’re a week old, so it’s not ideal, but a week ago is better than nothing or two weeks. Um And he opens the box, it’s like an old tiny, like lunch crate, metal lunch crate. And they are tape drives and tape drives are uh like almost like a cassette deck. Um But they’re, they’re, they used to be used very frequently to store a large amount of data, but the downside is, are very slow to help move data on and off those tape drives. So I’m like, ok. All right. So he’s gonna say, oh, I’m gonna go restore the data to get us back up and running. He comes back a couple of hours later. He’s like, it looks like this is gonna take 14 days to restore our data. Like that’s a, that’s a really long time. And so ultimately, the leadership of the organization decided to pay the ransom because it was gonna cost them less. I think it was four or $500,000. It was gonna cost them less to get, to pay the ransom, to unlock the computers than it was for them to be down for two weeks. And that’s a hard choice for an organization to make. We’re paying the bad guys, but it’s a business decision. It’s a business. You see, are these foreign actors? Not this one specifically. But do you see a lot of foreign actors as the bad guy when you can identify, maybe, maybe, sometimes you can’t even identify where in the world they’re located. It tends to be pretty geographically spread. Um You know, there, there is a whole business model and, and business life cycle for these ransomware attacks. So an organization, uh 11, malicious organization will go and they’ll perform the initial um exploitation of a, of an organization. So they’ll go in, they’ll get access to a computer or an account and they do that tens of thousands of times and they’ll, they’ll collect all these logins and then they’ll sell them to ransomware Attackers. So there’s almost, they’re almost like a data broker providing these account credentials and this access to the ransomware Attackers and then the ransomware Attackers will go and they’ll install the ransomware on the computers that are associated with these accounts and they’ll just see who calls them back. And so there’s this whole ecosystem of, hey, you know, uh the Attackers know, like they need to be pretty, pretty quick to respond to their customers email, right? Their victims emails. Otherwise people aren’t going to trust that they’re going to provide the key if they get paid. And so we tend to, we tend to say that they’re so they’re good on customer service, customer service because there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. They, they, they’re great communicators, some big corporations, I promise we’ll get back to you within 15 minutes. Uh Crypto are they, are they typically paid in Cryptocurrency, typically paid in crypto? Um And they have a variety of different cryptocurrencies that they’re using almost as many as you can count. Um And they take pretty significant steps to once you’ve paid them, they typically give you one address to send the money, the, the, the, the digital currency to and from there, it’s almost immediately um essentially like chopped up into smaller chunks and sent out to, you know, potentially hundreds of other, you know, digital currency and Cryptocurrency accounts. So it’s very difficult to trace that, that kind of that kind of thing. Have you seen a case where the ransom was paid? And the key was not provided, the encryption key wasn’t provided. We’ve seen, we’ve seen where the attacker has provided the wrong decryption key by mistake. Uh But email them back back, he made a mistake they sent the customer, they got back to you. So you don’t have to go through a gateway or anything 800 number. Just go right to the right to the principal and then they provided the correct key. Now, now you do have to be careful. Right. We don’t, we don’t recommend paying the ransom. Not necessarily, but if it’s a business decision, um, you do have to be careful because, uh, the Department of Treasury and law enforcement agencies, they, um they’re very closely tracking these ransomware Attackers and what they do is they’ve placed some of these Cryptocurrency wallet addresses on the sanctions list. So the same sanctions list that has uh Russian oligarchs and um you know, um Chinese hackers through financial crimes enforcement network, Department of Treasury. I know exactly. So, what’s the, what’s the caveat there? The caveat is that you could potentially be in sanctions violations by paying one of these ransomware hackers. Um If it’s, if it’s a track sanctioned uh uh Cryptocurrency, it’s the Russian hacker or the Indian hacker and the Treasury Department are both, it’s not a good position, you want to call your lawyer for sure. All right. That’s a, that’s a great caveat. Alright. So what can we take away from this, uh, this uh lessons learned from this particular ransomware account at the manufacturer? Yeah. So I think the key thing is make sure you have ongoing current backups and uh and a lot of organizations they’ll set up backups, like in this story or they say, ok, we’re taking backups every week. That’s probably fine. But the downside was, they never tested it. Right. They never verified that the data was complete and they never made sure that they understood how long it was going to take them for them to recover. That if they had known they would have probably chosen a different, a different way to back up because it doesn’t cost that much more uh these days to not back up on a tape drive. Say, um are there where in the world are these, are these uh bad actors clustered? Are there, is there parts of the world like II, I mean, I mentioned India and Russia but I’m, you know, I’m not a cybersecurity uh professional. Where, where are these, can you say generalize where these folks might be clustered? So, so they, they tend to be pretty geographically spread. Um You know, the, the, the, the reality is that it’s, it’s no longer that hard for someone to gain the skills that are necessary to do, to perform some of these attacks. And we’re seeing more and more of these organizations of very young people going out and committing these types of crimes and, you know, ultimately being successful in a lot of cases. And so, you know, youtube is great for learning all sorts of things, you can learn how to hack and do all these things on youtube and by research there’s a lot of great information out there. Um, but the reality is like, it’s almost impossible to know who’s doing this in a lot of cases. Right. Either the Attackers are using all kinds of intermediaries and bouncing their communications off other computers all around the world and it’s very tricky to really track them down unless you’re a fins or a large government organization. Um Is there truth that if, if you, if you are a victim of a hack, uh let’s say it’s your credit card, you know, your credit card company says that uh your, your, not only your credit card number but your, your address and maybe your date of birth or something, you know, was, may have been, it may have been, may have been compromised and you know, they’ll typically give you one year in one case. I saw two years which double but still my question gets to the value of all this two years of like credit monitoring and you know, the suspicious monitoring alerts and things like that. But I’ve also read that the, the real value comes more comes longer from the, from the incident because because it’s harder to track back to where it happened, what the source of it was. So like 3 to 4 or five years later, your birth date hasn’t changed, your address might have changed, but a lot of people’s addresses haven’t, so they’ll use what they’ve got and they’ll get lucky and in a lot of the, a lot of their, uh, ill gotten file. So, is, is that true that the, the longer the time, the more value valuable your data is on the, I guess on the dark web in the black market. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think it speaks mostly to the following impact that can have. Right. If someone steals your data, that’s, and there’s a big breach, that’s one thing, but that data gets repackaged and sold to a variety of other people on the, on the dark web and, and, and the reality is that most people, they’re not going to be able to pay attention that long. Right? They can’t change some of these core things about them, like their phone number or their social security number, you know, some of these things. So you really have to be mindful all the time and really watch your accounts and really understand like, what is the impact here, you know, the one year of credit that they give you. I just don’t, I mean, yeah, sure, I’ll take it, I’ll sign up for it, but I don’t see the value because so my, what I’ve read is, is accurate, the longer, the longer the time, the more valuable actually. And the more likely it’ll be used after, after one or two years from the incident. Um, we got a little more time. You want to tell us one more story. And, and some lessons from it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we, we have, you know, we’ve, I’ve told a lot of, like, kind of dark stories, you know, but there are bright spots. Right. So, you know, we, we come in a lot of times, come in an organization, they, they’re having an incident, we work with them, we really, we help, you know, kick out the attacker and the leadership, they really get it right. They really want to understand they really want to learn because, you know, we hear things at conferences and read about online and hear on the news that all these bad things are happening, but it’s not until you really feel it and you’re really in it that you’re like, OK, this is, I understand this, you know, and that that’s a hard lesson to learn certainly. Um But we, we in a lot of cases have been able to say, hey, here’s how you fix the underlying root cause that caused the incident. But you know, here are, here are another 10 things that you could do that are low effort, low cost, very minimal business impact that you can do to really reduce the chance that this is gonna happen again. And it’s those organizations that tend to understand that security and it and operations and the success of their organization are all very deeply linked and that it requires, it’s not just like an activity for it to be worried about or security to worry about. It’s a whole security is a team sport. Everyone has to be involved and be a stakeholder. The reality is that an attacker is they’re gonna, they’re gonna target the CEO and the leadership of the organization when they’re trying to get in. Um And so by bringing all those people all together, it’s just, it leads to better outcomes um to have them involved and have that buy in um in a continuous way. So, is there a bright story? Yeah, the right story is that they were able to kind of plug the holes that they had and, and go on this journey where they were able to modernize their, their it stack and their tools that they’re using and their processes, um you know, really embed security very deeply into that and we’re able to reduce the, the likelihood of, of these kinds of incidents happening again. And we, we, we’re in a spot where we can watch the Attackers attempt these types of attacks and that’s what we really want. So you get early warning that there’s an attempt happening, we can take some additional steps without having to wait six months to learn that you’ve been compromised for six months. Steve Sheer. Thank you very much. He’s CEO and co-founder of Riprap security. Thank you for sharing, Steve. Excellent. Thank you and thank you for being with our coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits next week, more 24 NTC Goodness with intergenerational communication and the four day work week. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech, you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms blocking support, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org daughter box. It’s obvious. Well, who else would it be? It’s daughter Box to Box. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. 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It’s a new form of decision making you might want to try out. Justin Birdsong from Skeleton Key Strategies introduces us to circle structures, domains and aims, and linking roles, as he acquaints us with this more equitable and inclusive, sociocratic decision making method. (Recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference.)
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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. This is show number 691. That means we’re only nine weeks away from our 7/100 show and 14th anniversary. Not that we are wishing the summer months and weeks away. Certainly not, but we are close to the big one. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of Burrito Genesis if you got under my skin with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce what’s coming. Hey, Tony, this week we have two more conversations from 24 NTC Sociocracy. It’s a new form of decision making. You might want to try Justin Birdsong from skeleton key strategies. Introduces us to circle structures, domains and aims and linking roles as he acquaints us with this more equitable and inclusive decision making method and attract more donors. When your development and communications teams work collaboratively with strong relationships, you’ll draw more donors and increase your fundraising revenue. Our panel shares their strategies. There’s Shannon Bowen with Monsoon leadership and Emily De Frisco at Center for environmental health. Antonis take two through infants. Eyes were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and the marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is Sociocracy. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know what it is, you know that it’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. You know that we’re at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, beautiful Portland, great food city. And you know that we’re sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. What you don’t know is that I’m now with Justin Birdsong, founder and principal of Skeleton Key Strategies. You’re now informed fully, Justin. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much, Tony. I’m so glad to be here. Pleasure, pleasure. Thank you for joining us for our coverage where we are, you and I are going to talk about equitable governance and consent based decision making an introduction to sociocracy. That’s it. All right. I think we better start with a definition of sociocracy. Absolutely. So, sociocracy is a peer governance system that is based on decentralizing power and hierarchical power structures and uh more equitable distribution of decision making in organizations. What do we say? To the CEO S who think they just heard a definition of the word anarchy um to a certain kind of CEO with a certain kind of, um you know, power centric mindset, they wouldn’t be far off. Um I think the difference is that it’s the opposite of anarchy in the sense that sociocracy actually has really strong uh process and governance procedures. So it’s not that there’s no rules of the road. It’s that the rules of the road are about integrating all voices, making balance for dissension and um objections to certain kinds of decisions and making sure that everybody has a voice in the kinds of major decisions that drive either an organization or a team or uh it’s also used extensively outside of organizations and more informal kinds of settings like cohousing communities. Oh, interesting. OK. Or maybe we’ll get to some of those other settings. Sure. Uh But we’ll be focused on our, our listeners are small and mid size nonprofits. Yes. So I think they would be fertile ground for, for your ideas. I think. So I think an important thing I can say right up front is that sociocracy is a really different methodology from most of the kinds of power structures we are used to having, especially in businesses and nonprofits. They tend to be traditionally hierarchical in nature. There’s nothing wrong with hierarchy. It’s just ultimately decision making rolls up to a certain kind of level of decision making and the buck stops with one ultimate decision maker. Some smaller nonprofits are a little bit more flat in nature. We’re a little bit more democratic. We’re sort of, everybody gets to weigh in, but there are pros and cons to that as well because that can make it really difficult to make a decision and to integrate everybody’s different perspectives when they are in competition with one another. And so sociocracy attempts to sort of balance the things that are useful about hierarchical methods and flat and democratic type methods into a consent based approach where that balances all of those voices and seeks not just to have a sort of one decision maker or a consensus or a majority of decision makers who agree with one thing, but that every single member of a decision making group will be able to consent to a particular way forward as you alluded. Uh This is going to require leadership. Yeah, buy in. We’re not going to be able to, we’re not going to be able to