Another Conversation With Art Taylor

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd come down with nephromegaly if I had to pass the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate to give you the highlights.

Kate Martignetti
Hey Tony, we have another conversation with Art Taylor, the CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, returns to share his thinking on the GoFundMe chaotic week in October, addressing the decline in families who donate to nonprofits and our community's perception and messaging challenges. It's an open, honest conversation with this leader of the nonprofit sector on Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Sarkis Foundation.

Kate Martignetti
Here is Another Conversation with Art Taylor.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure to welcome back Herman Art Taylor. He's president and CEO of AFP Global, the leading association for fundraising professionals worldwide. Prior, he had a 24-year tenure as president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance. AFP is at afpglobal.org. And you'll find Art Taylor on LinkedIn. Welcome back, Art.

Art Taylor
I mean, hebdominal. I gotta look that word up. How do you spell H-A-B?

Tony Martignetti
Heb, heb, H-E-B, hebdominal.

Art Taylor
H-E-B-D-O-M-I-N-A-L.

Tony Martignetti
No, I-D-A-L. Hebdominal.

Art Taylor
I-D-I-H-E-B-D-O-M. I-D-A-L. Wow. Hebdomadal. Oh, weekly, used especially of organizations that meet weekly. Got it. Hebdomadal. Wow. Okay. Weekly.

Tony Martignetti
I feel like any schmo could say it's your favorite weekly podcast. Only Tony Martignetti and Nonprofit Radio is going to call it your favorite hebdomadal podcast.

Art Taylor
Man, that is a new word for me. I have to, I have to use that somewhere. I have to figure out where I want to use that. Habdominal. It sounds like a hernia.

Tony Martignetti
I don't use it anywhere but here. I've never used it. I don't think I've ever used it anywhere else. I don't have habdominal meetings with clients. I just have weekly meetings. But here, uh, it works. It's good to see you again. Good to talk to you. Thank you for coming back. Sharing some thoughts.

Art Taylor
Good to see you.

Tony Martignetti
I feel like this is only a couple of weeks old. I have to ask you about the GoFundMe chaotic week in October. You were hearing feedback, let's put it benignly, hearing feedback from members. You were engaged with GoFundMe. What can you share?

Art Taylor
Well, I can say there was a lot of heat around the issue for sure. You know, there was some hebdomadal heat going on. You know,

Tony Martignetti
it only lasted one hebdomadal period.

Art Taylor
It was a hebdomadal period, which I think is about right. I mean, from a timing standpoint, clearly there were some things that they did completely wrong. You know, I mean, yet I think the— well, let me start with this. You can't take someone's brand and put it up there without their permission. You also— it's also not advisable to not communicate more broadly with the nonprofit sector before you release something like this, because you might've been advised to do it differently, right? Hmm. It's also important to be clear about what's gonna happen to the data long before, you know, it goes out. So, and there are other issues too. So there was no shortage of justifiable criticism None. And so I heard, I heard that from some of our members. There were also many of our members, just being honest, who probably never knew anything about it and just were going on about their business. But there was some vocal criticism and loud criticism. Yeah. And so I felt like I need to just go and talk to them and see what's going on with this thing. So I did. I reached out to the folk there that I have contacts with and essentially said, are you aware that what you're doing is a bit of a challenge? And, and they were in agreement by that time, right? They understood that what they did was not helpful. In fact, it was more harmful for them because it may have foreclosed an opportunity to do something really valuable for nonprofit organizations through their platform. And what do I mean by that? GoFundMe gets over a million daily transactions on their platform. And so what a great opportunity it could have been for some nonprofits to benefit from that traffic, right? To get people who may not have known anything about some of those organizations. Right. But found out about them through their transaction on GoFundMe. And what a great opportunity it could have been for those nonprofits to receive data about those individuals who gave that money, which is something that you don't get on many platforms today. But they could have gotten data about who the donor was so that that organization could then go out and establish a relationship with that individual outside of GoFundMe. A tremendous missed opportunity, I think, in that regard. But in talking with them, they understood and they took it down, which was the sensible And only thing they really could do. We'll take it down. We will in the future try to work with leaders to figure out what the appropriate posture should be, what what type of product we might offer that can do some of that. And so, you know, that's kind of the right result. I think if if they can work with some of the organizations to see what the right approach from an ethical and operational approach is that's fair to nonprofits, that maybe gives them the ability to earn enough to keep the platform going, I think that's a win. Because Tony, we need the innovation.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Art Taylor
I've said this many times. We have We have seen our donor base decline by multiples over the last 20 years. I mean, if you go back to 2000, we were at 66% of families giving to nonprofits. And the latest information we have from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, of which AFP Foundation is part of— a partner on. Okay. We're somewhere down to 41.5% of families today. And so if you look out another 20 years, there may not be anybody giving to it. Now, I'm obviously hyperbole, but a lot of—

