Nonprofit Radio for August 26, 2024: Empowering Women

 

Jenny Mitchell: “Empowering Women”

Jenny Mitchell’s new book, Embracing Ambition, unites the leadership stories of twelve exceptional women CEOs. The result is a mentorship resource for the current and next generation of women leaders. She shares the challenges, including perception barriers, glass cliff assignments and collective vision. Jenny is chief visionary officer of Chavender.

 

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Wait, let’s say it together. Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Uh Big nonprofit. Just 95%. Yeah. Do it together. Come on, go out and be great. 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 larynges frais if you obstructed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show sitting right next to me this week because her family is on vacation at my beach house. Is our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hi, Kate. Hi, Uncle Tony. It’s nice to be here. Well, I hope our listeners are hungry for empowering women. Jenny Mitchell’s new book, Embracing Ambition. Unites the leadership stories of 12 exceptional women CEO S. The result is a mentorship resource for the current and next generation of women leaders. She shares the challenges including perception, barriers, glass cliff assignments and collective vision. Jenny is chief visionary officer of Chander on Tony’s Take two. I feel bad for the Democrats 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 Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and buy pork bun. Looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com. Here is empowering women. What a genuine pleasure to welcome Jenny Mitchell to nonprofit radio. She is the visionary. What a pleasure. Oh, I forgot to ask you. How do you pronounce the name of your company? Cavender? Like lavender. Cavender looks exactly as it sounds. It sounds exactly as it looks. Ok. What a pleasure. A genuine pleasure to welcome Jenny Mitchell to nonprofit radio. She is the chief visionary officer of Cavender where she works closely with leaders to change the world. One mission at a time. She’s a speaker, executive coach, fundraising, professional, and host of the underdog leadership podcast. Her book is embracing ambition, empowering women to step out, be seen and lead that important book. Brings her to nonprofit radio. You’ll find Jenny on linkedin and her company at cavender.com. Jenny Mitchell. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Woo hoo. I love the energy already. Thank you, Tony. Oh, my pleasure. I’m glad you’re excited already. Thank you. And congratulations on a book that I believe came out in March. That’s correct. It feels like uh my third baby. Are you doing lots of gigs? Are you speaking? Are you selling books? I’m doing it all. So um launched in March, did some Canadian launches we’re working on launches in New Jersey um for the fall. Um And I have another author that’s in Pennsylvania. So we’re on our way there. Not just Trump, that’s there. It’s me too. Um And you know, it’s been an interesting journey, seeing people experience the book, what the kind of feedback is, uh how the speaking engagements have kind of come out of that very briefly. My story is that I, I cut my teeth in fundraising just like you. And as I got going, I realized that the passion I had was for the people. I’m sure you can relate to that and specifically the op opportunity I could provide was women’s leadership. And so that’s kind of where I’ve doubled down in the not for profit space, although I am exploring corporate as well. All right, expanding ever challenging boundaries, one of the things we’ll talk about expanding boundaries, um Thank you for mentioning New Jersey, my hometown. Um And you’re coming to us from Ottawa. That’s correct, Ottawa. So think about going to Toronto and then going kind of east three hours. So the book is a collection of 12 authors. Yourself included essays. II, I deserve essays on, you know, you’re out to empower future and current female leaders. And there are lots of CEO S. Um They’re all CEO S eventually, are they all, do they all make CEO S or they’re all, they’re all CEO S and I might help you with like a sort of situating the why? Because like why another book? Right, Tony, I do to tell your story about the out of body experience that you had. That’s to me that’s what. But you please, it’s your, it’s your, it’s your story. Tell you a story to tell this story. No, no, I’m delighted to tell the story. Please tell your story. I’m delighted to tell the story because um I guess the the very brief of why this book, why another book? And who am I to be honest, who am I to bring another book into the world about this? And so this ties into my story. Um But when I realized that there were parts that we weren’t bringing of ourselves to leadership. And of course, my podcast is called underdog leadership. So obviously, I care deeply about those number twos becoming number ones. And I saw that there was this theme that we couldn’t really know people until we truly understood their leadership story journeys. And so with that lovely segue, you gave me, I will give you the set the stage for the my story, which is called um being Right? And I had this experience driving down a street where I realized in a moment that I was having a panic attack. And it was very interesting because my logical brain kept saying things like, well, if you’re gonna have a panic attack, it’s a bad idea to do it in a car, Tony. So you should pull over and banks are always reputable. So sh you should definitely sit in the front lobby of a bank. Like don’t go to the grocery store. There might not be seats. All of this is running in my head as you can imagine. It’s a ticker tape as I’m trying to figure out how to not pass out in the car. Um And the experience of that moment in my body forms a thread in my story, which I’m not gonna give away the ending. But it’s a realization of something about leadership that I’m trying to do that doesn’t fit. And I’m sure your listeners can relate to that. Uh Tell the, tell the story now about the, the out of body experience you had listening to one of your, one of your 12 authors uh talk about her research. Oh, at the beginning, yes. So yes, at the beginning. So I’m sitting in the audience of a very large international fundraising conference and I’m listening to this woman talk about her research. Uh Doctor Megan Ravine about women’s leadership experiences, which she was an expert in. She just finished her dissertation. She was sharing us those five pillars and the outer body experience was, oh I recognize that 10, I know that one too. Oh That one’s familiar to me. In other words, it was like she was talking to me and I almost had the experience of like, do I look like a she like I’m turning my head behind me thinking, oh my God, is everybody else experiencing the same way? Um And it really helps me understand that my, my experience was not my own. It was just mine. It was other people’s. And so I made a beeline to her because I’m that person and said we need to connect. And that was the beginning of a wonderful collaboration that we had together when I was reading, I was thinking of uh the Roberta Flack song Killing Me Softly, right? She the Rebecca was, was strumming her your life with her words. She wasn’t killing me softly with her song. But there was, you know, no, I’m not gonna sing. No, I know better. I know my boundaries. I know my boundaries. Um Anyway, I was thinking of Killing Me Softly by Roberta Flack. Uh OK. So you got, you got the women together for a weekend was the sort of the genesis of the, of each woman’s essay. What was that? What was that weekend? Like? Do you have a lot of wine? I was wondering, was there a lot of wine flowing? Oh, there was so much wine. That’s cool. You do? Did you do it at your home or where? Where? No, we went to. So first off, we picked a really fancy hotel. It was important to me that they were, that they got the nice hotel because not for profit. You’d never get the nice hotel. Right. You always get the burger. I have a trouble with that. I, I believe we all deserve the best. I mean, we don’t, that doesn’t mean we have to fly first class but it doesn’t mean we have to fly in the coach either. We could, we could do, you know, comfort plus is, is ok. So, I, I, yes, I, I agree that that’s common but I, I abhor it. Well, that’s fantastic because a resort. Yeah, we picked a nice place, a nice hotel in Toronto, um, because it was central and we had folks coming in from all across North America and I’ll just set the stage for your listeners. I, of the 12, I knew four, I think three were coaching clients. There were four that I did not know very well and two that I knew hardly at all because, uh, the network that I wanted to create was wide and I wanted that diversity. So you can imagine all of us showing up on the 12th floor to the bar because I invited everyone to the bar for 7 p.m. and these 12 women come in that don’t know each other. And I’m thinking to myself, well, this is either gonna go great or this is gonna go awful. And within 20 minutes it was really funny because immediately we took over the bar and the volume in the room went up to here and you could see the connections and the conversation starting and the, and the, the shared experiences. I mean, when you’ve lived as a CEO at, when you’ve dealt with the tough stuff, there’s a lot of common ground that you can hop into. And I’d like to think I had a part in that too. I wanted a certain profile of leader. I believe that we have to be ambitious and compassionate and kind. And so that kind of creates a space where you get high achievers but, but high achievers that are willing to share, willing to connect, willing to offer, offer their stories as value add to, to colleagues, share vulnerabilities that Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes, you absolutely. I mean, you should take some credit. You, you decided who the 12 to be. Uh and you, you know, you had set expectations for all of them leading up to, you know, because all of your conversations leading up to that, that wonderful weekend. All right. So that was, that sounds like great fun. I uh so then did you meet in? I’m just uh I’m interested in the, you know, 12 women CEO S sharing and some don’t know anybody. They don’t know each other. A lot of them don’t know. You hardly know two of them. You know, how does it sort of coming? So you had drinks on Friday that’s casual. But already the stories are starting to flow because you’ve set up what we’re here for you. You’ve set the expectations for the weekend. All right. So then what is like Saturday mornings you get together as a required breakfast or what, what happens? So let me give you the flow and, and yeah, we’ve had one zoom meeting before. That’s all we’d had, which basically an introduction before the weekend. So the stage was set Saturday morning that we were gonna workshop together. So what was really funny was, of course, they’re all type a, right? So I kept saying, ladies, I’m in charge, I’m in charge, you know, because they want to qualify, they want to understand expectations. Uh That was really funny. And I actually had a wonderful um colleague named Michelle Fishing, who was our facilitator slash editor for the book. And she spent a full chunk of time in the morning talking about storytelling and remember some of us in the group of fundraisers, not all of us, but we all know comms, but these are personal stories completely different. So we actually talked about the components of storytelling. We talked about what an arc of a personal essay or, or like you said, um article or whatever would look like an essay, you know. And um we, we kind of framed that out, but here’s where the magic started to happen. And I share this because I think this is a great tool that people could use in different ways in their offices. We w we broke into groups of 31 person told their story, one person asked questions and one person listened, Tony. So the listener at the end of the story being shared because we’re trying to workshop which story we would include, right? And you know, they’re type a, they’re like, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one, I have this one and we’re trying to connect them to the most meaningful story tied to leadership because that is really what I wanted to get to. And a story that wasn’t just, here’s my broken heart. Like here’s what I learned from this. That’s what I’m not so interested in the story of what you, what you experienced. But I’m really interested in what you overcame and how you managed it because that I think is a teachable moment, right? So what happened was when these women would hear their words reflected back to them by the listener, there were light bulb moments. It was like coaching like they, oh I never thought of it that way. And what they thought the story was about was actually not what the story was about. And that was really cool, Tony, really cool and AAA good number of them share that in, in their essays that, you know, as I’m writing this chapter for the, for Jenny’s book, uh I’m, I’m thinking about how I grew and reflecting and I, I’m, I’m seeing this my own story in a different perspective. You know, in, in, not in so many words but those exact words, it’s, it’s actually that one g starts with, I’m the little engine that could, I don’t think of myself as a leader. I just show up every day and do my work. And then as she describes her journey and where she came from, um this is Heather Bach in the book. And at the end she says, you know, as I write this, I realize that I have a great accomplishment and that my values and what I stand for reflected in my leadership journey and I can now own that, that label, that I am a leader. Um And I thought those were beautiful moments and a lot of empathy too like, wow, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Like we have some pretty heavy topics, right? Like racial discrimination. Um A lot of tough the school of tough knocks, but the book is actually quite lighthearted. I would say Tony, I don’t know how you feel about it, but it’s, it’s got everything. No, I agree. It’s, it’s uplifting. It is, I mean, it’s uh you know, it’s, it’s empowering. Uh and, and uh yeah, there are, there are, there are hard moments. Uh We’ll get to them. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to empowering women. Let’s tick off for everybody. Just so we have a general framework, the five, the five pillars, pillars around which the, the essays are organized, just tip them off, just tick them off and we’ll run through them, we’ll run through them. So I’m just reading for my book. So I get them in the right order. Um So the first one is perception barriers. A K A imposter syndrome. The second is embodied roles. When you take on the role too much, I would say, embracing challenge, I think that one’s self explanatory as well as Glass Cliff assignments. This one’s getting a lot of play in the media. It’s interesting that folks have picked up on that one. We can, we can talk. That’s the idea that you get hired into a situation that’s almost impossible when you’re falling off the glass cliff. And finally, visionary, I all of the women and the research says that these women can see something that’s possible where others can’t. And so their ability to bring people along is one of their defining elements of leadership. So those are the five including seeing things in themselves. That’s all right. That’s where you’re, you’re in the, you’re in the vision, you put your story in the visionary pillar. All right. Um, some perception barriers. This is the, the first one, interesting that you started with a, with a tough one. this is a woman of color who’s introduced, uh, her is introduced to the board as, uh, uh, I want to introduce our new Fabulous BPO CEO and her world like the room starts to close in on her and it only gets worse. Uh It doesn’t get better. She’s hoping it’ll get better. But this is uh this is uh say please pronounce your name for me. Uh Oh, no. All right. Why don’t you, uh why don’t you share a little? We, we, we won’t have time to do every 12. 