do this without the senior leadership being on board 100%. Um you sort of made the case but let’s make it explicit. So, uh what, how would we make the case to maybe to our vice president to bring it to the CEO, maybe our CEO to bring it to the board um help us make the case? Yeah, absolutely. I think that ultimately depends on what the organization is struggling with. So when organizations and I think I’ve seen this in a lot of nonprofits, both large and small is how easy is it to make decisions? And then even if it’s relatively easy to make decisions, how brought in are people to those decisions? How easy is it to manage people through change? Because those conversations may have happened when they weren’t in the room, or somebody may be moving forward with something that they think the right thing, even though they may not feel like their perspectives or objections were heard. And so ultimately, that can sort of slow down or impede the success of a major project or a new initiative. Um And what sociocracy is designed to do is to level that playing field just a bit while still having an active facilitation role to make sure that everybody is being heard, make sure that um when somebody raises an objection that has to do with the effectiveness of the mission or the aim of whatever it is that we’re trying to do that, we’re able to hear and balance that and incorporate any of those objections through maybe altering the proposal a little bit or saying we’re going to extend the timeline of this so that we can give it a try. But then we’re going to commit to checking back in and making adjustments if we need to et cetera. So you just referenced some of the symptoms of less than ideal decision making that we might, that we might encounter slow processes, people not feeling bought in, um, anything else that would sort of trigger, you know, maybe we can, we can be doing a better job of and, and could be more successful at decentralizing our decision making. Yeah, I mean, I think the types of organizations that are drawn to something like sociocracy are also generally doing it from a sort of equity perspective. They’re just generally interested in decentralizing decision making, maybe making things a little bit less top down um organizations that are close to organizing or social justice tend to respond to this type of model because it’s about sort of disrupting traditional power structures in a way that just generally appeals to people while also understanding it’s a big shift and sort of putting it into practice is uh is complicated and um it involves a lot of letting go of uh the traditional sort of seats and, and controls of power that people are used to in organizations. Hence, you know, the senior leadership has got to be uh has got to be willing to have some fun with uh decision making but make decision making more equitable, exactly less flat as you, as you already explained. OK. Um We need to have a foundation, there’s some things we need to learn like circle structures. Yes, some things. OK. So set us up with our foundation. Yes. So this is, and this is by the way, also how there are bits and pieces that you can borrow from sociocracy, even if your whole organization is not ready to sort of move uh part and parcel into a socio cratic model. Um Essentially the way that we sort of take the hierarchical structure and adapt it for sociocracy is by having a relationship between sort of parent and child circles. And you can think of the core of those being a general circle, which in most organizations is kind of like your C suite, you sort of executive leadership and decision makers and then governing that is a mission circle which in nonprofits is typically akin to the board, may or may not not be all internal folks, but which are trying to make sure that the organization stays aligned with its declared mission and purpose in the world. The general circle is about managing the organization and then stemming off of that central circle are sub circles which are equivalent in many ways to teams and departments. And the thing that’s a bit different is the model by which these circles are linked. So as opposed to being sort of purely top down, there’s a system of double linking where there’s a leader and a delegate that is a member of both every parent circle and the child circle. And part of what that enables is for there to be two perspectives that get shared in both the parent circle and the child circle. And that the leader is making sure decision making happening uh or influence or questions happening at the parent level circle are being communicated down to the sub circle. And then the delegate is doing the same thing in the reverse, making sure that what’s happening in the sub circle is reflected back to the parent circle. And the explicit delegation of power is that rather than all of the decision making happening at the C suite level, that executive general circle level, anything within the declared domain and aim, which is an explicit sort of set of standards that get defined when you create these circle structures is, you know, my marketing sub circle has an explicit aim that is about, you know, publicizing and communicating about the role of our organization. And their domain includes potentially things like the website, the email list, anything that falls squarely within the domain of a sub circle, they have the autonomous decision making power to make decisions and recommendations at that level without necessarily always having to run things up a chain to a uh a general circle for buy in. OK. All right. That, well, that’s the big shift. They, they have the autonomy, they, they have the, they, they have the authority and they also have the responsibility, the accountability, responsibility for their, for their decision. OK. Now, at one point, you had said the parent child and the, the, the parent circle and the child circle. Uh I don’t that, that still sounds hierarchical. I, is there a better? I’m, I’m not trying to revolutionize sociocracy. I just learning about it for the past 9.5 minutes. But uh I don’t know that, like I said, it still sounds hierarchical. Well, there, there are different words we can use. Um I think it’s not wrong to say that it is, it is taking the thing that is effective about so about hierarchy, which is the fact that there are different levels of domain and oversight that are needed when an organization is handling both high level strategic and mission level impact type things and then all the way down to the weeds of the operations. So I think it makes sense that there’s still relationships and gradations of responsibility. Um And they are still related to one another in that sort of binary relationship that we can think of as hierarchy. But typically hierarchy stacks power and decision making at the top and the farther down in the hierarchy you go, there’s less decision making and that’s explicitly inverted in sociocracy and some decisions do need to go up to the parent. Exactly. I mean, there’s always the case where a sub circle itself, even though there’s a lot of uh rich process around decision making and how you get consent and how you integrate objections. There’s always the case that a sub circle can’t in itself integrate all the objections and make a fully consent based in which case that’s part of the reason why we still have the parent circles. Ultimately, things can be escalated up. If they can’t be solved at the sub circle, they don’t have the data, whatever information can’t resolve the conflict, they may not have the relationships to make their decision effective. It could be that it could also just simply be that there’s opposing viewpoints that are both valid. So when someone has an objection, it, first of all, it really needs to be based on something that is related to the aim and domain. I think this proposal that’s on the table, say it’s about a certain kind of marketing channel that we want to open up and somebody may have a really genuine objection that can’t be about their sort of personal feelings and preferences. But it is about, I genuinely think that us going into tiktok is going to erode our aim, it is going to make us less effective at our aim and domain. And therefore I am going to withhold my consent from our ability to move forward with that. And the group can try to integrate that objection by again, sort of saying, well, we can try it for a period of time and then check back in, we can amend the proposal and say we’re only going to do tiktok for certain kinds of campaigns, there’s ways to sort of balance that out. But if the group cannot ultimately arrive at consent rather than consensus full consent from everybody involved. Then worst case, that’s why you have parent circles to escalate things up to. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits go generosity. Virtuous believes a generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that responds to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only response of nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous is CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. Now back to sociocracy with Justin Birdsong. Le let’s shift away from the theoretical for a minute. Tell, tell me a story, tell me a, a success story of uh sociocracy decision making. Uh Sure. So I think one way that I have been able to implement it in a very small way is with um some colleagues of mine who were putting together uh their own sort of strategic plan for their new consulting company. So it’s a small, tiny, tiny group, group of three and they were looking for some sort of system of power that would enable the three of them, two founders and the sort of first hire underneath them to equitably balance the decision making power between them and then also position them to grow as they imagine they’re bringing on eventually mother staff. How could they do so in a way that continues that same method and doesn’t kind of concentrate all of the power and decision making in the hands of the founders. And so this is actually a really good example of where, you know, we went through the sort of whole model top to bottom. And there were lots of things that they were like, you know, I don’t know that we’re going to fully adopt that, that that sort of feels like in some ways that’s impeding us. We might not need quite this level of process and decision making. But we really, for example, liked the uh the circle structures because it gave clear aims and domains that could be distributed and it allowed them to then divorce in some cases themselves from one of those circles and say, OK, I’m going to step back and let these two other principal consultants take the operations circle and they have full aim and domain about that. If they need my input, they can come to me because all three of them are in the general circle, but I fully trust and delegate all of my trust responsibility to them. And it’s enabled them to um understand where they need all three of their decisions versus where they can move faster by making autonomous decisions themselves in smaller groups. And how long has this start up in uh engaged this way? They are in their third year and they adopted this early in 2023. So about a year and change and they’re still successful, they’re finding that it’s easier to, again, they sort of, they can move faster without anybody feeling disenfranchised because there are explicit agreements up front that these two individuals are double linked into this parents circle. They have autonomous decision making power over this particular domain and aim if it’s operations, if it’s product development, et cetera. And um and there’s no overhead of having to constantly run things back up the chain. I can see how this would make an any organization more, more nimble, you think more reactive in, in a, in a good way. I don’t mean knee jerk reactive. But you know, like the three of us in our circle can huddle and we can make this decision maybe in 10 or 15 minutes where we might have to wait for the next meeting with the vice president or the, or the CEO and that’s not scheduled for another whatever 10 days, you know, we can resolve this right now. That’s the best practical application of it is that it just allows people to move swiftly and it puts into place agreements of I at the time we set up the circle, we imbue it with this trust if you’re in this circle, otherwise I would be in the circle if I didn’t trust you to make the decision, I’m going to delegate explicitly this power and that allows us all move a little bit quicker. Plus, it tends to raise this sort of sense of morale because everybody has a voice at the table and has explicit ability to influence whether or not decisions get made and move forward. Now, what is your role in sociocracy? Are you, are you, is there a certification for teaching this and implementing it for organizations or skeleton key? What are, what are you doing around sociocracy? Well, at skeleton key, it’s mostly a thing that we have imbued in certain scenarios. Like what if we’re setting up a kind of committee? We are always kind of looking at like power dynamics and what’s going to enable an organization to move fast. Sometimes we are calling it sociocracy. Like with the group of consultants, I was mentioning other times, it’s more like principles of equitable decision making that we just try to weave in. Um but there is um there’s a number of organizations that do this, but I spent all of last year working in and training with an organization called Sociocracy for all that is an international NGO. But it’s based in the US. And their whole mission is about sort of spreading education about socio cratic models. And I trained in their sociocracy. Sociocracy academy for all of 2023. And um and that is where I learned a lot of this content and was able to practice it with people all around the world who again are using it in some places in the sort of eco permaculture sort of movement, cohousing movements. There’s lots of places where this is being used that are outside of sort of formal nonprofit organizations. And so now do we have our foundation set? Can we move to the next step of process? There’s, there’s something called rounds and integrating objections. And so do we have our foundations we’ve created? OK. Uh So what does it look like in practice then? And so this is where we’re, we’re sort of, we’re inner circles, right? We’re in our, our meetings and we’re trying to have more effective meetings. And one of the ways that we facilitate, there’s a strong, strong facilitation role at all levels of sociocracy and most meetings are run through what are called rounds. And that’s essentially whoever is in the facilitator role in that particular meeting, which is often rotate. Yeah, is going to make sure that every single person in the room or in the circle gets a moment to talk. That’s explicit. It takes some of the pressure off because everybody knows that at some point they’re going to get called on, they’re going to get to say their piece even if they have nothing to say and they can just pass. So it takes some of that pressure off of people feeling like they need to insert themselves. When, when does my chance come? I, I didn’t get a chance yet. The meeting’s gonna end. I’m not gonna, everybody gets an explicit chance. Exactly. It also helps to balance voices because then you don’t, it’s the facilitator’s role to make sure everybody’s being heard. It’s sort of the reasonable, roughly equally, nobody’s dominating that contrary to our purpose here. Exactly right. And so we are facilitating things through rounds. And so for example, when we are making a decision, there will be a proposal on the table. That’s the sort of traditional way that we talk about whatever the topic is the proposal. What is it that we’re deciding on and somebody might run, the facilitator would run us through first is a clarifying questions round. So we’re going to go around. Everybody gets just a moment to say, is there anything about the proposal you don’t understand or need more information about? We can go through that as needed once all the clarifying questions are asked, there’s a second round that is about reactions and that’s when people can start say like, you know, I am hesitant about this or I actually think this is a really good idea or, you know, I have some real concerns about this particular proposal as it’s articulated. And then that would be followed by an explicit consent round that is literally going around. Do you consent to this, do you not consent for this? And within that the sort of range of tolerance of consent, you know, there’s gonna be people who love it and they like, yes, this is perfect for me. I’m super enthusiastic about this and then there’s other people who are like this is fine, like it works for me, maybe it sort of falls into this sort of neutral territory and both of those count as consent. Um And then the third option is I object, which again, I have something about this proposal. I feel like it’s going to interrupt or be counterproductive to our aim. So I have an objection. I’m going to clearly state what that objection is. That’s that sort of last