Nonprofit Radio for February 19, 2024: Frustrations & Opportunities With Jay Frost

 

Jay FrostFrustrations & Opportunities With Jay Frost

Jay returns to share his reflections on four decades in the nonprofit community. There are things he’d like to see us doing better, that the sector has been talking about for many years. But they haven’t changed much. Yet he remains optimistic, so he recognizes the brighter future that’s possible if we practice more of what we preach. Jay is on LinkedIn.

 

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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. We have a new sponsor. Welcome. Virtuous to the nonprofit radio family. So glad to have you. I’m grateful for your sponsorship. Welcome. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of irises if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s going on this week? Hey, Tony, we’ve got frustrations and opportunities. Jay Frost returns to share his reflections on four decades in the nonprofit community. There are things he’d like to see us doing better that the sector has been talking about for many years, but they haven’t changed much yet. He remains optimistic so he recognizes the brighter future. That’s possible if we practice more of what we preach on Tonys take two last chance were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supports, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. And 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. Thank you again for your new sponsorship. Virtuous. Welcome. Anyway, here is frustrations and opportunities. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Jay Frost back to nonprofit radio. Jay has worked in the nonprofit community since 1985. That’s 39 years. Let’s call it 40 years between friends. He’s been a grant writer, fundraiser service provider and now he’s a consultant and content creator. You’ll find Jay on linkedin and he hosts Donor Searches Philanthropy. Masterminds series. Welcome back, Jay. It’s good to see you. It is always great to see you, Tony. We talk a lot on the Masterminds series. You’ve hosted me there probably by mistake or, or you had last minute cancellations. Uh I don’t know, three or four times. I’ve been on a bunch of times. I think you’re a popular guy. I, I like to draw a crowd. I, I like to think I draw a crowd but, but we’re focused on you today. The crowd that you draw, the thinking that you have the wisdom of let’s call it 40 years, 40 years in philanthropy. What does that feel like? What does it feel like to have done something? 40 years? Who, when you say the number over and over and now so far it’s 100 and 20. Uh I I it, it uh it, it really, it really makes me feel old Tony. So, thank you. Um But, ok, so there’s a line from Mary Oliver that I want to quote because it’s what I’m thinking about a lot, which is that, um, when it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I’ve made of my life something particular and real. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. So that’s what I’m thinking about these days. And, uh, and it’s a good place to think about it. Right. I mean, we have a lot of fun in our world, especially when I’m hanging out with, with a friend like you. Um, but it’s serious stuff too. And when you say 40 years, 40 years, 40 years, the first thing I think of is, oh, my gosh. I’m just getting started for, well, first of all, it’s not additive. So it’s, it’s not 100 and 20. So, uh, it was, it was keep you with your 40. Let’s not get carried away. Don’t get a big hit. Um, no, but, you know, uh, well, I like the, I like the idea of not, not simply visiting our world. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Um, what was your very, very, very first job? Was it the grant writing job or? Very, very, very first job in, in nonprofits? Oh, my gosh. Ok. So, first I wanted to be in the film business. I went out to LA. I lived in a garage. I didn’t have a car. I took buses, you know, you don’t do any of that in L A and I did all those things and that’s why I left. So I was there for a brief time, came back tail between my legs to Washington DC where my parents then had, had uh moved and I was introduced to a person at the National Endowment for the Arts. And very quickly, somehow miraculously got a job there as what was called a floater, which is back when people typed stuff and printed stuff, I was running around just doing all those odd jobs at the National Endowment for the Arts. And it was the dream for me because I was raised to study poetry and music and all these other things. So the ne A it was the citadel of all those things. And so very quickly, I, I had the opportunity to work in the inter arts program which was very interesting and controversial place. What program inter arts which is introduced plenty of arts work and um lots of controversy there. And then I worked at the literature program which also had a share of controversy, but that’s where I had a chance to as a 24 year old identify poets who would then be reviewing manuscripts from all the people, writing poetry and fiction and so forth around the country to review it and make investments in writers. I mean, it was, that was my first job. I was 24 I had $2 million in grants responsibility but, but uh I was not making the decisions. I was administering that work. But still, since nobody else really knew a heck of a lot about poetry then or now it meant that I got to be in this candy store of being with people who cared about words and their, and their impact. And that was 1985. That was, yeah, I was, I got there at 85. I was there through just a brief time through 87. Yeah. What happened in what, what happened in uh Hollywood, Los Angeles filmmaking? Oh man. Uh well, you know, you can only live so long on patty melt sandwiches served to you from behind a plexiglass screen for cash um working across in the Kit Kat Club in a theater that’s closed most of the time. Uh I I that was, that was my life, you know, occasionally getting into 50 bucks in the Kit Kat Club. You could have been a, oh my God, you could have been a floater instead of a floater. It could have been many things on that street with Santa Monica Boulevard in the eighties. Yeah, it was an interesting place. Um Alright, but it didn’t go, it just you didn’t take off. No, I did not take off. I had the opportunity to write some uh some scripts for things that probably didn’t need the scripts. Um and I decided not to do that over Christmas vacation. Looking in the mirror. Um, and then was able to rededicate myself to things that have, you know, aesthetic value. I see. All right. Oh, this sounds like a conversation that we should continue over a beer at a conference, uh, on a, on a Friday night. All right. All right. But, yeah, it’s fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so let’s turn to, uh, your thinking. I mean, I, I invited you on to, to share your thoughts about our, our community. You have 40 years to reflect over. You’ve seen the things we’ve emphasized over 40 years, the things we’ve accomplished not accomplished. What uh what strikes you first? Wow. It’s a lot of it that occurs to me first are the kinds of things that you and I have chatted about um over the transom every time we’ve, we’ve talked a lot of the petty frustrations that kind of, you know, gnaw at you. Um The things that we laugh over such as uh such as, you know, um why don’t organizations we know, do the things that they should do that are relatively easy to do um such as, uh you know, send out a personal thank you note once in a while. And then we get into all these debates about whether or not people should write thank you notes, whether they’re vestiges of the past, whether they’re too elitist, there are other terms that are less polite for doing this kind of thing. But the, but the thing that really drives me bananas about all that is that it focuses on a tiny, tiny sliver of activity. Uh instead of thinking about the whole, where we can say, what is it that we’re here to do? What is it we’re trying to address what are the best ways of engaging with people who believe in the same things we do, making sure so that they know that we see them, that we hear them, that we know that they’re human and they’re valuable and then we truly partner with them to get things done. Instead, we’ve divided all this stuff up and these little uh actions and then half the time we ignore some of those things to do and I’ve been guilty of it too. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that that I haven’t failed at almost everything because I have. But rather that once we learn these things, I’d like to think that we could put some of them into practice. And I have seen best practices over 40 years. So if we could just pull them together, sort of like our own little mini Bible and actually practice that stuff. I think we could have better partnerships, better friendships and be better trusted and then have better results. Let, let’s take off a few of the things that uh you’re talking about these, these small things that uh accumulate into better, better relationships. What you’re saying, stronger relationships, longer, more devoted donors pick off a few things that pick you off. Yeah, I took some notes so I wouldn’t forget. Um So what are these are so reverential to you? So I have to take notes to you that you have to write them down to remember. Ok, there are two levels here. So what we’re talking about first actually are kind of the appetizers of a conversation like this. They’re the annoyances, right? So those are the things we mess up that we can control for if we thought they were important. So it’s treating donors like ATM machines. This has become a common phrase now. Uh But uh but I think I’ve been saying it for a long time, I’m sure you have to and it’s not just because we see other people doing it and we say tis tis you should do what I say and not what I do. No, it’s because as donors, we experience this, we wonder what in the world is going on here. We make it donation and then we don’t hear from anybody or we get a digital receipt and they think that’s enough. It’s never enough. So uh just one practical example. And I think I’ve told you this before. Um off offline is that I started giving to an organization that this was two years ago now. So it was in the middle of the pandemic uh based on a book and a movie that I thought was just so powerful emotionally wrenching. And so I won’t mention the name of the organization because what I’m about to say suggests that they, that they are not taking care of their donors. And I’m hoping that what I’m going to tell you is isolated, although I fear it’s not. And I know it’s also true for many organizations that is it. I saw this powerful story. I’m really engaged. It’s a way to help people who are getting out of the prison, industrial complex. It is a big deal. We have more prisoners in this country than anywhere else on earth. And so, uh what do we do for these people when they get out? Well, pretty much nothing. Their life is almost over unless they’re lucky or they happen to live in a state with a program for that. I mean, it’s just awful on every level. So, wouldn’t it be great to help out? So I start giving an amount every month, which for me was a fair amount every month. Um And, and even though it’s not a lot of money, I knew it was probably putting in the top like five or 10% of donor pool just because of the stuff we know from fundraising. And so they keep, you know, sending me the kind of the notes uh via email that say dear friend. So I made a point of calling at one point just to say, you know, I’m doing this. They didn’t call me back and then at the end of the year I stopped giving, I thought, well, let’s see what happens. Not because I don’t care. But I was hoping that this would be kind of jarring and they do something and then I’d have a discussion not trying to get business, just trying to say, hey, I’m not special. There must be a lot of people like me silence every once in a while. I’ll get a note from the organization saying, dear friend asking me to give, not even mentioning my past giving. Now this all sounds pretty petty on my part. But the reason I’m mentioning it is because I think it’s just emblematic of a larger problem. Um On the one hand, we don’t have a lot of time in this world, fundraisers just don’t have a lot of time. We’re, we’re, you know, we got a lot to do, we aren’t particularly well paid to do it and we’re doing it out of love. All of those things are true. We don’t often have a lot of support staff. We don’t have a lot of great resources. It’s all true. But then there’s what we do with our time. And if there’s not, I don’t know that there’s anything more important than saying to people who believe in the same things we do that I see you and you’re important and this is important to do together. And I, and I know that organizations can do it and they’ve done it very well in some places, but somehow in the nonprofit industrial complex, we’ve forgotten a little bit of that. And I’m not sure that some of the new technology is, is helping us to become more human. I think sometimes it just relieves us of this nagging responsibility to, to have those little personal engagements that make this work so personally rewarding and so financially successful. It’s time for a break. 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 in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to frustrations and opportunities. Well, the promise of artificial intelligence is that it’s going to free us up for, for all the things that you’re talking about. So we’re gonna be better to our donors because we’re gonna relieve ourselves of the mundane writing tasks. Uh I think it’s mostly right. I’m gonna use that as the example. That’s what I see the most, you know, the the writing tasks, whether it’s annual report or a 200 word article or whatever, you know, and that’s gonna, the promise is that it’s going to give us time for the, for the human relationships and in my, uh, now we’re on Tony Martignetti s frustrations that, that sounds familiar. It’s a good show. I, I think the, I think the smartphone was supposed to do that for us too. Yeah. And I wonder if the telephone was supposed to have done that in the, I don’t know, 19 tens or I might be off on when, when that was became a widespread technology. But I think I’ve heard this promise before that we’re going to have more time for other activities and, uh, the promise hasn’t been realized in my mind. Right. Yeah. No, I, not only do I agree with you but I think it’s, it’s going back to what I was trying to get to, which is that this is a symptom of a larger issue and the technology it is, seems like a patch on this big tire that we’ve created to try and drive down this road of social change and, and it’s good. I mean, I, I’m all about tech because tech is, is awesome and we really can use it for good. Um, but at the same time if we’re using it as a patch to just keep driving down the same road in the same ways, it doesn’t necessarily serve the purpose. Um, so I’d like to think that if we can go back to what it is that’s supposed to be guiding us. What is the principle behind this work? You know, keep that in mind all the time, keep it up on our wall and look at it all the time. Then hopefully we’ll be doing the more human things. Um There’s a book written years ago by Robert Putnam, you know, Bowling Alone. And the reason I’m mentioning it here is because this concept about uh this kind of fracturing of society where we don’t know each other as well has been potentially exacerbated by some of these technologies, not because of the technologies themselves, but how we use them to avoid actual interaction with one another. And I think that the nonprofit sector and fundraisers specifically not only have potentially a responsibility to do something about that, but it’s more of an opportunity to do something about it that we could decide every time we employ a technology or a technique um that we can use that in order to get closer to people instead of just to mechanize and uh efficient and make more efficient our work because I know what we’re trying to do is get more money. But what we really need to do is build stronger connections in order to get that money, be mindful of your use of the technology. I mean, if, if, if it does, in fact, if artificial intelligence does, in fact relieve you from the, the drudgery of writing your annual report then what are you gonna do with those extra 15 hours that you saved? Because nobody’s gonna tap you on the shoulder and say you’ve got 15 free hours. Now, what are you, how are you going to use the time that the A I saved you? You’re, you’re boasting over coffee. Whoa, the writing, the annual report was so easy this year? Ok. What did you do with the quote surplus time that the, the A I uh allowed you? Did you, did you make more donor calls? Did you have more donor meetings? Did you write more handwrit notes? Did you uh pick up the phone to somebody you haven’t talked to in a, in a while? And this implication, this leads over into the personal too, not only the professional, but you and I are talking about fundraising and fundraisers. So I’ll, I’ll keep it there but use that time consciously if you feel A I is or some other technology has relieved you of a burden. How do you use the new time that, that you used to uh devote to that burden? But, but we kind of forget then about those other things that we can do because if we’re all then trained to engage with one another in these almost mechanized ways like by text and I use text all the time like we all do. But if, then that’s what we’re used to. How comfortable does it feel to just call somebody. So every once in a while I’ll do this, I’ll just grab a number on my phone of somebody I haven’t talked to for a long time and just call them up. And it’s almost shocking because we’re all now so used to communicating in this other way that to do that other thing, sometimes it can be refreshing but sometimes it can be off putting because we’re not accustomed to it. And I, and I, and if that’s true in the personal world, I know it’s also true in this professional world, you, you feel like it’s off putting, I find it more refreshing, then off putting it, you can mean off putting to yourself or to the person receiving the call to the person, receiving the call. And I’m not suggesting we don’t call. I’m saying the opposite. I’m just saying that I think people have become used to a certain kind of thing. And so this new thing, some people do find it refreshing like you and I do. But other people just, they don’t know what make of it. Like, why is this happening? Why is this thing happening? We have to do that. We have to break up that thing and, and do those things to, to engage with people in these ways to make it more human. I, I think my experience is, you know, I I’m working in Planned Giving. So I’m usually talking to people who are 70 80 90. And there’s one woman who’s 100 and one and one who was 100 until she died recently, they grew up with handwrit notes and then they had decades and decades of phone conversations before we went virtual that many decades, like 4050 decades of, oh, no, 40 or 50 years of, uh, phone calls. So to them, uh, a phone call is very thoughtful. A handwrit note is even more thoughtful as the recipients of those. And I, you know, I, I think, um, I think when you do more than what’s typical, I think it’s more refreshing to the recipient than it is off putting. So I guess I’m pushing back a little bit. You know, I, I would and I know you’re not discouraging folks from doing the extra, you know, look, customer service is, um, I have a recurring show that I, uh, replay called Zombie Loyalists with a, a marketing and, uh, pr guy named Peter Shankman and he says, well, he said years ago when he was first on the show and I’ve replayed it many times since then, you know, the average, but it remains true, the standard of customer service is crap. So if you could just be a little above crap, you’re setting yourself apart. So just don’t, just don’t do crap. Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know, whatever it looks, whatever, taking an extra step looks like for you and your donors do it because you’ve got this, uh a surplus time theoretically from the, from the, from the technologies that we, that are, that are saving us so much. But if you do find you have extra time, um, use it, you know, use it consciously. That’s, that’s kind of what I was getting to is, you know, conscious use of time. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I use off putting that as the way I feel about it but as how some people react even to the idea of doing it. Um It’s, it’s funny though because in talking about these things and you, you’re going through the idea about people who were used to handwrit notes of a certain age than people used to phone calls. And if you talk to people who are maybe of the successive generation, they might say, well, we don’t do these things or people in this age group, they make assumptions, they don’t do these things. But in fact, if we go on to Twitch right now and we see a Twitch streamer who’s raising money for, you know, pick your cause, it might be Saint Judes. It might be something we know as well. What are they doing? They’re engaging with people live right now. They’re talking to them. They’re, they’re um they’re doing that through the chat. They’re engaging with people in a meeting that makes sense for them today. But the reason why I mentioned this is, it’s not about the tech that’s just today’s tech, they’re really engaging with people so anything we can do to properly engage with people, uh, I think is that is exactly what we should be doing. And I, and I, and once again I don’t think it is off-putting. I just think that’s the objection. I think what we really need to do is bring things up a little to, to be better than the boring to go back to your point. Yeah. Oh, I see. You’re, you’re concerned. Yeah, I see what you’re expressing that people might be put off. No, I think people will be uh elated. You know, I write a lot of handwrit notes and not surprising that I get a fair amount of handwrit notes back. But again, I’m writing to older folks. 