Tony Martignetti
But that's from two-thirds to well under a half.

Art Taylor
Yeah. So—

Tony Martignetti
That's bad.

Art Taylor
I understand. Listen, I understand the outrage. I understand how organizations were really upset by what happened. And GoFundMe deserve that criticism. But I think we gotta find ways to work better with them and others on finding opportunities for us to get everyday donors back in the giving game, because we can't thrive as a society with less than a third of the people giving to nonprofits. So that's my thing. I think it was a moment for us to really take a deep breath and say, oh yeah, we should be disappointed by how this happened, but then ask ourselves, is there anything else like this that can generate that potential kind of attention for nonprofit giving? And if not, how do we work with it so that we can put it in a place where it can be viable and useful for all of us. And I know everybody won't agree with that. I mean, some people are like, let's just cancel it. GoFundMe, go, go. They want them to go, go somewhere else.

Tony Martignetti
No, that's not—

Art Taylor
From my perspective, I'm more into let's figure out how we can make this work for nonprofits.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Art Taylor
And so that's, that's the, uh, the approach I would take to it.

Tony Martignetti
I was one of the critics on LinkedIn. There was a lot of activity there. And I agree with a site that gets a million transactions a day, we just, we wanted them to have done it more collaboratively, smarter. You know, you're acknowledging they did things wrong.

Art Taylor
Yeah. And they do too.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Art Taylor
In hindsight, right? Right.

Tony Martignetti
And it ended up, you know, it was part of a— well, it became a moment, I think, also because of the culture, just what the nonprofit community is suffering under the Trump regime or administration, however you picture it.

Art Taylor
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
You know, the community's been battered badly in terms of money and reputation. So There's only so much battering a community can take until it reacts strongly. So they, you know, yeah, and I agree with, I certainly don't agree with just like cancel GoFundMe, like don't deal with them on a nonprofit level. I don't run a nonprofit, but if I did, I wouldn't cancel them. I would look to, you know, how can we leverage? Yeah. A million transactions a day. Is there anything in there that we could benefit from? But we wanted it to have been done collaboratively, and it felt like it was foisted badly.