1 matters. But you opened with a, you opened with a, you opened with a probably the I, I think the most egregious example of racism and sexism uh in the, in, in, in the book. Yeah. And she’s so gracious about it. And uh so to set the stage, what her experience was of that was that all of her other credentials didn’t matter. She was defined into a box of being pal and that’s all that she counted for. So I learned a lot from her story. I’m actually still, I’m getting goose gump as we talk about it. And she talks, I tell you my synesthesia kicked it. I got some tears reading a couple and I got some chills too. So, same, same reaction. Yeah, it’s pretty, uh, and I think the other thing for us to understand, especially myself as a, as a white person is, you know, when, when women of color go up to be CEO S and they even go up for a job. First of all, there’s tons more risk for them. But what I didn’t realize was they become the symbol of their entire community. So she talks, she’s from Nigeria. So she talks about all the Nigerian finance scams that kind of chased her. So she triple quadruple checks, all the finances for her organization. Um Never thought of that. Never crossed my mind that she would think that way. So the ability in these stories to see the perspective from other people really powerful. Um She talks very strongly about her community and about the the collective decisions they make together. Um And one of the most so using that example of the three people listening when she told her story, the thing that everybody kept saying over and over was I can’t get my head out of that um that room in the bathroom, the the cubicle in the bathroom she opened with this story about the cubicle being her friend and how it had seen her highs and her lows and that was the place she’d retreated to when you know, somebody had had, she found out that one of her colleagues made more money than she did, even though they, you know, they did the same job when she got turned down for promotions. Also her happy stuff too. And, and the visual of that cubicle just stuck with us and we built the whole story around it. Why did you make the choice to start with? Uh uh a uh a difficult story? That’s a great question. Um So one of the things we said to the women because they’re type a, they’re like, OK, which pillar do you want me to write to? And I was like, no, I want you to write your story. Our job as editors is to figure out how we thread this together. And so they knew the research, we had prepped them with the research and they’re all really excited about it. But the goal was not to write to the pillar because I it it kind of pigeonholes you a bit and then you have to, if you know, you kind of flip from first person to like academia speak, you know. Um And it was, it was hard, it was challenging for many of these women who represent organizations Tony to represent themselves to speak. It wasn’t hard for them to speak from the heart. But the majority of the issues were around. How much do I tell? Will I be hurting anybody by telling this? Right. So where’s the line on that? Um And so why did I start with a, a compelling story like that? I wanted people to notice the book. I know people don’t read full books. My story is at the very end. So I thought, you know, people would, if they were so inclined, they would make it there. Um And I wanted people to pay attention to what we had to say. And the perception barriers is real. One of the things the research said that I just want to highlight is it’s not just external perception barrier. So people not seeing you as a leader that’s gets discussed a lot, but the internal perception barrier, am I good enough to do? I have the skills, you know, we talk about competence, builds confidence. Well, what if you don’t have a lot of competence? What if you just don’t have a lot of time being a CEO how do you build, build that address the perception barrier from internal? So I thought it was, I still think it’s a kick ass story. The there is a lot of introspection in the book. You know, you talked about the imposter syndrome. We’ll get to um I think it is Delphine who makes the is a very good example of what uh her essay is a very good example of what you just described about how you see yourself your own perception as well as the perception of others. Um And, and just women, you know, women are not uh raised to be, to be leaders. And I think that even in 2024 I, I think it’s less true than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still true. Oo overall women are just not raised in those girls are not raised in those with that kind of thinking with that kind of role. So the, so the self doubt is, I think remains pervasive which we need to, you know, you’re, you’re making a step at, you’re, you’re taking a, you’re chipping away at this, this perception barrier and we all have it. I mean, I think that’s the other thing was at, at the end of the day, we live in a society. So we’re never going to get away from it, Tony. But what we can do is prepare ourselves better. So that I think that’s where you see the hope in the book is, I’m not here to say who with me, poor me, these wonderful, these horrible stories. This is what happened to me. I don’t care so much about that. Actually, I care more about how you handled it. I care more about what you did about it. And and the book is about and here’s how we can prepare the next generation better because once you know these stories, once you know, this is going to be part of your experience, different sections of it or whatever, then you cannot be so thrown off your course when it happens, right. That’s the thing and, and if you’re not alone and I think it’s important for us as people who’ve arrived there to say this is what happened because it really changes the way you see someone because leaders still have this shiny veneer around them. I don’t know if you, this drives me nuts but you know, that shiny veneer that they’ve got all the solutions, all the answers they can’t possibly be, show themselves as vulnerable or human or, you know, miss a pick up with kids. That’s the jack we, uh, theory of leadership. He’s, he’s been, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know, debunked but he’s, he’s, he’s an anachronism now, but we’re in a transition and we don’t have a lot of models of that ambition and compassion. Right? I mean, look, let’s look at the, uh, the female models we have, we have Angela Merkel, you know, relatively masculine. Hillary Clinton is maybe one. Kamala Harris, not so much, but like those, those were how they, they, what they had to do to survive was become a, more of a masculine energy. And so we’re in on charter waters. We have our new Zealand Prime Minister, you know, who, who really came to the office with a different experience. Um, and I think modeling that and showing that it’s viable, it’s not better or worse, it’s just different and it’s viable, but we’ve got a whole chunk of years behind us of society that’s been expecting something that’s that unconscious bias. And I want to be part of blowing that sucker up. You, you are, you, you are. Um And we’re gonna move to the next pillar. But I, I, for, for listeners who may have ever been identified as an interim, stuck in Interim, your own, again, the outside perception, your internal perception, your own, your own self worth and value. Uh There’s an excellent uh essay uh by uh by Megan about Interim. It’s called Interim. So um that’s a must read actually, that’s a must read too because there’s so many nuggets there, things like asking for pay at the new interim level, like asking for clarification on how long like how do you define yourself worth and, and how long, I mean, you can very easily be taken advantage of as an interim. I just wanna say, let’s move to uh what, what, what was the last thing you said? But if you let Yeah, yeah. All right. Now uh our next pillar is uh you call embodied rolls. What, what does this one mean to you? The easiest way to describe it is the uh OK, fine. The corporate lawyer gonna use your example. Um who gets breast cancer and who decides she wants to move into not for profit into cancer and becomes the ceo of the blah blah blah cancer society and can no longer separate her personal and her professional work lives and the risk of burnout is so great because they over identify with the constituent group they support. Do you want to uh le le let’s, let’s talk about the story of uh uh of the Navy jag. Jag because that one struck me as a, as a former lawyer. She got much further in her career in law than I did. Uh uh Illuminary, the two star admiral that she rose to um II. I think that was a, the way she wrote. Did, did she write the story or did you change in, in editing? Did you change the flow? I love how she opened with the courtroom, the courtroom movement. I thought that was and, and I was thinking of, you know, she mentions, she mentions Tom Cruise and a few good and a few good men. And I was thinking of that uh before, before her reference, I don’t know, I’ve always go to media like I was saying earlier, I was thinking of uh Roberta Flack’s song. Um So yeah, just why don’t you share the, share the story, share Janet’s story. So Janet’s story is that she goes, she’s very funny, by the way, I’m sure you giggled when you read it, right? So she talks about um uh going to deciding to go to law school and the the service calling that she had in her family, right? So her parents had been involved in service and community and military backgrounds. So she decides to become a lawyer and and ends up as a jag lawyer. The, I don’t know if that’s the same term in navy. Yeah. Like a judge, judge advocate general. J so a navy. So imagine being, I don’t know, under 30 on a boat. First of all, working to support the sailors depending on how their, you know, things go along. And the theme of her story was that the system is you, you can believe in the, and this seems so timely, you can believe in the system and you can put your faith and trust in the system. But there will come a moment where you yourself are the system and the expectation and how you show up and do the right thing at that moment really matters and you must never forget that. And so her story goes through this disillusionment. There’s a couple of different instances where one is, she’s wrongly accused of having sex with one of her clients and it is a completely false accusation, but you must go through the process because that’s what the system is. And you get to hear this sort of inner dialogue that she has about. Well, how could I, how could I have slept with him? I don’t even know him like, and she goes through this whole thing and it turns out that, you know, she was the, the attractive young lawyer on the, on the ship and there was some, some loose lips. Um So that was on her front and eventually the charges are dropped. But it happens again when she’s representing someone where she feels that due process isn’t happening. Um And in that case, it’s a very interesting story where someone’s brought, uh, they want to be dishonorably dismissed from the military and the impact is Tony, they don’t get benefits. So it’s serious, really serious. And um it goes through the process of how this judge wants to move this thing through. It’s December 23rd and he’s not willing to wait for time. She hasn’t even met the client and they want to just push the thing through and she judges them about against the system, you know, are, are they acting in the true spirit of the system? Is this fair? I mean, the other part of her story as a lawyer is justice and, and equity and, um, fair process and treating people, uh, the way in the eye of the law. These are all very strong, strong principles of hers. Um, and I, I won’t tell you the ending on that one because it’s, it’s absolutely fabulous. But your question about writing, her writing is very dense, very different than the other ladies. And it was really important to me that I not change it. Um But what I did do was ask or challenge her arc of the story because there’s a lot of different components in this story and it could, it could be, I was worried it could be confusing to the reader. So, one of the things I would do with Janet’s story is I would do a bit of editing and I’d hand it to someone that knew nothing about her. And I said, can you follow it? Right? Because there was a brilliant thread. But I mean, it’s, we had so many ideas. It was almost more of a paring down. Um And to make sure at the end there was a strong message and sidebar. She is, um, the, uh, president of the Girl Guides in, uh Greater Pennsylvania, which I think is just such a perfect role for her girl scouts in the US Girl Scout scouts in central central Pennsylvania. Yeah, two star admiral. She rose to remarkable career in the, in the law. And it’s funny that you, you highlighted that one as a lawyer too, right. So you could, I can imagine you could see, see that story even more vividly. Yeah. Well, it’s a big stretch. I was a lowly two year. I, I only lasted in law for two years. Uh, so maybe, you know, that hearing, if I had been a jag officer, I wasn’t, but if I had, I could see, I could see doing that hearing. But, uh, that’s about it. You know, I, I didn’t get, I didn’t get too far. So that’s a, that’s a, that’s a book in itself and this is another reason why the book I think is so, so fabulous if I May. Is there so many different perspectives? You know, there’s 12. So some of them you’re going to resonate with more and I think that’s really why I wanted this sort of prism experience of leadership. There’s, there’s no one size fits all right. Um, but there’s always takeaways and you’re going to connect on a visceral level with different personalities and different profiles. And that’s what I love about the book. It’s time for a break. Pork bun.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024. Pork bun helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name.org and the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility is easy to remember and helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at pork bun comes with free features like who is privacy, SSL certificates, web and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five star support. 365 days a year. Get your.org domain name for a low priced at Pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony’s take two slide that mic over here. Hey, thank you, Kate. It’s good to have you sitting right next to me. It’s fun. Alright. The Dems I feel bad for the Democrats because they just can’t break through all the noise. All the media coverage of National Make a Will Month. I feel bad for them. The, the Republicans actually were smart to have their convention in July because there’s no point in competing with National Make A Will Month. It’s not a fair game. You, you just cannot break through. So I know it’s hard to find information about Kamala Harris, Tim walls, all the speeches, all the entertainers. Uh It’s hard, it’s, it’s hard to find the news uh out of Chicago. I, I understand I’m having the same difficulty, you know, I, I cannot find it on Twitter X whatever. Uh I have. Yeah, you gotta go looking, you gotta go digging, it’s worth it because there, there is content there. But you’re gonna have to spend a lot of time looking, you know, as you sort through the National Make a Will Month coverage which dominating the media channels. So II I feel bad for the Dems and that’s Tony’s take two Kate. You know, all I have to say is Happy National. Make a well month. We’ll take it one more, one more voice in the crowd. We’ve got vu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of empowering women with Jenny Mitchell. You know, that makes me think of another film that is, I have not seen yet, but it’s on my, it’s on my immediate list. Uh It’s called Nashville and I, I just from the trailer and what a friend who recommended it told me is it, it’s a mash up of 20 some different stories taking place in Nashville, Tennessee. Uh And so, you know, some you’re gonna resonate with and some of the characters, you know, are not gonna hit home so, so hard. But um all right, it makes me think of, uh makes me think of this fabulous book. Embracing Ambition. All right, and I’m gonna see Nashville soon. Um OK. Embracing Challenge, our third, our third pillar. Um Yeah, you know, these are, I mean, the women are all go getters, you all are, you all are go getters all became CEO S. Um but this one, you know, you picked out somewhere uh like Sherry is, is new in the role Sherry’s Sherry’s essay is called ambition. Why don’t you, why don’t you share Sherry’s story? Love this. So um Sherry of course, holds a dear spot in my heart because she’s one of my co coaches in Cha. She does my West Coast coaching stuff. Um And the thing about Sherry’s story is, you know, the other word it could have been was underestimated. She was underestimated. She wanted to, she had a recreation therapy background and she wanted to work in the health care system in a leadership role and she brought herself with her big girl pants up to the CEO S office who was a woman and said what do I have to do? I mean, isn’t this textbook? What do I have to do to have your job one day? I’m here for, you know, she was in her thirties. What do I need to do? And the woman slammed the door on her vision and her dream by saying it’s never gonna happen. You’re not a nurse. And the story is about a, how she picks herself up from that b how she perseveres, which is a theme on this, embracing ambition, right? Embracing challenge. Like just because I know nothing about it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. Um I, I hear that a lot with clients around finances, right? They come in through a programming background and then they have to do budgets and planning just because you don’t know how to do it doesn’t mean you suck at. It just means you don’t know anything about it. Well, you do, you do suck at it now, but we’re all trainable. If your, if your mind is open, you’re trainable and, and by the way, perseverance, I think pervades all five pillars. I mean, all these women, you know, they kept at it, they kept, I mean, we’ll talk about that with the visionary pillar but keeping at the despite the despite the internal and external perceptions and real and real challenges too. Real boundary, real. Yeah, real challenges. Uh the, the perseverance pervades the book. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And uh when So when Sherry was declined that way, she found another way to get there. She offered to take on extra files at one point in time, she got offered a secondment into the foundation and that became a huge career for her in fun development and uh sidebar for our not for profit people. She had 10 cents, 10 separate uh well, be a bit like your cuny job you were talking about earlier, right? 