70 plus, it’s time for Tony’s steak to do. Thank you, Kate. This is the last Chance for Planned Giving Accelerator. The last few weeks. The class starts in early March. If Planned Giving is on your to do list, you wanna launch it. Your board has talked about it. You’ve been thinking about it. I can help you in Planned Giving Accelerator Guide. You step by step week after week, how to launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. Of course, there’s the incredible peer support too. Besides what you learned from me. Lots of cross talk. We, we set this up as zoom meetings, not webinars, so you can talk to each other. Folks get to know each other. Share successes, frustrations uh help each other. That, that part has been much more uh than I than I expected the, the, the peer support. So there’s all that if you’re interested, the info is at Planned Giving accelerator.com. If you use code nonprofit Radio, 1500 you can claim $1500 off the tuition. It’s all at Planned Giving accelerator.com and that is Tony take two. Hey, I hope people join in the class. Thank you. We’ve got just about a butt load more time. Let’s return to frustrations and opportunities with Jay Frost. What you’re espousing is be relational, not transactional, but that’s something that we’ve been talking about for 20 years. Donor centric. How long about 15 years we’ve been talking about being donor centric. Do you feel like we’ve improved? II I, I’m not experiencing it when you give, when you leave the prison. The prison charity is, hasn’t heard about donor centrism or hasn’t put it into practice. I think that’s it. I think that they haven’t put it into practice. I mean, we have had a really important discussion about whether or not organizations are community centric or not. And I think that’s a valid and important conversation, whether the organizations themselves are accurately representing the needs and interests of the community by having people within the community uh on the board and engaged in the activity and engaged in the fundraising and all these things. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization, uh, shouldn’t do these things we’ve been talking about, shouldn’t have a note written to somebody. Shouldn’t pick up the phone and just say I appreciate so much that you care about the same things and what can we do to, you know, to make sure that you have the information you need to keep being involved. These, I think these things work well together. So I understand why we’ve had this discussion. I don’t understand. It sounds like you don’t understand it either is why when we’ve been talking about these things for so many years, whether it’s about donor Centricity, whether it’s about actively engaging the community that we end up in the same place of not doing it, of sending a digital receipt of not just finding whatever the current version of picking up the phone is. And here’s the reason why I think this really matters. I, I think it’s much more than just whether or not we’re going to hit this year’s retention figures and make this quarter’s goals. That’s important. All of that is important. But what’s far more important is that it’s about building relationships of trust that’s fundamental to major gifts, that world that I spend some time in. It’s obviously important to plan gifts, which you spend so much time in. But, and there’s so much revenue there that that’s important, but far more important if people don’t trust our organizations as a whole. And the Edelman Trust survey shows that nonprofits are also seeing declining uh faith in, in our organizations. If people don’t trust our organizations as a whole, then that means they won’t start, they won’t come on the on ramp to supporting us as volunteers, as, as employees, as board members, as contributors. And if they won’t, then we can’t meet the big challenges of our time. So these little things that we choose not to do either because we think we’re too busy or because they’re not important. End up having a direct correlation to whether or not people trust our organizations to take on the biggest challenges of our time. And these are existential. I mean, if, if we can’t get anybody to trust uh the government um or major institutions about issues like climate change, why should they trust, you know XYZ organization either if, if they are engaged with us that we haven’t asked them to volunteer, we haven’t invited them to sit down and have a discussion in the local community. We haven’t invited them to invest. And if they’re not really engaged with us, why in the world should they listen to us about why we need to make sure that we don’t go above 1.5 °C, which we just hit, we just hit this week, the thing that we were supposed to avoid for, for decades, just like for decades we’ve been talking about. Write a Thank you note. It’s, it’s almost parallel to see the decline in trust, the decline in generosity and ultimately the decline, our ability to address existential challenges and we have the ability as fundraisers to do little things to achieve great things just by building these bonds. That’s a terrific sort of segue to, you know, what we can do. And we’ve, we’ve toyed with this, uh uh while we’ve been talking, but we keep saying, don’t do this or do the other instead. But, um yeah, I, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m with you. These, these small, these small things, small tasks lead to bigger uh either trust or a lack of trust if you’re not doing them, which impinges our ability to uh stop hunger and homelessness and, and reverse climate change and, and save whales and animals from kill shelters and domestic violence victims, survivors and all, you know, all of it and, and the arts education that, yeah. So, all right. So we have the ability to write the ship. It’s just, you know, we haven’t done it. We’ve been talking about it for decades. I’ve only been in philanthropies for 27 years. It got me beat by, by 1312 or 13. Um 12 or 13. Yeah. Right. 12 or 13. I don’t wanna overstate the case. Um But you know, but, you know, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not seeing big uh I’m not seeing big impacts. I’m not seeing big outcomes, outcomes is really what we want to be measuring. So, but that doesn’t mean we stop talking. That doesn’t mean we stop trying. No. And I, I wonder if maybe the, the thing is that we need to give people a bigger goal. Um, I mean, climate change is a pretty, pretty large, pretty existential goal. Right. But that’s, that’s too big too. Right. I mean, an individual or even in an organization, probably many people and many organizations don’t feel like they can do a heck of a lot to make a change to something like that. Um They can do the little things but they can’t do the big things. But maybe there are, there’s a, there’s something in the middle that ties together the work that we do in our world of, you know, um fundraising, for example, and philanthropy together uh with um uh with that bigger, bigger existential um question and, and I wonder if it’s stuff like um determining how we work with other organizations to build trust, you know, consolidating and coordinating our efforts so that instead of everybody forming another nonprofit. Um No, well, maybe we find a way to bring these nonprofits together, not just out of financial distress, which is where we typically go with mergers, but out of AAA true desire to share power, to share resources and to achieve greater things, bigger goals, bigger impacts, you know, through consolidation and cooperation’s, that’s one and that’s a bigger goal that I, I think is also attainable. And um it, something it’s a little easier to sort of imagine rather than how am I going to make sure that the ocean water levels don’t rise too high in the Carolinas. Um, you know, but it does lead there, I mean, if we can get people to work together as organizations instead of all being separate entities, then maybe it’s going to be a little easier to communicate to the public about the importance of taking actions to lobby the government, which is another thing that we can do that we don’t do because we’re so fearful that if we lobby that it’s going to run afoul of the law and that also we won’t be able to receive all the donations we want. So lobbying is one and then we can do things like um ensure that we are partnering with the kinds of supporters who also best represent our values. So we’re not just going for whatever money is out there, but we have big audacious goals supported by larger consolidated and cooper entities in pursuit of these bigger goals, supported by people who are willing to make big investments towards those goals. So not just trying to get uh a few dollars together for a small thing, but bringing more actors together with bigger support from well aligned actors for bigger things. The first one you mentioned the partnerships and those are all valuable uh the the partnerships with other organizations. That’s something I feel that the community, the sector is doing better. I remember um grant making foundations focusing on uh on, on collaborations and, and I think that that made a difference. Um II, I do still hear that there’s, you know, fear about, well, you know, we don’t, we don’t really know what a partnership looks like, you know, is it just a memorandum of understanding or are we doing events together or, or grassroots activities together like uh an advocacy day on Capitol Hill or, or in the State Capitol or whatever? Uh you know, what, what does it look like? And, or our, our board is, is uncertain about working too closely because it kind of suggests that we can’t do the work ourselves. You know, I’ve heard some of these arguments against the, the, the, the partnership ideas, but I do still think we are further along in working collaboratively than we were like 10 years ago. You, you may be right about that. Uh But I do on my end in the consulting work that I do still see so many emerging organizations all the time. They’re popping up like, like weeds or maybe dandelions. I mean, something prettier than weeds. But they, but the problem is that they still are thinking I need to do this alone. And I, and I, and I don’t see the trouble there. I pardon my interruption, but you’re accustomed to it, you know. You know, I, I do that all the time and the, the trouble there is, you know, these are folks new to the sector. So like, you know, they have passion about something. It may have, may be an event that a AAA trauma in their life that they want to create a, an advocacy cause around, you know, but, but they jump in, I mean, their first thought is I want to start a nonprofit or maybe, you know, maybe the first thing is they do a uh a fundraiser, you know, on one of the platforms or something. And then they say, oh, you know, we made $1500. Well, you know, maybe I’ll start a nonprofit, you know, so they, they’re not acquainted with the sector. They don’t, they don’t know what they’re jumping into. And by the time they start to meet the partners, you know, they’re, they’re already incorporated for three years and they’re raising, you know, now, $5000 a year and they’re flailing. But, but they got in with all with passion, which is necessary but not sufficient. 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 frustrations and opportunities. It’s, it’s uh it’s hard to watch because you want to take people’s, you know, all that, all that energy and passion that they have and, and help them to achieve that result that they, they say that they want to see in the world. Um At the same time, they’re never going to, it’s going to be extremely difficult for them to hit the scale that they want. What is it? Three quarters, three quarters of all nonprofits uh annual revenue under, isn’t it three quarters under $75,000 or something like that? But, but I, I don’t know, have, have you ever had these conversations with folks who just reach out to you because you’re in the sector and you’re well known and they want to start a nonprofit and they’re like, pick your brain. I, I, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of those pick your brain kind of conversations and the folks are resistant to the idea of donating to an existing cause. That’s, that’s already doing the work they’re talking about or volunteering with it or, or uh just approaching them about how can I help somehow if, if you don’t know what the structure looks like, just they, they feel like they have to do it themselves. It’s, it’s not that the existing organizations are not sufficient. But, yeah, but they’ve already, but they may have already scaled. They’re certainly more scaled than your non-existent organization. They’re, they’re, they’re way beyond where you are now, but folks are, are resistant to that line of thinking. They, they’re just so motivated. They don’t really want to hear the reach out to the existing community versus incorporating and taking on management of a, of a nonprofit corporation. You, you really don’t know what you’re getting into. So this is, this is one of the questions that I have for myself. It rattles around in my head all the time. How much of that is the result of the way we have kind of trained the community to understand how they can engage with the existing organization. I, I mean, some of there are going to be some people who tomorrow want to start their own organization and that’s just the way it’s gonna be, but it could be that they aren’t even aware of how they could be involved with another organization. So let’s take this down to the very, you know, practical kind of fundraising stuff that we do all the time. If we look at many organizations, websites, it’s very difficult in most cases to find out how to volunteer and sometimes volunteering is not only difficult to understand within the website, but there might be barriers to it. Um And those barriers are sometimes practical on the inside. But what it means externally is if you’re the person who says I really need to help the kids in my community um with an after school program. Uh And you don’t know any, any of the programs that are existing right now. Well, maybe that’s a bit of your own personal ignorance, maybe you can do more research, but it could be also that the organization already performing that role, or more likely several organizations have not found a way to bring everybody with that passion in. So I don’t mean to blame us for not being sufficient in our marketing, but I do think that we can open the doors wider to people who share our values and our passions than we have done. And we can certainly do it even in very simple, practical ways that fundraisers have some degree of control over like our websites, our Facebook pages, other places where we are acting as an acquisition tool. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a way that we can say you don’t need to in indirectly say you don’t need to start your own thing. We’ve already got a thing here. We value you. That’s why we’ve already invited you to participate in this and that and the other thing and to give. So why don’t you come on in and work with us and that work may be as a volunteer, it may be as a advisory board member. It may be as some kind of community event or organizational um activity person, but I’m not sure that we’re doing that job very well. And in fact, if anything, I think that we have in our efforts to streamline our operations once again, um we have narrowed the portal through which people can discover and engage with us so they can find their passions through our organizations instead of coming up with 10,000 other competing organizations. I mean, let’s put it another way. 1.6 million organizations in the United States is just too many, it’s just too many. Some of that is uh the, the, the accessibility, you know, volunteering with us could look like two hours a week. I, I it could look like just a few hours a month, you know, or you, sometimes you see volunteer options but, you know, it’s not, I, I don’t, I don’t know, you, you sounds like you’ve, you’ve spent more time thinking about it and, and looking at them. Um II I, I’m thinking about, you know, volunteering. We, what does it look like? I mean, define, define what folks could do as a, as a volunteer. I mean, I think a lot of people would like to enter as a volunteer and then may very well become donors when they see the, the good work that you’re doing and they’re helping do it firsthand. They’re doing it with you firsthand. Um All right, Jay. Um what else? Now, what else? Uh What, what else would you opportunities on the opportunity side? Well, we also talked about the importance of, of coming up with advocacy um of making sure that uh we are taking a more pronounced role and discussing the issues that are important to us. And that might go a little bit beyond just a statement of our mission, our immediate mission. Uh maybe we once again get together with other organizations and say that this is our common platform, the thing that we all need to do together. So if we’re working with Children, there are lots of organizations working with Children and we need lots of them. Uh Maybe we don’t need as many as there are. I don’t know, but we do need a lot of people out there working with kids, but together, they probably have some common threads and if they worked together, I would think that they could also have more um more weight in lobbying their state legislatures. Um and, and their, their congressional representatives, um the federal government for more aid to Children um in various forms, whether it’s for head start programs or for after school programs. What have you. So in other words, we don’t have to have tons of organizations trying to fight over small amounts of money, kind of that scarcity principle, but instead coming together uh in pursuit of larger goals and then lobbying together uh to make sure that there are more resources available to address these common needs. So I think that advocacy is something that we don’t pursue as well as we could. Um And, and we could, we could do it in a more concerted and um, and successful way uh advocacy days in Washington or in state legislatures are a great example of this, but they’re usually done by individual organizations rather than by a group. Um, and so that’s one more way that I think that we could find common causes together and work together for, uh, a more, more successful outcomes, an advocacy day. I mean, I see that as perfect, uh, fertile ground for partnering, you, you’d rather have six busloads of people than one or a half and one of the organizations may have other organizations are gonna have relationships that you don’t have with, with staffs and, and this could be like we both said, Washington or at the state level. Um, I, I don’t know, I see that as ripe opportunities for, for partnering door knocking campaigns. The same thing. We, we’d rather have hundreds of people than a dozen. And I would think that would be easier if we’re working with a coalition of them. I mean, that’s, that’s definitely what happens in a political campaign. And there are some things that political campaigns do well and some things that they, they don’t, they’re much more transactional, but there are some things they do well that we can learn from and we can uh make sure that we employ those same tools and, and techniques and approaches to reach more people, get them more engaged. You had a, a dalliance with uh political campaigns. You were, you were considering running for uh for the US House at one point. I remember years ago, years ago, I never, I never jumped into the, into the, you were considering, I admire that you were thinking about it. You were serious enough that you, you publicize it to some of us, some. Well, I, I was involved at the state level with uh with the Democratic Party. Um And uh so uh was involved as a finance chair for our congressional district and doing other activities like that. Um There’s also a history of politics in my family on both sides of the aisle, uh especially with advertising and marketing, interestingly enough and in, in, in that world, what I find really interesting is advocating for ideas. So it’s not just, it’s not just the politicking over the bills, but it’s also saying that this is what’s important to us. Let’s fight for it together. Um And I, I think if there’s a kind of a through line in all this discussion, it might seem like we’re bouncing around a little bit. Uh But for me, it’s that if, if we can figure out what it is that we’re pursuing and then find out what our common interests are and common pursuits, then we should be able to attract more people to that together, um, to work on those things and more resources to, to accomplish those things. That’s certainly true in politics. And I believe it’s true in the nonprofit sector. Um, and if there’s something that, uh, that has driven me kind of crazy in the last few years, it’s this almost disaggregation. It’s this breakup we’ve had um that uh that I think that, that fundraising in part can help to fix. Um that instead of uh finding the way to divide up the population into a million different conversations, we can find common conversations and invite people to have those with us. Um instead of fighting over red and blue and, and so forth, whether it’s political or, or sports teams or our approaches to fundraising, um Instead we can find what it is, the majority of us need to do together in order to achieve these common objectives. Um So, yeah, uh politics in some ways is very appealing to me. Um What has been most uh um uh disturbing about politics is also in some ways reflected in the nonprofit sector, we may not have the same kinds of fights here in the nonprofit world that we do in politics. Thank God for that. Um But I do think that sometimes uh we, we get involved in these little uh rivalries over ideas when in fact, some things are, are pretty simple and direct, like sitting down with people across the table and listening to them first, um showing them that we heard them and then invite them to participate equally with us in achieving a mutual, you know, mutually desired result. And I know that in earnest, most of us feel that we are doing that. We are working hard to do that in this sector, but especially in some of the ways we’ve talked about so far today. Um I think we can do better. I think that’s an a, a fine place to stop if uh if, if you’re comfortable with that. Yeah. Is there? No, I need you to work with. I was kind of all over the place. No, no, you, you were restrained, right? All right. I think you like. That’s uh those are, those are excellent parting words and we, we, we can do better and we’ve got existential challenges that are at stake back to J Frost. Oh, thank you. Um Yeah. And we had a, you know, I should have given you a little more space for humor, Tony because this wasn’t the laugh fest. It usually is with you. That’s the only problem. Well, that’s when I’m, when I’m the centerpiece. It’s, it’s more uplifting. No, you were quite uplifting. Maybe. Uh maybe I wouldn’t go so far as to say jovial. But uh you’re uplifting, uplifting. All right. He’s Jay Frost. He hosts the, uh, you do this a couple of times a week, right? The Donor Search philanthropy Masterminds series. You do one a week or a couple of week, 22 per week, plus one podcast per week for 46 weeks. This year, I’m giving myself a little vacation. All right. Let’s not get too slack. 46 444 weeks of vacation. 4 to 4 to 6 weeks of vacation. Um, You’ll find him on linkedin and you’ll find him at the uh philanthropy Masterminds series, which is he’s the host and donor search is the sponsor of the, of the series. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for uh Thank you for opening up. Thank you to really, really appreciate it next week. Publish your book, Thought Leader. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com or sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. And 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. Welcome again. Virtuous. Thanks so much. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web 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% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for February 12, 2024: Overcome Your Fear Of Public Speaking