round. If there are objections, then the group is going to attempt to integrate those objections by potentially extending the timeline. Um Saying, you know, can we modify the proposal in some way that accounts for this or can we agree to move forward with this proposal as written? But know that we are going to check back in at some specific point and revisit it and what ultimately we’re trying to get people to consent within, to move whatever it is into that range of tolerance of at least being able to say like, OK, this works enough. It’s good enough for now. OK. So I have to be heard. Yes, my, my objection has to be heard. If, if, if that’s where I that’s where I start out precisely. OK. Um Say a little more about the role of the, the person who has the dual uh the dual appointment. They’re in the, they’re in, they’re in the, the parent circle, but also the child circle that is the liaison is that the leader and the delegate, the delegate, the delegate has the two, the dual role, dual assignment, let’s say yes. So the circle leader, you know, which may or may not always be the circle facilitator by the way, but they are the sort of designated leader of convening that circle. They may be the one that’s calling people together or sort of managing outcomes, et cetera. Um leader. Less likely to be rotating, it’s selected. Actually, there’s a selection process that’s similar to the rounds where somebody gets nominated. We discuss qualifications, people can amend their nominations and then the group decides on who the leader and the delegate are and the delegate is another participant who is explicitly not in the leadership role, but they sort of represent everybody else. And so their job is is to again, sort of keep in some ways, keep each other honest, right? Like if you and I are both in our marketing sub circle and then we have to go up to our general circle because we are double linked and you’re the leader and I’m the delegate, you may be reporting out on something that our decision making group did in the sub circle. And I’m another perspective. So I can even just sort of qualify sort of what you said is like, actually, there’s something else, I think the general circle needs to know about how that decision was made. We had to integrate this particular kind of objection and this was the nuance about that. And so it makes sure that there’s two perspectives being represented in every conversation, which helps again, sort of make sure that there’s no one person’s perception or, um, you know, allegiance to a certain kind of outcome that is going to prevail in every case. What else? Uh, what else should we know? I mean, you have some, uh, things that you’ve suggested about the, the, the topic, um, understanding how it improves equity and inclusivity. I mean, I think, I feel like we’ve talked about that at the outset even. But what, what else, what else should folks know about this, this process? I, I think ultimately the thing to know is that it is, um, it is a set of tools and I think one thing is people see it and they may have a really, well, they have a really strong reaction one way or the other. Yeah. Right. It’s unlikely to be neutral, talking about the neutral in the decision making. But I like it’s ok, you know, I could live with it. It’s probably gonna be, I think it’s very positive or very negative. I think that’s exactly the case. And so, um and while that is true, and I think even, you know, a thing that sociocracy for all that organization that I was training with, you know, they do implementations of this in organizations and they are frequently unable to move forward because if there’s not the kind of buy in and alignment about the kind of seismic change it represents, if you are an existing organization with a traditional hierarchical structure and you’re planning to upend that, that is not something to be done lightly. Um But the thing that I think I want to reinforce is that I see it as not just a monolith but a whole set of practices and tools and um sort of micro processes that can be used and adapted, especially when you are in an operational or a technological or project project based kind of role because you are constantly making decisions in agile projects, technology implementations, you’re constantly trying to like get stakeholder buy in to be a level in a certain way and make sure that decisions are soundly informed by different, maybe even competing perspectives. And you want to be able to integrate objections from different stakeholders and project members because they may have something really valid to say that you may want to adjust a little bit. And so I see it as a whole tool set from which people can learn and take pieces of it that they can implement. Even if you’re going to do it within a traditionally hierarchical organization? Is it difficult in uh sort of the, the delegation of where the authority ends for each circle? I mean, there, you had, you had said at the outset, there are certain things that are not gonna be conducive to this or the CEO is just not gonna give up uh uh give up sole authority over. Um But say a little more about delineating the, the boundaries of each circle. How do we, how do we define that? Sure. It’s when you, when you’re creating a circle structure of any kind, even if you were going to sort of just do this within, uh let’s say you have a technology department and you have a couple of different teams and you sort of, and you want to be able to adapt this just even within a department, you could sort of the thing that you do when you’re defining it is you first are articulating the mission that unites the whole group together and then you are delineating the aim and domain. The aim is what we’re here to accomplish. And then the domain is the set of things, usually multiple things that then fall into our responsibilities and oversight. Like for example, one group may have the domain of the website, another group has domain over technology infrastructure network desktop. Another group has domain over project management and applications, things like that. Um And so you define those things at the outset and you are clear about what does and does not fall into the domain and you try to make sure everything is captured somewhere. And then of course, you know, organic organizations are constantly changing. New things will come up and when they do come up, it’s the job of that parent circle to figure out. OK. Whose domain does this fall into? Does this stay with ours? Does it move into one of the sub circles or do we even need a sub circle of off of that? Do we need a new sub circle that has a clear domain? And that’s the way by level setting right at the beginning about who has, who gets to decide who decides, who decides everybody decides at the beginning? Ok. OK. Leaving it there. You feel like we gave it adequate coverage? I think so. Thank you very much, very interesting sociocracy. Um Justin Birdsong, founder and principal at Skeleton Key Strategies. I love the company name too. Skeleton Key. Thank you so much. That’s brilliant. I appreciate it. Thank you, Justin. Thank you Tony and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC, the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks so much for being with us. It’s time for a break. Donor box, open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere. Anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations. Visit Donor box.org to learn more its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. A couple of days ago, I was on the beach. Uh I just sat myself down, still not warm enough to go, you know, sit for six or eight hours under an umbrella, not quite that warm yet we’re getting there. But uh I was just out uh walking and I decided to sit down and there was a little infant, uh I’d say 23 months old or so and she was being held by, I’m not sure it was mother or grandmother. I think it was her mother and the, the so the mother was facing the, the, the sand and the dunes and the houses and she had their baby facing out uh to the ocean and this little infant was just so captivated by, you know, the vast ocean. I guess the waves and she was just like serene and uh they were like 20 ft away or so, you know, it’s not, not really that far. And, you know, the baby wasn’t fussy, just calm and, I don’t know, h, I don’t know, I don’t know if babies think, I don’t know what, I don’t know what infants think about. Do they even have the capacity to think or what they, they, what, I don’t know what they’re doing in their minds, in their brains. But she, she was just so calm on