10 different centers with 10 different needs in long term care. And it was a team of three of them that used to manage all of those fundraising portfolios, raising millions of dollars. So it was quite a play. Um And she persevered and that’s how she got her seat at the senior leadership suite table was through that side door that would never would have opened up if she had gone the other route. So to me, there’s um there’s a lot of, and being underestimated is such a typical experience for women. I wish it wasn’t, but don’t believe what they’re saying about you. That’s really a message if, if you want to do it and you want to try it, put your hand up and try it and don’t be afraid to fall down. It’s, it’s part of, it’s part of learning is failure and embrace it. Don’t believe what other people say about you. Uh You were just referring to uh my, my previous fundraising work at Cuny when you and I were talking about that before we started recording uh that I did plan to giving fundraising for Cuny, which had 2020 different colleges. That’s the, that’s the connection. Um You know, I, yeah, there’s another one I want to talk about embracing and embracing Heather, the other, the other story but was so, so Sherry’s story is uh is ambition, Heather is identity. Um And she’s one of them who calls out that writing the essay helped her own self identity. Tell, tell us about Heather. Yeah, I love that. And I love um the other thing that comes out of hers is the perseverance. She, she grit grit determination. She, we’re calling it perseverance. So just to tie that up into what we were talking about a minute ago and I think uh it’s called Identity. I mean, we had so much fun with these titles, right? You can imagine us playing with these titles and organizing them all and I sort of decided they needed to be one word titles. Um And I wanted them to have really clear expressions of things. So with Heather, she grew up from a read background, she’s actually from a, a farmer from a small town and um grew up in a retail background but didn’t like the way that people were treated in it and could see another kind of leadership. Um And this story really is about her learning how to believe in herself and learning how to own her values and her principles. And once she did that, Bob’s your uncle, like she was able to, like, it’s a bit like owning it is part of this process. I actually am a leader. I find that a lot with number two and number ones, like there’s this sort of moment where you walk around with a post it note on your head that says I am a leader. I am a leader like you have to almost start believing it and, and uh you know, letting it be in your bones. Um And Heather is very understated, I would say. But the, the realization in the essay I think for her was maybe it’s OK to own my experiences. And, and how about I find my own way of, speaking of my accomplishments and I find that incredibly liberating and inspiring for so many women who are, who are maybe pigeon hold or stuck that also dovetails with finding your own brand of leadership, which, which we we’ll come to. But, you know, uh not fitting uh a, a mold uh a per a perceived mold, you know, a phrase I’ve been hearing lately is uh for women’s leadership is changing the chair. I really like that. It’s this idea that you don’t try and sit in the chair. But how do we change the chair? Like if you, you, I have a CEO friend who negotiated into her contract, she’s a single mom that every time she’s away, there’s a fee that’s paid to her for childcare. And I was like, oh, talk about equity, right? Rather than equality. Like everybody needs different things. And, and so changing the chair is, is something I really like that metaphor. It’s, it’s stuck in my head lately. The glass cliff, it’s our, our fourth pillar, the common glass cliff assignments and particularly I, you know, I, I did not know that phrase. Um and particularly interested in that, that women of color are often put into these types of no win CEO situations. Talk about, talk about the glass cliff. Yeah, we know the glass ceiling right where we hit a, a bumping spot where we can’t get past that title or past that job description. The glass cliff is the literal experience that you’re stepping off a cliff, which is sliding off the side of the mountain and you are, it’s just figurative. It’s just sorry. OK, we’ll lose it. But I, I sometimes physically it feels, it feels like it, right? Like what did I get myself into? Um So let’s back it up and explain um how that happens. Why does that happen? Because often there are so many red flags with the organization that nobody in their right mind would touch it except somebody who was hungry for a leadership or title that would normally not be given to them. So that explains your, your black person, I think of immediately or any of your bike pop communities. Um And so they’re predisposed to take on those roles. The other thing that happens with um you know, the emergence of activity diversity and inclusion is boards think they want a profile of a certain kind of person or how they look. And then when that person gets in there and actually starts making the change to make it friendly and warm and inviting and inclusive. The boards go. Oh no, no, no, no, no. We didn’t actually want that. And that’s kind of my interpretation of what happens to Moj J Cox in, in the book is, you know, she was brought to great fanfare for an organization that felt it was very pro progressive. And when she got it, she was walked out 14 months later. And the thing that always sticks to me about that story is she still to this day has no idea why her husband gave her a depression hammock that she now uses in a very different way, 100 80 degrees from depression. But uh why don’t you, why don’t you just share that, share that part of how do you say your name mode? Yeah, that part of her story. So, uh and then all important to hear that she’s a New Canadian. Um and uh has been worked in the federal government, has a very storied career and, and lots and lots of experience. And so when she was unceremoniously fired, um very publicly, her husband, she went into a great depression, as you can imagine. And by the way, they have four kids. So it’s not like she could just curl up on a couch and her husband brought home this depression Hammock where they put it in her back room or her back 30 she’s a big long property. And so at the back there was this Hammock and she could look either way she could look out to the meadows or because she could look the other way 100 and 80 degrees and look at the house. And whenever she was just the most beautiful moment in this story where her husband explains how she can use, this is sort of, I know you need your space, I’m gonna create this space for you. And so whenever that feeling comes over, you, you have somewhere to go. Can you imagine a house summertime kids like running around? Like I can only imagine, like just keeping it together and, and, you know, uh she was a primary breadwinner at the time. These are things, you know, we traditionally don’t think of women as primary breadwinners, a lot of pieces to it. Um And now she uses the Hammock like you said, she’s changed what’s really changed since this experience is she’s not willing to compromise her quality of life for a job. She not want to call compromise her family life. She’s, she’s not going to give her left kidney anymore. She’s willing to be part of the conversation and it is very active in the not for profit world here in Ottawa. Um But she is or sorry, she’s in London, Ontario, but she is very, very committed to the work but has completely different boundaries. You know what I took away from that depression Hammock story is that she had a AAA spouse in, in different people’s lives, could be, anybody could be a spouse, partner, dear friend, mentor, but who knew what she needed knew, just knew how she processes, knew that she needed space away from a family of six to, to, to process this, you know, e egregious public firing. She was walked out by six board members flanking her following her to the office gathering. You know, they’re, they’re all huddled around as she’s hovering around as, as she’s putting her family photos in the box. You can just imagine the tension and the, I mean, I don’t even know how you remember it, you know, it’s, and then they escort her out to the boundaries of the property. Uh uh You know, she can’t remember what she said to her husband just, you know, come pick me up the outrage to the humiliation, uh the, the inhumanity. So, so I took away that, you know, she had somebody who knew what she needed, gave her that space and the physical, the Hammock, the physical hammock between the two pine trees. Um So having a, a support network or person who, who know that knows you well enough to know what you need when, when you are needy, critical I think. Critical, I love that. I love that takeaway. Those are the glass cliff assignments. Um Let’s talk about visionary, the fifth pillar, visionary. Um Yeah, you gotta keep, you know, you gotta stay true to your dream. The dream be the change you want to see in the world by, by Angelou, I think or no, there’s countless tw you know, the, the uh the kind of gimmes on Twitter X, you know, but, but you do, you do have to stay true to your vision even when it’s, it’s not happening as big as you wanted it to. Uh with that was Heather’s, that was Heather’s essay, uh called Collective Vision. Share, share, share Heather’s essay. So this one is about, I’d say it really speaks to ambition. She had a vision of what she wanted. She was working for a national Food Scarcity organization. And I think also she, she was, you know, we’ve all been through that thing where we’re super excited by something and we can see it and we can feel it. And when you have that prospecting meeting that just goes like golden and you’re, it’s all happening in her head in the, she’s in a meeting with this, I imagine it’s a Canadian food store supermarket chain throughout the country, hundreds of stores throughout the country and it’s all un, not un, it’s all unfolding because she and the guy mark from the, from the supermarket store or supermarket company are just aligning. It’s all, you know, she’s, it’s all emerging in this sound like a two or three hour meeting. Yeah. And it, uh, I mean, she comes home to kind of 1010 ft off the ground, walks into the office and starts explaining it to folks and she’s so jazzed and they don’t receive it very well. They start punching holes in it. They start asking questions, they start challenging how they could do it in that timeline that, you know, the programming people are starting to freak out like it’s kind of like your worst nightmare. And you’ve got this dichotomy between the two and she talks very pointedly in the story about how um she had to learn how to bring people along on the journey. And for some of us that are raging enthused, just myself included, you know, packaging myself so that people can see where I’m going and kind of leaving bread crumbs and showing people. It’s possible, you know, those visionaries uh take big huge visions and break them into pieces and bring them along and to her credit. She talks about, you know, I remember the line and it says now I don’t want you to read the story and think this is not about holding true to your vision. I want you to hold that vision like a candle like a flashlight. Um, but be mindful, I think is the message of how you piece it out and let people come with you because it’s so easy to get. Right. Nobody can choose my vision. Nobody wants to do what I want. Right. So you pick yourself up, you dust off, maybe you have your piggy party. Like that’s ok. I totally get it. Um, and then you get up and you figure out how you’re going to make it happen and that’s what she did in that story. And she, uh she’s a very successful um corporate sponsorship company and she has a super duper strong vision for that Tony. I, I have to say I was reading, I was thinking, as I was reading, I was thinking, all right, I just quit. I have a vision if you don’t see it, I, I’m, I’m bringing millions of dollars to this. This is the, the biggest corporate sponsorship of our history. You asked me to make change here if you’re not on board. I quit. Uh That’s, that’s why I’d be a terrible employee. Even CEO, I’d be a terrible CEO. I, I would never rise to CEO. Uh uh uh but uh are much brighter, much more empathic, much better listeners. She’s, that’s another thing that comes out in hers is listening, listening to your peers, uh even those who are working for you, you know, you may not consider them your honor lateral peers. But listening, listening is III, I would listen up to the point where somebody says no. And I, I can’t, I just, I don’t take no. Well, I don’t react well to no. And I think too, I mean, you’re from New York. Let’s just talk about that. Right. Right. But on the flip side I find with fundraising, you know, we get tired of explaining ourselves. Right. I don’t know about you. But, and I know your work, but I mean, how many times do I have to repeat the best practices? I’m I have a client right now who, who I’m trying to get to do two appeal letters a year. Like do I have to, you know, blue in the face, trying to explain why two appeals is better than one appeal a year and how much time that takes so that the ability to listen in that moment. My invitation is rather than go defensive. But I think Heather did well was to listen with empathy and try to understand the objection like we do with major gaps. What’s the objection that I can then address? And I also find I my, some of my language is pilot projects. Let’s test it. I use words that make people feel more comfortable. So we don’t have to do two appeals for the rest of our lives because they can’t imagine that. But they can imagine trying it. Right. So that visionary piece and I, I really feel for the frustration. We are almost always as fundraisers. The Lone, The Lone Voice, um which is why we need community and why we need radio shows and why we need to, to, you know, read each other’s stories and, and get jazz like I’m just so pumped right now. Right. We’re, we’re getting to unpack this stuff and, and talk about it normalize it. Let’s make the uh the final essay that we talk about. Let’s make it the Jenny Mitchell essay. Uh because this is another key takeaway about, you know, yours is called, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna tell you a story. Yours is called No. Right way. What’s it? What’s that all about? Yeah, I had this perception that there was some right way of doing leadership and when I arrived there, I would know type a, can you say much? And I, I really felt very frustrated with the, the leadership books because they would just kind of spew best practices and they would, you know, give you frameworks and da da, da, da, da da and I’m a big reader. Um I love to read, I love different ideas. I’m an idea generator. But the experience I had was being a chair of a board on a very challenging board at a very challenging time. I give myself grace on those that there were a lot of transitions sidebar. One of the things that happened was we were an institution that had been around since 1881 we had restructured in 1939 under a new share structure. And because of governance, basically nothing had changed until t uh 26 months before I took over. So I’ve been on the board during this governance transition. And so I kept saying we were 100 year old birth into this new organization. And so the story talks about me, I’m, I’m gonna say, trying to lead, trying to lead the way I thought leadership was supposed to be done. And, and a lot of that came from books. You are a big reader, you were reading, it comes out a couple of times and you how many leadership books you were reading? Yeah, because, you know, I must have been able to find a solution. I’m a smart girl, I should be able to figure this out, right? But the problem is, is you’re always wearing somebody else’s coat when you do that and you’re not showing up as your authentic self. And one of the things I talk about is how I over prepared for everything. I mean, I over, over, over prepared. I had agendas, I had sub agendas. I had where I to get to where I didn’t want to get to. Um of course, being a relationship based person because of my background, um it was very important to me. I think I did a great job on team. Not something I think is a real strength of mine with that group. And so they were able to come with me on things. But internally I was super stressed to the point where I was, I was having panic attacks and that’s what I talk about in the story. Have the 12 women gotten together again since that, since that first meeting. So in Toronto we got as close as we could, we had nine of the 12 in Toronto for the launch. Um We’re in conversations about an audio book. I think that would be super cool because we have all those different voices in different wilts. Um And I’m learning that there are more and more people um listening to audio books which really bodes well. So we have a tentative for the New Year in 2025 to come together for a conference and do the recordings. Um Maybe there’ll be a spa day just saying more wine. Yeah. Ab absolutely. Yeah. Oh, that would be, I think that would be fabulous if, if, if you could get all 12 together and they will call on our group chat. We call ourselves the Magnificent 12 which I really love um unexpected, that sense of camaraderie that has stayed from this project. It is not, it is stronger today than it was. I, I’d say every single one the women is, is there for them whenever anything happens. Um And there’s been some, some bumps in the road and I’d like to think that this model of book, I’m putting it out to the universe right now. You know, the topic could change but the framework could stay, you know, you could do a book on women’s women in politics. I think you could do a book on, uh, you know, conservationists. Like, I think there’s a way and not like using examples of conservationists, not their work as researchers and, you know, what they study, but how they feel about the environment and, and why the environment matters to them. And I, so I think it’s a really cool model. I’m not seeing anybody else doing it. Um And I think it really gives a wonderful reader experience. Let’s talk about your, your takeaways, like your top three or four things. You know, you, you were talking, if you were talking to an audience of emerging leaders, even current leaders. The book is, the book is, is uh I think relatable to both whether you’re in your twenties thirties or in your fifties, sixties uh as an emerging or current CEO or in somewhere in the C suite. Um What are your, what are your top takeaways? Number one, nobody is gonna advocate for your career the way you can advocate for your own career. So don’t put your career in somebody else’s hands. Number two, it’s OK to take up space to ask questions to challenge the status quo. Um And it will probably be expected of you. And number three. The only person that has to believe in you is actually you, when you make that choice for yourself to decide that you’re gonna show up as a leader, all these subtle shifts happen in your behavior the way you are and people notice and people change and people receive you differently. It’s beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny Jenny Mitchell, chief visionary officer at uh cavender. Tell us the story of uh Chander. Why, why? What’s a, what’s a, I never caught one. What’s a cha? Yeah. So a cha is actually a fish. It’s a sort of a colloquial name for a fish, kind of like a chub, a very generic fish. But it lives on the east coast uh between like Boston and uh Nova Scotia in those we call those Georgia banks. And this fish is incredibly adaptable so it can live in fresh water, it can live in salt water, it can live when the water gets all murky. Um It can live at the convergence of the brininess that you have when you have uh fresh water and saltwater together. And I thought what a fantastic analogy for the work of leadership and not for pro we adapt, adaptability, we survive and we get better and we evolve. Her book is embracing ambition, empowering women to step out, be seen and lead. You’ll find her on linkedin, Jenny Mitchell and her company is at chander.com, Jenny. Thanks so much, real genuine pleasure. Thank you. Pleasure. And just for your listeners, the book is available on Amazon. So, um I really appreciate this conversation. It’s been, it’s been really fun. Tony. I’m glad. Thank you next week, community and engagement with Michelle Boggs. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com who are 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. Fast, flexible, friendly fundraising forms. I still I can’t help it. I love that alliteration. I think you should just start doing it from now on. You can take the whole section right there and buy pork bun, looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility pork bun.com. You’re just trying to get out of work. Caught me there. I’m on vacation. You could take that one back to work. 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 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 August 19 2024: “The Responsive Nonprofit”