 

Laurie KrauzOvercome Your Fear Of Public Speaking

We’d rather face death or the dentist. We’d rather talk about money or sex, than have to speak to an audience. Even a small one. Laurie Krauz can help you overcome your anxiety around talking in public, with her preparation strategies. She’s a presentation skills coach, who Tony worked with for years. They’ve got good stories about how difficult he was, and how she helped him. This originally aired May 24, 2021.

 

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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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. And I finally got my mic situation resolved. This is the new mic that I’ve been waiting for. So over the past couple of shows, the recent ones that we had last recorded, I was sounding a little wonky different mics. This is the one it’s settled. I hope you like the way it sounds and I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of iliotibial band syndrome. If you irritated me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, I hope folks are hungry this week. It’s overcome your fear of public speaking. We’d rather face death or the dentist. We’d rather talk about money or sex than have to speak to an audience. Even a small one. Laurie Krause can help you overcome your anxiety around talking in public with her preparation strategies. She’s a presentation skills coach who I worked with for years. We’ve got good stories about how difficult I was and how she helped me. This originally aired May 24th, 2021 on Tony’s Take two. Let’s connect. We sponsored 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 overcoming your fear of public speaking. What a pleasure to welcome back after really too long a hiatus, Laurie Kraus to nonprofit radio. Having worked in both the corporate and entertainment industries, Laurie brings great skill from a remarkably eclectic educational and professional background to her work as a public speaking presentation and interview skills coach. She’s a professional entertainer and has helped men and women from all over the world and all walks of life achieve their own personal and professional styles while developing their ability to offer dynamic compelling presentations. She’s also helped AmeriCorps, Sony BMG BBC. Television, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Martinetti Planned giving advisors Aptly named and the Mary J Blige Foundation for the Advancement of Women. Now you’ll find Laurie Krauss on linkedin. Hello, Laurie. Welcome back. Hello, Tony. It’s always great to talk to you. It’s a pleasure. It’s a job. I’m getting my, my uh synesthesia is kicking in. I just got chill because I know we’re gonna have a valuable fun time together. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be. But uh and there, it won’t be a problem with us having to live through those uncomfortable silences. That’s what should work. Oh, no. No. No, not at all. Uh, absolutely. Right. You know, I have my, uh, as you’ve, uh, trained me through the years, I have my, uh, glass of warm water and I have my, you have yours. Yes. Yes, I have my Grether, my tin of Grether pastilles. Uh, no, non sugar. I like the sugar free variety for, uh, for potential throats. And I’m feeling a little throaty today so I took a prophylactic. Actually, I took a uh yeah, it’s, you know, it’s that allergy time of year and actually we can start with a little bit of that tip is I’ve really been struggling with allergies this year. It’s very weird because I don’t usually. And so that idea of having something like whatever it is you would use a halls or, you know, I like cola ready because coughing, begets, coughing. And so tip number one have something like that ready before you’re not gonna be able to leave the room or leave the screen or leave the microphone and go get something. Have your, have your aids within arms within arms reach or when we get back to face, to face presentations on the, on the second shelf of the podium. Uh Well, I don’t like podiums somewhere near you have a little table with a little water. Ok. But we’re getting, we’re getting ahead. We’re getting ahead. Don’t be an anarchist stop. Uh This is, it’s Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, not Laurie Krauss. I’m so scared right now, you’re merely the guest. I’m merely the guest. Yes, I’m brutal to my guest. All right. All right, I’m ready. I’m ready. So I have a formal, I, yes, I prepared a formal question for you. So you are a jazz singer? Mhm. Uh Which I have firsthand knowledge of because I’ve paid to see you perform. So I know this for a fact. It’s not rumor or innuendo. Um How does singing and maybe jazz singing, especially inform your public speaking coaching. That’s now, I, I wanna say that’s a great question. But I also want to say a little caveat about saying to an interviewer. That’s a great question. That will be the last time I say that because a lot of times people say that because they’re buying time to answer. And so, so if you, as the interviewee keep saying, that’s a great question, Tony. It, it just sounds like you’re b sing the interviewer. I don’t get too many, but it is a great question. Thank you. I don’t get too many guests complimenting my questions. Actually, it’s a rarity. So thank you. Thank you. However, obsequious it may be or in your case, not hesitating at all, but thank you for that. So, so having said that what’s interesting about it to me is that uh public speaking is an improvisation when you get and you know this uh when you get really good at it, you are not afraid of punting. You are not afraid of moving to some other thing that if I leave my script, I’m, I’m doomed because I have practiced this and I am going to do exactly this and that’s what makes for boring speakers. A great speaker is simply having a conversation with their audience. The audience just isn’t actually verbally responding. And so, you know, I always say to people, you, you think you need to be fancy, you don’t go and look at Ted talks, go on youtube and Google, great uh uh presentations for college graduations. You will find that your favorite speakers are not using big words, they’re not using fancy paragraphs, they are simply talking and that’s what makes a great speaker. So as a jazz singer, first of all, there’s some technical things like you learn to breathe and speakers don’t get that speaking is a physical act and that you really actually need to be warmed up. Uh We’re recording this early today so I can’t not speak or move before I come to sit down and have a conversation with you. I won’t have enough breath, I won’t have enough energy. And that’s what a singer learns to warm up. A singer learns to practice out loud. You cannot think your song, you have to actually practice it. But it’s the same for athletes. I often say that becoming a great speaker, we can borrow from disciplines like performance, art and sports because in both of those activities. People know that they need to have a plan, they need to practice and they need to practice physically and in the case of a singer out loud and in the case of a jazz singer, you learn, you know, there’s a joke in jazz, there’s no mistakes in jazz when you’re scatting or something like that. It’s how you resolve the phrase. So if you think you’ve hit a note that actually isn’t a good note, it’s only not a good note depending on how you finish the phrase. Same thing with a speaker. It doesn’t have to be a perfect speech. You can really mess up, you can really be awful in points. But if you are really clear about your message and passionate about your message, it can be messy and you can still get the job done. Uh There’s a lot I love in there. Uh The, the one that stands out the most is the uh the graduation speakers. There are so many that are just so simple down to earth compelling. Uh I, I think of Steve Jobs at uh I’m pretty sure it was Stanford and I forget what year it was. But he tells the story of when he was in co why he dropped out of college. But, but how learning fonts in a, in a calligraphy course that he was auditing. He wasn’t even, he wasn’t even a student at the time. I think he was just dropping in but, you know, there was no security on college campuses then he, like, dropped in and, but that informed fonts on the Mac, that’s how we got away from whatever times. New Roman that, that, uh, that IBM had at the time, you know, that. So they’re just, you know, down to earth, um, Will Ferrell has a very good one. But anyway, the, the graduation speakers are, people always think they need to sound smart and, and you, you actually sound more intelligent when you have a real comfort level with what it is you’re saying and why you’re saying it, I, I often say to people when I’m teaching workshops, if you and the people listening to this will have the benefit of it. How many fancy words am I gonna use here and look at that last sentence. If you saw that in writing, you wouldn’t publish that in an article, you wouldn’t publish. How many fancy words am I gonna use here? You would say it more fancy in the article, but a speech is not an article, a speech is a conversation. And so I have to put words in my mouth, literally, I have to put words in my mouth that my mouth is comfortable saying literally the anatomy of Laurie’s mouth, my lips, my tongue, my jaw need to be comfortable saying what I’m saying so often with a client when they say something I’ll say now, is that something you would say to friends if you were hanging out at dinner, having a drink, would you say it that way? And I’m not being funny here. I’m asking that because a speech should not be the time when you practice new vocabulary or new phrase and paragraph structure. You should be making it easy for your mouth to do what it does. You think about an athlete, an athlete play? I, I was just watching tennis. So I, I’m an avid tenor tennis in my brain. I’m a brilliant tennis player, but in reality, I’m a much better tennis watcher than I am player. And I’m fascinated by what is similar about tennis. In public speaking. I was just watching Rafael Nadal. He’s playing his game. He’s not trying to do what his opponent is doing. His job is to do what he does best as a tennis player. And that’s the speaker’s job, put stuff in your mouth that your mouth is used to saying. And you will be a good speaker. Well, you said earlier it’s a conversation with the audience. It’s just that they’re not active participants. So we get to the Q and A section which happens to be my favorite. Tony is one of my very and I mean, this very few clients that enjoys the Q and A section. People are usually terrified by that and that is impro that is jazz improv. Yeah, I love it. I love, I love doing the Q and a well, yeah, we’ve so um to be a good uh to, to stay in line with the lessons that I had learned have uh have learned, had learned, learned from you through the years. Um It’s been years since we worked together. But, but you were in my formative speaking years when I was scared and pretentious and thought I needed big words and I didn’t understand it was a conversation. It’s a so uh you always urge that we, we, we guide the audience like I’m, I’m responsible for the audience. The audience is counting on me to take them through a, a journey. And uh I, I within the requisite time not to go over time, not to be rushed in the last five minutes because I realized that I’ve got 20 minutes left of material and now the audience feels screwed because I’m blowing through the second half of my slides in the last five minutes of an, of an hour long presentation is that, you know, so the audience is counting on you. So as a guide path, I always, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it now. Um I would say here’s where we’re headed. That’s my agenda slide. Somebody else might call it agenda. I say here’s where we’re headed. So here’s where, here’s where you and I are headed. Uh Talk about the goal of your speaking research, write, practice the last hour, the last five minutes, the last one minute in the post, post, post performance. So that’s where, that’s where we’re headed. What about goals? Goal goal? That’s, I wanna, I wanna back up just a little bit now. Goals what? Oh, you know, I thought you were gonna disapprove of my uh where we’re headed slide. No, no, no, no, I want to. There was a lot in that and I, I wanna um keep it very simple for a moment. What happens a lot of times is you get an email and you’ve been asked to speak and in the email, the subject line gives you the title of whatever it is they’re looking for you to talk about. And what most people do is they then write a presentation about what was in the re line. You know what, what the subject line said. And the, what I think everyone needs to understand about developing a presentation is that when, in my opinion, when you speak publicly, whether it’s one on 11 on two or one on 20,000, whether it’s a job interview, whether it’s a commencement address or whether it’s what most people are doing, which is giving presentations. Well, not now, but in conference rooms or on zoom or to, you know, groups of 15 to 20. And sometimes more than that, whenever you do that, you are opening your mouth to speak because you are trying to move the listener. And this is what you were talking about, about taking care of the audience and what it is, they, they sort of have an expectation from you. That’s this. You are trying to move them from their point. A on your topic. That was that subject line to your point. B this is not a passive thing of just shooting the poop about something you are trying to motivate and energize the listener to change their mind to come over to your side about your point. That is why you’re talking. Never forget that. Ever. Ever. It will inform all the things you’ve just talked about. Like, what’s the goal? So you say goal, I, I call it core message. Ask not what your country can do for you. Yes, we can things like that. What is it? That is gonna be the motivating theme of my presentation. If I want to get people to contribute money to my organization, if I want to get people to vote for me, that’s, that’s the easiest one to use as an example. If in a commencement speech, what’s your core message there? I work every single year with commencement speakers and everyone thinks they just need to talk, tell their life story. No, you’re supposed to take that crowd of 8000 people. And I like to think of it as a science fiction movie. When you’re done speaking, they’re gonna go running screaming to the exit to take an action. What action do you want them to take in the case of a commencement speech, you want them to go out there and take a risk or you, you, you know, you need to get much more specific than that. But in the case, it, it, you want people to do something, you want them to reach in their pocket. This is not commencement. Now, in the case of wanting money from the listeners for your organization, you want the people to leave that room. This is the simplest one to explain, reach into their pocket, rip out a lot of bills and shove it in your hand on their way out the door. People need to get that specific about what their goal is. And the core message is the theme that runs through your speech that informs the writing of the speech. That is how you get the people to change their minds and to sign up for whatever it is you’re wanting from them. So that would be the, that your goal is in every presentation to move people from their point A on your topic to your point B and you do that through your core message. It’s time for a break. 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 in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to overcoming your fear of public speaking. I don’t even necessarily say the core message. You’re saying that you’re not, you, you’re, you’re just hitting it from so many different. There’s a, there’s something in trial. Look, II, I spent only two years as a lawyer because I hated it very, very unpleasant way to make a lot of money. But I remember more from law. I learned more, much more in law school and I learned as an attorney for two years and when I was in my trial practice courses in a Temple law school. Now, the Beasley School of Law, like, like Mrs Beasley, the old doll on a family of Mrs Beasley don’t trash Mrs Bealey. But it’s not, she doesn’t deserve to have a law school named after her. Some wealthy donor, trial attorney in Philadelphia does so. But uh so I still say it’s Temple University School of Law. Just Temple. Not, no, not the Beasley School. So you have this, you have what you want people to believe, you, the people, the jury and you get at it like that’s in the circle, that’s the circle in the middle. And then you have all these spokes like evidence, their witnesses their words, their story, you know, whatever it is, you’re to inform that or to get to that core message, but you never really say the core message until in trial. You don’t say it until the closing, the closing argument. That’s why it’s the opening statement, but it’s the closing argument. That’s when you coalesce all those spokes into that hub of the core message in only in your closing argument and, and it’s a natural progression if you’ve done it. Right. So, yeah, so you’re not really speaking your core message, you’re, you’re hinting it, you’re cajoling it. Uh, I don’t know, you, you’ll, you’ll be more articulate about what you’re doing around it. Did you? I, I’m not articulate at all. I just talk. Um, so I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’ve been talking longer about talking than I have so articulate. I actually, often when I’m teaching, you know, the only way I can demonstrate a core message is to use one that existed that people know where those come from, those come from politics. So, one of my favorite examples is where they didn’t say the core message in politics. When Bill Clinton was running the first time in the war room, you know, where they plot and plan everything on the wall. There was a sign that said it’s the economy stupid. Now, Bill Clinton never went and said in an interview. Well, it’s the economy stupid from James Carville. Right. Exactly. It was from James Carville who stars in that documentary, The War Room. Which is that right? That’s right. And that’s exactly, that’s exactly what that was. Clinton never said that. He never said it, but it was the core message. So that any time he was asked a question, no matter whether it was about education or buses or human beings, he brought it back to the economy. So he did what we hear all the time in politics. But what speakers who are trying to get funding for something don’t get politicians that win, stay on message. And that means the core message. Now, sometimes a regular person can have a core message that they do say out loud throughout their speech. But they don’t have to, it like you said, it, it informs everything that you put together for your presentation so that I often say to people. It’s kind of like the Sophie’s choice of your speech. Something may be a really interesting thing to say. But if it doesn’t serve the master and the master is the core message. If it doesn’t serve the master, it’s gonna be in some other speech someday. Not this one. Because another thing that’s really important for speakers to understand. And again, politicians who win, get this. In fact, your audience is only gonna retain between two and 15% of what you say. And yet because speakers are afraid of not having enough to say or sounding stupid, they flood their speeches with data. And so no one’s listening. And if they are, they’re not retaining, if you want to move, people, motivate them, ignite them to move from their point A on your topic to your point B, you need to target their heart and their solar plexus, not their brain. And I have about 400 million examples over the years with clients that I have wrestled to the ground. About this. One of my favorites was a client who was an OBGYN who was gonna be giving a presentation to a room filled with OBGYN. And I said to her, you need to dumb this down. You’re gonna bore the heck out of them. And she’s like, no offense, but you’re not a physician. You don’t get this. And I said I do get better. You blew up better. I did. Don’t you dare say that to me? Yeah. So, um, she was bloodied. She was actually a long term client. So I was able to say stuff to her and I convinced her that I actually was right. And I, I often say we wrestled to the ground. I finally got her to come to my side. Her presentation was so fabulous and so not database but more it, it was, uh, it was on sexually transmitted diseases. And so there’s a whole storyline of who’s coming into the emergency room with this. What’s their life like, you know, tell their story and infuse it with the data and she killed it. She hard to say about a doctor. But um she just, it is the hardest thing I have to get people to do is to let go of what they perceive to be. Makes a human being sound smart when they talk, it’s not data. It’s a command of the subject matter and a passion for what you’re saying. And you get that passion from a core message that you believe really strongly in. It goes to the heart and not the brain. Correct. Let’s put together. Uh There’s a bunch of stuff we, we could talk about frustration. We’ll work that in. Uh There were times when I was sure you were going to throw me out of your apartment and I think you were on the, I’m sure you were on the verge of it. You, you, if we hadn’t been working together for a long time, years ago, you, you might have no, I never would. You know what that’s as a coach, you know, think about this as a coach in sports that goes on all the time. And athletes are used to that as a, a teacher in the performing arts that goes on all the time because the creative process is very frustrating and we all, we have blocks about that and we have, we, we hit walls about that. And so whenever I work with someone who comes from the performing arts, I don’t actually have the same learning curve of having my client become more comfortable with the discomfort and the the electricity that goes on between student and teacher and in sports, they know it part it the creative process, the the process of becoming a great athlete and be being a team player. These are very, very frustrating things. It’s almost recorded. But out of frustration comes breakthroughs, activity, understanding recognition of, of where, where I need to go that I didn’t understand before my frustration. And I have the same thing I remember one time my musical director, we decided to, my, my nephew was getting married and I wanted to, he asked me to sing at his wedding and I was adamant that I wasn’t gonna sing Sunrise sunset, that I wanted to write something. So my musical director Darryl gave me a piece of music that he had and I wrote lyrics and I went back and forth a bit with him and he’s done a lot of writing. So he’s a good coach for this and the middle of the song, what we call the bridge he had some issues with. And I thought he was wrong. I was done. This is good. It is good. I am dying and I left that, I left that rehearsal because I knew he knew more than me about this. I left that rehearsal furious and also committed to at least trying. I’ll just look at it and of course it, he was right. And through my frustration, I was able to come up with something that what I had written wasn’t ready yet. And that’s the creative process. It is very hard for me personally. When I see when I have to allow a client to leave. Therapists do this all the time, allow a client to leave, not feeling happy, not feeling good, feeling incomplete and frustrated because I know that’s part of this freaking process if you’re doing it right. It is. It is. But it leads to breakthroughs. Absolutely. I, I saw it a dozen times working with you and, and, and since and since and your goal at the time. I’m sorry to interrupt. Well, I’m not really sorry to hear about your goal at the time. I will never forget because most of the time my clients are business people who want the skill set of presentation skills to not be in their way at work. Your goal was loftier. You wanted to be really great at it. You wanted to have your own radio show someday. And so your, your proof of what the process that you did, what you put into it. I just simply led the horse to water. Oh Thank you. But yeah, it was a uh it was a frustrating journey to the, to the trough but not, not, not like every session. But uh but there is, yeah, there’s the, there’s the time but I, I freaking this is done. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve worked on this enough. It’s, it’s ready. You’re supposed to just tell me, uh, you hit it, you hit it right on and you nailed it. No notes, no corrections, improvements, no suggestions. You nailed it. Ok. We’re done five minutes. That’s what I was expecting. You know, there’s like, never a time if you have a director for something, there is never a time where they don’t see room for growth. It’s so frustrating, especially if you’re a person who is more emotional and sensitive and I certainly am that I would love there to be one time where you’re told everything is perfect. The unfortunate truth and, and public speaking is a performance art in a performance art. If you’ve been perfect, you have failed. You can, it’s supposed to be imperfect. You know, think about when you’re talking to your friends. If you were perfect, talking to your friends, you would be boring. Yeah, they wouldn’t go to the bar with you. No, that’s exactly right when you start going to bars again. Yeah, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have a night out with you because you bore them to shit right there. Isn’t that you think they want to hear? Right. There’s not enough alcohol to dull the senses from your, uh, pretentious over the top speech. Um, look, I have to, uh, I’m in charge of the audience here so I have to move us. I have to move us on and we’re gonna, we’re gonna, uh, put a couple of things together, research and writing. OK. Research and writing. What’s your, can we coalesce those? Let me just say one thing about forcing to finish everything. Um, if you’re focused on crossing all the Ts and dotting all the I’s, and this interview is a great example, then they’re not gonna remember everything we’re talking about. Anyway, you gotta, you gotta work with Laurie Kraus. I mean that, you know, we can only, I can make you a great, I can’t make you a great speaker on nonprofit radio, but Laurie Kraus can. So you just, there we go. We’re done. It’s like talking to when I interview authors about their books. I mean, I, we can’t romp through every page. We hit the highlights, you gotta buy the damn book and I’m happy to get through whatever. But when you’re, but for the audience in your presentation, try and leave a lot of breathing room. You’re more scared about having not enough and you should be more scared about having too much because you want to, you want to motivate the people to move from their point A to your point B your goal is not to cross every T and dot Every I, they’re not gonna remember anyway. All right. So research and writing. Is that what you asked me? Yes, please. I know they’re distinct, they’re distinct processes. That’s OK. You’re, you’re an improvisation, you’re anser. So go with it. I’m actually preparing a, um webinar for a new group. And just before we started, I was sitting down because I had asked the person who’s contracting my services to give me who are the people I’m going to be talking to. You know, I, I wanna know the demographics. I wanna know what they do. Now, this is a group that comes from the same organization. So they work for the same place. But he sent me a whole bunch of stuff about um the organization’s mission and all. That’s great. I love it, but I don’t know who I’m talking to. Still, there are 12 people, I’m told, who are they? How old are they? I don’t want to ever be surprised. I want to know that everything I’m preparing to say is targeted for the right people. I, I don’t want all of a sudden think I’m talking to a bunch of 50 year olds and show up and they’re all 23. That would be an absolute disaster for when you’re trying to motivate people. And I’m saying this over and over again because this is the point I’m trying to motivate them. And in this case, I’m coaching them on public speaking, I’m trying to motivate them to throw spaghetti at the wall and try the stuff I’m talking about. So I wanna make sure I’m talking to the people who are in front of me. So research involves getting to know who your audience is, even if you think, you know, get to know them more specifically, the best speeches are specific. Most people talk above the topic instead of in it and through it, like Steve Jobs talking about fonts that’s in it. That’s something specific that my brain and heart, I’ve had experiences with fonts that we all can latch on to. So what’s my audience gonna latch on to my best guess is to try and get to know them a little bit before I start writing my speech, where is it gonna be? Is it a webinar? Is it in person? These are gonna require very different things from me? Is it a big room? A little room? And is, am I required to stand at a podium? Am I gonna be amplified? You want to get a sense of what all the different elements are of the presentation is so that you can relax and feel comfortable in the environment and with the people in front of you and start convincing them. So once you do all that research, then you sit down and you ask yourself. So this is the topic. The topic is my organization because of the pandemic is, has just bled all our money we need. And a lot of times people in the nonprofit area want to say support, I say call it as it is, we need you. It’s funny because when I work in the for profit environment, those people have no problem saying we need your money. But yeah, yeah. But man, in the most wonderful organizations in the world, it’s like pulling teeth to get people to say I need you to volunteer to help out on Thursdays and I need you to bring 10 people with you. You can’t, OK? Can you bring two or I need you can you, can you, when you leave here, can you put a $5 bill in that bin? You know, it really can be very specific. And so once you’ve done all your research and you know what your topic is, then you start working on that core message, that underlying theme that’s gonna run through your presentation, that will allow you to move those people to your point B and then when you have that core message, this is how much work this is, then you sit down and you start writing and this is one of, there’s, I think only two times I ever use what is out there in the world of public speaking coaching because I don’t agree with most of it. But this one I agree with when you write your presentation, it’s what you were saying earlier, Tony, tell them what you’re gonna say, say it, tell them what you said. Keep it simple, develop a very simple road map roadmap is your outline. One of the reasons and there’s a couple of reasons for that. People are only gonna retain between two and 15% of what you say. And that’s a real statistic. And also when I’m talking, I know what I’m gonna say next. The listener doesn’t. So even the most simple concepts can get lost because the listeners like a nanosecond behind you, they don’t just have to hear the word, they have to evaluate it. So keep it simple. Everything needs to serve the master. So sit at your computer and you have your core message, you’ve done your research, just dump thought, don’t edit yourself, don’t judge yourself. Just dump thought. Put it away if you have time. Hopefully for a couple of days, bring it back up again and start looking for where there’s commonality where you can sort of see where your outline is gonna come from. You know, the headings. If you’re in, in my workshop, I teach research, write practice and then warm ups. And so I came up with that by doing exactly this process. I dumped thought and then first I thought I had six categories and then I went weaned it down to four, put everything in categories. Eventually, you’re gonna end up with bullets, bullet points. The only people who really use scripted stuff are commencement speakers and politicians. You don’t need to have when I, when you leave your speech, your goal shouldn’t be. Do I get an A for doing all my bullet points? Your goal should be, do I think I motivated those people? Do I think I moved those people. That’s your goal. So that’s sort of the cliff notes version of all that. What an improviser, you handle that. Uh You handled that uh deftly and adroitly. Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s time for Tony’s sake too. Thank you, Kate. I’d like to connect with you on linkedin. Uh because I’m interested in what you’re hosting about. I think that would maybe generate some uh show ideas. I’d like to see what you are thinking about what you’re sharing with the folks on your linkedin network. So please connect with me on linkedin. Send a request, I’m certain to accept it. Uh And if I get, if you don’t feel like connecting on linkedin, um just send me a post. Let me send me a link to a post. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to connect. But you know, you might this Tony Martignetti and he’s overexposed, overexposed too much. I, I don’t need to be connected with the guy on linkedin uh plus every week. So uh one way or the other love to connect with you on linkedin. If not, send me, send me links to your, to your posts, I’d like to know what you’re writing about and sharing. And that’s, that, that’s Tony’s take two Kate. I love networking. Networking, net, networking. Yeah. It’s called networking. Why? My brain stopped. I had a joke about, oh, how I love networking with other people and meeting new people. But I don’t want to meet Tony Marnette, but then I forgot like what the word was and I second guessed myself. Oh, I ruined the joke. Anyway, we’ve got bountiful boob. But loads more time. Let’s go back to overcoming your fear of public speaking with. Laurie. Krause your practice practicing you, like you used to ask me to practice while I was doing jumping jacks, push ups, high voice, low voice, comic voice. Um Those are the ones, you know, I hope I retained more than 2 to 15% of what you taught me. No, that’s different though. Repetition though, over and over. It’s a different thing. Very interesting. What I retained when we were working together, was it, was it 2 to 15% or was it just 2%? But maybe that’s because I only retained, I, I retained on the low end. I forgot the 15% possibility at the high end. I think sometimes people remember too because it’s devastating news. Wait, I am killing myself here. I am doing my own research on what I want to include and I’m having to have energy and volume and personality and you’re gonna leave here remembering 2%. But yes, so I think people remember 2% because it’s just devastating. I didn’t, I didn’t remember the 15% possibility on the high end. All right. Uh A little about, a little about practice. You have, you have uh unusual ways. I at least I thought unusual ways of encouraging practice. It’s actually not all that unusual. There are other people who teach presentation skills who are former actors that use stuff like this. But the practice techniques all come from the world of the performing arts and from sports that the concept of it from sports, if you, what, what’s happening is practicing is so freaking boring. And so you want to just number one, make it more fun. And since you have to do it over and over again, doing things like dancing while you practice or singing, while you practice or pretending that you’re angry or punching or doing yoga while you practice, it just makes it less boring and you have to practice out loud. And the other thing that doing practice in those ways does is that what you’re trying to achieve in practicing is to become more conversational. And what is more conversational is having a more varied verbal and non verbal way of expressing yourself. Verbal is the sound nonverbal is body language and facial expression. And so instead of we’re going to work on your body language today, which I think only makes people self conscious by doing other activities. It distracts you and in the process of distracting you, it also ekes out other verbal and nonverbal behavior that despite yourself will become a part of the relaxation in your body that allows you to be more flavorful, verbally and non verbally when you speak it also will make you lose your place. And so the prac practicing in those kinds of ways also tricks you into forgetting where you are and having to find your way back again. That business of people getting freaked out because they can’t remember where they are. That’s, that has got to stop. I mean, you know, at my age that happens more and more, but I’m not freaked out about forgetting where I am because I know the goal is not perfection, perfect. And studies show audiences don’t care about, not only do they not care about perfection. They hate it in a speaker and they become suspicious of the speaker and the au authenticity. And man, is it important for you to be authentic? I just, I just saw an example of that. I won’t name the two guys um or the, the name of the training company, but I, I know it. Um and they did a webinar, somebody referred me to one of their webinars because it was about planned giving and she wanted me to see what they, what their theories are and the guys were trying to act like they was spontaneous. Oh, that’s a very good point that you just made Jimmy. 00, yes. I was thinking about that just the other day, Johnny. And it was like such bullshit. I, I couldn’t, I, I couldn’t what I, well, II I only agreed with about 10% of what they were saying anyway, so I didn’t watch the whole thing. But, but the two of them, they were both on the screen at the same time and, and they were trying to be improvisers. Uh, uh, it was, it was just awful. It was so disingenuous and that’s just so affected. I could tell that they’ve, they’ve done this. Oh, that’s a good point. I’ve never thought of that, Jimmy. I could tell that he said that in all the previous 40 webinars that he’s done at that exact moment. To Jimmy, you know, it was such nonsense, you know, and the thing is you need to know that your audiences, they are savvy people. You know, the whole reason people know body language, they know what they, they hear the tone that, that you’re describing is tone. You, you just know it’s false. And so the goal, that’s why it’s so important to put words in your mouth that your words are not only that you’re used to saying, but that you’re the anatomy of your head can get through them really easily that it is literally what, how you talk in conversation. And so when you practice your speech out loud and notice how I’m finding my way back to this when you practice your speech out loud and you do it in all these other ways, it is tricking you because you also will change some of your words as you’re doing it because it just doesn’t feel organic to you. And if it doesn’t feel organic to you, you trust me, your audiences are all over that. Something else you taught me small nugget. But I’ve, I’ve kept it and it’s helped me a bunch of times. Your audiences don’t know what you didn’t say. What you left out that you, you practiced it a dozen times and somehow you just left it out. Don’t beat yourself up. Nobody knows. Well, actually it’s not only I’m, and again, I’m so glad you’re bringing this up because I’ve talked about this in our chat today. But boy, are you putting the emphasis on the wrong Sabol? As my dad used to love to say, when you focus on, did you cross all your Ts and dot All all your I’s, which is my way of saying, did you say everything you had set out to say? If that is the litmus test that you’re looking at for how you did? It’s a fail. The litmus test is, did you motivate and move people? You know, I’m gonna leave this conversation and think of a million things we could have talked about, but I’m in it. I’m in the, I’m enjoying myself. It’s a fun back and forth and I’m excited about the things we’re saying. I’m excited about the points that we’re making and that’s the point of any presentation because you’re trying to motivate people. You’re not trying to get an a on a math test. If you have enough spokes pointing to that hub. That’s, that’s my metaphor of that core message. Then you left one or two out. It doesn’t matter. You had another dozen, you, you hit it so many other ways. It doesn’t matter. And, and usually I usually leave out your main points. You know, I, I actually want to strongly disagree with how you’re even saying that it does matter if that’s what you’re looking at. it does matter because it’s a fail to look at it that way. That’s how you’re evaluating yourself. Yes, it’s, it, not only it, if you are evaluating yourself by how many spokes you hit or that you missed a major point, you are missing the whole point of your presentation, which was to motivate people and you don’t know, you know, your main, main point might not even be the thing that motivates them. I mean, that’s my understanding. I’m fascinated by um the whole process of courtroom from, you know, your opening statement, all the other stuff to the closing argument that it, that lawyers will, they’ll be so surprised by a verdict because they thought they hit a nail on the head and they thought they saw those people agreeing with them because what they don’t get is there were other little things along the way that for whatever reason made more of a point, we don’t know what our audience is thinking so we can just to the best of our ability, pick something we are passionate about. Pick a core message. We are just absolutely all about pick things to say that we think are interesting and will interest the people that we think are in front of us. You know, there’s a lot of guess work here. There’s a lot of jazz to giving a presentation and trying to motivate people because you don’t know. You know, I, and, and when I’m teaching a workshop, I’m getting that information second hand about my audience. And so yy, you’re guessing, but your goal and how you should look back and think, how did I do is when people left my room, they were talking a lot, they were energized. They, I don’t know what they were saying, but there was a lot of energy in the room when they left. Then, you know, you did a great job, might not get what you want, but you did your job. I wanna shout you out for being uh again an excellent improviser the way you did your call back with uh opening statements and closing arguments, seeing what I said 15 minutes ago, whatever, whatever. Well, she brings it back. What? That’s actually, that’s a really important point. Stand up comedy. That’s a call back. And uh it’s a sign of somebody who’s paying attention and can synthesize what someone else said into what they want to say. And that’s why callbacks are so brilliant. It’s also important for people to remember and, and uh that listening tells your audience that you actually hear them and you are more likely to motivate people when they feel like you’re not just talking at them, but you hear them, you’re with them. We are one. And so it, it makes a person feel more important to you. So then they’re more likely to listen to you. We forget that listening is, it’s as important in speaking to listen. That’s why I love the Q and A because I get to listen and I get to focus on what, what’s on people’s minds and I can use their names. And now on the web, you can shout them out by city and state and, and, and if somebody says anonymous, I say, oh, I don’t, I don’t do anonymous questions. What’s next? You know, of course, I answer the anonymous question. But let’s jump to the last hour. It’s the last hour before I go on. What’s your, what’s your 50 tips, tricks and strategies for that last hour before my curtain? I just one of my favorite memories and something that I talk about a lot when I’m teaching is you and being at, I forget what convention center where I met you in a stairwell be right before you were gonna go on and I had you. But Marriott, Marquis Marriott, Marquis in New York City. It was an association of Fundraising Professionals. I was doing a seminar on Planned Giving right and this is what I tell my clients and this is what my client was doing, standing in a stairwell, punching or something like that. What, you know, and again, sports, performance, arts, if you go into a locker room, if you go in, which I’ve never been into an NFL locker room, but I’ve seen videos you’re gonna see people warming up, you’re gonna see big bruising linebackers meditating in a corner. That’s what they’re doing. They’re about to go on the field with one thing in mind, Maim and kill and they have their headphones on and they’re sitting in that like meditative thing. They’re breathing, they’re getting focused. This is what speakers need to do. If you go into a theater, most theaters before a show for a lot of them, the entire cast goes out on stage and they do warm ups together. And that, that’s for nonm musicals too. They want the cast to feel the same energy, but also people need to get their bodies warmed up. Speakers think they can just walk out and talk. I even in this conversation, I’m having to put out a lot of air. It’s a heightened energy of speaking. So you need to warm up, you need to warm up physically and emotionally. If you’re terrified, this is really important for you to do because it helps with nerves, meditation, helps with nerves, doing physical things. I have people all over the world going into bathroom stalls. All over the world, sitting down on the bowl and doing a breathing exercise in through the nose, out through the mouth, slow down your pulse rate, stand up and do some punching, do, do things that I often say there’s things you can do where you need to be completely silent and there’s things you can do at home before you leave where you can be making more noise to get yourself energized. You want to be careful not to strain your voice, but you want to, if you put on music and dance, go for a walk. If you do yoga, man, yoga is a great thing to do or Pilates before you’re gonna speak because it loosening up your body, your entire body supports the sound that you’re gonna make. And so the hour before you want to get physical, you wanna breathe, get air moving through your body and then the moments before you wanna try and get you do something, you know, I always excuse myself when I’m teaching, I go to the restroom because usually the rooms filled with people were chit chatting beforehand and I need to get focused. I need to remember I’m about to perform. I’m gonna be speaking nonstop for however long. And so I go into a stall where I can get some privacy and then I always think of a boxer, that eye of the tiger where, where they’re going toward the ring. I’ve only seen this in movies where they’re going toward the ring and they just have this laser being focused. They’re about to be on. Is someone knocking on your door? No. You know what is happening is that there? And I could not believe. Of course we’ve all been through this though. I live in midtown and you know, there’s people vacated all over the place here. So the apartment upstairs for me has been vacant and they’ve chosen today to do whatever it is they’re doing there for the next tenant. If we can’t hide it, we flaunt it. People don’t hear it. You know, the Fedex guy knocking on your door. Well, Laurie lives in a doorman building so the Fedex guy would not get up to her building. Uh uh would not get to her apartment but not anymore. All things stop at the front door. Those guys may I do a shout out for the people that work in the front of buildings in Manhattan. They have been killing themselves. Shout out to everybody. We learned what an essential worker is. They work in our food stores, they deliver our mail. They are our doorman for those who live in doorman apartment buildings, of course police fire emts transit workers. Yeah, very few people who make over six figures a year are, are, are truly essential infrastructure. There are, there are lifelines. Yeah, they are. And uh you know, one of the guys in my building told me that and they have a union that he just got his vaccine. How is that? Even a thing? How is that? You know, I’m sorry. It’s May, it’s May 13th. They’re essential. And we learned, we learned who we really, we knew who we really rely on. How about the last five minutes? Five minutes? One minute is there? Uh, I don’t remember if there’s a difference. There’s not really too much of a difference for me. I check my, I look in the mirror to see if I have spinach in my teeth. Yes, there’s that one. Can we do five minutes in one minute together or are they too distinct? Um, you know, I’ve never really thought of it that way. I mean, there’s that, you know, I really think for that last five minutes, you’re, you’re definitely making sure you’re breathing. You definitely take a look in the mirror and make sure everything you don’t want to find out after that. You know, you’re whatever tie is in the wrong place or your sash was tied into the back of your pants that when you left bathroom and you didn’t know, uh, it’s really helpful if you know someone there to have them. Take a look at you before you go on because you know, someone you can trust but you really, you’re trying to circle the wagons around your passion because what, what does the job is having a passion about what you’re saying? And so you wanna just also, 08 o’clock the night before you are done. They please don’t be scribbling notes in the last hour or last five minutes. You’re saying even you’re saying even 12 hours or 1520 hours before. But I be scribbling at the last minute. My grandmother used to tell me because I was a really good student and I needed A’s. She would tell me that after eight o’clock the night right before a test, there’s nothing more you can learn, let it go and relax. And I say that it is such good advice. Your goal is not to be perfect. Your goal is to motivate people to be interested in what you’re saying. And that will help you to be interesting and let it go, let it go and the focus turns to the physical and emotional prep. And so five minutes before you need to find a way to exit the room. And if that means you can’t leave the room, you can sit in your um chair at the conference room table. If that’s where you are, sit up on your sit bones, you don’t wanna be leaning back, breathe, put your feet on the floor, breathe, no one’s gonna know what you’re doing. Your eyes can be open, breathe in, through your nose, out through your mouth and just see you can, you can do a visualization of yourself getting up there and just killing it. So that’s that mental prep that athletes really know how to do. Well, I love the visualization. Yeah, I see myself running through a tape as a, as a sprinter running or whatever marathoner running through the finish line tape and, and uh yeah, my hands are up and the crowd is cheering. The visualization. I actually, I’ll tell you a little secret. I have actually never told anybody this but when I teach group workshops and I do a breathing exercise and then I have people do a visualization, seeing themselves giving the presentation, they’re going to be giving that day in the workshop and watch and I’ll say watch yourself just get bigger and more and having fun. And I see on their faces they start smiling, they’re seeing it and their whole body language changes with their eyes closed and in their, you know, visualization and, and I know that person’s gonna have a better day that day because, because they’re doing that. But I love the look on their faces when that’s going on. How about post? You have savvy advice that has stayed with me through the years. I just finished walking off the stage, sitting down at the table. Maybe it is a table. Oh, that makes your post a little tougher. But you can excuse yourself. What’s your post advice? Yeah, I had to learn, I learned this myself from performing because people have this habit of thinking that they’re, for some reason, they have to tell you how you did. And if you’ve done your job as a speaker, remember, I’m telling you that you’re focusing on the heart and solar plexus of your listener and that you need to be really passionate about your core message and your topic. So you’ve gone to an emotional place yourself, you have laid yourself raw. That’s what actors and athletes do. And that’s what speakers who are doing a great job do. And so now you’re done and you’re still raw. So you’re, you know, you’re sensitive and all of a sudden people are coming over and they need a piece of you or they need to tell you something about how you did. So it’s good. Can I just interject or, or they are so excited? They’ve got questions for you, right? Six people lined up to ask you questions and you can’t take care of everybody at once and you’re aware of that too. And so, you know, you wanna say go back to that bathroom and have a couple of minutes on that bowl, but if you’re trying to get people to be involved in your organization or whatever your topic was in some way, you really can’t leave. So it’s good for you. If you can just, you know, you can be talking to people and you can be breathing, they’re gonna be talking, you’re gonna have time where you’re not talking. And so just try to breathe, just try that same in, through your nose out through your mouth. If you can get used to that sort of meditation breath, you can use it all the time. And, you know, it’s like you want, you can visualize your pulse rate coming down and just try. Those are ways to try and calm down. It’s ultimately, you kind of want to be able to almost disassociate from all the energy and the need for you. It’s like your mommy and all the Children are tugging at your dress. But, um, but the fact is if that’s what’s going on, you did a great job and you will get used to this after the speech thing and find your method over time. But the real comfort and relaxation is gonna happen when you get to leave the room. It’s a tough time alone. You gotta be alone. Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. Even just a minute, a minute at the end of the hall, a bathroom, an empty bathroom will work. I love seeing when I’m, when I have to speak. I love seeing private bathrooms. I can, I can, I can close the latch and I know I can punch the air and I can, I can bring myself down after. But it’s even really literally just a minute or so. But I need, I see, I guess I, I perceive it a little differently. I if, if there’s people huddled around and asking questions and they’re all excited because I move them. I consider myself like still on stage. You are, I feel like I’m, I’m still performing. I have to be alert, listening as you stressed. Uh It’s, it’s, it’s extended Q and A which as I said is my favorite part. I love the Q and A. So it’s, it’s an extension of that. I consider myself still performing. And then ultimately, the crowd is gonna dwindle, you’re giving out your last card. Then I go and I retreat to a AAA private, a quiet corner or a private bathroom. Yeah, that, that actually is a real, really important thing that you just said and it’s more accurate, you are still performing. So the thing is that although if you’re doing a one on one and you feel the need to do the breathing great, but you’re, you’re right about that. The reality is you’re still performing. And so you need to still be in performing mode energy, which you most likely will be because you have the energy that’s still with you of having done that show. But uh I’m that way too though about even if I don’t need to use the restroom before I leave the building, I go use the restroom because I just need, there’s just something about solitude. You’ve really done your job as a performer and this is performing. You have given away yourself to yourself raw, you said, and so you need to get yourself back and just that moment. And quite honestly, it’s different for different people. And this is where people have to find their way. What are the things that I need to do when I’m done so that I can just relax and feel good and whatever. And, and right after is not at all the time to evaluate how you think you did. Uh right after you should just feel like you did, you, you showed up, you did your thing and that’s a win. There’s always room for growth, unfortunately. And fortunately, and you know, some things I might change for me the whole having to teach public speaking, you know how I teach to have to teach public speaking presentation skills in a webinar, which is a workshop that is highly interactive when I do it, that has been a very difficult adjustment for me. And uh but that’s what, that’s what you do. When you’re learning how to do presentations, it’s very difficult. And so when, when something like that’s thrown in the mix, who you said something that I wanna credit you for, you said, uh you let yourself raw. And when you and I were working together, I used to, I’m getting a little wispy now. I used to aspire to my Springsteen moments because I’ve been to dozens of his concerts, dozens scores of his concerts and even watching them on a video, you can just see the man even at 70 plus years old. He’s, he’s in a place that few people get to enjoy. I don’t even, you know, it’s spiritual, it’s, it’s professional. It, it’s, it’s just a, it’s just a special place and I used to aspire to those Springsteen moments and I have achieved them. And I would call you at the, after, when I was, after my solitude, after, after the performance, after the, the, the, the presentation, after the solitude, I would call you on my way or this was even before texting. And, uh, and I would say, II, I had a Springsteen moment. It was just, it was just such a feeling that I was, I was just cruising and everybody was cruising with me. They were following me as I was presenting and, uh, you know, that’s, you know, talk about, let yourself raw. I mean, those are, those are exhausting, fulfilling so gratify, I mean, beyond gratifying. Yeah. Uh You help me get there a lot, a lot. Well, you, I mean, Tony, you threw yourself into everything, but I want to say something more about that for the listeners who might be out there who are soft speakers and don’t, you know, I’m a big emotional person. I like to laugh big. I like to cry big. I like to be big. Uh But there’s a lot of people out there who are not like that and it, we’re not saying you need to be Springsteen or be really big to be a great speaker. You need to be authentic. You need to have something that you’re talking about, that you are passionate about in your way. And I remember uh where we met in the, the, the networking group, right? There was a woman in there who um every so often we would get to give a 10 minute presentation and she did everything wrong. Everything I tell people not to do, she had written something, she stood up, she read it, she never looked up and she was very soft spoken thing is she’s a great writer and it was incredible. It was so beautiful. So it was like those old Paine Webber. Now I’m aging myself commercials where that, when Payne Webber speaks, everybody listens. You were like her child for 10 minutes, not you. But one was like her child for 10 minutes. You hung on every word. She is the exception to the rule. She’s also a professional writer and editor. That’s right. 30 40 40 years of publishing experience. Exactly. But I use that as an example with my students all the time. These are all the things I’m saying we do. And there are people out there who don’t have big personalities, that’s who they are. That doesn’t mean they can’t be a great speaker. It just means that we have to find within them what their passion is on the topic and figure out ways that they can put words in their mouth to allow themselves to just enjoy saying what it is. They’re saying and people will listen if you’re authentic when she did that. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, we went over time. I don’t know. I had a timer for some reason. We went over like 10 minutes. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter at all. Laurie Kraus Lauriekrauz. You’ll find her on linkedin. You just, if you wanna be better speaker, speak to her outstanding, she’s outstanding and you’ve been outstanding through the years. It, it’s always was a pleasure working with you. I may have you, you know, you’re motivating me. I may have you. Uh Well, I’m doing something today this afternoon. I’m doing a, a I call them quick shot 45 minute webinar. Maybe I’ll, I’ll have you. Uh I’ll, I’ll ask you to look at it. I would like, I’d like your notes after all these years. I’d like some notes. Wow, Tony. You know, I, I’m gonna do it. I have one at three o’clock. It’s 11 o’clock today. Three in four hours. I’m, I’m performing um doing a webinar on planned giving. I’m gonna, I’m gonna shoot you the video link and uh let’s, let’s talk about it. It’s, I love it. I love it. I love talking to you, Tony and I’m so pleased for what you’ve created here. It’s just amazing. You helped me create it. You did. You were there in my formative times next week. I’m working on Jay Frost. If you know Jay, tell him to get back to me, the guy owes me an email for Pete’s sake. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com work sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, 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 Martignetti. The show of social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web 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% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2024: Zombie Loyalists