her mom’s shoulder over her mom’s shoulder and I was just thinking, oh man, that the ocean and you know, she could feel the breeze and maybe smell the salt, although she doesn’t know it’s salt air. She just knows it smells a little different than, than her house. Uh unless her mother cooks with a lot of salt, but all the senses from a little infant from like a two or three month old infant. And I was thinking just how unusual it must be for her, the wonder, you know, and just to sort of seeing it through the infant’s eyes too. I was enjoying it myself, especially like more than usual that that afternoon, but just, you know, through an infant’s eyes, the world or in, you know, and just the ocean for the first time. It was, it was uh it was really moving, it was really something uh and it went on for many minutes. Uh the baby was just captivated, we can all be captivated by life. See the world through infants eyes now and then, and that’s Tony’s take two K. I would love to go back in time and look at the world through like five year old Kate’s eyes because I’m sure it was so much more colorful and bright and just exciting and I really like, didn’t take anything for granted, you know, at that age. Right? Because so much was new, like this little infant watching the, watching the ocean and hearing the waves and uh yeah, you know, we get a little jaded so take time to smell the roses. We’ve got Buku, but loads more time here is attract more donors. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. We are all together in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center. Nonprofit Radio is SCHED, is sponsored by Heller consulting at 24 NTC Heller does technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits with me for this conversation conversation like I’m 14. My voice breaks are Shannon Bowen and Emily Def. Frisco. Shannon is founder and CEO at Monsoon Leadership. And Emily de Frisco is senior Director of Communications at the Center for Environmental Health. Shannon Emily, welcome. Thanks for having us. Glad to have you on nonprofit radio. So we’re talking about your session topic. Have you done your session yet? We did it, you did it all right, as you’re fresh off the stage. So all the questions maybe we asked some about, about some of your questions that came up your session is full court press harness development and communication teams to attract donors. Alright. Sounds like we’re breaking down silos. Uh Emily, let’s start with you. Why do we need? I think it may be uh it may be widely known, but I want to make it explicit why do we need this session? We need this session because it’s never been more clear that there are silos, you can absolutely collaborate and work together to achieve your shared goals. So we had a lot of fun in our session, taking a lot of questions from folks who were learning just how to collaborate across the teams and how to really achieve their goals. Uh Shannon, what what happened? Why, why are we in this situation? Development and communications. They, they seem like ideal partners. Why are we siloed? What happened? Well, I think it’s hard for humans to work together in general. So that’s just across the board. Um But Emily and I worked together at Center for Environmental Health and really, we harnessed all of the different vehicles to connect with our donors. So not just donor emails, but also using social media website pop ups, you know, earned media, everything to really attract new donors and engaged at a deeper level with their existing donors. And so we really wanted to share that story because it is actionable and you can do it today at your organization. All right. So, so how we got here is just human nature. Well, I don’t know what happened, what happened to the, what they seem like symbiotic partners. I think that sometimes people put a lot of pressure on development because you got to bring in the money and you’re paying for people’s salaries. And so sometimes in organizations, it’s like, oh, well, development is more important than communications. But really what Emily and I saw as they are part and parcel, working together to increase the brand reputation and that brings in your major donors. So really, instead of working in opposition coming together and co collaborating on campaigns can increase your impact exponentially, which is what we did at ce H Yeah. And sometimes there can be a little tines as Shannon mentioned, you know, between communications and development. Um but we really valued each other’s expertise, respected each other’s expertise. And that really set the tone for collaboration for our teams as well. Ok. All right, Emily, let’s stay with you. How do we start to break down the silos? How do we start to collaborate, see each other as, as equal partners? What do we do? Yeah, it starts with communication with setting up meetings, brainstorming together, creating campaigns together. Really soup to nuts, sit together and work on something in a collaborative way. Instead of having, oh, my team is working on this, your team is working on this and never the Twain shall meet. Um really collaborate from the get go and that you will have a stronger campaign meeting together and from the beginning and then sharing success at the end. So it’s not just development going and presenting to the board, you’re bringing communications along and saying, hey, we did this great campaign together. I’ve never seen that. I mean, I always see development, presenting development outcomes. OK. All right. What, what else can we do? Yeah, I mean, I think communications serves a vital role in the organization and just having communications needs to have the humility and respect of the development team when they approach the development team to understand that um you know, fundraising for the organization is so it is so challenging. So sometimes communications folks can get kind of a little bit set in their ways and just really from the get go valuing fundraising and really just putting your best foot forward and valuing the expertise will set you up for success. What if development and communications are both under the same, let’s say vice president is that that’s not sufficient. I mean, you still still the two teams should be meeting together. I mean, I, I can see a scenario where they, where they don’t even though they’re under the same vice president. Exactly. I actually am also a Chief Advancement Officer for an organization in Seattle. And so I oversee development and communications and still even within that, you need to bring everybody together to say, OK, how are we using each vehicle to achieve our goals. And so we’re not just, oh, we’re only going to send print appeals, we’re only going to send email appeals. How are you incorporating social media? How are you incorporate video or I currently work with genetic scientists. We’re talking about podcasting because they don’t really like to be on camera. You know, I think that we have to be creative about those different mediums to increase the brand recognition, but also to talk to the donors about the content that they’re interested in and really it’s coming together brainstorming that we get our best ideas. All right. And that, that’s a great transition to another one of your learning outcomes from your description, expanding social media as well as earned and traditional media who speaks to is that this is my favorite topic is press and media. I still believe it’s the best way to reach the most amount of people when you have a piece in the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or the Chicago Tribune. Um You know, you’re reaching millions, tens of millions of people at once. So it’s very important to develop in your communications team, a robust press and media strategy, develop that calendar and then keep some of it flexible for breaking news and then work with your executive director, your program directors, your science director, whomever you have at the organization who’s really moving and shaking and come up with a way that you can develop news for your organization and you can use one of the fancy platforms that there are to pitch journalists like Cision or Meltwater. There’s other ones as well help a reporter out Harrow. Is that still a thing? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, I think so. But you can also be scrappy about it and build your own press list using an Excel spreadsheet. Um, that’s a possibility to build relationships with journalists that way. And then when you have, have a press release, ready to go, you pitch the journalist and you make a splash with that news and try to connect it to current events and then once you have that piece that you landed, um then you can approach your development team and say, hey, we’re in the San Francisco Chronicle today on the front page and that is so validating for donors um and for board and for everyone who cares about your organization’s mission. You said something that I want to flush out a little bit with, um have a relationship with journalists before you’re pitching before there’s a news item, news hook related to your work. Say a little more about developing that relationship, you know, like uh building the digging the well before you’re thirsty, you know, building the relationship before you want to pitch the journalist. There’s so many ways to do it. You can follow journalists, you like on Twitter who are reporting on issues that your organization works on, you can tweet at them and say, hey, thank you. I read your piece. It was great. I would love to connect with you. Um You can build that press list, as I mentioned and you can proactively share with them the work your organization is doing in our session. We talked a lot about virtual town halls, basically a fancy phrase for a webinar. And you can invite journalists to your webinars, invite them to your virtual town halls. They might write about your work. At the very least they’re going to get educated about the work your organization is doing. So all of those are things you can do to build relationships with journalists and to the extent that there’s still local journalism, which is not, not nearly what it was 10 years ago. Uh that includes local journalists, not only the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. Absolutely. We just had, um Fox News come out to our office in Oakland yesterday. They came out at like seven pm and interviewed our CEO about a report that we launched yesterday. So local journalism is still alive and well, although it has, you know, as you said, there’s been some setbacks but you can still reach local journalists and they’ll still report on the work your organization is doing ok. All right. So you’re earned in traditional media, uh social media, Shannon. Do you want to flush out social media a little bit. I’d actually love to hand this over to Emily because she has an amazing hot of depressed story um about tiktok. Yeah. So we released this toxic fashion report yesterday. Um We have tested a lot of consumer products for toxic chemicals and we found over the period of the last 10 years, high levels of lead in purses and other accessories at Ross and Burlington stores. So of course, we’ve sent them legal notices, but it’s kind of like a persistent problem. So we released this report yesterday, detailing kind of our results and the legal actions that we’ve taken. And we did a Tik Tok video on it um which we didn’t expect to get a lot of traction because it’s really um like kind of a slide carousel with music and as of today, it’s reached over 300,000 people. So social media there is, is still a wonderful way to reach people. Ok. Uh Is there a broader lesson that uh our consultant from uh Monsoon wants to extrapolate from the, the, the tiktok breaking news? Well, I think that you have no idea which of those 300,000 views is going to be your next major donor and major donors are looking for causes that resonate with their values and they’re looking out in the world. They’re watching Tik Tok and we had an experience at Center for Environmental Health where we had out of the blue, an email to our info at Ce h.org started con connecting and talking with them and they turned into a $300,000 over a three year donor and you just never know who is, who is reading, who is watching. But you, you have to find a way to engage them and bring them in. And then once they’re there using all of your communication strategies to steward the donor and bring them even closer and increase that gift. And so I really think that all development directors should be savvy in communications and be open and willing to new communication channels like tiktok, you know, Twitter was the hot thing five years ago and now we know it isn’t. So you gotta be open to linkedin Tik Tok all the different ways that people are engaging now because it could shift and you don’t want to be left behind. Now, these were two anecdotes that both called up the number 300,000. You’re not making this up, are you? I guess it’s just our lucky number, I guess. So, skeptic in me, I’m sure you’re being very truthful for non nonprofit radio listeners. I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t lie to you. A scout. I was a girl scout for a long time and scouts on her counts, otherwise it would have to be a pinky pledge, but scouts on her counts. Um Anything else you want to say about media, whether social traditional earned? I think social media is a great way to showcase your organization’s work. And what we do at ce H is we have a comprehensive editorial calendar. We keep some of it flexible and we do different strategies across different platforms. Um linkedin is growing really quickly right now. So is tiktok Instagram a little bit? Um So definitely diversify your strategy across social media. The news is very hard, it’s very depressing. Our work is sometimes challenging. So I always encourage um social media strategists to celebrate the wins. So when you do have a piece of good news or you are part of some legislation that passes, you know, really celebrate that on social media and you will find that, that those are some of the most highly engaged with posts that you create. And I’ll also add that in our session. We talked a lot about email strategies with donors and segmenting your list and really talking to your donors in different ways in different places. Glossing over here we go. So when I came to ch there had been a two year vacancy in the director at V Monro. So our donors hadn’t heard from us. So the first thing we did is we set up a what we call our three things email and this was a monthly email from our CEO to our major donors. It came from his name. It looked like a normal email to the point that people respond back and be like, oh, it’s so great to hear how you’re doing. Here’s my, my wife, how it’s like, oh, this is the development team, but it looked like it was, it was fresh off his email. Exactly. And we had huge engagement with it and we actually ended up, we were writing a story about, uh, toxic chemicals and exercise. You wouldn’t think that’s how you’re gonna get back, one of your biggest lapse donors. But we did and she wrote back and said, oh, I’m using this brand blah, blah, blah. We had it tested by our toxic team wrote back to her, not only did she come back as a lapse donor, but then she for the first time ever introduced us to her family foundation. And we got a second gift from her family foundation and it was all because of this email and the interaction, the opening the conversation through that email. And so we really believe in the power of segmented emails, talking in different voices, providing different content that all aligns with your brand, but really speaks to the donor. And how does this align with our bigger purpose of bringing together? What do you say? Harnessing the development and, and communications teams? Well, and I think that’s because we would repurpose content from the communications team. And we would hear, oh, this is what’s hitting really big on social media. This is what you know, reporters are really interested in and we would tailor that content to the major donors based on what was hitting and lo and behold, it would engage in conversation. And our donors would say, hey, I want to hear more about that report, you know, how did you guys even think to test lead in purses? You know, and so I think it’s like if you don’t know the data of the other team, you don’t really know what your audience wants and we need to deliver the content that our audience is actually interested in. So you got to entertain too, purses and exercise bands and socks. We did a whole Safe Socks campaign in clothing, high levels of BP A in all of our workout clothing, sports bras, leggings, shirts, shorts. Um Yeah, so this is one of the issues that we’re tackling with our public interest litigation, telling companies get the BP A out of the clothes. Ok. Um, we still have more time together. You, you did a what a 60 minute session, right? So we’re not, we’re not flushing out some things. We’ve only been talking for about 15 minutes. We, we’re not flushing out some things that you did for your live session. Well, I