 

Gabe Cooper: “The Responsive Nonprofit”

That’s Gabe Cooper’s new book. He walks us through the 8 core practices that will disrupt the status quo and make your nonprofit responsive. Like dismantling silos, adopting agile methods, managing change, building a durable team culture, and more. Gabe is CEO of Virtuous.

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. If you scarred me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce the show. Hey, Tony, I’m on it. The responsive nonprofit. That’s Gabe Cooper’s new book. He walks us through the eight core practices that will disrupt the status quo and make your nonprofit responsive like dismantling silos, adopting agile methods, managing change, building a durable team culture and more. Gabe is ceo of virtuous on Tonys. Take two hail from the gym who talks like this 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 and buy pork bun. Looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com. Here is the responsive nonprofit. It’s a pleasure to welcome Gabe Cooper to nonprofit radio. He is the founder and CEO of virtuous the responsive nonprofit CRM and marketing platform, helping nonprofits build lasting relationships with their donors. He’s the author of the book, the Responsive Nonprofit Eight Practices that drive nonprofit innovation and impact. It’s his book that brings him to nonprofit radio. You’ll find the company at virtuous.org and Gabe is on linkedin, Gabe Cooper. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Tony. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m glad you are. Oh, congratulations on your book, which came out just a couple of months ago. Congratulations. Yeah, I appreciate it. It was, uh, it was a fun one to write. For sure. Well, we’re gonna talk about the, uh, responsive nonprofit and, uh, the eight, those eight practices that will, uh, help you be responsive. Can you just give us an overview of what, what it means uh, for you, for virtuous, for a nonprofit to be responsive? Yeah, it’s a great question. So, excuse me, I’d written a book a few years ago called Responsive Fundraising. And the purpose of that book was to help nonprofits connect more personally with donors. So, what we, what we were seeing is many of the nonprofits we were working with would send out the same email newsletter to everybody. The same direct mail appeal to everybody, all of their donors would get exactly the same thing. And it felt, uh, pretty impersonal honestly, donors were giving for very personal reasons, what they felt like they were getting back from their nonprofit was kind of this spray pre marketing like, does this organization really know who I am? And so we were really pushing into, hey, I in the world we live in nonprofit should be able to build more personal relationships with donors at scale. Like that’s possible using some of the modern technology. I think what we found over the last couple of years is most nonprofits really want that. They hear me say that and they’re like, yeah, we want, we, you know, we just don’t have the staff, we don’t have the time to really do that. And, but the other thing we found is is just changing. Innovation is really hard. A lot of the things that prevented nonprofits from really building more personal relationships with donors is like, innovation is hard. We’ve done things the same way for the last 20 years. Moving to this new paradigm, we just don’t know where to start, right. So this new book response of nonprofit is really eight practices of innovation all designed around as a nonprofit. How do I move toward innovating more quickly, changing more effectively? How do I build a culture that can actually pivot quickly with the times so that we can provide better relationships with donors and drive generosity. You talk about disrupting the status quo early on, early on in the book. Uh your introduction, I believe is where so uh but these things are, these things are scary I mean, people, people don’t like change. Organizations are a collection of people that, you know, if the people don’t like change and fear change and innovation, then the organization is going to yet. You wanna, you, you want us to disrupt the status quo? Yeah. And I, I think it’s, it’s necessary. I mean, there’s this uh a concept called Martex Law which says, um technology uh increases exponentially. So if you think the internet came out when at the very end of high school for me, right? But if you think there was like the internet and then quickly after there’s like myspace and social media and then there’s a smartphone and then you have social media on smartphones and you have Uber and airbnb and then you have A I and, and each of these technologies stacks on the one before and it moves faster and faster and faster. The problem is organizations evolve linearly, right? So most nonprofits like way we got to get like 3% better every year. Well, the problem is now you have technology that’s increasing at an exponential rate, nonprofit that’s growing at 3% a year. And you have this widening gap and all of a sudden nonprofits look around, they’re like, man, I don’t, we’re not rel relevant for the world we now live in, right? The changes out pa outpaced us and so disrupting the status quo is more than just, you know, we could potentially do something different here. It’s almost like our lives, depend on us being able to adapt more quickly. I think we saw that a lot during COVID. Right. For the first time, I think, you know, nonprofits, you hear the word pivot more than any other word during COVID. And I think some of that is fortunately continue to echo after COVID where nonprofits realize, man, we’re gonna have to be able to change and adapt more quickly to the world around us and, and part of that’s dismantling what we’ve done in the past, killing the status quo, right? And, and being willing to try new stuff. Yeah, you quote someone in the book, uh a woman who says, I, I’ve never heard the word pivot so often as I did throughout the, throughout the pandemic. Uh you have a quote that, uh I, I really think captures what you’re talking about. Uh uh after every chapter title, there’s a quote and uh after the, um the chapter on managing change, which we will get to one of the, one of the practices uh in times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists from Eric Hoffer. I don’t know who Eric Hoffer is, but I think that’s a brilliant quote. Yeah, brilliant quote. I think like the, the, the winners in our current environment, the ones who flourish are the ones that acknowledge. They don’t know anything or they, they don’t know, you know what’s next and it’s the area that’ll survive. Right. It’s the learners and the ones, there’s a similar quote in the book about, um, you know, for the next stage of growth in the next stage that they’re going to be successful. It’s a, it’s more about unlearning what, what, what you thought was true in the past in order to learn the great stuff that’s ahead and curiosity. That’s a, that I, I admire curiosity, curiosity about people, curiosity about the future. Uh curiosity about the present even, I mean, even just managing ma understanding what uh what’s, what’s right in front of us today. Uh I think requires a AAA curiosity. Um II, I admire that, that trait. Um So let’s talk about the, the eight core practices, please. And uh your, your first one is uh dismantling team silos and increasing transparency. But I really would like to start with your story of your wife to be pushing your Mustang and uh how that relates to dismantling team silos, please. Yeah. Oh, it’s so funny. So you guys have probably experienced this. Our listeners have probably experienced this is where um you’re in a nonprofit. Uh you know, if it’s super small, just a couple of people, this probably doesn’t apply. But once you start getting bigger, you start having kind of silos that develop, you know, your fundraising team doesn’t talk to your program team as much as they used to and my wife’s organization. The problem was the, the fundraising team and executive team set on the other side of the parking lot from the program team and nobody ever, like walked across the parking lot to see what program people were doing. And it’s just these silos begin to form. You have like data silos where uh our finance data doesn’t talk to our fundraising data, doesn’t talk to our, our program data and they just harden and Little Kingdoms begin to form. And so the car example is there because at most organizations, what ends up happening is, is one or two team members will take it upon themselves to become superheroes and put on capes. Right? Well, you gotta, you gotta share the story of Farrah pushing the car. Come on. Don’t, don’t hold out, don’t hold out on uh nonprofit radio listeners. Well, the story of what your wife to be was doing, it’s an embarrassing story, but it’s in the book, you got it in the book. It’s not like I found it in some dark corner. You wrote it in the book. So please tell the story. So I had this four cylinder mustang, this horrible car, it looked like a mustang on the side, but on the inside it was not a mustang. And the thing, the only way to get it started was to push it and, you know, sort of throw it into gear as it’s moving and first gear is a manual, a manual shift. You had to put it into first gear whilst, so my, my sweet now wife, I was dating her at the time. She wouldn’t rain or shine. She’d have to get out of the car, pushing the car. I would pop it into gear, get it going. And she’d run along the side of the car. Dukes of Hazard style, jump in the door and off. We’d go right. So that was, that was the early stage of our dating relationship. But it seemed like just such a great metaphor for what I see. So many nonprofit professionals doing, which is, you know, pushing the car running alongside the car, jumping in just being heroes when they don’t need to be heroes to compensate for the disconnects within the organization, doing everything that needs to be done when it’s not the most efficient. But, you know, the, the lights have to be kept on and, and the people have to be served. So I put on my cape. You use the, you talk about in the book, the, the superhero wearing the cape. That’s right. That’s exactly right. Um And, but also, you know, she was willing to uh break down the silos. I mean, a girlfriend that’s not, that’s not a typical responsibility for uh uh e especially in just a dating relationship. You know, getting your car started after the dinner that hopefully you paid for. At least you bought her. I would hope that you at least bought dinner before the, before these car pushing in the rain episodes, at least pay for the dinner. I should hope. All right. Uh, but, yeah, but she, you know, that’s outside, that was outside the, uh, the girlfriend’s silo. That’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. There’s, and that, that’s what we see. Like, you know, the most effective nonprofits that we work with. Realize, like, you can’t have one or two staff members be the heroes that close the gap that do all the unnatural things that shouldn’t be done. That’s outside of the role just to make the thing keep running right. And so, so much of that is, is about and can, can we just have better systems? So our fundraising, our comms team, our program team are working together in lockstep. Do they have shared goals are going after together? Is, do they have shared data across the organization? Can everybody see what’s going on? Are you holding your entire team accountable? So everybody’s pulling their weight. Are, are there any efficiencies in your system that you need to be able to correct for? So you’re not, you know, risking staff burnout because you have one or two heroes that are running beside the car and pushing. Right. So, and it’s critical, especially as your organization starts scale or starts getting older, like these things just inevitably happen, you, you talk about the it silos and, and fundraising silos. Give one of the examples of the uh of fundraising silos and what we can do to break these down. Yeah. One of the bummers that I experienced early in my career and, and I’m sure you’ve seen this too, Tony is that sometimes fundraisers are seen as a necessary evil within the organization. They’re kind of like the sleazy c side of the house that, you know, I guess they, they have to go get money so we can do the real work of the organization and the cause and, and I hated that stereotype, I think, you know, I’m on boards and I do fundraising all the time. But I think generosity is part and parcel to the mission of the organization. It’s not, you know, it’s not we fundraise because we have to, to get the real work of the mission done. It’s like actually building generosity in the world is good in and of itself, it’s good and it’s part of the organization. And so I saw a lot of silos were just like we put the fundraising team in a corner. They don’t really interact with everybody else because they’re kind of doing the dirty work of the mission. And so you begin to have this silo built up, you know what I, I think I mentioned the book, but one of the things that I’ve seen several organizations do I think is just amazing is they have people on the program team calling think donors and they have people in the fundraising team participating in program, right? It’s just that actually putting on the shoes of the other person and doing these simple things that can begin breaking down these walls is, is amazing. The best organizations I know fundraising program, communications all start to get blurred in this really beautiful way when you’re doing it. Well, its time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to the responsive nonprofit. You, you cite one nonprofit where even where everyone has to be in the the customer support uh role for two weeks, even, even the lawyers, the new corporate lawyers for the organization, they spend the first two weeks, they spend two weeks uh on boarding in the customer support role. Zappos is the shoe company Amazon. In the early days, you could, if you were hired as an attorney at Zappos, they would make you do customer support calls your first two weeks. It’s just amazing, right? It creates so much empathy across the organization. In the case of a nonprofit, it really brings your donors to the front. So now your program team is getting to talk with these people that are, are giving their hard earned money and time every month to support your cause. And the pro program team gets to see that firsthand. It just, it’s magical and this could be done, you know, in uh like a, a ride along for a day or, you know, shadow for a day or a couple of days so that you would build the, the empathy that, that you mentioned. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. The, the, it one is a little bit different that the, it, unfortunately, it, and some nonprofits has just become, they’re, they’re seen as like the bottleneck or the killjoy, right. We wanna kill all, do all this stuff and it has a backlog and we can’t get it done, which is for as a, I’m a computer programmer by trade. So that’s a frustrating stereotype for me. Right. But um there’s several ways, one of the, the things that we’ve seen the best organizations do is actually empower the individual teams to make their own technology decisions rather than having to run everything through it. We were even talking with the folks at Microsoft last week and they’re seeing Microsoft is seeing the most innovation in A I right now from non technical people, right. So with the Microsoft nonprofit team when they go into nonprofits say who’s, who’s doing really cool things with a I it’s never coming out of it. It’s coming from the fundraising team or the program team, right? And that’s like, and the more we can think about sort of empowering the entire team as technology decision makers rather than like keeping that entire burden on the it professionals, the better we’re gonna be, you mentioned, uh goal setting, uh you know, shared, having shared goals and that leads to the, your, your second practice, which is metrics and quarterly goal setting. And you tell us what’s your thinking here? Yeah, I, you know, one of the things is that you’re never going to be successful as an organization and you’re never gonna be able to pivot unless everybody at the organization is very clear on the target that we’re aiming at together, right? And so which requires two things. It requires really good reporting, you know. So if you say as an organization a to be successful, we need to increase donor retention by 20% this year. Like we’re not gonna be able to hit our number and accomplish our mission unless we do that. But if you don’t, if you can’t report on that number in a meaningful way and allow everybody in your organization to see it unless they know that it’s important, you’re just never gonna get there. It’s way too opaque. I’ve been a part of way too many nonprofits that don’t, they just don’t know their number. They don’t, they can’t see the data, they don’t know what they’re chasing after. So decisions end up being made by leadership or whoever has the loudest voice at the table. They’re not data informed their decisions, they’re just whoever has the strongest opinion. Right. And that it, it is a recipe for disaster because you end up wasting a lot of time on the wrong things that don’t actually move the needle. So a lot of what we talk about in the book is, is frameworks for setting clear goals quarterly. A lot of nonprofits have started to adopt E OS the entrepreneurial operating system as a way to set quarterly goals and sort of operationalized goal setting in the organization. Um or there’s a framework as well called OKRS objectives and key results that does the same thing. But basically both of them say like, hey, every quarter, we need to know the 3 to 5 numbers we’re shooting for, you know, whether it’s program outcomes, it could be donor retention, it could be new donor acquisition, it could be starting that plan giving program that we’ve always wanted to do. You set clear goals quarterly, right? And everybody knows what success looks like, they know the number and those goals should actually filter down. It’s not just that an exercise for the executive team in the board. I I feel like I should be able to walk to any employee of a nonprofit, any individual contributor and say, what’s your number? And they should know, hey, the reason I’m getting receipts out within 10 days is because when I do that, I know I increase donor satisfaction, I increase likelihood of second gift in this number. We want to increase second gift retention by 25%. So I’m playing a big part in us hitting that number, right? Like everybody at the org should know how they’re contributing to that, that quarterly goal. And I just find it’s, it’s just too rare in nonprofits, especially small to mid size nonprofits having that sort of discipline around. This is where we’re going and we’re all in lockstep getting there together. Quarterly. Feels just right. It feels like a month is, is not enough time to achieve anything. Semi annual. We could be slipping and not and not know it and it could end up being too late. I don’t know, quarterly just feels, feels perfect. 90 days is enough time to get something done. Right. And it’s, and, and you can now look back and make adjustments for the next quarter as needed. Right. A lot of this too is, is, takes executive leadership in bringing your board along because a lot of times boards are calibrated to sort of annual plans and as nonprofits, we all know that we get like halfway into the year and everything goes to hell in a hand basket or things change. Right. So it’s even calibrating board and leadership to understand, you know, this is what we’re going after this quarter and the next quarter and the next quarter and it gives us permission to pivot and sometimes even stretch further than we thought we could halfway through the year. Let’s move to uh agility, the agile, your practice three, the agile nonprofit. What, what is the uh agile methodology comes out of software development, doesn’t it? It does. And it’s been applied. There’s this great TED talk on, on a guy that started using agile for his family, like his parenting and, and, and doing stuff at home. And so it’s, it’s used broadly. It’s used a lot in marketing right now. Actually, um Agile is just the concept that, hey, we’re, we’re gonna work in small teams and on projects and we’re gonna work in two weeks, spreads, right? And so this is especially powerful in marketing and fundraising teams and nonprofits where uh you want to test new ideas or launch a new program. So rather than saying, hey, we’re gonna lock ourselves in the room for the next six months and hopefully, what we come out on the other side will work instead of doing that, we’re gonna work in, in two weeks, sprints where we’re going to see how much we can accomplish in two weeks that we could test at the end of two weeks. And so, you know, maybe as a nonprofit, you have this hypothesis. Hey, I think our donors care way more about video stories than they do all about all the stats we’re shoving down their throat. It’s like, well, we don’t have to wait six months to figure that out. In the next two weeks, we could create a video. How could we test? So what we could run, run on social media side by side, split test to see what works and what doesn’t work. It allows you to break up work into two week chunks plan that work, execute on it. Everybody comes back at the end of two weeks and shares what they’ve done and what they’ve learned, which is incredibly important because you have this like continuous learning loop that allows you to make pivots on the fly rather than just wasting time working on stuff that will never bear fruit. And the uh agility also not surprising. It starts with, with goals with shared goals and the goals toward the, to I guess toward the two week sprints, I guess not, I guess towards the two week sprints. Right? I, I know, I know, I know, I like to, I like your time period, the quarterly goal setting, the two week sprint. I don’t know. I just like the idea of a sprint. You know, even if, even if, even if it crashes and burns and you didn’t meet the goal you still have learned and you’ve only, and it’s only taken 22 weeks to learn a lesson. Well, now it turns out they do like the statistics better than what we thought would be the engaging video. But our, you know, it turns out that our intuition was incorrect. Our audience more prefers uh what we think is bland over what we think is engaging. But now we know, so let’s focus more on numbers and we don’t need, you don’t need to produce so much video, you know, that’s counterintuitive. But, but you, you, it’s valuable to learn that, you know, all your assumptions, whatever they may be, however, you know, how strongly we hold them could very well be wrong. And you can, you so many of those you could test in just in two weeks, a little sprint. That’s right. That’s right. I always encourage organizations to use the word hypothesis. It sounds like a goofy scientific word. But you’re h uh hh zero H one. That’s right. Yeah. So it’s what our reach not. That’s right. So you have a board member, hey, direct mail doesn’t work, right? It’s like, well, we have a hypothesis. Direct mail doesn’t work. Could we test that? Hypo? Let’s not assume even best practices here. All these best practices, nonprofit space, well, sometimes best practices are best practice because they are our best practices. Sometimes somebody just said it a long time ago and nobody bothered to test it at this organization. And so let’s hold those loosely as a hypothesis. Let’s see how quickly we can test, learn from them and then pivot to what actually works. Anything else you want to say about, uh, agility? It’s, there’s, there’s a ton more in the book. I mean, the bumper practices is it just, you can’t deep dive into any of them too much. But if you’ve never tried sort of that like an agile approach of two week sprints, like, find, don’t, you don’t have to roll at all. Just find one team at your nonprofit, two or three people with a project you’re working on, they can test it out. I promise you, you’re gonna be thrilled with the results and, and want to adopt it. But just start with a project with a small group of folks and give it a shot and see how it goes. And there are hundreds of books on uh the agile methodology. Um OK. Human centered design practice for being human centered. You talk about uh as an example here, water.org the, the way they uh did empathy gathering brought, brought constituent opinions in te tell us that little water.org story. Yeah. Water orgs this great org. Um Matt Damon is one of the founders. So they have all this kind of, you know, big star appeal and that kind of thing, what they found was uh just funding water projects like wells. The kind of thing that typical orgs do was good, but really fixing this problem required big systemic change, large capital investments working with governments, all of the kind of big buzzwords that are really hard to pitch to donors, you know, because the donor wants to feed a child or dig a well, they don’t want to invest in systemic, you know, 10 year initiatives. And so uh what water.org does did to solve this problem is to rather than assume they knew all the right answers. They actually spent a ton of time doing what’s called empathy gathering in Human Centered Design, which is effectively just going out and, and interviewing their stakeholders, their donors, their other constituents and saying like, you know, like, why would you give to water.org? Like what makes you tick like? And, and they use this Toyota Practice. There’s a ID O is the big company that does Human Centered Design, but a lot of them use Toyotas ask why five times. And so it’s uh I give an example of my 10 year old daughter in the book where I say, you know, she says, you know, why is this guy blue? Well, because this, well, why? Well, because this, why and she’ll just keep asking why to get to the heart of the thing, right? That’s what empathy gathering is. Don’t assume that you know why your donors give, why your volunteers volunteer even on the program side, don’t assume that you’re making the biggest impact in your community just because you’ve always done it a certain way, like take time to really be empathetic to ask open ended questions. Don’t assume you know the answers and ask why. So that’s exactly what water.org did and found some have found multiple really creative approaches to connecting with donors around some of these initiatives. But it just in human centered design, generally, it’s like starting from the ground up being empathetic to the communities that you’re serving in your donors. Like actually asking them questions. One of the things that I’ll recommend a lot to nonprofits is I know it sounds crazy, but I call 100 donors and don’t, you’re not calling them to ask them for money to get anything out of them, just have a conversation and ask great questions. What made you give, give? Like what, what did you find appealing about our organization? Like, you know, what was the thing? And just that simple little thing can be transformative in how you think about fundraising or your organization in general. Again, the assumptions that we hold so dear. I just know it. I just know it’s true. Well, you, you believe it, you believe it to be true. It’s time for a break or b.com named the number one domain registrar by USA today for 2023 and 2024. Pork bun helps you share your organization’s mission with a.org domain name dot org. And the entire.org family of domains are at the heart of change makers and philanthropies worldwide. Join an international community of individuals and organizations sharing a common goal to make the world a better place. Your.org domain name gives your website credibility is easy to remember and helps bring better awareness to your goals. Every domain at Pork Bun comes with free features like who is privacy ssl certificates, web and email hosting trials and more. You can manage everything about your domain from one place backed by five star support. 