Art Taylor
I want to comment on one other thing you said about the culture right now. And something really good happened to me that week, by the way. I received the Independent Sector's John Gardner Leadership Award, which is a big effing deal. Congratulations. It's a big deal. Congratulations. It's like, I don't know if I could ever get an award more prestigious than that for what I've done throughout my career. So it was really great to be recognized that way. So one of the things they do when you get this award is they give you a few minutes to talk about something on your mind. And I used it to talk about what we see as a decline in trust in institutions, because I feel that that is also part of what's happening here and maybe what so many of us were concerned about with the GoFundMe thing. And what I said was, even when we were at the Wise Giving Alliance, we noticed that there was this thing called the trust gap. Every year, Wise Giving Alliance does a study called the Donor Trust Report, and we measure the disparity between the percentage of people who feel that they feel like they need to trust highly or somewhat a charity before giving, and we compare that percentage to the people who say they do or not trust a charity, right? And you would hope that the 2 percentages align, but there's a wide chasm between what people feel about how they trust and how they feel that they need to trust before they give. And so we know that this trust problem exists. And I feel like GoFundMe was part of that cultural problem that you're seeing, which is this decline in trust. But the thing is, I don't happen to know for sure, and I don't know how you could know, if institutions are less trustworthy today than they were 20, 25 years ago or even 30 years ago. In fact, I can tell you specific examples if you want to use my one-off case where I know they are— they were less trustworthy before than they are now. I know for a fact, given some of the places I've worked, that they're way more trustworthy today than they were before, yet we trust them less now. Than we did in the past. And that trust leads to this desire to shut them down or to shout them out. Now, that doesn't mean that when we see things wrong, we shouldn't say something about it. And institutions have never been perfect. And when things go wrong, they should be called out to fix those things. But I guess I draw a line When people sort of say, you know, we don't need to talk to them, we don't need to deal with them, just shut them down. I'm more in favor of let's find out what's going on first. And if there's a way to fix this, if it can be beneficial to us, right? If it can't be beneficial, that's another story. But if the institution can do things that can be helpful to what we're trying to do, We should have conversations with them to try to fix it. Because, Tony, in the end, all nonprofits are institutions. And do we have— all of us get everything right every time? No. But we shouldn't be canceled. We should just fix it. We should just adapt and adjust and fix the problems, not say that, well, because this nonprofit did this thing wrong, They should be canceled. So that's my only thing. I'm for trying to fix. Now, if an organization doesn't want to fix it, that's a whole nother story. Then you can talk about canceling. But I'm trying to figure out how we can work to make these institutions work on behalf of people and the causes we care about, rather than the alternative, which for me.

Tony Martignetti
What's the, the John Gardner Award? Who was John Gardner?

Art Taylor
Oh my goodness, Tony. All right, so John Gardner was the founder of Independent Sector. He was also the founder of an organization called Common Cause. All right, but more importantly— well, not more important, he did a lot of things. But John Gardner was a conservative, a moderate conservative, who was the head of what was then known as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for the United States

Tony Martignetti
government.

Art Taylor
Oh, sure. HEW. HEW. Old enough to remember that. Before it split off into these 3 different bureaucracies, right? And he did remarkable work there working in the Johnson administration. as a conservative. You'll never see that again in the world, right? No. Never see that again in the world. He also, for many years, headed the Carnegie Corporation, which is, as you know, a grantmaking foundation that we have in America, one of the most preeminent, and did great work through that role as well. In his later years, he was a professor at Stanford University. And wrote some remarkable treatises on the work of nonprofits and civil society. So they named this award after him to honor people who are leaders of people, institutions, and causes. And so I took a minute to talk about the institutional aspect of that, which is where we seem to be losing. A lot of our trust. Yeah, but it was a great honor to get that award. Thanks to all the people involved.

Tony Martignetti
Well, congratulations again.

Art Taylor
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Outstanding. Yeah, a lot of the institutional loss of trust comes from loud voices, uh, who have prominent followings telling us that institutions have been weaponized, corrupted, Et cetera. And there are a lot of people who believe, if not everything, you know, maybe everything that prominent people say. They just believe it because of the messenger, not because the message is accurate. It's just because who's saying it. And that has eroded venerable institutions like our Department of Justice and our FBI and others. Yeah. And then, and it trickles down to a lack of trust in nonprofits. And nonprofits have been targeted, as I was saying before, that puts us in that moment that I think GoFundMe may have been swept up in.

Art Taylor
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
In part, in part, not all because of the moment that it happened, but I think in part.