 

Peter ShankmanZombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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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 suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored 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 zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. 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. Thus, 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 costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the 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 Martti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web 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% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for January 29, 2024: Decolonizing Wealth

 

Edgar VillanuevaDecolonizing Wealth

Edgar Villanueva’s book, “Decolonizing Wealth,” takes an innovative look at the purpose of wealth. His thesis is that the solutions to the damage and trauma caused by American capitalism, including philanthropy—can be gleaned from the values and wisdom of our nation’s original people. He’s a Native American working in philanthropy. (Originally aired 11/30/18)

 

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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 be forced to endure the pain of hyper garsia if you tickled me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, this week it’s decolonizing wealth. Edgar Villanueva’s book, Decolonizing Wealth takes an innovative look at the purpose of wealth. His thesis is that the solutions to the damage and trauma caused by American capitalism including philanthropy can be gleaned from the values and wisdom of our nation’s original people. He’s a native American working in philanthropy. This originally aired November 30th 2018. On Tony’s take two, Tony tells a joke were sponsored 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 decolonizing wealth. It’s my great pleasure to welcome to the studio, Edgar Villanueva. He’s a nationally recognized expert on social justice philanthropy. He chairs the board of Native Americans in Philanthropy and is a board member of the Andris Family Fund, working to improve outcomes for vulnerable youth. He’s an instructor with the grant making school at Grand Valley State University and serves as vice president of programs and advocacy at the Shot Foundation for Public Education. He’s held leadership roles at Kate B, Reynolds Charitable Trust in North Carolina and Marguerite Casey Foundation in Seattle. Edgar is an enrolled member of the Lumby tribe of North Carolina. You’ll find him at Decolonizing wealth.com and at Villanueva Edgar Edgar. Welcome to the studio. Thank you, Tony. Pleasure to be here. Congratulations on the book. Thank you, which just came out uh Last month, it was October October 16th. Yes. All right. And uh you just had a very nice interview with the New York Times. Congratulations on that. They, that prep the preps, preps you for nonprofit radio. Right. Right. I’m ready. All your, all your media appearances to date have brought you to this moment. So the, the it’s all culminated here. Um and I promised listeners uh footnote one, footnote one to hyper gargle ashes. Uh Of course, anybody who listens to the show knows that uh I open with uh something funny like that. A disease. Every single show. Uh But in Edgar’s book, he uh mentions hyper gargle aesthesia. So this is the first time over 400 shows that the uh that the guest unknowingly has uh provided the opening disease state. So, thank you very much you didn’t know what we do that, every single show, um, that you didn’t know that you’re not listening to nonprofit radio. It’s, it’s your life all right. Um, ok. Decolonizing wealth. Uh, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re a bit of a troublemaker a little bit. Yeah, you’re raising some eyebrows. Someone told me yesterday that I was the Colin Kaepernick of, uh, philanthropy. Which, um, I was like, I haven’t thought about it that way but that’s not all bad. Get a little closer to the mic so people can hear you. Yeah, just not almost intimate with it almost. Um I used to call myself the Charlie Rose of charities until he blew that gig for me. You know, he, he ruined that. Uh It, it’s, I can’t use that any longer. Um Could you talk about uh colonizer virus and exploitation and division? Um uh like, these are bad things? Yes, they are bad things. What uh what is the, what, what, what’s the colonizer virus? Why do we need to decolonize so many of us who uh work in philanthropy or even the nonprofit sector? Um you know, um have this firewall that we are completely disconnected from um Wall Street or from capitalism or, or some of those uh processes and systems in our country that um may have a negative connotation for the, the good doers. Um But in philanthropy, we are not very far uh uh you know, disconnected from uh corporate America. Most of this wealth was made by corporations and businesses. Um sometimes uh not in the best ways, not in the back of a lot of indigenous and uh colored people. Yeah, when you look at the history of the accumulation of wealth in this country, it’s steeped in trauma, right? And so uh legacy wealth that has been inherited for generations. Now, folks may not even know the origin of their family’s wealth. Uh but, you know, uh when we look back and we see in general how wealth was accumulated, um you know, especially I’m from the South North Carolina, we’ll talk about that. Um There absolutely was a legacy of slavery and stolen lands that, that help uh contribute to the mass of wealth. And you feel there are a lot of lessons we can learn from the values of uh Native Americans. Yeah. So, you know, we uh as a people talk about healing a lot, we have a lot of trauma that exists in our, our communities. Um You know, because colonization as we often think about it as something that happened five years ago in North Carolina and especially where I’m from, we were the first point of contact, but uh colon and the uh the acts of separation and exploitation are still continuing present day. And so in my community, uh native communities across the country, even as recent as uh my grandparents’ generation, kids were forcibly removed from their homes and put into boarding schools. And so we’re still, we’re experiencing a lot of uh trauma as a result of these practices. Um But we are, are, we are resilient people and um those who are closest to a lot of the problems that we are trying to solve today. Um As a society have um a lot of answers and wisdom that we can bring to the table. You say that the natives are the original philanthropists. Um Now you’re a member of the Lumby tribe of North Carolina. Uh Robinson County, North Carolina, which, which is not too far from where I own. I own a home in Pinehurst, which is a little north and west I think of, of Robison County. Lumb. So the Lumby tribe, I assume the lumber River is named for the Lumby and Lumberton, the town name for Lumby, right? So Lumby were actually named after the, the lumber River. Um After the first, yeah, the river came first and so the river came first. The name of the river came from. The river’s been there much longer than the one. Yeah. So we are um you know, a hodgepodge of historical tribes that were in coastal North Carolina um that came together to form the Lumby tribe and named ourselves after that river. Um And we’re gonna come back to uh Native Americans as the, as the original philanthropists. But uh I I that, that struck me a lot. I think you, you, you say you say that at the end of the, at the end of the book is where I, where I caught it. Um uh We just have like a minute and a half or so before a break. So just, you know, we’re introducing this, uh We got plenty of time together. Uh Wealth. Uh You say um divides us, controls us, exploits us. What’s that about? So the accumulation of wealth. So I money in itself is neutral, wealth in itself. Iii I say is, is neutral, but it’s the way that wealth has been accumulated in this country that has caused harm when we value um when we, you know, fear and we’re motivated by greed. Um The acts that can result as a, as a result of that to exploit the land and to people are or what that’s what has caused the harm in itself. So um the case that I’m gonna make in this book that I’m making in this book is that wealth and money can actually be used for the good. If it historically has been used as a negative thing that has caused trauma, we can flip that to use it for something that can actually help repair the harm that has been done. You’ve got uh seven succinct steps to that. Uh the second half of your book, it’s time for a break. 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 in 2024. Visit Donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to decolonizing wealth, Ngani Behi. Uh That is your Indian name. Did I by any chance say that correctly? I, I think that’s correct. Um I’m, I’m a little shabbu with my ojibwe these days. You don’t know your ojibwe, but that is your Indian name. Uh uh leading bird, tell the story of how you got that name. We, we’ll come back to, don’t, we’ll come back to the exploitation and control, don’t we? That this is a good story. How you got that name? So um my tribe and the Lumby tribe in North Carolina doesn’t have a tradition of naming um you are whatever your mom calls you, that’s your name. Right. Right. So, um but uh when I, when I was working in North Carolina in native communities, I went to a conference where there was a medicine man and someone uh the medicine man was meeting with folks who wanted time with, with him to, to talk or have a session and growing up in North Carolina. My identity as a native has always been quite complicated. Uh We didn’t have these types of practices in my home in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so, but I was very curious to meet with this medicine man and to um see what could happen from that encounter. And someone told me if you’re, if you’re really lucky when you meet with a medicine man, they might give you a spiritual name or a native name. Um And so I met with this guy in, in the Marriott Hotel in Denver, Colorado where this, this native health conference. So it was all uh I tell the story in the book is quite um um hilarious in, in many ways. But at the, at the end of our session where I was feeling um excited about, you know, the conversation we had, but also a little confused and skeptical in some ways because I’ve, you know, had such a colonized ways of thinking. Um He did offer me a native name, Ngani Beche, which means leading bird. Um So I was very honored and my first thought was, what kind of bird? Right? Am I a little tweety bird or am I a mighty eagle? Pelican birds are best? So, um he explained to me that I was the type of bird that flies in a v formation. Um And uh as I, when I left, I, I studied uh these birds and, and they’re the leading I’m the leading bird. I’m the bird that flies in the front of the V formation, which is the kind of leader that is often visible, but really understands its uh coded dependence and interdependence on the other birds. And so if you watch birds flying in a V formation, it’s really like a, an amazing natural, natural phenomenon. Uh how uh how they, they, they communicate and fly together. Uh The other thing that’s remarkable about the leading birds type of leadership is that it often will fly to the back of the pack and push another bird forward. So it’s not always the one that’s out front. And, um, when I, when I learned these characteristics, um I, I just felt really, um uh I was really, really happy and content about this name because I do see that’s the type of leadership that I model in my everyday life. And I think it’s the type of leadership that’s really important for the nonprofit sector. You explain how the birds communicate, which I’ve always wondered, um, they’re, they’re just close enough that they can feel like vibrations off each other and, or a micro movements, I think you say off each other, but they’re not so close that they’re gonna bump into each other and, and, you know, be injured, but that’s how they, and they, I guess they’re feeling the breeze off each other and sensing these micro movements of each other. So they’re that close. But not so close that they’re gonna be injured. Yeah, it’s very, it’s very fascinating. It’s like a scientific, uh, you know, a GPS built into their bodies. And the other thing I recently heard about these birds, um, is that, uh, you don’t ever find one that, uh, dies alone. And so, you know, I, I wanna learn and research that a little bit more but I think when they’re, when someone is down or, you know, um there’s an injury or whatever may happen. Uh They, there’s, there’s a certain way that they take care of each other. And so, um you know, it just kind of speaks to our common humanity and our inter related, you know, being interrelated exactly our interdependence. Now, this is a, this is uh an indigenous uh belief that we are all related and that’s what it makes me think of the birds also working so closely together that they feel micro movements. But how, how explain this, this belief that we are each of one of us related to the, to all the other. Yeah. So there, there is a, a native belief, um all my relations that means um you, all of our suffering is mutual, all of our thriving is mutual. And uh you know, we are um we are interdependent and so it’s a very different mindset or worldview um from sort of the um American individualistic type of uh of mindset. Um We also have connected to that viewpoint is, um, this idea of seven generations. So not only are we all related, you know, in this room right now and that we’re relatives, um, and we are related to the land and to the animals around us, but all of the things, all of the decisions and, um, that we are making today are gonna impact future generations. So there’s an idea that I am someone’s ancestor. And so what a responsibility to move through the world in a way that is thinking that far forward about our um our young people. And so these are concepts that um were taught to me by my family. But I also uh in recent years, this book gave me the opportunity to revisit and spend time with indigenous elders to remember these teachings and that and to think about um how to apply them in my work and you encourage us to each that, that each one of us takes responsibility for, as you said, we, we’re thriving and suffering together. Um What I’m referring to is the, each of us takes responsibility for the colonizer virus, say, say more about that. Yeah. So, you know, I think we all responsible, we’re, we’re all responsible because we’re all affected. Um I think some folks um when we, when you know, when we learn about colonization in schools is something that seems pretty normal, right? We um we think of colonization and the colonizers as heroes. It’s like the natural path of progress, the way it’s learned, right? We have holidays, you know, for, for Christopher Columbus, for example. And so, uh but the realities are that colonization um was something that was terrible that resulted in uh genocide and all types of exploitation. And uh that type of history that we have in this country is something that we um as, as the people have not come to terms with. We actually, we don’t tell the truth, we don’t face the truth. And so I think we’re still dealing with the consequences. Um And so the dynamics of colonization which are uh to divide, to control, to exploit, to separate those dynamics. Um You know, II, I refer to them as uh the colonizing virus because they, they are still in our bodies as, as a nation, they show up in our policies, our systems reflect the colonizer virus and in our institutions in the nonprofit sector and especially in philanthropy where we are um sitting on uh lots of money, privilege and power uh the least naturally to your point about us, them organizations. So, you know, I think the philanthropy uh for example, can perpetuate um you know, the dynamics of colonization because when you look at um uh where this, where this money came from and how we as a sector don’t face the realities of that truth. Uh When you look at um ask the question of why this money was held back from public coffers um that, you know, had it gone into the tax system, it would be supporting the safety net in vulnerable communities. Um And when you look at who gets to allocate, manage and spend it, you see a very um white dominant kind of mindset happening because, um for example, if we get into the numbers just a little bit, um foundations sit on $800 billion of assets. That’s a lot of money that has been uh you know, sheltered from taxation, that’s money that would have gone into public education, uh health care, elder care, um things that we need for the infrastructure of our communities. Um But that money has been put there with little to no accountability. Um Private foundations are only required by the IRS to uh uh pay out 5% of their assets. And so then, you know, you’re looking at just a small percentage of, of money that was intended to be for the public good. Only a small percentage is actually leaving the doors being invested in communities. Let’s assume it’s, it. Uh I know there are a lot of uh foundations that use that 5% minimum as their maximum. So that’s so 5% of that would be $40 billion. Uh So the counter is, but there’s $40 billion coming each year could be more, but let’s take the minimum just to be conservative. And, you know, we’re trying to preserve this uh this foundation capital for perpetuity. So if, you know, if we, if we spent in the next two years, the 800 billion, then we wouldn’t have anything left for future, just future years and other generations, we’re trying to, you know, we, we wanna be around for in perpetuity. Uh The foundations would say. Right. Right. And, you know, I think, I think there is a case to be made for saving some funds for a rainy day in the future. Uh But the, the truth is that 5% when Congress had acted that 5% rule, um it actually began at 6%. I, I believe in 1974 and then in 1976 was lower to 5%. The reason that Congress had to actually put this legislation forward is because foundations were not paying out any money. And so when you think about the intent of foundations, are they being started to actually benefit the public? Are, are wealthy, the wealthy 1% or whoever corporations starting these foundations just for the, the sake of having a tax break. And so that, that uh IRS minimum payout of 5% that rule was put in place to force um foundations to actually begin making grants. And so, you know, so it is sort of uh the other thing to explore if you are with a 95% that is not leaving the doors. Um if the intention is really to do good in community. We have to look at how that 95% is then being invested to generate more money for future grant making. And the truth there is that the majority of those funds are tied up in harmful and extracted, extractive indus industries um that are counterintuitive to the mission of foundations. You make the point often uh that often, right, those investments are in uh are in industries that are hurting the very populations that the foundation is explicitly trying to help through its, through its mission. And, and in fact, funding um the um there was something else that I was going to ask about the uh the way the money is. Um All right. Well, we’ll come back to it if I think of it. Um There’s, there’s a lot that organizations can gain by hiring people of color, indigenous people. What, uh and, and very few uh you’re, you’re a rare exception um working in, in found doing foundation work. Uh What, what’s the, what make explicit th those uh those advantages? Sure. So, um you’re right. I’m absolutely um an exception. I think when I started in philanthropy, I was one of 10 native Americans that I could find. We kind of found each other. And what year was that? Uh this was in 2005 and we are now, uh there’s about 25 of us now. Um The last time I counted. Um So, yeah, there’s, there’s, you know, an an amazing opportunity for foundations. And I think more and more foundations are understanding, to bring uh folks in uh to, to foundations that have lived experience and not only foundations but, but nonprofits, the NGO S doing the ground work, the foundations are the funders. Uh and, and of course, some foundations are now actually doing their own ground work. We’re seeing that emerging but, but for the nonprofits doing the day to day work as well uh represent the communities that you’re absolutely, it kind of makes sense, right? And uh you know, it’s funny because some foundations actually require that of nonprofits. They ask about the diversity of their staff and their board, but they themselves have no type of uh you know, values around diversity of their staff. But you’re, you know, the, the point is that uh for sure that any nonprofit or foundation to, to have folks uh that, that work there who have authentic accountability to community and understand and have been impacted by the issues that you’re trying to solve is gonna bring an awareness and um you know, about the problem in, in a different way, it’s gonna create some proximity that I think is gonna just inform strategies that, that make sense. And I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been in uh strategic planning processes and board meetings where decisions were being made. And uh I always carry my mother, my family with me, you know, and spirit into the room and uh I hear these decisions or these conversations and I’m thinking like, oh my God, like, you know, this, you know, this, this would not in any way help my mother or my family that’s still living in poverty. Decision makers are disconnected. There’s such a disconnect. And uh I, I thought of what I was gonna ask you about or just comment on the, the foundation wise. We do see some foundation saying that they’re gonna spend down their assets. Uh I, I wouldn’t say it’s uh needle moving but you do hear that from time to time that there’s a foundation that’s committed now to spending it. It’s, it’s assets down, you know. Um Was Paul Allen, was it uh now the not Paul Allen? Uh the Microsoft uh I think the Microsoft founder, co founder who recently died. I think his foundation was Paul Allen. OK. OK. Um I was thinking of Steve Allen the com the old comic. OK. That’s why I thought, no, it wasn’t him but it was Paul Allen. I think his foundation is one but there are some, so we do hear some glimmers. Uh But you say in the book a few times uh people we need to move the needle. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think deciding to spin down is uh is a very progressive way of thinking about it. There’s so much need now um if we actually release the funds or even if you don’t want to spin down, you can make a decision to pay out more. Um There, there’s a lot of amazing work happening. Um Right now that is so under resource that if we could um support and get behind investing money in these various movements and these uh in, in communities of color, which are so um marginalized by philanthropy, you know, uh uh the 5% that is being invested, only 7 to 8% of those dollars are being invested in communities of color. That would make a big difference. And so I think, um you know, I think it’s a conversation that the boards of foundations should think about what is the value of, you know, why, why do we want to stay in perpetuity? Like what is, is that about a family legacy? Is that really about making a difference in the world? Um Because in some ways, it feels uh I can see that as being a very selfish type of uh you know, uh uh way of thinking uh if this was CNN uh right now, I would, I would play a video of you but I don’t, I don’t have that. Uh But in your, in your times, uh we have to work on that at Talking Alternative. We need, we need video capture and screens and everything uh in your video in, in your interview with uh David Bornstein New York Times, uh you said by not investing more in communities of color philanthropy, venture capital, impact investing in finance are missing out on rich opportunities to learn about solutions. Yeah. You know, I think that I think of, you know, people of color indigenous folks as being the Canaries in the coal mine sometimes when, when uh policies fail or systems fail, um we hurt the hardest and uh but there’s just something so magical about and, and sense of pride that I have about my community because we are so resilient, like, regardless of um you know, um all of the trauma, the colonization, the um you know, genocide, stolen land, we still remain intact as a people. Um And so there’s, there’s gotta be something magical about that resilience that I would, if I weren’t native, I would be interested to know like, what when you think about sustainability, you know, we have a corner on sustainability. Um Indigenous peoples around the world are on the front lines of saving this planet on, you know, um you know, really fighting for environmental protections. Um There, there’s so much wisdom and, you know, often when foundations roll out new theories of change or changes RC strategies or there’s a new model or theory, theory of change that comes up. And I’m like, wow, we’ve been doing that in our communities for years. If someone would have asked us, you know, maybe we would, we can get there faster. Is there still a lumby community in Robeson Robinson County. Yes, there are, there are about 60,000 enrolled members in the Lumby tribe. The bulk of our community is, uh, still in Robinson County now, I have a North Carolina driver’s license. Will that, will that get me in? Can I be in? You know, we, we’re very inclusive. We, uh, we, we will take, we’ll adopt you as an honorary brother, but, uh, you have to have a little bit more documentation to, to get officially enrolled. It’s a stretch for an Italian American with just a North Carolina license plate and, uh, and driver’s license. All right. Um, you, uh, you talk about, um, you know, I guess, I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re skirting around these things to make it explicit that the, the power imbalance, you know, that um minorities are seeking it and uh mostly middle aged white guys are, are doling it out. Uh, you know, piece meal. Um, the, the, the, the imbalance, you know, the, the, the grant, even the, even the word, you know, the, the granting. Uh, it’s like some, uh, I don’t know, it’s like some Holy order has, uh, has bestowed upon you something that’s, uh a gift when, uh, your, your belief is that, uh, and your thesis in the book is that it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a right, equally held by all. Yeah. You know, I think power and money, a lot of, a lot of this does come down to power and ownership. Um We are talking in the nonprofit sec sector right now, a lot about equity, right? And um equity is very different from uh diversity and inclusion. Um To me, equity really is all about uh shifting power and we often think about that from um uh lens of equality. So we’re gonna have the same power, which is a good thing. But to really achieve equity, it’s gonna actually require that some folks who have had power for a long amount of time, give up more power or take a back seat. That’s not gonna happen. You know, that that’s highly unlikely, like infinitesimally small, unlikely, you know, it’s, it’s a hard thing for people to uh to think about and especially if you have, if you’ve been privileged for so long, um equity might actually feel like oppression for you, right? Because it’s like, you know, wow, II I have less than I’ve had. So um but you know, we, I I wanna think about this through an abundance mind frame. There’s enough, there’s enough resources and enough power to go around. Um We just have to uh work together to make sure that we are privileging those who have not been privileged by that power. I love that you, you approach it from a position of abundance and not and not scarcity. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I saw on Twitter or XX. Of course, that the average attention span is nine seconds and I thought that’s enough time for my mother to create guilt. I’m coming over for dinner. Can’t you stay for the night? I’m coming to stay for the night. Can’t you stay the weekend? I’m coming to stay for the weekend. Take me on a cruise. I’m taking you on a cruise. Can’t you move back home? I’m moving back home. Let’s get cemetery plots. That is Tony’s take two Kate. That sounds so much like nana like it was, it was, I didn’t know how to like react. That was so like nana just keeps pushing and pushing. Oh I miss her so much. Lots of people experience uh mother induced guilt. So I wanted a little tribute there. Yes, we’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to decolonizing wealth with Edgar Villanueva. Welcome back. You didn’t go far. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. No, you haven’t done anything that would lead me to shut your mic off. Um It hasn’t happened. I’ve threatened but uh it hasn’t happened. So let’s let’s start getting uh positive, you know, the, the second uh roughly the second half of your book is uh seven steps to healing. Um And uh I thought you came up like five short. I mean, we have another 12 steps. I mean, if you wanna, if you wanna share power, you’re gonna have to have, you gotta have to step it up with like 12 steps or, or even 15, you know, you have more than the colonizers. Uh, but, but the seven steps are in themselves, they’re, uh, they’re pretty radical. Yeah. You know, um, it, it’s funny because I, I did have some resistance to, um, having seven steps. Right, because it, it, it makes, it seem like there’s a, there’s a, a quick and easy fix. If I just do these seven things, then we’re done with this and we can move on a prime number so that I don’t know. So, you know, but I did need to simplify the process in some ways just to help us get our minds around, uh you know, a process that we can begin, but there is no uh linear way uh or a quick way to uh to solve all of these problems or to, to undo what has been done. But uh there are ways to, to, to move forward and uh the steps to healing for me were, are, are list them out for us, just list all seven and then we’ll, we’ll talk about them. Sure. So they grieve, apologize. Listen, relate, represent, invest and repair. Um So you’ve been thinking about this for a while. I mean, this uh iiii I just did, I admire the, I, I admire the thinking that goes into this. Yeah. So some of it comes from my, my own personal experience um when and, and kind of come to terms and, and with uh the sector that I’m working in and the disconnection that I felt as a native person in the space and spending time in my community to uh just re ground myself and my values. And um and kind of acknowledging the, the wisdom that was uh in my body and in my community that I could bring to the space. Um the other parts of it come from, I did lots of interviews with folks who work in nonprofits and in philanthropy who were uh I think a very forward thinking people in this space activists who are leading movements around the country to get to a place of, you know, what, what did, what have you gone through personally to kind of reconcile some of this. Um And then, you know, a lot of this is also based on an indigenous uh restorative justice model. So we hear a lot about restorative justice um in the nonprofit sector. Now, this is a, a method that’s used in schools and um in the criminal justice system to um help uh people deal with uh with, with things that have gone wrong to kind of get back on the right track. And so this is a model that has come from indigenous communities where we sit in circle with, with the offender with someone who has harmed us or done us wrong to get to a place of truth and reconciliation. Uh So uh grieving, uh you say e everybody, I mean, because of our inter relatedness where we all need to grieve, including uh the people of color, indigenous, you know, those who have been oppressed. Absolutely. We all need to grieve. Um We need to get to a place where we’re just very clear and honest about the history of this country. What has happened, what the idea of, um you know, white supremacy, which is not a real thing, right? But what the idea of subscribing to that the the the harm and the loss that has calls for people of color, but also white people. And uh you know, I think that’s uh we we it’s pretty clear the trauma and the harm that has been caused in communities of color. It’s not so clear. We don’t talk about it very much the the loss that uh that colonization and uh the idea of white supremacy has actually caused in white communities. But it’s uh it, it is, there is a loss there. I talk about it in the book um of uh the idea that white people came from, from communities where they had uh cultures and uh tribal ways of interacting in many cases, um languages and things that were given up in order to assimilate to this idea of being American. And I think now we’re seeing um folks feeling a sense of loss about that. That’s why if you see these commercials for these DNA tests are so popular right now because everyone wants to kind of remember where they’re from and they feel connected to that in some way. Um And um the uh the, the thing you talk about too is uh the orphans, orphans. You say that uh those of us who are descendants of, of the, of the settlers, you, you call us orphans. How’s that? I, I call them orphans. Uh This is a term my bar from some research that has been done uh on uh whiteness and it is, it’s kind of speaking to this idea of loss. Um again, sort of giving up uh the, the culture um that maybe from, from, from the home country, from where, where folks settlers came from, giving up those, those ways of being interactive and community to subscribe to um this individualistic way of being in America. And so with that, um there’s been a loss of sort of that, that mother country um for lots of white folks and a loss of identity. Uh because although, you know, I’m, I’m not anti-american, let me be very clear about that. This is the greatest country in the world I’m very proud to, to be a citizen of this country. Um But there is something about um leaving behind and not remembering where you originated from in order to adopt sort of this new culture here. Um You know, and, and, and, and not um that, that makes you feel sort of like an orphan. If you’re not, you, you, you have no connection to where your grandparents are from or the language they spoke or the culture that they have. Um And I feel that that’s a loss for many white communities. That is actually a feeling that is shared with communities of color. Um And if we recognize that loss and that trauma that we have in common, uh it opens doors for a different type of conversation about race. You, you said a few minutes ago that white supremacy is, is not a real, not real. Why? Why do you say that? Well, I mean, there’s a white supremacist movement. Uh But how are you thinking about it that you say it’s not real? Um Well, well, the idea that, that, uh you know, a certain group of people, white people are superior because of the pigment of their skin is not a real thing, right? So this was an, an ideology that was created um in order to um be able to uh have the types of oppressive uh movements and systems and policies that have been put in place for many years. And so it is a, a mindset that has been, uh you know, an idea that is not real, but we have built systems and um societal norms around that, you know, growing up, I was taught that, um you know, or sort of the default for me was whiteness was, was better. And so if I were to behave or dress or act um in a certain way that appeared to be more white, then that was gonna be a better thing for me. And so we know that the idea of white supremacy is, is, you know, the idea of it is not real, but there are very real implications and uh for how we have adopted that, that uh belief. Um And you’re, you also encourage uh nonprofits and teams to have a grieving space while we’re talking about, we’re talking about grief. Uh We just have about a minute before break, but, and then we’ll move on with the seven steps. But what, what’s a grieving space in an, in an office? Yeah. So, you know, these, these steps are, are, are personal but it can be applied in an organizational setting. And so I think especially those of us working in the nonprofit where we’re supporting communities, we need to have um a space spaces in our, in our, our work life to be able to uh talk about bad things that have happened and to grieve that and to feel emotion, to be human about it. And so, um you know, I share some research in the book and, and some anecdotes of um folks who have have done that and the research shows that there um it’s actually um leads to a much more productive workplace to have moments where we, we stop the work to actually grieve and acknowledge the events that are happening, you know, in our communities. The, the, the book is uh decolonizing wealth, just, just, just get the book, you know, because we can only scratch the surface of it here in, in an hour. But uh decolonizing wealth.com, that’s where you go. I like the idea of the grieving space, you know, uh uh to acknowledge, you know, everything doesn’t go well all the time. It’s impossible. No organization succeeds 100%. Uh Nothing. So give yourselves time and space to talk about it, acknowledge it, learn from it and, and move on rather than it being some cloud over the organization that everybody’s afraid to talk about or something. You know, it’s how, how, how oppressive is that very oppressive and in philanthropy is especially because we uh we’re sort of carrying around these, the, these secrets of like how this wealth was amassed or secrets that are within these families that um you know, many people feel bad about. And so we just need to kind of, you know, be, be truthful and honest about the history and spend time grieving over that so that we can move forward, as you said, and, and that moves our next step in terms of uh uh your next step. Uh apologizing, recognizing which includes recognizing the source of the foundation money. I mean, you worked for the Reynolds Kate B is it Kate Kate B. Reynolds Foundation? I mean, Reynolds Tobacco, North Carolina, you know, that money was raised on the backs of slaves. Um I’m not gonna ask you if the Kate B Reynolds Foundation acknowledges that. But that’s an example of what we’re talking about in the, in the step apologizing. Absolutely no, there was, there was no acknowledgment of that. And uh chapter one of, of the book is called My Arrival On the Plantation because our foundation offices were literally on the uh former estate or plantation of RJ Reynolds. And so um really literally and metaphorically, I was, I was working there, but no, there was there, there’s no acknowledgement of that. And I think you see that, you know, in, in North Carolina uh recently, the Chancellor of the University of North Carolina acknowledged that uh the history of slaves and in building that university and that some of the buildings there are named after a former slave owners. What most people of color want um is just to be seen and heard and, and for folks to make that recognition acknowledge and, and maybe move to apology per perhaps that didn’t Johns Hopkins University do do something similar that, that they had their founders were uh was it Johns Hopkins? Their founders were slave owners? I think Georgetown University, Georgetown. Sorry. Thank you. OK. Uh Georgetown, they were priest, right? They were priests, uh priest founders that were slave owners. That’s right. I actually know um AAA friend of mine who lives in New Orleans is a, a black woman who is a descendant um and was called to Georgetown uh to share about her family’s history. And it was a beautiful moment. They said in community together, talking about the history, talk, acknowledging the contributions of her ancestors. And uh there’s a big write up in, in the paper. And uh you know, this has been very uh healing, I think for the university, but also for my friend Karen, um who is now having that uh you know, that recognition that her, the contributions of her ancestors, you, you, you talk a good bit about the reconciliation process uh in South Africa. Um Canada uh just you gotta get the book. I mean, we can’t, we can’t tell all these stories. I mean, I know listeners, I know, I know you love stories as much as I do, but there’s just not enough time to just get the damn book. Just go to decolonizing wealth.com for peace sake. You go right now. If you’re listening live, where are you Poughkeepsie Schenectady? Uh Nottingham Maryland just, just go to decolonizing wealth.com. Um OK, listening, you talk about uh em, em, empathic and generative listening, right? So, you know, often um when we, when we move through a process like this, we feel bad, we’ve apologized. Um The default sort of like dominant culture way of being is like, OK, I’m done with that. I’m gonna move forward. And so, but before you move forward and act, you just need to pause to actually listen, um, to listen and learn so to, to, to uh uh for, for nonprofits. Uh, you know, I ran a nonprofit. I’ve worked in philanthropy for 14 years when I asked nonprofits, what is the number one thing that you wish funders would do differently? The response is always, I just wish they would listen. Uh because there’s something about having resources, money, privilege and power. When we enter the room, there’s a power dynamic where we um automatically feel that we can uh control the airspace and we have an agenda and uh the nonprofits are gonna be responsive to what we want. And you know, that often is the case. But uh the, the best way to really build a relationship with folks where there is a difference in, in power and privileges is to actually stop and listen. Put aside your own assumptions and, and try as best you can to put yourself uh in, in their shoes to understand their experience and their history. So it’s just gonna make you a better person. Um I feel like listening is a human, right? We all want to be, we all deserve to be heard. And so that is um just something that we have to keep reminding folks who have privilege is to um to, to stop at times to, to also listen and to let others be heard. Put aside the White Savior Complex. Yeah. Uh Listening, we talk about, we talked about uh about that a lot on the show in terms of just donors and, and I know your next, your next step is, is relating versus being transactional. And that’s, that’s, that’s the beginning of a relationship, as you said, you know, listening, genuine hearing uh to w whether it’s donors or potential potential grantees. Um There, there’s a lot to be learned. So it goes back to the, the value of bringing uh representing the, the, the communities that you’re, that you’re serving. Um OK. So relation, you want us to, uh you want us to relate. Let me ask you, uh, you, you, you read, um how to win friends and influence people. You say dozens of times, you say dozens, I have trouble reading a dozen pages in a book. You’ve read one book dozens of times. Uh What, what, what, what do you take away time after reading, uh Dale Carnegie’s book dozens of times? Well, you know, I still have an original copy from that. I, um, I stole from the library of, uh my mom was a domestic worker and she was caring for a frail elderly man. Um, they had this vast library. So I ended up with this little book that you stole from an infirm. I know, I feel terrible about a book. It haunts me to this day. So this is a public, I didn’t even think to leave like 20 bucks or something on the table. I didn’t have it if I had it at the time. Um So hopefully this is my way of giving back. This is, this is my reparations for, for that, that wrong. But you know, and the one take away for me in that book uh is uh is really kind of connected to relating and listening. Um is when you’re, when you’re talking to folks, people just really want to be heard. So mostly you should listen. Um And if you actually just listen more than talk, people are gonna think that you’re a great friend like, wow, Edgar, that was that I had such a nice time with you. Um But even if I didn’t say one wrong, right? And so, yeah, it’s really about listening and, and letting others feel that they are important because they are um you know, we, I think people just feel so invisible these days that um just by giving people that moment of, of feeling heard and connecting with something that they are interested in. Um It’s just gonna really take you much further in building a relationship and, and stop the, the transactional, the, the transactional thinking. Um You have, you, you have an example of uh uh a uh oh and, and like building design, like office design, kitchens, you’d love to see a kitchen in the center of, of offices. Yeah. You know, so sort of like these ideas of like the colonizing virus, it infects every aspect of our community. So yes, even the way buildings are designed, um, especially buildings that are uh financial institutions, think about what banks look like when you walk in and with the, with all the marble and, you know, hard edges. Absolutely foundation offices where you have to go through five levels of security to get in as if we’re as if the millions of dollars were in the office. Right. And so we just, uh, through even how we design our offices and um you know, the way that they appear can be super intimidating for folks who are coming in who need access to resources just in, in terms of designing organizations more egalitarian, you’d like to see. Absolutely. So, uh one of the steps in the book is represent, and when you look at the uh the demographics of the nonprofit sector and um especially in, in foundations that part of the sector, uh we still have a long ways to go with diversity uh particularly when you look at the board of directors and the CEO positions, folks who really hold power in organizations. So what are the, what are the ideas that I put forth in the book is that foundations should have a requirement that at least 51% or at least 50% of their board should reflect the communities they serve. Uh This would drastically change what uh you know, shake up what the seats on the bus look like, but this isn’t this uh far from what is required of, of many nonprofits. Funders actually are, you know, requiring this, of their nonprofits that they’re funding. Um, and many go, um, organizations that receive, gover government funding, federal funding have these types of requirements that the folks who sit on the boards must be, um, folks who are benefiting from the services of those nonprofits. Representative. Absolutely. That’s a, that’s a stretch. 51 percent. It’s a stretch, it’s a stretch. But, you know, um, the, the conversation has uh, has been uh zero about it. So I figure, you know, if we put something, a bold vision out there to help us imagine what’s possible, maybe we’ll get a little bit further down the road and there are some examples. Uh you cite the Novo Foundation in the book, uh they have a women’s building that they’re, that they’re repurposing some old warehouse or something to turn into women’s building and, and the, the decisions are being made by, by women who are gonna be using the building. Absolutely. There’s some great examples of, of foundations and, and funds that are, um really, um putting these values into practice in their work. Uh Novo is, is a foundation that I really appreciate. Jennifer and Peter Buffett, the founders of, of the, the Novo Foundation wrote the forward to my. And uh they, um are folks that you, if you get to know them, you can see that they have done this work. Um and it shows up in how they give, they are a foundation that absolutely sits in community and listens um to folks who are impacted by, especially women and girls, which is an issue they, they really care about and they fund in a way that is responses to what they really need versus what the foundation’s agenda might be. Is it novo that funds for five years or seven years? Is it guaranteed? You, you cite this in the book, no matter how much trouble you’re having in year 123, you’re going to be funded for five or seven years for their initial commitment. Right. Right. And, and that type of long term commitment is uh you know, something that, that is the best type of funding, you know, um folks can be, you can focus on building a relationship versus, oh, I’ve got to meet these certain objectives so I can keep getting this money year after year. And so to be relieved of that, that pressure of thinking about where am I gonna, you know, how am I gonna pay these salaries next year? Um Really allows folks to have the freedom to think about the actual work that they’re doing in communities and, and planning and, and can plan instead of it being one, only one or two years. Um And so we kind of mishmash together, you know, relating and representing um investing. So investing is really a call to philanthropy to think about using all of its resources for um for, for the public good, right? And so uh we are not uh going to be a, a AAA sector that achieves equity that, that is really moving the needle on issues if we’re supporting uh with the 5% in our right hand, really good work, uh you know, mission related work. But in our left hand, we are investing 95% of our resources in um industries and causes that are extractive that are, you know, really canceling out the positive of, of our resources. So, you know, there are great foundations like the Nathan Cummings Foundation, for example, who just recently declared that 100% of their assets, their entire corpus is going to be used um in support of their mission. And again, other examples in in the book. And uh we just have about a minute or so before we have to wrap up actually. Um so talk about your final step, which is the final step is repair. Um All of us who are philanthropists are givers and as we’re getting close to the end of this year, uh we are all philanthropists um supporting um nonprofits in our communities. Think about how we can use money as medicine, how can we give in a way that is helping to repair the harm that has been done um by colonization in, in, in this country. And so think about looking at your personal portfolio are you giving to at least one organization of color um to support grassroots leadership. So reach across um and support folks who may not look like you invest in ways that are helping to unite us uh versus thinking about some of the traditional ways of giving that have not been uh you know, along this lines of thinking or exercising these types of values. OK. So I’ll give you the last 30 seconds uh uh uh in the way that uh the, the way I learned that uh natives are the original philanthropists was by what you, what you talk about your mom. Yes. So, you know, I think a lot of giving, when we look at giving in this country, the biggest philanthropist philanthropist are folks who are giving the most uh highest percentage of their incomes, incomes are actually poor people. And so I do talk about my mom in the book um who um was uh you know, is actually um very low income and, but yet she gave um to our community and, and had it ran a ministry out of our church to support Children ministry. You just gotta, you gotta get the book, you gotta read the ministry. And so it’s like giving of time, treasure and talent, not just resources. And so all of us who are caring for our communities in ways that are um you know, through love is uh we’re all philanthropists, get the book, go to decolonizing wealth.com, Edgar Villanueva. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on Tony. Real pleasure. Next week, zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman from the archive. If you missed any part of this weeks show, I beseech you find it at Tony Martignetti dot com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, 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 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.