365 days a year, Get your.org domain name for a low price at pork bun.com. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I’ve got more tails from the gym. II, I don’t know if this is a Southern thing or, you know, the way folks talk, uh adults, we’re talking about adults older than me. I mean, these, these uh these are guys uh 7070 plus it could be 75. Um And you know, of course I’m overhearing because I just like to do my work at the gym. I’ll say, you know, polite hellos, but I like to get my work done and depart because I have things to do the rest of the day because I go to the gym in the morning. Uh So it’s not like I’m conversing with these guys at all. I’m just overhearing because they have loud voices. And so one of the things, uh he was uh a guy was saying that uh he was talking about dancing, they were out for, you know, I got to hear the whole story, right? He and he and his wife were out dancing and uh they were, they had met somebody or they were, they were with somebody younger. It wasn’t clear whether they had met them or come with them. But, and he was dancing with the, the younger woman and, and he said, I maybe could have kept up with her if I was 20 years younger, I maybe could have. I, I don’t know, I, I could have, I think what the English that he’s trying to express is I could have, I could have kept up with her if I was 20 years younger, but I maybe could have, it’s just not proper English. And then the other one, same guy different day, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m putting a couple of different uh gym days together. He um had a neighbor wanted to cut, trim some trees, but I gather the trees were growing on this guy’s property. My, my uh loud gym person property. But, you know, there were the branches were over on the neighbor’s property. So, uh the neighbor had asked, you know, could I cut them? And he said, uh to the neighbor that uh it don’t make me know. Never mind. I was what? Uh it don’t make me know, never mind who talks like this. II, I don’t hear these, these idioms. I don’t know. Uh again, you know, it’s one person but maybe I’m overreacting. I don’t know, it don’t make me know. Never mind how they talk. That is Tonys take two date. He kind of sounds like he would make a very good brisket at a barbecue. He sounds like a very, that is, that is the southern, that is a southern skill. We’re actually a couple of towns over there’s an annual barbecue competition and festival. Um, uh, what town is that? I can’t remember the town but barbecue is very big down here. Yeah. Uh good, very good observation. Yeah. Uh He, he might very well. I’ll, I’ll be listening out for his barbecue recipe. Well, we’ve got VU but loads more time. Here’s the rest of the responsive nonprofit with Gabe Cooper. Your fifth practice is managing change. This is where you have the, uh the quote in the, on the opening page of the chapter about uh finding yourself beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. Uh The learned versus the learners who are uh inheriting the earth. Um In, in this, in this practice, you’re talking about AAA shared vision, shared skills incentives, share your, share your thinking about the best, you know, best work around managing change, which is a cha uh which is a constant, uh you know, it’s a, it’s a cliche now to say it. And I won’t, I won’t get into all the sort of the techniques and, and tricks of this practice. But the big people have to buy the book, you gotta, you gotta leave something to buy the book, you gotta buy the book. I mean, we can, we can scratch the surface here in an hour and wet, uh, appetites. But, you know, if you want to, if you want the, the detail, we, you know, we just don’t have that kind of time, you’re gonna have to buy the book and it’s, it’s worth buying. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. But this is a big one, right? Because nonprofits, you, you get to the point where you see where you need to go. Everybody sees that aspirational reality out ahead. And everybody’s clear on this is where we need to go as an organization where it gets stuck is ch the change required within the organization. Everybody’s gonna have to do their job slightly different than they did a year ago. And that’s hard, right? Because everybody’s cheese is being moved and everybody gets a little bit uncomfortable, um, with what’s going to be required of them in whatever the new normal looks like. And so a lot of this just revolves around, you know, how do you get team alignment early on and cast a clear vision for where we’re going? So everybody knows where we’re going. How are you asking the right questions along the or around the organization to make sure that you’re not inadvertently gonna create a real problem that you don’t anticipate? Like, how do you set a culture where people are adaptable and curious and they want to change and they want to get better. Right. And then how do you assign the right ownership and accountability through change where you’re not all of a sudden just asking somebody to work 80 hours a week, you know, to get there? But how do you create realistic deadlines with accountability? And so everybody’s moving in the same direction in a predictable way. It sounds, you know, a little bit, you know, maybe uh boring or mechanical. But this really is the thing for many nonprofits, they know where they want to go. It’s just really hard to pivot. It’s hard to change. Virtuous has uh an audacious vision as a company. Well, why don’t you share what that is? So, um we want to create $10 billion in that new generosity in the world, right? We, we think that if we can help nonprofits level up how they communicate with donors, um how personal they can be. We think that, you know, people, there’s this famous quote that says donors aren’t ungenerous, they’re just distracted. Right? And right now, giving is roughly 2.7% of GDP in the US. We think it could be way bigger and we think nonprofits can, you know, can contribute and more and more uh interesting and um sort of um complex ways than they are today and we want to be a part of that story, right? So we look at all the data for the organizations on our platform. Um And we see how they’re able to tilt up after they adopt responsive fundraising and they adopt our platform and we measure how much they’ve grown generosity. So to this point, we’ve generated about a billion dollars in that new generosity in the world that’s measurable across all of our customers. We don’t think that’s enough, we want to get to 10 billion just because we have such a passion for generosity in general. Now you said earlier that anybody in the organization should know their number. So what as, as ceo at virtuous, what, what is your number? Yes. Well, my number is that $10 billion. It’s, it’s interesting that you said that I talk a little bit about this in the culture chapter of practice in the book. But um when a new employee starts at virtuous, I don’t start with like the pithy values that, you know, sound kind of trite and fun and sound like they should be printed on a copy mug actually start with the Economic Engine of our business. And I explained to every new employee, this is how all the numbers work like this is how I if you’re in customer success, I want this much retention. I want this score and customer satisfaction. I want in our quarterly business reviews with our customers. I want them to give us this grade and if you can hit these numbers, it’s going to create happy customers that stick around. It’s going to create more successful customers that can increase, giving 5% a year. You know, they spread that out across x thousands of customers. It gets us to 10 billion in generosity. So before I have one single conversation about values, you should know how my job is gonna contribute. My number is gonna contribute to our number. And then I talk about our values in the context of that. It’s a, it’s a backwards way of thinking about culture, I think for some orgs. But that context I think is so powerful if you can provide it. Well, that’s, that’s your next practice building a durable team culture. What, what do you mean by durable? Um Well, uh one of the biggest issues in nonprofits that I’ve seen is uh people either burn out or check out, right? Nonprofit work is really hard. And so you either put on a cape, you put in too many hours, you burn out the turnover of fundraisers, especially in this country is far too high, you know, or you check out, you just, you know, you start just taking up a seat and mailing it in and you don’t want to change anymore. And so you have to develop a culture that is um adaptable where people want to be a part where you’re able to attract the best and the brightest talent, not just whatever you can get, but people that care deeply about your cause and they’re in it for the long haul, right? And you have to, you have to create this, you say uh great culture doesn’t just build itself. This has to be intentional. II, I assume you’re beginning with leadership and, and, and then eventually it becomes bottom up. But I would think that initially, it’s, it, it starts at the top a 100% a virtuous. I’ll give you an example. We have a cultural road map just like we have a product road map, right? Because we know that we will lose our soul if we don’t uh have a very intentional plan for culture. And so what that means is as we scale, we want the cadences and rhythms of our company to remind everybody why we’re here. So when you go into a meeting at virtuous, when you do your performance review at virtuous, we want our values so embedded in all those cadences, it almost becomes like, you know, to use a religious term like a liturgy that reminds you of why we’re here, why we show up every day and what we’re all about. And, and when you do that, then what the magic that starts happening is now, culture isn’t like a tops down like the executives telling us how we should behave. It’s, it’s bottoms up where you see people that have been here, six months that are individual contributors that are enforcing our culture and they’ll be in a meeting and they’ll call somebody out. Hey, that’s not our culture here, right? Like, and, and that’s really when you start seeing a durable culture, when it’s so sort of ingrained at the ground up, which means as, as leaders you have to be. And, and this happens at nonprofits where we become so focused on the mission that we sort of, it’s at the expense of our team. Like, you know, we’re riding our team, like the people ride a mule through the Grand Canyon and just like, you know, this is gonna get everything we can out of this until it’s done, right? And as opposed to, I wanna be shoulder to shoulder with my team asking them what they need, seeing how they feel, asking them how their weekend was making sure they understand the job that we’re doing here together and they fully embraced our, our culture because without a great team, without the ability to attract and retain great talent, we’re never gonna accomplish our mission. It’s time for a story with uh it doesn’t really belong in this uh this practice area, but I like the story about Cure International. Oh Yeah, you talk about them with related, related to the metrics. But we, we, I felt like I wanted, I wanted to spread out the stories and you were just told the good uh good Mustang story. So uh tell, tell us about Cure. Cure has AAA great CEO um buddy of mine and he uh when he came in and, and took the job, um realized cure was number one, an amazing organization. They’re doing like children’s hospitals globally. They do amazing work, have this great reputation. But also realize that if they really wanted to have the impact, they wanted, they were going to have to tighten up the ship and get way more focused. And so one of the things he uses the E OS framework that I mentioned before of like sort of operational goal setting in the organizations. But the other thing he did is that I loved as, as a, as a new leader, he didn’t assume he had all the answers. So he kind of went on a listening tour around the organization and talked to almost everybody, like, you know, what do you care about? How do you do your job? What are the problems you’re facing? A lot of what we talked about in human centered design. So as a leader, just really empathy. That’s right. And, and then use that empathy to a line up to their overall strategy where they’re going as an organization. One of the even the hard decisions he had to make was he realized the organization was doing a lot of stuff that was off mission. It, you know, stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. And now they have 20 little like side projects that are just hanging off of the, the core mission. What, what they want to create. And as long as they’re dragging around the baggage of like 20 things that they’re doing that are good but not great. Right. And, and they’re like kind of aligned to the mission but not really, they’re just gonna never get to where they want to be. And so a big part of what he did after he kind of did his empathy gathering was he went through and began to cut projects and programs or fold those in to the mission in a way that lined everybody up. So everybody’s marching in lockstep together which at an organization, the size of c is no joke, right? As this is a year, a multiyear initiative, but was just so impressed by his thoughtfulness, not just being a leader that comes in and says, this is where we’re going, we’re quitting all this dumb stuff, you know, but instead taking the time to truly listen and get to know everyone across the organization and align everybody together. I like that concept of alignment. You know, it just to me, it, it embodies the shared goals, the shared vision, everyone walking together, helping each other. There’s a, there’s a lot of that in your book too. The team support, you know, that’s uh uh that, that, you know, in, in stand up meetings, you know, how can I help you? Uh uh uh a, a big part of the stand up meeting you talk about is you know, what, what, what obstacle have I gotten and who can help me do it, who can help me overcome it and we can take care of it probably in the next 30 minutes versus a bunch of emails back and forth. And nobody really understands the, the issue as well is if we just talk about it right now in our meeting 100 yeah, 100%. You know, and that it’s, it’s not all like, you know, rainbows and roses and all the time. You got as a leader, you have to make really hard decisions. You just, you do. But if you’ve taken the time to actually collaborate with people and, and build trust and they understand why, like why are we going into direction or what goal are we trying to accomplish? Those hard decisions? Get way easier and they make way more sense as opposed to just dictating from the top. This is where we’re going. You’ve, you’ve earned the right to make the hard decision if that makes sense. Mhm Community and storytelling. Yeah. As uh as the drivers of change. But uh what, what struck me here is that the long haul? And you’ve, we’ve started around this. But uh I like to focus on that explicitly that this so much of what we’re talking about is the long game. Even, even if it’s a two week sprint, there’s a lot of two week sprints long game, you know, that, that commitment. That’s right. Yeah. And in community is definitely a long game kind of thing. But, you know, at a, at a ton of the works that we work with the issue becomes, hey, we just don’t have enough resources to pull this off. We don’t have enough staff to pull this off. You know, maybe you have 10 people on your team, 20 people on your team. I’m like, yeah, but you have 10,000 raving fans in the world that love your mission and want to make a difference. Like you have all of the resources at your fingertips. You just have to work to catalyze. And so, you know, I, I tell the story in the book of the Kony 2012 video and uh uh a lot of you that have been around nonprofits for a long time, like I have probably remember Kony 2012. You probably remember that video. Um But it was this moment where it was youtube’s highest ever viewed video and people that saw it thought this came out of nowhere. This is crazy. How did this get popular so fast? What they don’t see is the years and years before that video came out of people on that team, they were driving, you know, vans around the high schools all over the country, like telling the stories of, of the atrocities of Joseph Kony to kids that just didn’t know anything about it and they were building a community. They were like doing the really hard work of creating a massive movement of people that care deeply about their call. And yeah, it’s the long game. It’s hard work. But if you look at some of the best organizations and even the best campaigns that nonprofits have done, it’s because people have done the hard work to really care about building a community. And so now it’s not just you and your 10 staff members, it’s you and this 10,000 person army behind you that’s willing to do anything for the cause. And the power of that is just amazing. But it takes work and intentionality. You, you have to get out into the community and you have to do the hard work of getting to know people and building that movement. Another example you use is uh food link the way, the way they built community around getting food from, from farms to uh to shelters or kitchens. Yeah. Yeah. The farm lake is amazing because they uh they were started by a couple of kids in college that just solved this problem where farmers had a ton of excess food. And then there was all of these, they’re throwing it away and there’s all these food banks that were short of food, right? And so the amazing thing there is recognizing that your community isn’t just powerful because they have money. I if we see our donors, it’s just checkbooks like it’s, it’s an incredibly like short sighted way to see the world. The magic of what they did is they had, you know, college kids driving around in vans picking up onions. Right. They started with picking up 50,000 eggs that a farmer was going to throw away. So they go rent a van and a truck and go pick it up. That was their first, I think that was their first episode and they were just, you know, uh, young enough and, and hadn’t been sort of part of the institution long enough to not know any better, right? It’s like, well, what do we need, we need somebody to drive a van and pick up some eggs. Well, I can find some people to pick up some eggs, right? They, they saw their community um as not checkbooks. They, they said all of these people have different superpowers. How can we bring together all of these amazing superpowers to accomplish more in the world? Right? And it’s, and, and it’s amazing. I think so many nonprofits can learn from that is like, how do I look at my community? See their unique superpowers and figure out how to plug those in in a meaningful way and it’s, it’s helpful to your org but man, for your donors or volunteers, you, you no longer feel like an outsider who’s giving to this cause like this cause is kind of my proxy for doing good in the world. But I’m not really a part of it all of a sudden you feel like you’re part of it. It’s like, it’s, I don’t have to be a staff member. Like I’m shoulder to shoulder participating in this, in a meaningful way. It completely changes the nature of how you accomplish your mission. Yeah. Yeah. You have a lot of touching stories, uh, that they, they illustrate points but I, I found a bunch of them also moving and that, that food link one especially. Um All right, your last one, I’m sorry. I wish they were. I wish you had 12 because then we’d have, we’d have five more to talk about. But uh we only have one, we only have one more uh generosity gen ops, you get generosity operations, structuring your team for shared insights, what you’re advocating for a new position or in a bigger organization, a new team. What is this? Well, let’s let our, our audience is small and mid-sized nonprofit. So it might be uh it might be a, might be a halftime responsibility or something. But what, what, what’s the idea behind generosity operations and, and the person leading that? Yeah. And it, it probably is more applicable to uh more mid-sized teams honestly. But the, the idea here is that um your constituents interact with your organization in all kinds of different ways. Like you have people who have volunteered, who have also given, who have also uh taken part in your program or, or been a part of your services offering, right? They’re interacting with your org in all sorts of different ways. The problem is if you, if your departments or teams are siloed, you don’t have really any visibility into this. And so this is a team and sometimes you’re right, it can be just call it a committee of a few people working together a few hours every month that are stewarding the entire constituent journey. So they understand some people, hey, are you, do you guys realize 20% of our volunteers give money? It’s like, oh, I had, I had no idea like we should, we should see if we can report on that and figure out why that is right? Or did you realize that um our program team, the the most powerful stories or this kind of story? But our program team doesn’t know that and they’re giving us the wrong kind of stories and we could easily fix that problem. It’s somebody who understands how your stakeholders and constituents interact with your cause. They’re looking at that from a bird’s eye view and they’re connecting the data and dots between departments. And so that people have one single coherent experience with your organization, not a bunch of dis disparate experiences. And so that within your team, data and insights are shared. Yeah, there’s this uh Brian Regan, he’s this goofy stand up comic. He tells a story about, he saw two logging trucks passing one another, both carrying logs on the freeway one going one direction and the other going the other one. And like the guy in the one truck says, hey, you had logs over there. And so the point of the story is, you know, as nonprofits, I think we do that all the time where we realize somebody and some other team is doing something massively similar to us, man. If we just would have shared and communicated better, we get to s save so much time and effort. And so generosity ops is that team that helps optimize data and communication across the org and optimizes a single constituent journey outside of the org. It’s a holistic view. That’s right. You’re right. You’re, you’re taking data. But first of all, you have to have the right, you have to have the right data. There’s a, there’s a key part of being able to enhance generosity uh but taking data from, from across the organization and like you said, you know, sort of connecting dots and discovering learnings or even things worth testing. That’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. These are kind of your, the, the team that really drives innovation and insights across because they’re the ones that are seeing data that’s disconnected. They’re seeing real huge opportunities for growth. They’re able to bubble up those insights to the rest of the team and find sort of unnatural opportunities for growth that if you’re just heads down in fundraising every day or heads down in finance or heads down in it, you’re never going to see it without somebody connecting the dots. All right, Gabe. So, I, uh, dictatorially, uh, you know, chatted us through the, ran us through the, uh, the eight practices. What, what, what, what didn’t we talk about? What, what, what do you want folks to know beyond what we’ve, we’ve said about being a responsive nonprofit and these practices. Yeah, I think one of the things is there’s a lot covered that we just covered and it can sometimes feel really overwhelming like boiling the ocean. Right? And so I’ve, I’ve been into quoting Frozen Two lately, which is, you know, your daughter. It’s a favorite of your nine year old daughter. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah. So it in there, the, the sort of punch line is just do the next right thing, right? And so don’t get overwhelmed by all everything. It just feels like so much I would say just pick a practice. Like the one we talked about with agile. Could we do? Could we try out working in two week sprints to see how fast we could learn? Right? Like, or could or be picked goal setting, man. I don’t think we have clear goals. Can we for, for one team for one quarter? See if we can set some clear goals and go after them, just pick one, do the next right thing. Don’t get overwhelmed with all of it. If you, if you can continually get better in any one of these practices. I can promise you you’re gonna get better as an organization. All right. Thank you. The book is the responsive nonprofit eight practices that drive nonprofit innovation and impact Gabe Cooper, the author. You’ll find the company at virtuous.org. You find Gabe on linkedin Gabe. Thank you very much for sharing so much. Fun. I’m glad. Thank you and congratulations again on the book. Yeah, thanks. Next week, empowering women with Jenny Mitchell. If you missed any part of this weeks 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 and buy pork bun looking to grow your nonprofit. You need a.org domain name from pork bun, instant recognition, trust and visibility. Pork bun.com. 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 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 August 12, 2024: Get Heard In The Election Season