Art Taylor
But it does, it also creates a space for some conversation around how we communicate the value of nonprofits. Because if people aren't giving— and we see the numbers, right?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Art Taylor
And the numbers don't tell the whole tale because we know that a lot of that has to do with religious giving. And if you take out religious giving, the numbers are less dramatic in terms of the decline, but it's flat and it is going down. But the point is, Tony, shouldn't we all be having a conversation around how we encourage the nonprofits to work together to deal with this whole issue of decline in trust? And do we communicate our value to society differently so that people find more reason and we can begin to shift our culture so that giving is what we should be doing. And people are more comfortable giving to these institutions and understanding that, no, we're not perfect and we're not always gonna get everything right, but more often than not, more people are gonna be helped by these institutions than hurt. And I think that's what I'd like to see us begin to talk about. And I don't have the language right, so don't hold me to what the language should be. But I do think there's an opportunity for us to begin talking about the value of nonprofit organizations, what they mean to society, and how we can help the public How we can show the public that we are trustworthy institutions. I think that's what I'd like to see.

Tony Martignetti
I would like to see that on a grand scale. I mean, I think nonprofits individually, all the 1.4 million, I think they're endeavoring to do that. They're doing it with their limited audiences. Their audiences are the folks that follow them on social networks, Their donors, their volunteers, maybe the community if it's a local organization. I mean, if it's a large national organization, I mean, they have more people following them, but I'm not sure the commitment is as deep as it is for a local organization. But that's each charity doing it individually, talking to their constituents. But when the messenger has millions and millions of followers, And it's a— and, and a media ecosystem following them around that amplifies the message. It's, it's very hard for, for individual nonprofits to defeat this broader, louder, more prominent message and messengers. Yeah. And so, so we need something on a bigger scale is what I'm saying. I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. Yeah, I agree with you. Right. We need to be able to match the scale of the negative commentary around the 501 community in this country. I don't know who's going to lead that grand-scale effort.

Art Taylor
And I think that the ground game is still good. I think what every nonprofit does with their donors is important. And Lord knows our AFP colleagues lead with that, right? When we go out and talk to donors, We're sharing that message of trust because every member of our association has to commit to a code of ethics. See, most people don't understand, you can't just sign up to be a member of AFP. You have to agree to abide by a code of ethics. And we have an ethics committee that will sanction members who are found to be in violation of that code.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, we talked about that.

Art Taylor
And so all of our members lead with that. But what I'm suggesting is they need help too. I mean, and I think a conversation among foundations and nonprofits, large and small, collectively, maybe through an activity like Independent Sector or Council on Foundations and And, you know, collaborating with AFP and other really vital organizations in our society to begin shifting this message to something different than what people seem to think we are all about will make a difference. And by the way, people still give to nonprofits, but they're not giving at the level that we would like to see them give. And that's a huge missed opportunity for our society, especially now when we're going to need these organizations to function at a high level more than ever before.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. Just about 2 weeks ago, I had the honor of opening the Sarkis Foundation Regional Leadership Forum, which is really— it's a conference, uh, in Oklahoma City. The Sarkis Foundation funds only Oklahoma nonprofits, and they invited me to open the first day with stand-up comedy. So I did a 5-minute set or so. Wow. And that was the very first time that I've spoken at a conference and opened with standup. So I'm grateful to them for trusting me that I wouldn't bomb, which I didn't. I love how the comedy outcomes are all war-related. Oh, I bombed. I killed. I killed. I killed them. Yeah. I slayed him. So I killed. It went very well. People laughed at the appropriate moments and did not laugh at inappropriate moments. So it all went very well. Felt very good when I then introduced the CEO and she gave her opening remarks for the conference. So I'm just very grateful to them for trusting that I would open the their conference appropriately and lightheartedly so they get off to a fun start. So thank you, Sarkis Foundation. That is Tony's Take Two. Kate?

Kate Martignetti
I think you need to change your opening now. You are the aptly named host and the Podfather and the comedic genius.

Tony Martignetti
All right,

Kate Martignetti
you're

Tony Martignetti
getting carried away, which I appreciate. Associate producer should have vast enthusiasm for the host. Absolutely.

Kate Martignetti
Number one fan.