Nonprofit Radio for January 22, 2024: Team Engagement Tips

 

Kiersten HillTeam Engagement Tips

 The company Firespring uses unusual and fun strategies to engage their 185 employees, so everyone lives and celebrates the Firespring values—each day. We’re talking Firestarter meetings; Culture Club; Power of Three; and more. Kiersten Hill shares her employee experience to spark your thinking about team engagement.

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with Hunt virus pulmonary syndrome if you had to be ratted out because you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, this week we have team engagement tips. The company Fire Spring uses unusual and fun strategies to engage their 185 employees. So everyone lives and celebrates the fire spring values each day. We’re talking firestarter meetings, culture, club, power of three and more. Kirsten Hill shares her employee experience to spark your thinking about team engagement. On Tony’s take two nonprofit radio. 1500 were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, vast flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is team engagement tips. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome for her first appearance, Kirsten Hill to nonprofit radio. She is the Director of nonprofit Solutions at Fire Spring. She had nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit management and fundraising. Before joining fire Spring, she made the move to Fire Spring with the goal to assist educate and equip nonprofits at a larger scale. Kirsten is on linkedin and the company is at Fires spring.com. Welcome, Kirsten. Hello. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. You always bring such, I don’t know, ebullience. Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you. And, uh, I witnessed that this morning which we’re gonna get to talk about. I joined a meeting this morning, but I know just every time we talk, you, you seem joyful. Thank you. I um it’s one of my gallop strengths is positivity. Uh And I think that’s just sort of my natural state most of the time. What is that Gallup strength? So, Gallup is uh the, the Gallup corporation who does, uh you know, polls and those sorts of things. They are also um a business and strengths success coaching organization. Um And you can go through and do an assessment and they tell you what your strengths are. And then the theory and philosophy is that if you lean into those strengths, you uh have better performance and achievement. So, uh one of my top five gallop strengths is positivity. So that’s probably, that’s probably it. I think you’re succeeding. Yes. Thank you. I can, I can validate the Gallup results. Bona fide poll, a poll of one. Yes, a clean one. All right. So we want to talk about the engagement tips for, for teams and you do some special things at Fire Spring. Uh, you acquainted me with them and I wanted to flush them out for our, for our listeners because I think they’re unusual. Uh, I think they show a certain commitment to the team and, and, uh, I want to shout them out. So, first of all, you got value, you got three very clear values. Yes. Um, you know, talk about the values, of course, what they are. But then you know, how do you, how do they help the team, you know, sort of unite? Yeah. Well, I think one of the reasons that I, so I had been a Fire Spring client for a number of years before I came to work here. Uh I had used all of the services that Fire Spring offers websites, the marketing and strategic things that we do. And so I was familiar with the company. Um But one of the things that has really become very clear to me as I have worked here as an employee is that we are very much a company that leads from its values. Uh and we live those values out and we have three primary values. The first is bring it every day, the next is have each other’s back. And the third value is give a shit. And uh we talk on a daily basis about how we are all living those values and we take time during every single meeting. Um that we have that we, we recognize those values and we call out and, and recognize and honor people who are living those values. And I think that’s a really unique approach um to, to, you know, not just having the values and putting them on the wall somewhere, but really, um you know, getting in there and, and diving in and living um through those values. Yeah. And I have firsthand experience for uh an example of this. You, you have these meetings, I don’t want to give it all away. I want you to share it but you have these daily meetings. And I just want to say that I think people listening until they hear more are thinking, oh my, they meet every day, every day, the company, the whole company meets every day. All right. So I was in today’s meeting, but I’m gonna hold off on my follow up questions and you know, my, my impressions of it, us with these, with these daily meetings that are not laborious and feared. Yes. So uh these meetings started in about 2010 is when they started holding them as a company. And uh they had, they wanted a way to kind of try and bring everybody together, get everybody on the same track and again, reinforce those company wide values. And so they did some research and they found that the 11 o’clock time period is the least productive time period during an employee’s day. Yeah. Yeah. And so somebody then said they liked the alliteration of having a meeting at 1111. And they said, well, if we’re having a meeting at 1111, let’s make it 11 minutes long. And that’s how the meeting that we call the fire starter was born. And so every day at 1111, the entire company comes together for an 11 minute stand up meeting and, uh, if you’re in the facility, if you’re in any of our buildings. So we have a headquarters office in Lincoln. We have an office in Lincoln. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. We’re in, we’re in Nebraska. You’re talking throughout the country now that, you know, Lincoln could be Lincoln, Kansas, I don’t know. Lincoln, New York. True, true. Yes. So we are based out of Nebraska. We have an office in uh our headquarters offices in Lincoln. We have an office in Omaha, Nebraska and then we have a small walk up print shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. And so every single person in those in those buildings who has the ability now, we do recognize this is a daily meeting, not everybody is going to be able to, you know, be there every single day. Um But for the most part, we, we encourage anybody but, you know, with that’s in the building to, to attend those meetings. If you work from home, you can hop on a Zoom link uh and, and, you know, sign in that way and everyone, uh, company wide takes part in the meetings. How many, how many employees we have about 100 and 70 uh, or actually, no, I take that back. It’s 100 and 85. I just verified that yesterday. So we have 100 and 85 employees. Yes. Sure. So when we come into Firestarter, there’s a handful of things that we do every single day, there’s always one employee who leads it. There’s a group of about six or seven of us who rotate the duty. Uh I typically, uh, we call them the fire chief because they’re leading the meeting of the fire starter and the chief, um kind of just runs through the agenda. Keeps everybody on track. So normally I chief on Tuesdays, but today I chief on a Thursday because I couldn’t, we, you know, swap things back and forth. So are we so ingrained in the culture that the down has become the verse? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we, yes, I, yes, I used the chief. I do. I will in the future. Yes, exactly. Who can chief for me today? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh today I had the pleasure of being the, the fire starter leader, the chief and we always go through the same agenda. So we start by welcoming everyone, then we move into um recognizing any guests or visitors. So we introduced you today as a, as a guest in our meeting and that the, whoever’s there just sort of normally waves and then, you know, smiles and we recognize that we have visitors with us and then we move into recognizing any birthdays or anniversaries. So if anyone in the company is celebrating a birthday or a work anniversary, uh we’ve got a lot of very long term employees. And so, uh as soon as you hit one year, then every year on your, the anniversary of your higher date, they recognize that you, how long you have been with the company. So we uh we recognize those and then after that, we move into our values, living portion of the meeting. And so uh you can uh as, as an employee of the company, you can recognize anyone else anywhere in the company for um the great work that, that they do and the work that really align with those core values, you know, it might be somebody who um helped you out and took a project uh from you or somebody who filled in for you at a meeting or uh somebody who really has gone above and beyond for a client. Uh And, and we recognize those kinds of efforts on a regular basis today. The it team got a couple of shout outs. They did. Yeah, we had a server, we had a server go down and Zoom and uh Jump Cloud were having problems yesterday. The it team was really hopping. And so lots of people recognizing the I TT the it team for what they were doing and the, it team recognizing one another for how collaborative the response was and how they all just really chipped in and got the work done. Uh So that’s a really good example uh of, of, you know, how we will really recognize one another. Uh Then uh we also do a few special things. So on Fridays, we give the F uh F as in Frank. Uh So on Fridays, we give the F and that is calling out somebody who really steps it up and, and somebody who just is consistently always living those fire spring values. Uh and the F passes from team to team uh within the company. So I can’t give the F if I, if I win the, uh or I, um I’m honored with the F, I can’t give it to anyone else on my team. I have to go outside my team. So we’re really encouraging um the groups to, to mingle together and to get to know one another. Uh And you can only get it once a year. Uh And, and then, you know, again, we just sort of pass that pass that around uh quarterly. There is, it’s bright gold, it’s, and it has a chain on it. If you’re, if you’re in one of the offices, you can actually wear the F and you can hang it at your desk or, or your cubicle. Uh And then if you get the F, you get a little gold F that you can put on a sticker that you can put on your laptop. So, as you’re walking through the building, you’ll see lots of people um who have their laptops open with F stickers on it. Uh So it’s, it’s, you know, a nice visual way to, to represent the F um And that’s kind of fun. On Wednesdays, we go through Gallup Strengths. So we’re a gallop, strengths based organization. Every employee knows what their top five strengths are. And on Wednesdays, we call out one of those strengths and we talk about how you work with people who have these strengths and what, how you might, you know, recognize how they like to work and how you can bring out the best in one another. What are, what are your other four besides positivity? So um strategic is one wu is another which stands for when others over. Uh I’m, I’m, I like to be out there. I get energy from being around other people and uh and engaging with folks over. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then uh positivity and um individualization. So I like to get to know each person individually. I like to know what makes each person tick and then deliver content and information and things that are specific to that person. Um And then the last one I think is communication I think is, is um is supposed to be able to recite. I should be able to, I should be able to, I get, I get, I get, I also have um I also have uh activator in, in like my top five or six and I can never remember which goes where. Um but activator means that I’m not real good at just sitting and letting things happen. I’m kind of always pushing and moving things forward. So um uh activator is in, is in there too. So, um and like I said, on Wednesdays, we, we go through those and talk about those and then on Tuesdays, we go through and review the, the goals for the previous week and uh address, you know how successful we were. Um because that’s the other thing then that we talk about and during every Tuesday meeting, we go through the values living and then we break up our goals by um division of, of the organization. So we have client solutions, um client fulfillment. Uh And, and we go through each of each of those and we say, you know, who has achieved what uh and in, in terms of meeting their goals for the week. And then on Tuesdays, we review how successful everybody was. So, yeah, and then at that, we, when we finish that, we talk about any risks or challenges that we have and then uh if there aren’t any of those or if there are, we talk about those and then if uh after that, we do what we call the cheer. So uh whoever it is that it has the cheer for the day and that also rotates through the company. Uh They come up with some sort of a clever story or anecdote or sometimes it’s this day in history. Um And then, and at the end, it’s usually a very short phrase that everyone says all together. Uh And that’s how you really signify that the meeting is over. Once you finish with the cheer, the meeting is over and everybody just goes their separate ways. It’s not like you’re having this long drawn out. Like nobody quite knows. Is it, is it over? Are we still going? Um After we finish the cheer, everybody goes their, their separate ways and, and all of that is done in 11 minutes. It took you about 12 minutes to explain it. I know. I know. Right. I probably should have cut you off. I should have cut you off a minute ago. You’re over time. You get, no, no, the meeting is really, it’s really impressive. Uh So you invited me to today’s like you said, uh I didn’t say a word. I just waved because I knew you were on a tight schedule. Um So the uh the people that are living the values who get shattered out, you enter them on a spreadsheet. There’s someone, there’s a recorder, it seems to be a, there’s a recorder, someone’s recording on a spreadsheet. Describe OK, who’s keeping track of the people and the teams that get shouted out and, and, and if you get shouted out twice, you get a star, you get shouted out three times, you get two stars so we can. Yeah, exactly. Will. And sometimes, uh, I mean, like the ultimate achieve at fire sp is to be a five star general. Um, so if you have five stars in the, in the week, then you’re a five star general. And that’s pretty unusual. Yeah, that’s just, it’s adorable. It’s fun. It’s easy to understand. All right. So five star General. So what, what happens with those names? You just keep them for the week. Yep. They keep, we keep them for the week. Um, and at the end of the day on Friday, they wipe that board, uh, they wipe the values part of the board clean. Um, and we start over on Monday with a, a clear board and we add those names as we go throughout the week. Uh, the, the goals actually turn over on Tuesdays, uh, because we, our, our goals start on Tuesday and end on Monday and that gives us a little bit of extra time, uh to, to try and get things accomplished if people wanna, you know, not very many people work on the weekends, but if they want to work out on it over the weekend or if they need a little extra time, it just seems to flow better to run uh, goals Tuesday through um Monday. Plus we, we have um some all teams, some other, all kinds of all team meetings that we do usually on Mondays. And so that’s when people set their goals for the week. It’s time for a break. 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 boss 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 in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to team engagement tips. Yeah. So moving to the uh the the gold side, you go through it very rapidly. Uh This is also set up on a on a board or I don’t know, spreadsheet, it’s the same spreadsheet, same sheet. Um It, it, it says the name of the team. And then there are the 33 categories that they’re being a accountable to. Basically it’s public accountability and they have goals for the week listed like some had, some teams had three, some teams had four goals and you go through how are you doing on your goals? Most of the people said all on something all on track, all on track on track. There was one team, I, I didn’t write them down so I’m not gonna, you know, embarrass them. One team said goal number three at risk and that one got a, that one got a negative next to it. It gets a red mark on it. Number three at risk. All right. Yep. So if you finish a goal, you would say like first goal complete. There were a couple of those, so there were one or two complete. Um, if you’re, if it’s just moving along then it’s on track and if it’s behind then it, it’s at risk. And, you know, there’s a variety of reasons that a goal could be at risk. It could be that maybe you had a meeting scheduled with this client and the client moved the meeting. Um, and so, you know, there, it’s, it’s not, we know that it’s very seldom. I, I mean, I don’t, maybe once or twice in the two plus years I’ve been there if we ever had 100% on our goals, you know, it’s, it’s, do you just, you also want to set goals that are, you know, a, a strive that you’re really working to achieve? Um, and so we don’t always hit 100% but we, it at least keeps all of us on track and it keeps all of us accountable to one another and it helps me to know. Gosh, I can’t bother the, you know, customer fulfillment team this week because I know they have a ton of stuff on their goal list. They’ve got a lot going on. So maybe I’ll hold this thing that I need, um, and give them some time to do that and, and, you know, rearrange what I need from them and, and when I need it. So it, it does help us to know what each other is working on and what the timing looks like. Yeah. Absolutely. And those are weekly goal. Yes, those are weekly goals that we review on a daily basis. Tuesday to Monday. You, you start them every, every Tuesday, every Tuesday review weekly progress on Mondays. Ok. Yeah, I, I love the accountability and it’s quick and nobody says, well, why is that one at risk? There’s no, there’s no chatter about why we’re doing great or why we’re not or why one is at risk or how, how good we were that we accomplished one goal. You just, you just report on track at risk or, or done. Exactly. And then they move on to the next team and boom, boom, boom. It’s very efficient. I mean, you gotta be because 11 minutes tell me does the tech cut you off? Doesn’t zoom, cut you off? Yeah. Zoom completely cuts you off. So, uh when I first started being the chief, I didn’t know that and we were running long one day and then all of a sudden just died and they were like, oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you, it’ll cut you off if you go too long. So now, especially when we’ve got a day where people are really excited about, you know, recognizing other people and putting lots of people on the board. Then I know I have to go faster through the goals because you don’t want to get cut off. That’s, that’s bad. Ok. Ok. And, and today’s meeting, I think it was nine minutes, I believe. Yeah. The other thing that I love about it that I think we don’t often recognize enough is when I went down before the meeting started, I saw one of my coworkers and I said, oh, gosh, I need to grab you for just like two minutes as soon as the meeting is over to ask you a question. She was like, yeah, no problem. And that happens every day. So not only are you getting people together, you’re mixing different groups, you’re mixing, you know, people who work in different departments and divisions and have different tasks and goals. But it’s a, it’s a common place where you can meet up with one another. Uh, and then most people now will eat lunch about 1130 because by the time the 1111 is over, they go, you know, into the kitchen and warm up their lunch and then sit, sit down and have lunch and, um, it’s a really nice natural break and progression in the day that I think is just fantastic about building, um, camaraderie and, uh, and teamwork and connecting us to one another. Those are the Firestarter meetings the way to do daily meetings that people don’t dread. Yes. Absolutely. Uh, it’s super, it’s super fun. It’s one of my favorite. It’s one of my favorite things. I mean, I would have never thought that I would love a daily meeting, but it’s one of my favorite parts about working there. It shows your positivity comes out about the fire star 1111 for 11 minutes. All right. What’s Culture Club? Yeah. So we also have uh a group. It’s a, it’s actually an elected committee within the organization that is focused on uh I it’s focused on employee engagement and that is their major goal is, is, you know, making sure that um that the employees are connected to one another. They also represent the employees to the leadership team. Um And they are the ones who plan