think one thing that we talked about is really about validating your brand, that there are a lot of people that are tackling the same issues that you are and you also have a great mission, but you really have to your brand to attract top donors. And so using her media using virtual town halls where you’re your CEO in line with other stakeholders that builds a trust of your brand and validity that you are actually the right person to be delivering this mission that all increases the dollar amount that you’re gonna get from donors. So you really have to be thinking about all of these things working together to validate your brand because there’s a lot, a lot of great missions, there’s a lot of great organizations, but why are you the right person to do this work? And that’s what’s going to get a new major donor or a larger gift from an existing donor? What were some of the some of the questions that you got? We got so many great questions. Let’s see. We definitely talked a lot about virtual town halls. People were very excited about that topic and exactly what Shannon was just saying about bringing together different stakeholders to kind of validate your brand. Um We talked about a lot about press and media coverage and talked about how you don’t have to have a huge budget and you don’t have to have a super comprehensive plan. You can get started just sitting down with your executive director, your program directors, your science director, whomever you have, who’s really moving and shaking at the organization and create a piece together and what you want to do for that is think about what the work your organization doing, what what’s happening, what has changed because that’s what reporters want to talk about is what has changed in your organization or what has changed in the work and then connecting it to current events, what’s going on in the world that you, that’s connected to your organization’s work. And then you can write an op ed together hooks we talked about and you can pitch it to different reporters or you can publish it on your website, you can publish it on linkedin and that’s a way of really driving thought leadership forward. Absolutely. We also had an interesting question about how many staff we had and who’s actually watching the metrics and who’s reporting back the metrics and why we were inspired to do this session is we both have small teams. So Emily had two staff and I had three staff and it really just takes a dedicated portion of one person’s time to look at the metrics and to discover the gems. I told a story of, I had a staff who would look at who opened and who clicked on the emails and she brought it to our team and she said, hey, there’s this donor that’s been, they only give about $500 but they’re opening and click everything. And when I looked at them, they’re actually a producer in Hollywood, maybe we should re engage them, guess what we did. And it turned into a $10,000 donor. And so by having someone just take a minute and look at those, bring that data back to the team. You can actually optimize your process and get a bigger result. And so, you know, we’re not a huge shop, we’re small shops, but we just kind of work smarter, not harder and really by working together, even though it’s monsoon consulting, you’re not enormous, you know, creating tidal waves and tsunamis. No, just little lightning bolts, you can create a tidal wave with a few amount of people. That’s true. That is true. Well, our 300,000 on Tiktok today. There you go. That’s just today, that much breaking news that we didn’t make it to our slide show because it just happened. Is there any more questions that came that you think could be instructive for us? I think there is definitely some people that just felt really frustrated, you know, that they wanna do things this way or they want to try new ideas and the other team member doesn’t want to. And I think that Emily and I are both early adopters of technology. We’re both really open minded and it’s like you have, everything is moving so fast right now. You have to be open to new technologies and new ways to communicate with your donors. And if you do things, the same thing over and over again, you’re gonna bore your donors and you’re gonna see attrition. And so I think that just one of the main takeaways is be creative take risks. You talked about an idea that failed and you have to be open to failure to be able to be successful. And I think that both of us have that same ethos and we brought that to our teams and that’s why we could create so much success in a short amount of time. You know, while I was there, our development team brought in close to him, million dollars over our goal. We could not have done that without the support of the coms team and all of their creative ideas and immersing our donors in this message that what we’re doing is important and vital and urgent. And that’s where I feel like you’re missing out. If you’re not harnessing your communications team, you’re missing out on the bigger ripple effect you can make for your donors. I’m dying to leave it there because that was a beautiful closing. However, there’s a story that you teased a story of a failure that was, that’s instructive. Why don’t you tell that story? Yeah. So sometimes your op ed that you craft that you spend so much time on does not get picked up. So we have had, you know, an op ed on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. And then there was another time that we spent a lot of work on an op ed on the very sexy topic of leaded aviation gas. I know people are falling asleep already. So this is actually a big problem because in this small little municipal airports where the small aircraft are flying, a lot of leaded aviation gas is released. And then the folks living in that area have high blood lead levels. So we wrote this op ed about this California airport and how the Children living nearby had blood lead levels on par or worse than those in Flint during the height of the lead poisoning crisis. So we had a lot of facts and figures and a lot of solutions that talked about our litigation kind of making, you know, unleaded aviation gas more prominent and prevalent. Um and nobody bit, we pitched it out a bunch of different places and nobody bit, but it was ok because what we ended up doing is posting it on our blog and um kind of made lemonade out of lemons and that page has been one of the most viewed pages on our website. So it all worked out in the end even though we failed along the way to place the op ed. How about we leave it there then? A good uh a willingness to share a failure that resulted in a highly viewed page. And uh also uh Shannon’s uh two minutes ago, very good wrap up, which I was, I was, I was very tempted to end there, but I wanted to hear the story. You can’t tease the story with failure though, but that’s why it wasn’t a failure. That it was the most red page on the blog and on a linkedin article which, you know, really harnessing all the linkedin tools is a great way to reach your audience. And I don’t think people should be afraid of failure because if you’re trying new things, you will fail and you should embrace it and learn from it and it’s going to work out, especially something that’s outside your control. Like whether newspaper accepts your op ed or not. Exactly. Exactly. But if you don’t try, you’re certainly not going to get published, right? And then you balance out with things. You can control your blog, hosting your own virtual town hall, hosting your own panel event, you can control those things. So yeah, you have some percentage of stuff you’re thrown out into the world and hoping it sticks and the other half you’re actually controlling and make sure it fits within your strategy. That’s Shannon Bowen founder and CEO at Monsoon Leadership with her is Emily De Frisco, senior director of Communications at the Center for Environmental Health. Shannon Emily. Thanks very much. Thank you. I’m glad. Thank you. And thanks to you for being with nonprofit radio’s coverage of the 2024 nonprofit technology conference where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Next week, more from 24 NTC with strategic meetings for teams of one and cyber incident cases and takeaways. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools you need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supports, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org past flexible friendly fundraising forms. Love it. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guide and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.