Tony Martignetti
All right. All right. Maybe I will change. No, I'm not gonna change. But comedy genius. Let's— yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just say thank you for your enthusiasm.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup buttloads more time. Here's the rest of Another Conversation with Art Taylor with Art Taylor.

Tony Martignetti
We need the messaging, you know, at scale. Well, look, you, you know, you did a national message when you were one of the 3 cosigners of the, the, the Letter to America, the Letter to America, the overhead myth letter.

Art Taylor
Overhead myth, right.

Tony Martignetti
When you were CEO of Better Business Bureau and then it was also CEO of GuideStar. And, um, and the CEO of Charity Navigator. I remember Ken Berger was then the Charity Navigator CEO. Who, who was the CEO of GuideStar at the time?

Art Taylor
It was Jacob. Jacob Harold.

Tony Martignetti
Jacob Harold. Jacob, thank you. Right. Now, of course, you know, in Candid. Um, but I mean, that was a, that was a letter to the, to America.

Art Taylor
Yeah,

Tony Martignetti
I think it was addressed to the donors of America or something like that. All right, so I mean, it's, it's possible to We just, we just have to scale the message to defeat the scale of the, the contradictory message that, you know, that we're a Ponzi scheme.

Art Taylor
Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go by that, but I, I hear you. Well, that, but that's the scale of that. People are saying stuff.

Tony Martignetti
Well, that was Elon Musk. I'm talking about the scale of, you know, he has millions and millions of followers on X. There's, there's a guy with that kind of scale. I'm not, I'm not saying we, we, We have to answer his claim, but that's the kind of rhetoric that hurts the reputation of nonprofits when we're called a Ponzi scheme at grand scale. So we need a grand-scale message to not necessarily counteract his individual message, but that theme of messaging that we are bad for the— we're bad, we're bad, we're fraudulent.

Art Taylor
Okay. That kills us. What you're pointing out is something that we have to think about. So there are people who have large followings and have the ability to help shape our culture, right? Maybe some of the answer is to go to them with a message of the hope and opportunity that comes from these institutions. and see if some of them would be willing to talk along with us about the importance of giving, right? So there may be others out there, and I don't want to name names, but people who our society sort of looks up to. Yeah. And I'm not talking about politicians necessarily, but I'm talking about people who are cultural icons in our society. We need to get them on board to use their platforms and megaphones to begin talking about what good comes from giving. Now, it's a little tricky, right? Because if you're a multimillion-dollar celebrity, it's easy for you to talk about giving, but— Yeah. When you— when that might not translate well to a person who feels like, I don't have that much to give. Yeah, they can talk about giving all they want, but they're not in my shoes. How dare they talk about giving like that? I think there's some risk of that, but I don't think it's— I still think it's worth finding some of those greater angels. Yeah. Who own cultural megaphones to talk about the importance of giving at any level. See, that's the point. It's not, I need just me. I need like a dollar. I need a quarter. I need a nickel. Every gift matters. No gift is too small. We need participation. We need to take our kids When we go to buy some food, if we have a little extra, take a can of something and drop it off at a food bank so our kids can see the value of giving back to others. We need that kind of thing going on, I believe, in our society so that we can begin to look after and take care of each other and develop that common spirit and that common purpose so that our country can thrive. Without that, I worry that we devolve to, it's your fault if you don't have. Yeah. It's not always their fault if they don't have. Usually, it's a combination of factors that a person finds themself in need. And I always loved our country because we never turned our back on those folk. And I've been one of, by the way, those folk, I was one of those folk. My family didn't always have all the ends we needed. And in our community, I can remember, go down the street and ask Miss Dorothy for a cup of sugar. Or if somebody was, Somebody had died, nobody had insurance. We took up a collection to bury somebody in our neighborhoods. That's how that happened. We looked after each other. You get me all going now, but that's what has to happen.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, we, we have— we've lost— we have lost the commitment to the greater good that, you know, It's— we talk about our freedoms, but we don't counter that with our responsibilities. And part of the responsibility used to be that we look out for each other. We look out for the folks who aren't as well off as we are. And there's always somebody who's less well off, regardless of who you are. There's always somebody worse off, less well off. We've lost the commitment to the greater good. It's become about— Yeah. Me and my family.