 

Peter PanepentoGet Heard In The Election Season

Peter Panepento returns with savvy advice about getting your messages heard through crowded, noisy channels for the rest of this year. He urges you to prepare your messaging, prepare to pivot away from that messaging, and more. Plus, the value of journalist relationships. Peter comes to us from Turn Two Communications.

 

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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 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 thrown into dentinogenesis if you tried to gum me up with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s coming? Hey, Tony, it’s get heard in the election season. Peter Panepinto returns with Savvy advice about getting your messages heard through crowded noisy channels for the rest of this year. He urges you to prepare your messaging, prepare to pivot away from that messaging and more. Plus the value of journalist relationships. Peter comes to us from turn to communications on Tony’s take two hails from the gym. This is blood and soil were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is get heard in the election season. It’s a pleasure to. Welcome back Peter Panepinto. He is the co founder and managing partner for Turn two, a communications and pr agency specializing in nonprofits, foundations and organizations serving the greater good. He began as a journalist including more than a decade at the chronicle of philanthropy where he advanced to assistant managing editor. You’ll find the company at turn hyphen two.co and Peter is at Key Panopo on X. He’s also on linkedin. Welcome back to nonprofit Radio, Peter. Great to be back, Tony. It’s been a while, but it’s great to see you. I’ve had a chance to, to share the, the microphone with you several times over the years. It’s always great to do this indeed. And our avid listeners will recall that your name, you as a guest were the answer to one of the quiz questions on our 7/100 show. Wow. Yes. Our uh our creative producer Claire Meyerhoff brought uh Claire’s quiz to the 7/100 show and uh it was a quiz for, it was for me. And then all the folks that were with us. This one was directed at me and the, the question was, uh which I believe it was five time guest has initials. That would be funny to a kindergartener. That’s why she did that correct. That’s why she’s the creative producer. I did get, I did get it correct. There aren’t that many people who’ve been on five times and then I thought of uh PP and I knew it. It was. Uh, yes. Do you do? I get like a robe like you do when you’re a five timer on Saturday Night Live or anything like that, or is it? Well, now this is your sixth one? So now you have to wait till 10. There was, we instituted something for five after your fifth. So you didn’t qualify on the fifth and then you’ll, you’ll start something. You have to wait until the 10. I assuming the timing works out. Uh, you’ll, you’ll get a crystal obelisk with 10 if the timing, if the timing is right. So, uh, you have your, uh, biweekly newsletter, your, your, your turn to email newsletter that I’m, I subscribe to and that I think folks should subscribe to where, first of all, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s acquaint folks with how they can get on your newsletter list. So they may, they may learn of future nonprofit radio topics. That’s how I, that’s how this one came. Where do they, where do they find a, you can sign up for the newsletter right on our home page at Turn two.co or you can reach out to me and I’ll gladly get you added there. Um, our, our newsletter is called on Message and you get, um, we, we try to do weekly but it’s, it’s sometimes in the summer it’s biweekly, but you get weekly, uh, pr and communications advice. That’s really spec, you know, specifically focused for people who work in the social good space. So it’s really geared towards people who are working for nonprofits and foundations. And, uh we really try to make it as practical as possible for folks who are wanting to maximize, uh maximize their communications and pr for their organizations on message. OK. And so I’m sorry, I, I, uh, credited you with being always biweekly. I thought it was always biweekly, but I, I read them whenever they come as often as they come. I read them in the summer. So I think it is, it was biweekly now. All right. So that’s very, that’s very gracious of you to say thank you. Uh Saving me. Uh And one of the recent ones uh that you wrote was about uh crisis, communicate well, was about uh not crisis. It was about getting your message heard in our um really presidential election cycle. Uh There’s nine, we’re recording, I believe there are fewer than 90 days left until November 5th. Um a lot. So there’s a lot of messaging around that obviously, uh which could be valuable. We gonna talk about that. There, there could be hooks there for you. Um But just, you know, in a, in a crowded media landscape which is, I think now typical uh to me it’s above average from what it was over. I don’t know. Well, you know, you and I have known each other for about 14 years. I think the level of communications the level of attention grabbing uh by all media and all channels, you know, has, has increased. There are, there are more, there are more places that want our attention and then that’s amplified by the uh presidential cycle that we’re in and nonprofits still have important messages that need to be heard. Absolutely. It, I think you’re absolutely right that it’s becoming increasingly hard or difficult for us to be able to get our messages heard, given the amount of noise that there is out there. And, uh if you think about what has already happened in this presidential election season, um, you know, we’ve had an assassination attempt, we’ve had a, uh, uh, you know, criminal convictions. We’ve had, uh, Joe Biden, you know, doing his bombshell, you know, dropping out of the race, we had the fallout from the first debate. Um If you had tried to, to get all of this into an episode of the West or a season of the West Wing, you would have been told you were jumping the shark on the Republican convention and the, and the democratic convention is coming up in a couple of weeks. Right. Yeah, that hasn’t even happened yet. And this is being recorded. Um, uh So, and, and each and all of these things just create so much noise in the media and in social media that it becomes really hard for nonprofits that are, are vying for the public’s attention to get their voice. Heard you have to, to really be ready to kind of roll with the punches, uh capture opportunities that happen, but also be really willing to kind of scrap your best laid plans in the in the, you know, in the, in the wake of bombshell news as they as it happens. So it really requires you to be both prepared and adaptable. At the same time, you had uh 44 major points in the, in the, the Onmes uh uh uh email that I received that uh stimulated me to email you and say, let’s talk about this on nonprofit radio. And your first one is to um create a new or review your crisis communications plan. You and I talked about crisis communications plans years ago. So we’ll hit a couple of those points. But why, you know, why is that essential now in, in our extra crowded media landscape? Yes. Um It’s really important for organizations to have a crisis, communications or rapid response communications protocol or plan. Uh because um things are happening so quickly. You need to really be equipped to get your message out quickly or make a decision about getting a statement out. Um You know, and, and be able to do it in a way where you can respond while the news is fresh. Um So a lot of organizations will kind of wait for something to happen. Uh They’ll have a discussion about whether they need to put a statement out, they’ll have to get it reviewed by, you know, the, the, uh, executive director and, or board of the organization. And by the time they do all of that they’ve missed the moment, uh, it’s been, you know, days have passed by the time you’ve kind of gone through all those steps and, and you’ve either missed the moment or you’ve gotten run over by what’s happened. 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 response of 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 get heard in the election season, the moment can last like 12 hours. Right. Right. Yes. And then, and then the media has moved on and nobody’s gonna be interested. That’s right. That’s right. And um so we really advise having AAA rapid response protocol in place where you have a clear set of steps that you take in response to some too fast moving news. Um, you kind of know who’s equipped to do what, um you’ve game planned some scenarios and you even have some key messages prepared ahead of time. So that when that moment strikes, you know exactly what to do, you can pull things together quickly and you can get the approvals you need. So you don’t miss the moment. Um So that, that’s the first thing we recommend everybody do um at your organization. And if you have one already, that’s a wonderful thing. It’s probably smart for you to, to, to revisit that a couple times a year, make sure everything’s up to speed that your messages are, are clear and in good shape and that, you know, all the key people who are part of that protocol, know their roles and have kind of done some um some prep work ahead of time and are are kind of ready and practiced and ready to go. Yeah, because a part of that is going to be who the spokesperson or people are. That’s right. You, you, you suggested having messages that are ready, which you know, clearly you may need to tweak based on what it is that’s uh stimulating this, this, this move, this need to do to get into the media. Uh But having something to start with, but who’s going to release them? Is this a and in what form is this social media post. Is this a press release? Is this calling the reporters that hopefully we have relationships with? Right? I mean, what form does it take and who are the people who are doing the work? That’s right. And, and it really helps to game out some of those scenarios and know who’s going to be your spokesman, who’s going to be the person who is putting messages out on social media or by email and even how to decide how to do that. Um We’ve done this with a number of organizations put these plans together and the thing we tend to do is is put together almost a matrix. You know, if this happens, here’s what we’ll do. Um Here are some of the key messages that we’ll want to pull from and, and here’s how we’ll, how, you know what channels we’ll use and what way we’ll, we’ll actually deploy the message based on, based on what’s happening. And you can, you can game some of this out ahead of time and say, all right, this type of thing, you know, is something we would respond to on social media. Um Here, here’s who needs to be involved here, here’s who needs to make the final decision on it and, and just having that in place saves you so much time when, when actual situations arise, what could be some triggers that would stimulate entry into this? Well, one would be um, news that affects your organization or, or is about your organization. So let’s say you’re an organization and um there’s a rumor spreading on social media about one of your key employees or about one of your key donors. Um You’ll wanna definitely get, get the word out quickly. So that uh about what’s true. So that um a rumor or, or some, some, you know, conversation that’s happening about you doesn’t grow legs and become, become a story. Um in the political realm, it might be um one of the political candidates making a major policy statement about your, something that relates directly to your cause and wanting to make sure that you kind of come out and, and talk about what type of policies you think are important uh to make sure that you’re, you know, a accurately and, and, and actively um being a spokesperson or a champion for your cause. So if um if one of the candidates comes out and says that they want to um uh you know, bring back the charitable tax deduction uh for, for anybody who files their taxes rather than just add itemizers, there might be something you want to say there. Uh If one, if you’re an environmental nonprofit and one of the candidates says that, you know, we should just go back to, to um to the old days of not having the EPA, you’ll certainly want to have something to say about that too. So, you know, having, having some key statements in place, um that really validate what you stand for and, and, and how you would respond in, in certain situations can help you respond quickly in situations like that. Using that energy example, makes me think of fracking. But, but I think it really, it had like a six hour moment and, you know, it was, uh one of the candidate. I, I, maybe it was, I think it was Kamala Harris said something she had in the past. She, uh was completely opposed to, uh, fracking, wanted to have a nationwide ban when she was running for president um in that cycle. And, but now she’s, her position has evolved. So if you had something to say about fracking or energy policy, you know, if you saw a hook, you had to act fast because it was not a, it was not a major, you know, it wasn’t like the assassination attempt, but it was in the news, her, her position, some people call it flip flopping. She would say she evolved what it doesn’t matter. Fracking was in the news for a while. So if, if that’s related to you, like, because you’re in Virginia or Pennsylvania and maybe your population is affected by fracking adversely or, or positively, maybe the, maybe the revenues, the stream of revenue from fracking has been, has been valuable for, for your population in southeastern Pennsylvania. Uh You know, so you want to, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t a long cycle before, before fracking was out of the news and then it was old. Yeah, that, that, that’s exactly true. So, you know, being ready for when those, those situations arise so you can capture the moment is really important. Um, and it can be for even bigger things that have longer news cycles. Uh, when, when the Roe decision came down by the Supreme Court, um, I think it was two years ago now. Um, the nonprofits that were ready to respond quickly to that and, and had something in place were the ones that were getting a lot of the media opportunities because they, they had already are, they had their, their statements and, and what they were going to say and their spokespeople ready to go and equipped with what to say. So when that decision came down, they weren’t scrambling. They, you know, they were able to pull from, well, if this, if this decision comes down, here’s what we’re going to say, here’s who we’re going to reach out to. Here’s how we’re going to deploy that message. And they were the ones who were, you know, on television and, and, and putting out statements on social media that we’re getting a lot of attention to. So it can be for something unexpected, like, you know, uh, uh, you know, fracking, you know, being, uh an issue coming out of one of the, the campaigns or it can be kind of a major policy or or court decision that, that, you know, that really connects closely to your cause and, and something that you know is coming. Right. Right. We knew there was going to be a decision about abortion in the United States. That’s right. So you could prepare ahead for that. You can’t prepare ahead for everything that a candidate is going to say, especially a brand new Democratic candidate where we don’t know a lot about what she talks about and a Republican candidate who can really say anything at any time. Um So, um but knowing like what you’ll say, if your cause does end up in the news, regardless of whether it’s a positive or a negative statement from one of the candidates can really help you capture that opportunity. And before we move on, I want to apologize to uh the Pennsylvania residents. I southeastern Pennsylvania is Philadelphia. So they wouldn’t be fracking there. Yeah, central I instead of southeast, I probably meant uh like uh northwest, northeastern, northwest, northeast or central northeastern central Pennsylvania. All right. I, I, I’m sensitive to the, to the, to the listeners in Pennsylvania. I understand. And plus I went to law school in Philadelphia. I think it’s all good. And I went to law school in Philadelphia. So I know there’s not fracking on uh on broad street or around uh around Rittenhouse Square in, in Philadelphia. All right. Uh Anything else, anything else on uh crisis, communications, creating it or reviewing it. Um, I, I just think it’s important to, to take the time to do that and, and, you know, even if you’re a small organization just knowing, you know, who gets the call when something happens or, um knowing that you might have to have a, a consultant on, on call in certain situations, you know, gaming that all out ahead of time, just put you in so much better position when, when real situations arise. What’s your next point? Well, the next point is uh being ready to pivot. Um you know, most organizations plan out what they’re planning to do with their communications and, and pr efforts a bit ahead of time. Uh It could be that you’re scheduling, you know, social media posts a week or two in advance. It could be that you’re, you know, you’re targeting a certain date on the calendar for a major announcement. Um And when you plan those things out, you’re, you’re doing it kind of taking into effect, what, what you know, is going to happen on the calendar, you may peg it to a certain holiday, you may peg it to a certain milestone or an anniversary that you’re having with your organization. Um But, you know, when unexpected news happens, you really run the risk of either getting those, those carefully planned messages drowned out or having them seem very tone deaf if they, if they come out at the wrong time. So, um so it’s really important. Um Even if you’re planning things out well in advance and you, you feel like you have everything buttoned down to really be paying close attention to what’s happening in the news and being prepared to, you know, hit, pause on that scheduled social media message for a few days until, um, until, you know, a situation that might seem insensitive to be posting about passes, um, or, um, or holding off on a, on a planned news announcement, um or even just completely, you know, rethinking the way you’re communicating about something based on what’s happening in the news. So if you were AAA nonprofit that had, um that had uh social media posts out about voting or civic engagement or, or anything related to uh anything even remotely political the days following the, the President Trump assassination attempt, for instance, it was, if you run the risk of it, either seeing insensitive or, or just getting drowned out by what’s happening out there. So, um it’s really important to just, you know, not just think about what’s happening in the news as a news consumer, but as uh what does this mean for our communications? I, I think, yeah, the assassination attempt is an excellent example. Uh Any, any of these, uh I think of uh President Biden stepping aside, you know, so if you had anything that was like critical of the administration, you know, it seemed like that would, that would be a bad 48 hours or so to in which to release it. That’s absolutely true. And I, I even think back to Tony, an example from when you and I were working together on uh on um on the uh plan giving Accelerator. Uh We had a meeting, I think the first meeting planned on January 6th, 2021. And uh once we saw what was happening in the world, we were like, well, there’s no way anybody’s gonna wanna sit in on a meeting on this. That was the fir that was the first meeting of our first class. It was exactly right. And you let me know what was happening. I didn’t know and we got a message out quickly, the class is canceled, you know, we’ll be in touch uh because of what’s happening in Washington DC. Um Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, yeah, be prepared to pivot and be ready to move quickly if you have to. So, um it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t have been a very engaged class on that first day. I don’t, I hope I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t hesitate. Did I didn’t, I didn’t push back and say no, it’s a, it’s an auspicious occasion. It’s, it’s something important is, is Martin Planned, giving Accelerator. I can’t, no, I didn’t. I think once you, I think once because you were busy preparing for that, that I was preparing. Right. But once I, I went to the CNN or something and I saw the you know, people crawling up the walls of the capitol. No, of course. Yeah. As soon as you knew what was happening, you knew, you knew it was time to hit. We were on the phone. You didn’t have to bring me along. We were on the phone. We were on the phone together and yes. All right. Prepare to pivot. Ok. Um, key messages, even though you may have to change your messages, you sh you alluded to this earlier, but let’s flesh it out, having, having some messaging ready, right? So in those fast moving situations, if you are somewhat prepared with what you’re going to say, um you know, if candidate A says, you know, something that relates to your cause or candidate B does um or even if something’s happening in the world, um that, that relates to your cause. If you have some key points that you have already vetted, worked through with your team that you kind of have in your back pocket and ready to go in a fast moving news situation, it can be really helpful uh in terms of you being able to get something out quickly and often those messages can, can really be an affirmation of what you stand for as an organization. Um What you think is, is, is the best course of action to, to make sure that you’re um ensuring that your mission is, is achieved. And um and even working through um how to, how to make statements in a nonpartisan way while still kind of validating what you stand for. Um If you can spend some time working through those in advance, having those in your back pocket or, you know, not physically in your back pocket, but, but somewhere on your hard drive, um where it’s something that um, your executive director, your board, everybody’s had a chance to weigh in on when a situation does arise. You can pull from that. Um Play a little bit of mad Libs with kind of filling in the blanks of what’s happening and, and get a statement out very quickly. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I’ve got another tail from the gym. I go to classes once a week. Usually I like to work out just by myself, quietly, do my own thing. Elliptical floor work, Pilates, push ups by myself. But I do go to a class once a week each Tuesday and in my very first class, uh, you know, I walked in, it was, first of all, it was all women. I was the only guy in the, in the room and I saw, you know, everybody had their stuff, like, you know, they had water bottles. I had a hoodie on, uh, people had like light jackets, you know, whatever, all lined up along the wall. So I went over and, uh, I put my little pile, took my hoodie off, put my little pile of hoodie and my keys and my little ID card for the gym. You know, I put that all in a, in a pile next to somebody else’s pile right alongside the wall and I went and got some, uh, weights because the woman who runs the class was announcing you’re gonna need weights. So I was going over to get the weights and then I came back and the woman who, uh, was belonged to the, the pile that was next to mine started to talk, you know, hello? She said hello? You know, she didn’t ask my name. II, I remember that. She, but hello, you know, you look new to the class. I’m the only guy in the class. So I guess I am new to the class. She said, ok, well, I’ll just move my stuff. I said, oh, I, I said, well, ok. Well, I don’t know, just move your stuff. What it’s not, I don’t care if it’s touching my stuff. Is that your concern that it’s, that the, the two piles are, are, uh, I don’t know, commingling the, the, they’re, they’re having some kind of intercourse what the piles are touching. You just can’t have this, but maybe I have bedbugs in my hoodie. What, what do you mean? You’ll, I’ll just move my stuff. She says very curtly after being, you know, kind of pretty cordial, you know, just friendly. Well, I’ll just move my stuff. That was it. Well, well, I’ll just move my stuff. Uh, ok. What I, I can move my stuff. I just, I see, I see piles along the wall. So I, I stuck, well, this is where I work out. I said, well, ok, I, I didn’t know, I didn’t, I didn’t know that the title delineates your Space, Mrs Blood and Soil. I didn’t call her that I didn’t say I didn’t say that. I didn’t know that that would demarcated your, your turf. You know, you can work, you could, you can work out here, that’s your place and I can see how it’s important to you. It’s a big room. It’s like a big fitness center room. You know, it’s, I don’t know, a couple of 1000 square feet, no wood flooring. It’s not like there’s boxes or anything with your name or a little chalk line where you write your name or something, you know, and there’s weights on one side and there’s, uh, the balls, you know, the big, the big flexi whatever those big balls are, there’s a bunch of those along another wall. You know, it’s a big, big room, a couple 1000 square foot room. Uh, you your spot, your turf. So I said, ok, you can have, you can have your spot. It’s my first time. I didn’t know. Uh, I moved my stuff over a little bit so they wouldn’t be overlapping the piles. And then I worked out uh I did the class for an hour, you know, 11 step over from her spot. So we, we worked out together. I gave her her turf. I was like, what? You know, not be gracious and kind, right? Be uh embodying uh a good, a good spirit and friendly to neighbors and welcoming. I work out here. All right, fine. So that was my first class. I still go to the class. She’s still in her special spot. I’m not, I’m not anywhere near that. I don’t need to be, you know, like week after week I’ve raised my heart rate by having uh turf wars with the Mrs blood and soil. So, you know, I, I go somewhere else. I work out in another spot and if somebody gets there before me or you know, I there’s no spot. It’s not like my spot or her spot, it’s just first come first serve. Alright, I think you get the idea that was Mrs mud and soil. But I still go to the class every Tuesday. Uh, I just work out on the other side of the room from her and that is Tony’s take two Kate. The entitlement. Yeah. Astonishing in some people and, and not even, you know, I mean, an older woman who should know better. She’s, she’s, she, she’s quite fit. Uh, I have to give her that she’s very fit. Uh, I don’t know, she looks a little older than me. 65 maybe 70 or so. You know, somebody who shouldn’t be. Yeah, feeling entitled having wars over like you’re, yeah, you’re new to the class. You would think that, I mean, if your stuff was genuinely on hers, I think there’s a different way to approach it and be like, could you move your stuff because your stuff is on my stuff. But if you’re, but the way that she said it is so entitled and the fact that she’s like in a class is very embarrassing, like go home and work out if you can’t be around other people like that. That’s very savvy advice for this 65 or 70 year old. Yes. My blood is boiling. Well, we’ve got just about a but load more time. Here’s the rest of get heard in the election season with Peter Panepinto. You’d want to know what, what format the, the statement is gonna be. Again, I would say it was a press release. It was an email, social posts and you want to think through what the channels are gonna be with being prepared to pivot on that as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yes. So here’s, here are a few points we would make for a news release. Here’s a few things we would do in a social media or, or, or kind of email statement. Um And, you know, you can almost have some of these things templated and ready to go where you can, you can fill in some key details. Um And, and make sure you’re ready to go. Um We even went so far with an organization we’re working with right now that has a, um the, the founder of the organization is, is getting rather advanced in years and, and um uh we worked with them to prepare what we would do if something were to happen to her and they needed to get something out about her passing. So, um we’ve, we’ve gone ahead and written kind of a AAA templated news release a statement for the website, some social media copy to help them prepare for, you know, for if and when that happens. And we’ve, you know, she’s been part of the vetting process on that and, and has seen what is being said, it’s kind of like writing your own, like writing your own obituary at a time, but it, it, it allows the organization to make sure that they are announcing that news on their terms uh that they’re explaining clearly what would happen in that, in that situation and, and what the plan is for the organization moving forward and also on her legacy at the same time. So you can almost game out some situations that may impact your organization, whether it’s something political or even something like that where, where you might have to unexpectedly announce, um you know, a, a, you know, somebody no longer being with the organization or, or passing away. And um by taking that those steps ahead of time, you, you really put yourself in a position that kind of own your own narrative in those situations. Was this woman amenable to that process. Did you have to be pulled along a little bit? Like, no, explain the value. She, she recognized it. No, she was, she’s a very self aware leader and I think understands that. Um but, you know, and, you know, even if, uh even if you’re the not actively involved in the day to day operations anymore, and you’re the founder of the organization and still engaged, I mean, that’s, that’s a, that’s a major event for that organization. And um she was, she was open to it. I don’t know, you know, personally how she felt about it, but I, I do know that, that she recognized the value of doing that and uh the staff and board of that nonprofit, I think feels very comforted knowing that um you know, uh you know, father time is undefeated, it’s gonna hit, hit all of us at some point that, that this is, you know, that they will be prepared to communicate with their supporters and with the public about what happened in a way that, that she is comfortable with and has signed off on already. And that, you know, the organization is also comfortable with too. I kind of like the idea of contributing to my own obituary uh after a life of selfless sacrifice and uh enviable success. The, uh, no, I like the idea of contributing to my own obituary. I’m starting to write it now. Ok. And your final piece of advice from, uh from the Onmes newsletter. Yes. And, and that is to be ready for November 6th and beyond. Um II, I don’t think anybody, regardless of where they are in the political spectrum, uh thinks that this is a, uh a minor election. This is an election that has a lot at stake. Um And, um there are a lot of potential eventualities with it, uh regard, you know, depending on who wins and, and which party controls the Senate and the House and everything else. Um It’s very hard to predict right now. Um But very likely depending on your cause. Um People are gonna want to hear from your organization on November 6th or November 7th and, um with, with what the, what the, what, what the stakes are for the outcome of this. Um And so it, it might be helpful for you to, to game out um a few different scenarios and, and, and be able to talk about what it means for your organization and your cause. So, you know, depending on which presidential candidate wins and which candidate or which party controls each house of or, or chamber of the, of, of congress. Um and even, even at the state level, at the state level and especially at state and local level for a lot of organizations, um whatever happens on Election day will really impact the work that you’re going to be doing and um the impact that it’s going to have on the people that you serve. So it could be your local school board planning board, your mayor and council election, any of those, any of those things on the local level as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s really important to think about like, you know, what, you know, what a scenario or b scenario will mean for your organization or your cause and, and what you’re going to be asking people to do, it could be a cause to, to raise more money. It could be AAA call to advocate um for, you know, for, you know, some aspect of your cause. Uh it may be a cause to celebrate but you know, and say the work isn’t done, we still have to do XY and Z in the months ahead. But really thinking about um how you’re going to respond to that to, to the results of that and having some things queued up and ready to go can again help you, um you know, own your own message in those situations. If, if there are things that you want to ask people to do, especially if it’s raising money, the faster you can do that and capture the moment the, the more successful you’re going to be. And also, I think if you’re not heard from right after the election, uh uh you, you risk being irrelevant, like these people have nothing to say, but, you know, they’re not going to think of it right away. But then two weeks later, when you, when you do send a message related to whatever it is, you, you finally got around to sending, let’s say, well, well, didn’t they have anything to say about the election outcomes? I mean, the local, the local school board, you know, and, and they, uh, and they advocate for, they advocate for, for Children, they, they advocate for uh uh a free pre kindergarten universal or, you know, whatever you, you risk being just kind of like I said, irrelevant, left out of the conversation or moving yourself out. Right. Right. So, yeah, there are, are, are real opportunities in the, in the months ahead to, to think about what you want to say in November. Um And you know, I, you, I, I think it will be impossible for us. To predict who’s gonna win. Xy and Z at this point in, in most cases, this year, it’s, it’s very close everywhere but you can be ready with, with whatever message you want to get out there, depending on the outcome uh by taking some steps now. Um And, you know, I think about a lot of the progressive organizations, uh right after the election in 2016, a lot of them were in mourning and we’re not putting, we’re not saying anything and that it took them uh in some cases weeks to, to, to be able to weigh in and, and mobilize people and, and that was a waste of time for that. Let’s talk about something that uh you and I have talked about in the past but it’s been a few years. Um i it’s all related to all of what we’re talking about today is the value of having relationships with journalists that are, that are long standing, not just when you need the person, but you know how to build those relationships. Well, let’s start with just the value of knowing some journalists in advance of when you have something to say. Right. Right. I it’s really important um regardless of whether you’re a local organization or a national organization or something in between, to really identify what journalists are covering the topics that most intersect with your organization or your cause and uh and making sure that you’re taking steps to, to cultivate them and let them know that you are a resource for them. Um because it, it’s really valuable in two ways. One, they’re ready to, um uh they’re gonna be more receptive to covering something significant that’s happening with your organization or that you’re looking to announce and, and b it, it provides an opportunity for when the journalist is looking for an expert, uh to comment on a specific topic for you to, for you or your, your executive director, your, your board chair, whoever is your, your biggest spokesperson uh for them to reach out to you when they’re working on something and, and get you to weigh in on it and, and share your expertise with them if, if you’re interested in, in, in reaching people and, and, and persuading people about whatever cause you work on and, or just getting visibility, cultivating those relationships is really important and by cultivating those relationships, I don’t mean just sending them a press release three times a year with like um and, and not, and not engaging them. Otherwise it, it often can involve you reaching out to them, telling them a bit about your work or a story that you think is important but then asking, you know, what are you covering, what’s of interest to you? How can I be helpful to you and, and starting to build uh some rapport and a relationship with them so that um they take your call or they, they, they open your email when you send something to them and, um, and, and that you’re top of mind for them when they’re looking for something. You pulled a, uh, car talk. You remember that, uh, show on N Pr Car Talk? You did, uh, you did number one and B Yes, I, it was funny. I was, I was halfway through saying that and I was like, did I use one or eight years ago? Then the car talk guys used to do that all the time. One and b uh, don’t worry about it. Um, no, so you’re, you know, I mean, you’re a 10 plus year journalist. So, so reassure us that journalists are open to conversations before, you know, before we have that they’re open to having relationships. They are like you and me and journalists are people too. That’s right. That’s right. And they also get bombarded with a lot of, a lot of pitches and, and press releases and emails and kind of like you and I do every day, like where, uh, where all of us do every day where it’s, it’s a bunch of stuff that’s not relevant to you. Right. It, it’s clear that the, the person that’s sending this to them doesn’t know what they cover, doesn’t, it doesn’t even know what beat they’re on. And, um, when you’re, when you’re drowned with hundreds of messages like that every day when somebody actually does take the time to say, you know, Hey, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve paid attention to what you cover. Here’s a story. I think you might be interested in that, that actually relates to what you cover. And if it’s not, you know, I’m here to, to find out what, what is valuable to you and, and, and provide you with some, some insights and resources to help you get it. Um that stands out first of all and second of all, it, it, it, it is something that gets noticed by that journalist because you’re, you’re not just throwing and trying to pitch them all the time. You’re actually taking the time to find out what, what that journalist needs. And um when you take that stop, you know, they may not respond the first time, but if they see that you’re genuine and that you actually are paying attention to what they’re doing, oftentimes they’ll, they’ll start a conversation with you and, and it turns into something really useful. Um you know, as a journalist, you wanna have, you know, some, some vetted people that you can turn to when you’re on deadline or an editor gives you a story that you’re, you know, that, that’s, that’s on a topic that you don’t cover every day. Um to be able to say, oh, the executive director at the, the local food bank really knows her stuff and I can, I can reach out to her and get a, get a read on what’s happening here and and you know, once you, once you have that, that list of go to sources, it, it becomes very easy for the reporter to, to get their job done and you’re helping them. I have a, I have a personal story that is an ideal example of what you’re talking about. Um, Stephanie Strom at the New York Times used to have the nonprofit beat when that, when that exi when that beat existed in nationally internationally known papers, she had it at the New York Times. And, uh, and I reached out and we actually, we ended up having coffee and, and through the years she, she, she called me, uh, sometimes I was never qu I wasn’t quoted, but I was happy to help her on, on background about some nonprofit fundraising issue. But there were times when she did quote me. And so, uh, and that, that’s a major, you know, the major outlet of the New York Times, um, years ago, she’s, she’s long said there’s no nonprofit beats anymore that I’m aware of. Um, and she’s long since left the New York Times. But, you know, that was, and that was just on the strength of doing what you suggested. We, we, uh this is, this was before I met you. So I was not using your wise counsel. I had the, I had the, uh almost equally wise counsel, not, not nearly as wise as your counsel, uh, council of, of another person who you know, we, we looked at her stories and what she had done and crafted an email and I followed up by phone and we ended up meeting for a coffee. Right. Right. It’s, it’s almost the same as if you’re a fundraiser, you know, really making sure that you’re getting to know your top prospects. Right. And that’s, that’s a perfect analogy. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Being persistent, pleasantly persistent. Um, and, and you don’t know where that relationship is gonna go and that’s what ended up happening with me and, uh, and same with your donors. That’s a very good, exactly. That and, and, and often they’re, they’re not going to cover exactly what you want them to cover. But, um, if, if they are covering something that, that connects to, to what you’re doing and they see value in talking to you, you’re going to get a lot of value out of that even if it’s not, you know, hey, you, you know, you’re, you’re not covering the press releases, I’m putting out, but you found something else that’s really, that’s really valuable that my organization can provide, um, that, that, you know, being included in that kind of coverage when it’s not something that you’re pitching yourself, it can be incredibly valuable to you. So propagate the, uh, the journalist relationships because they, they, they, they can be enormously valuable and they, and they don’t have to be on a national scale. You’re local, local outlets. Absolutely. 11 thing that we, we advise a lot of people about is don’t worry about the, you know, reaching the biggest number of people, make sure you’re reaching the people that, that matter most to you. So if you’re a local profit, um you know, being covered regularly in your local paper on local television is way more valuable to you than, than being uh you know, included in some national story once, right? Um So, you know, really be mindful of like, where are your donors? Where are the people who you need to be advocating for you? What, and, and, and what journals there are the ones that are, are covering the topics that, that you care most about and, and really focus your efforts there. Ok? If we leave it there. All right, I’m great. If we leave it there, Peter Panino, the company is Turn Two Communications. They’re at turn hyphen two.co, you’ll find Peter at uh P Pena Peno on X and also on linkedin, Peter. Thank you for a valuable conversation. Thank you for helping our listeners. Thank you, Tony. Always a pleasure to join you and uh and glad we can, we can cover this timely topic before we get too close to the election. Absolutely. Yes. Great value. Next week, the responsive nonprofit with Gabe Cooper. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM, fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box outdated donation forms blocking your 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. 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 August 5, 2024: High ROI Development & Marketing Communications Teams