all of our company, events and activities and festivities, parties, those sorts of things. Um And, you know, they really just help to keep morale up and keep employees engaged with one another. Um They are elected to that committee based on um which part of the company, which division of the company they serve in so that we have uh a representation from every team. Uh and they meet on I think a monthly basis and then they, you know, do little subcommittees and planning and those sorts of things. Um, and, and they’re all about maintaining and encouraging and engaging the company culture. Do they have a budget to work with? They do? Yeah, they do whatever it might be. Yes, they do. They have, they have a budget and, uh, you know, it’s things like, uh, in the summer they always do, they’ll do like a barbecue and sometimes they’ll have the snow cone machine come, uh, we, every year we invite anyone who’s ever worked at fire spring gets invited back for an alumni event. Um, and they organize the alumni event, they organize our holiday party, they organize trivia nights, they do or trivia days. Most, all of the events that they plan outside of like the holiday party. And, you know, some of those things, um, all, all of them are, most of them are during the day or, or at some point in time during the work hour, usually around like three o’clock or four o’clock in the afternoon. Um, and then, uh, sometimes, you know, the bigger parties and those sorts of things they’ll do, uh, on the, on the weekends or evenings and do people campaign to be the, uh, the culture club representative of their team. They do. So in the last competitive elections in the last election year, we just had the Iowa caucuses. So, elections are on my mind. Yes. Yes. Is there campaigning? So, yes. There is campaigning in the last few years, there has not been a lot of uh of competition over, but they’ve kind of been able to maneuver things. So there’s a few at large seats and those sorts of things. So anybody who uh has expressed an interest in the last few years has been able to participate. So, uh but uh this year, we did still have some campaign posters that went up around the building. And um you know, people were, were, you know, in the spirit of things in terms of campaigning, it was pretty fun. You have a lot of virtual employees. We do, we have in the stuff that, that culture club is planning. Yeah. So I, I wanted to, I actually went to, to our, our recruitment hr department and said, hey, tell me what the philosophy is on this because I wasn’t exactly sure. So they used to do a lot of hybrid events where they would, you know, they, they would have the trivia say at the headquarters office and then people could zoom in. And I thought it was really interesting because she said that what they found is that they actually had less engagement and less participation with hybrid. Then they did if it was just a completely virtual. So we have some activities that are in person and we have some activities that are virtual and they very seldom do hybrids if a team wants to make it hybrid and it’s an in-person event, you know, they might carry a coworker around on a laptop so that they’re kind of feel like they’re there in the, in the spirit of things. But otherwise it’s typically either a virtual event or an in person event. Um And, and that has been the main way that they try and really engage people is, is by hosting and being very intentional about having events that are virtual and then everybody is virtual. Everybody is on their computers to participate. So then nobody feels second class. I mean, that’s, that’s the problem. You know, how many virtual meetings I’ve been in. It’s just, it’s not the same. Uh You have to, you have to remind folks that you’re on the screen. You know, they’re all in 3d together and, and we’re all one D to lump together. You know, they don’t look at us. Uh you know, you have to make sure you speak up because it’s, there’s just not a lot of skill around engaging your one dimensional screen participants. So I just, I think it’s very simple and smart, just make everybody the same. We’re all one D and now we’re all equal. Exactly. Exactly. And they’ve had, I think, um, some, some very good results doing that. Uh The other thing is, I think once a year they, they invite a lot of the employees who do work remotely to come back. It’s usually around our, uh our all team meetings uh that we have or uh around the holiday party, something like that. They, they make sure that those folks get back um around that time of year. If they want to have that real, you know, quality in person experience, it’s time for Tony’s take two. Thanks a lot, Kate Nonprofit Radio 1500. That’s the coupon code that you can use to get $1500 off planned Giving accelerator tuition this year in the Accelerator, I will guide you and all the your fellow class members step by step through how to launch planned giving fundraising at your nonprofit. We meet once a week on Zoom for an hour and I set those meetings up as meetings in Zoom, not as webinars so that everybody can talk to everybody else. And there is a lot of peer cross talk, peer support because over the weeks folks get to know each other. So you all share challenges, successes, obstacles, uh difficult donor situations and everybody helps everybody else. There really is a lot of peer support. A lot, lot more than I expected. So if uh starting Planned Giving is something you wanna do at your nonprofit, you could look at Planned Giving accelerator.com. We’ll be done by Memorial Day. The class goes march to May and we’ll finish by Memorial Day. So there’s no conflict with your summer plans. And at Plan Giving accelerator.com, you can use the Code Nonprofit Radio 1500 nonprofit radio 1500 until January 31st and you will get the $1500 off the tuition. That is Tony take two. Ok. We hope that people take advantage of the discount we’ve got bookoo but loads more time. So let’s go back to team engagement tips with Kirsten Hill. Have you ever been a culture club representative? I have not. Uh you have to be there at least a year uh in order to, in order to be on culture club and after I hit, you get beat in an election, you got drugged. I did it. I’ve never, I’ve never um throwing my hat in the ring, so to speak, to be in culture club. I tend to travel a lot um during certain times of the year when I’m speaking at nonprofit conferences and so it doesn’t really lend itself um to, to, you know, filling that role as it needs to be. So I haven’t ever done it, but I love the people who do so. And you’re, you’re in the headquarters in Lincoln, right. Yeah, I, that’s, I go into the office about two or three times a week. Uh I work from home the rest of the time I’m home today because uh it started snowing again. 8.5 inches and, and more coming. So, congratulations. That’s the most I’ve heard. I’ve been on a bunch of meetings and webinars today. 8.5 is the most I’ve heard. Yeah. And it, that was over, you know, from like the first or the 25th, basically from Christmas, uh, until now and then it just started snowing again about an hour and a half ago. So just keeps coming. Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m in North Carolina. We don’t get a lot of snow. I’m jealous if we get, uh, if, if we have a forecast, the, the night before forecast of a half an inch schools are closed. Everything closes, close the school the next day because we don’t own any equipment. All the, I think all the snow equipment that the, well, all the stone equipment that the state of North Carolina owns both pieces. They’re, all, those two are, you know, they’re all stationed on I 95 which is nowhere near me. I’m two hours east of I 95 on the beach. So the towns don’t, we don’t have anything. The people don’t know how to drive. Oh, you know, I’m from New Jersey up near New York City, northern New Jersey. You know, there’s a skill to it and, and part of the skill is just being experienced doing it but there are people here. It’s risky. So, half an inch forecast the next day. Shut the schools. Oh, man, we, uh, it takes eight inches to close the schools here. It’s just been, yeah, it’s been crazy and then it’s like a minus 22 wind chill. Um, so it’s been, it’s been a brutal start to the year so far. But, uh hopefully, uh it’ll warm up soon and some of this will melt. But, yeah, tell us about fire Spring University. Yeah. So, fire Spring University is where we, it’s, it’s sort of the hub that connects us to a lot of things. Uh Fire Spring University houses are uh employee documentation. So, employee manuals if there are training manuals. So, for instance, if you need to fill out an expense report and you’ve never had to fill out an expense report before. Uh You can go to fire Spring University and there’s a module that you can take on expense reports. And it’s a training that walks you through all of the details. Um In addition to that, there’s a lot of um things in there, like an organizational chart, there is a map in there of where everyone’s offices and cubicles are in the building. So if you’re not, if you can’t remember, you know, where Tom Sits, you can go to the map and look at it and go, oh, that’s where he is and you know, exactly where to find him. Uh And then we uh we do some career pathing. Uh And there are um different uh they, they describe it, not like a ladder. So it’s not a, the, the career pathway is not necessarily a ladder that you go up and down. It’s more like a lattice or a web um where you can move within the company to try different things and different opportunities that fit within your skill set. Um And there is a lot of information in there about what other kinds of opportunities might be available in the company. Because once we go to the work to get great people um who want to keep them happy uh at their jobs and want to make sure they have the training and education that they need to do it and do it well. And if they’re not happy, then we would love to try them somewhere else in the company um to, to try and make it work uh as opposed to, you know, having them go somewhere else. Uh So there’s lots of, of opportunities to really explore what you’re interested in and find opportunities to still be a part of a great company without having to move on. This is all shared resources, shared tools, you know, I think this contributes to engagement, shared culture, right? I mean, the culture of the, as soon as you join and join the company, you’re, you’re introduced to fire Spring University. So you get a sense of what’s important, how they treat the employees and, and it’s, and everybody has the same experience. Yeah. And everybody has the same access as well. So it’s, it’s out there, you log in at any point in time and, and you know, if you ever have a question about something thing, uh our hr team is awesome but if you can’t catch them for one reason or another, you could probably log in to, to fire Spring University and find what you need. It’s also the storefront, uh, where you access the storefront for all of our, uh, company apparel and those sorts of things. So, um, we, we do, uh, and this is, it’s actually unusual. I don’t have a fire Spring t-shirt on today. Usually I have a fire spring t-shirt on. Um, but they, they do apparel orders. I think at least three times a year with the change of seasons. And, uh, you can go on and buy, you know, sweatshirts and t-shirts and ball caps and blankets and, you know, lunch boxes and all kinds of things that are branded for Fire Spring. They give us, uh, an employee discount on all of those and you can go on at any point in time and purchase those things and they, you know, just take the payment out of your next check and deliver the item that you want to your desk. It’s kind of cool. I joined you on a webinar that you did last week on annual reports. Annual reports. Basically. Yay or nay because you had a lot of reasons that you might not want to do an annual report because you had your fire Spring branded, uh, top on and, and then, and then I, I told you your nails matched the company logo color. It was, it was amazing. And they did. And that was completely unintentional. I didn’t even know it until you said it. Pierson. Really, really upping my game for 24. Wasn’t one of your five strengths. Um strate strategy, strategy, doing it unconsciously doing it. I don’t even know it gallop, validate those polls that they’re on to something. Now, you have something that you’re very public about uh personal. You’re an only child and then take it to the next level. Yeah, I’m an only child. I am married to an only child and we have an only child. So, if we get together for the holidays with my parents and my husband’s parents, there are seven of us big family gathering. Yeah. Exactly. You know, and, and it just, sometimes it seems so strange. I grew up with a lot of cousins and, and those sorts of things and, um, it, so it does seem a little weird that our family is just, it’s so small. But, yeah, it works for us. I always joke that I don’t, I don’t know what to do when you have more than one child. I’m certain it is much more complicated. But, uh, this, it works for us. We, we, uh, yeah, we all get each other. So I think adding a child more than doubles the complexity. Oh, and, and I, I’m, I’m the person who doesn’t have any Children but I, I hear from friends. I think it’s like exponential. It’s not just a doubling. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and then you, you know, if you have a spouse and you have two Children then you are in a man to man defense. If you get three kids and two parents, it’s, it’s zone, there’s like sports analogies and all kinds of things you have to figure out. II, I don’t know. I, I think if you just have one then they get whatever they want and you don’t have fights and nobody to argue with. It’s much easier. I wouldn’t know anything about the zones, you know, in baseball or anything. I’m not acquitted. I don’t know very much about sports at all. So, I don’t know the zone defense. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, uh, ways that you try and manage it and it’s certainly, it has to be more complicated. Like I say, we just have one, he gets to kind of do what he wants and activities wise, we don’t have to make, you know, big choices. And, um, yeah, nobody to fight with. That’s, that’s perfect. Did that draw you to your husband that you were both only Children? Was that an early, an early feature? You know, it really, it kind of was, it’s definitely something that we both have in common. Uh, and I think, you know, we kind of approached the world with that same viewpoint because we’ve always, you know, we negotiate things, I think differently than you do if you have, you know, big families and those sorts of things. And so, um, yeah, it was certainly something we had in common and, um, yeah, it makes our lives easier. Um, we always say, you know, our parents are, our parents are still young but as they, as they get older, um, there’s nobody to fight with, there’s nobody to argue with. They just have to, you know, we all have to work together to figure this out because there’s nobody else to do it. So, um yeah, it’s been uh it’s been kind of a fun um uh a fun thing that, that, you know, draws us all together and even our parents, you know, um get together and, and those sorts of things, you know, for holidays and that kind of stuff. So that’s, that’s been nice too. Last the engagement uh feature uh strategy that seems very smart at Fire Spring is uh the volunteering employee volunteering hours. Explain all that. Yeah. So uh Fire Spring is a certified B corporation which means that we are certified for public benefit. Uh When our leadership as an organization is making business decisions, they can take into account the impact of their decisions on the things that they care about that go beyond the bottom line. So if, um you know, if they could make a decision that would uh maybe save a little bit of money on ink, but it’s bad for the environment, then they can, they can choose the more environmentally conscious decision. Um And, and as part of that commitment to community, we have what we call the power of three. So we donate a minimum of 1% of our profits. The top line revenue gets donated to nonprofit organizations, 2% of our products get donated through in kind product and service donations. And the volunteering piece is 3% of our people. So full time employees at fires spring receive eight hours every single month. And I would say we’re, and we’re also expected to use those eight hours every single month to volunteer for the nonprofit and charitable organizations of our choice. So it equates to about 3% of our workforce and it really has just, it, it’s a culture thing. It’s just become a part of who we are. And so you might see someone post a message that says, you know, I’ll be out from 11 to, to 130 volunteering. Uh We’ve got a number of people that deliver meals on wheels because that’s a, that’s a really specific time period. And they, so once a week on, you know, whatever day of the week they go deliver their meals. Uh And so, you know, when you see that somebody is out volunteering, it’s not like you’re, you know, frustrated or mad or gosh, why aren’t they working? Because it’s part of who we are, we give back and there you can give back to any organization that you want So I have personally have a number of organizations that I work with. I, I volunteer a little bit at my church and I am on the Friends Council for make a wish and I’m on the um house court board for my uh college sorority and I am helping the legion baseball team. And anytime I’m doing those efforts, I can take time during my week and I can put in those, those hours and, and do the work that needs to be done and fire spring, uh, encourages it and appreciates when we are active parts of our community. And I think that is a huge piece of really developing the ethos of who we are as a company. That’s what these strategies are all about. Uh I love these. And you were the first B Corp in Nebraska. We were, yeah. Yeah, we were the first B Corp in Nebraska and there’s a points system that all B Corps receive, um, to, to say if you qualify as a B Corp or not. And our point system over the years, we’re in the top 10% of, um, the most impactful B Corp businesses across the country, across the whole country, across the whole country, not just in the state. Yeah. Top 10%. Yeah, exactly. Top 10%. Yeah. All right. Uh, so how does all this, you know, all this make you feel is it’s not, it doesn’t, it doesn’t certainly sound overwhelming. You sound uh, effusive about it. But how do you think it helps individual employees? How does it help you as an employee? Well, I think for me, you know, I, I, most of my career was spent in nonprofit management and so I’ve, I’ve run nonprofits. I’ve been a fundraising director. I’ve, I’ve been in that public, um, benefit sort of arena for years and I have tried at times leaving that and going to for profit and that never went well for me. Uh I, it just, it just didn’t match who I was and the things that I wanted and needed um in, in my work life. And so for me, this is really the perfect marriage um of, of for profit and still having that community impact and being a part of the community. And I see that reflected in the people that I work with. Um, you know, I think, I think we attract and develop a very like-minded community based, um you know, ethos and culture. And so for me that I think that is why I appreciate the values and the fire starter and the culture club and all of that is because uh it, it feels most like that, you know, public benefit uh nonprofit kind of, of environment. Um And they’ve been very intentional about doing that. And so for me, it’s just, it’s been a great, uh it’s, it’s just been a great place to land. Uh And if I’m, you know, not necessarily going to be working in a nonprofit. I’m still getting the opportunity to interact with so many different nonprofits. Um And then also to, you know, have that, that the company that I work for embraces and encourages uh that community participation. Thank you for sharing all this Kirsten. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. It’s been fun because I don’t, you know, people ask us all the time about what we do for services and, and that kind of stuff, which is I love talking about, but it’s also kind of fun to talk about who we are. Kirsten Hill, she is, she is Kirsten Hill, the, the positivity, the strategic. You’ll find her on linkedin. She’s very active there and the company is at Fires spring.com. Thank you again, Kirsten. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tony. Great being with you today. I appreciate it next week. Decolonizing wealth with Edgar Villanueva from the archive. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. I still have that alliteration. I can’t help it. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms or go ahead. Sorry. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez, Mark Silverman is our web 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% go out and be great.