Art Taylor
Yeah. Well, Tony, I don't want to say all of us, right? But enough of us have enough of us to try to get it back. 30 to 35% of the country's friends are teaching me new, new ways of communicating. All right. What they're saying to me is try to avoid the absolute whenever possible. Just try to be as clear about what you're saying, but avoid the absolute because everything— everything, see, even I say everything. Many things is a better word— are a continuum of possibilities. It's not usually this or that. Our minds are oriented in many cases now to think of this or that. And that can cause us problems. But we should maybe think of the world as more of a continuum of possibility, where in between the thises or thats, there's nuance and people who are in different places on that continuum. So I want to respect that as much as I can and say that it would be great if we could slide more people from the I'm not interested in giving part to the I am interested in giving part, and then further down to the I will give part. And we seem to be losing more people going in the other direction. And that's what I think I'd like to see us change. I'd like to see us change that.

Tony Martignetti
We don't have a spokesperson or spokespeople. We As a collective, as a community. Yeah. The nonprofit community doesn't have a voice or several voices out in the media, on the influential podcasts, because that's where a lot of opinion gets made is on podcasts now. We don't— so that's it. We don't have a coordinated message. I mean, we got 1.4 million messages and And there are organizations like AFP and the National Council for Nonprofits, Independent Sector, BoardSource, you know, but a lot of times I think they're talking— I mean, you're CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. I think when AFP talks, I think you're mostly talking to fundraising professionals. Yeah. That's our echo chamber. Yeah. And I'm not criticizing. That you have an essential role as a professional organization of professional fundraisers and with a code of ethics, et cetera. I'm not criticizing that, but a lot of times we're talking to ourselves, not the broader community that doesn't understand us. And in the best case, they don't understand what we do. It's kind of a benign opinion. They don't really know. And in the worst case, they have a negative opinion of what we do because of— The media. commentary from, uh, you know, from, from the federal government and people who have big followings. So we got to get outside our echo chamber. I mean, I, you know, I, I do a lot on LinkedIn, but I know I'm talking to folks in nonprofits. Um, this podcast is for nonprofits, right? It's not for the broader community.

Art Taylor
Yeah, you're right, you're right. So it's not an easy challenge.

Tony Martignetti
The echo, you know, our echo chamber hurts us. We don't have people talking outside of our, of our community. And that's what you're advocating.

Art Taylor
That's what I'm saying. I mean, like, I know, I know if I could throw out Taylor Swift, people listen to Taylor Swift. LeBron James, love him or hate him, people listen to LeBron James, right? Who are some of the great football players like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Jalen Hurts and these great athletes and, and entertainers, right? I don't— I'm seeing a lot of movies lately, but you know who I'm— what I'm talking about. Yeah. Those are people who help shape our culture, and it's not their responsibility to do it. But it would be nice if we could talk to them about the importance of them doing it. They're not obligated. They have their own challenges too. But man, what a lift it would be if we could appeal to them, to their good natures, to say, you know, We all could use help from time to time, and most of them give. A lot of times you don't hear about it. You don't hear about it when they give. But what if there was a way for them to communicate this message around giving back to community? And if we could accept that message. In the spirit that it was given, which is not to say, look at me, I made it, I'm giving, you haven't made it the way I am, but I still want you to give. If we could get them to accept the message as it's just beautiful to be able to give anything you can when you can. So my point is that wouldn't it be wonderful if we could appeal to some of the cultural icons in our society to encourage them to do something that they're not in any way obligated to do. Mm-hmm. Because they have to protect their own brands and images. I get that. But if they would simply look at the good that could come from a message from them around the importance of giving to each other and giving to institutions that can make a difference in their communities, I think that could have a huge impact on the psyche. Because I think giving, by the way, is kind of an innate thing. Giving to institutions, though, may not be, especially when we hear So much negativity around them. But again, without institutions, how do we get anything done? Because we need to work together collaboratively and consistently and persistently to solve difficult problems. And that's what these nonprofit institutions, large and small, national and community.

Tony Martignetti
You're right. I agree that giving is an innate thing. Like you were talking about growing up

Art Taylor
and raising,

Tony Martignetti
putting together a little fund to bury folks in the community. I think at that level, I think like helping family and your neighbors, I think that's innate. And To me, that's a— to me, a natural extension of that is giving to nonprofits.

Art Taylor
Yes.

Tony Martignetti
Because they're just their community, their neighbors, just at scale. You know, it's just, it's a bunch of community members who got together and now they're— now they built a kitchen and now they feed the hungry or they shelter the homeless or whatever work they do in the community. To me, it's a natural extension.

Art Taylor
That's right.

Tony Martignetti
And I think that, you know, I can't help but impose my own beliefs on You know, the broader— No, I

Art Taylor
agree with you. I agree with you.

Tony Martignetti
You're right. But we're countering these— this very detrimental, very vocal, very popular, loud voices that are hurting the community. And we don't have a coordinated response like you're describing to offset that.

Art Taylor
Right.

Tony Martignetti
To say, no, that that's not— here's what big nonprofits do, and here's what your local community nonprofits do. And, you know, all the folks you named, and obviously since I'm a podcaster, I think of Joe Rogan. I mean, I would love, I would love for someone like you to be a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk to him.

Art Taylor
I'd love to go on the show. I don't, I don't know who he is. I've heard of him because he got the biggest megaphone in the world, right?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, yeah.

Art Taylor
I would love to go on his show and talk about stuff like that.

Tony Martignetti
Oh, I would suggest you pitch— I would suggest your, your PR folks Uh, like pitch, you know, let's talk about the nonprofit sector for 2 hours, Joe. And then—

Art Taylor
I would welcome that.

Tony Martignetti
Well, I don't know anybody there. If I did, I'd probably have a bigger audience, but I'm— I love our—

Art Taylor
Somebody we know must know. We'll get to them. But I think you're right. That's the kind of—

Tony Martignetti
That's a huge— that's a big megaphone along with all the people, you know, the types of, you know, A and B-list celebrities that you're talking about.

Art Taylor
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Um, we don't, we don't, we don't have that. And the detrimental, the negative charity side has a lot of voices like that. They're, I don't, they're not so much entertainers as they are, I think, mostly politicians and talking heads that don't really, don't even know what they're talking about often, but they've got talking points.

Art Taylor
Talking points.

Tony Martignetti
We need to have, we need to have our talking points by spoken by Prominent folks.

Art Taylor
Well, look, speaking of talking points, I have a class that I got to teach here in a little bit. Okay. Did you know I teach at Columbia University? You teach ethics? In the School of Nonprofit Management. Yes, you teach ethics. I teach ethics, I teach governance, and I teach, um, um, leading and managing nonprofits. Leadership and management of nonprofits. All right, I don't want to keep you tonight. I do not want to keep you too late. So I got to get my talking points together for that. But, all right, but Tony, you call me anytime. Let's keep know, these conversations going. I welcome the opportunity to engage with you. You've, as I said before, been doing this for so long that you're part of it. You're part of our infrastructure now. And I honor and respect everything you're doing. So keep doing it.

Tony Martignetti
And we will. And I will certainly have you back.

Art Taylor
All right, my friend.

Tony Martignetti
We'll talk. If I, I won't see you, so enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Art Taylor
Oh, you too. It's going to be epic at our house. All the grandkids will be there.

Tony Martignetti
Enjoy.

Art Taylor
All right.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Art.

Art Taylor
Yeah.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, managing money and your banking relationship. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 99%. Go out and be great. Go out and be great.