 

Sherry Quam TaylorHigh ROI Development & Marketing Communications Teams

You want these two teams—fundraising and marcomm—to align every fundraising hour with its maximum dollars. You want these teams to have the time to secure investment level gifts. And you want them to secure the unrestricted gifts you need to grow and sustain your mission. Sherry Quam Taylor returns to share her strategies for achieving these vital ambitions. She’s CEO of Quam Taylor, LLC.

 

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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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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 am glad you’re with us. I’d come down with Irio denys if I saw that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s up this week? Hey, Tony, we have IRO I development and marketing communications teams. You want these two teams, fundraising and Marcom to align every fundraising hour with its maximum dollars. You want these teams to have the time to secure investment level gifts and you want them to secure the unrestricted gifts. You need to grow and sustain your mission. Sherri Quam Taylor returns to share her strategies for achieving these vital ambitions. She is CEO of Quam Taylor LLC on Tony’s Take two. It’s National Make A Will Month were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more, more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is high ro I development and marketing communications teams. It’s a pleasure to welcome back, Sherry Quam Taylor to nonprofit radio. She is CEO of Quam Taylor LLC. She helps business minded nonprofit CEO S create financial sustainability by revealing how to diversify, funds, grow general operations revenue and align their team’s hours with relational dollars. Her practice is at Quam taylor.com and Sherry is active on LLC and Sherry is active on linkedin. She is also the mother of two future CEO daughters. Welcome back, Sherry. It’s good to see you, Tony. I, I love that. Uh that, that uh extra my intro. Thank you gu Well, your daughter, we’re looking forward to your daughter’s. Uh well, 11 will be going to college, one is in college. Both of them becoming CEO S what, what, what kinds of companies do you think they’ll run? You had to guess at this, at this stage in their lives. It’s a good question. Um You know, it’s interesting, I have, they’re both in business school and so uh my older one is a bit more introverted, real, you know, process driven. She’s studying uh mis and supply chain logistics. Uh So I feel like some, some international company that’s shipping things all over the world. Um And then my younger daughter is, is more of my extrovert and so she just wants to be out in front of the room selling. So I think she’s gonna be selling you know, multimillion dollar deals and it is really afraid of, of, of nothing. So, it’s, it’s fun to watch, uh, both their paths be so different, but yet, you know, they’re leaders in their own way. All right. Yes, indeed. Future leaders. Cool. Love it. We’ll give him, uh, we’ll give them 10 years, 10 years. That does that sound good to be, uh, for each of them to be CEO S 10 year. I, I would definitely, uh maybe put my money on that. Ok, well, look, so we’re talking about uh having our development and marketing communications teams, uh be successful together, be hard, high ro i together. Uh But of course, we also have to talk to folks who uh are in smaller shops that don’t have separate teams. But what, uh what’s the occasion for this? Why do you, why do you see the need? Why, why did you bring this topic to me? Yeah. Well, you really set me up so, well, Tony, even with your, your phrase of like the other 95% because, you know, at the end of the day, about that percentage of nonprofits, uh never reached the $1 million mark or frankly the $5 million budget mark. And so, uh a lot of organizations even at that size come to me with big plans to scale and it might be, you know, it might be when you on a two x three x five X, whatever that is, uh and, and they’re coming to me saying, well, how do we grow? How do, how can we raise more money? And the question oftentimes I believe we need to flip and ask is, well, why are we staying small? Like what is keeping us from scaling in the first place? And so, you know, a lot of my work is looking under the hood. Sure. Can I teach people to be great and, and better fundraisers? Yeah. But oftentimes it’s really that structure from an organizational standpoint, that business behind the fundraising that is keeping organizations small. So we have to go straight to the or chart, we have to go and look and say, are our fundraisers or the single person on our fundraising team or even if you had a team of three or four, are they doing the right things to yield the budget? Are they doing the right things that aligns their hours with dollars? And so, you know what topic comes up, it comes up of like, well, talk to me, development director, what are you doing? What, what’s your schedule look like? What, what are you spending your time on so often? The list we get are, are all marketing communication activities, right? We go, we got that appeal, we get Spring Appeal, the Fall appeal, the social media, the, the campaign for XYZ, all very traditional marketing communication activities. Um Are those important? You bet somebody has to be doing them but oftentimes those are the things that are generating and attracting smaller dollar donors. Again, importantly, but when we want to scale, we wanna grow so often, the the the list of 52 activities that we expect a development director do to do is actually what’s keeping them from growing, keeping them from moving into relational fundraising, keeping them from moving into strong annual fund growth, you know, even plan giving growth, those types of things. So this is one of the questions. Um One of the things I unearth in every single one of my engagements, which is really, um is your development team, uh being allowed to do true development activities or are they being pulled into other parts of the organization that’s keeping them from fully funding the organization? I have a concern that for weaker fundraisers, they, they use these other activities like everything you named. I’m thinking also of the four color brochure or, or four color annual report, you know, they use these activities to uh to avoid what is difficult for them. Now again, I’m talking about weaker people in development or, or inexperienced, just haven’t had the experience and they just don’t, yeah, they, they haven’t had the experience. Um I’ve seen, I’ve seen like mid-level folks too. They somehow they, you know, they got promoted, uh erroneously, I think in, in multiple jobs through multiple organizations. Um they interview, well, I always say and they, they use but whatever the whatever the uh persona of the person, they’re using these activities as a, as a as an excuse to not be in front of donors, not having individual one on one face to face, kitchen table, office restaurant. And you would say investment level conversations to asking for 567 figure gifts, they’re using these activities. Oh, I have to get the four color annual report out. This is going to take me months, the printer, the graphic designer, the approval, I have to write the te you know that there goes two months of not having conversations that are going to lead to real growth, real investment level gifts and, and it it and I just want it ticks me off that they’re avoiding what is really gonna make the money for the organization. It’s not the four color brochure or annual report. This is true. I love where, what are we at minute six? We’re on the soapbox. I love it. That’s what I love about you. Well, Tony, I would also say like if we look at it from another angle too, it’s actually too often what the sector tells fundraisers. They are like, you know, II I believe that I see so often the messaging is, is like we, we we’re on a deadline, everything is urgent. We gotta crunch to the finish line. We gotta uh fundraisers are, are these people who scurry around? We’re on this spin cycle. Nn No, we’re not. You know, sometimes I say, hey, I don’t do urgent, let’s do thoughtful funding processes that fully fund our organization. And so oftentimes I just find so much of the advice is feeding into uh that type of fundraising. Even you see that on boards. You know, uh you know, I did, I did a board training this morning and so often when I say, ok, so appeals, events, campaigns that the turn and burn that we think fundraising is sitting at our desk behind the email machine if you will. That’s that type of fundraising should only be uh adding up to about 25% of your revenue. The fee is 75 percent of your revenue needs to be what you’re talking about. Relational. Uh just thoughtful might take six months to 24 months to land that gift. And so few fundraisers have had that training. Uh They, they, they kind of have figured out the grants and appeals and events and all of that spin, but they’ve never needed to know how to do that or that no one has ever invested in them learning. Those are two very different skill sets and to tie to our topic. One is way more mark com based versus development based and this is how you beat that 95% percentage you gave at the top of the show. This is how you move to diversify funds. Are you secure enough general operating revenue to fully fund your organization is really making sure that these activities, those relational activities are, are, are, you know, are the priority in your development departments. Le let’s talk about explicitly, we, we’ve touched around a little bit, uh, both of us have, but let’s talk about some of the symptoms. You know, what, what is, uh, what is low functioning development and marketing, team, teams, team or teams, uh, look like, I mean, I kind of suggested I’m too busy with the annual report for the next two months. Ok. That there’s one, what you’re, uh what are some symptoms you see? Well, let’s look at it from a couple of different angles, even if we think of from a budget and growth perspective. Uh you know, the minute I get a call I go on somebody’s 990 oftentimes a symptom would be, well, the revenue is kind of just bumping along, might be a little bit of growth, but there’s some up, there’s some down years. Um that tells me perhaps there are not as many dedicated hours to fundraising as there needs to be. Um, another symptom might be, uh you know, a, a heavy reliance on one thing whether that’s programmatic revenue earned revenue, uh one big gala or one big donor, uh like an over dependence on one thing, grants from institutions, project based grants. If, if that, if those parts of your organization are growing, but perhaps you’re giving from single source decision makers individuals, I can pick up a phone and talk to them family foundations. I could pick up the phone and talk to them private businesses. Hello, if that revenue is not growing, that tells me something’s wrong. That tells me uh that perhaps the team has not had a relational training. They do, they are not having investment level conversations with donors. Um I would also say that when, then we do say, ok, now we have, we have five hours this week to focus on fundraising. Um Then if, if those activities are the bottom part of the pyramid appeals to all the things. Um That tells me that uh they’re not running this type of funding model, they’re not aligning their hours with dollars. There’s so many things Tony. Um I also want to add from the board perspective if I then see that the, if the board is giving you one hour a month outside of their traditional meetings, if those activities are transactional event, appeal, email posting and giving Tuesday, if that is the type of fundraising, the board is doing, that is a red flag to me because the board takes their cue from the fundraising staff and the executive director. And so that tells me perhaps that, that that executive director and that development team needs training in this area so that the board can maximize their networks. So many things to look at. 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 high ro I development and marketing communications teams. What kind of growth do you like to see a year over year in, in revenue? Diversified fundraising revenue? What, what’s a, what’s a, what’s a fair growth percentage year over year? Yeah, I mean, it’s so different, Tony, I’m gonna, I’m gonna answer that uh a little selfishly because, you know, I love when an ed comes to me and says, you know, we’re a $1 million organization and we want to be a 10, you know, I have that client right now and she’s ahead of schedule. You know, I love that. If that is a meaty, a growth minded, let’s do this uh hungry executive director. That’s my, my favorite thing to do. Um I would say that not everybody has plans to two x, three x five x 10 X. Um However, I believe that everybody probably should be and could be growing at a greater rate. Uh I had another client, I’m just thinking of where they said, well, we kind of maybe 5 to 7% but we never get to do things that are in our strategic plan. So it’s like we, we spend the five or 7% is not, is not fulfilling your plan. It’s unrealistic. You’re realistic, your plan is unrealistic and you have no, you have no plan to, to budget for plan, budgeting for the plan. So I, I mean, I, I’m gonna do a blanket statement to your question to say, I honestly believe people could be growing at a greater clip than, than most of them believe. And it really has to do with um this is what’s crazy. It has to do with the spend even more than the race. And what I mean by that is if we’re a $1 million org and maybe we want to be a $3 million org in five years, we, we immediately go to, well, what kind of fundraising things do we need to do? Hold on first. The, the first question we have to say is how do we actually resource our organization to turn us into an engine that yields $3 million or 5 million, whatever you want it to be first, is the spend and so, um, so often orgs come to me where we’re one, we want to be a three and we kind of try to do that on our 1.5 staff load that doesn’t work because, and also that staff load is in charge of marketing communications. And so I, I want people to hear, um, whether you’re big or small or, you know, there are a lot of options. It’s that you do not have the one option, which is let’s bring on a development director and throw all things that even look or smell like fundraising on their plate. That’s not gonna work. It’s gonna set that director up for failure, burn out. Uh And all the things we’re seeing in the sector, there’s a lot of different options. You can’t do all things at once. The, the one person, development and, and marketing team person, there’s not a team team of one. Yeah, that is uh that, that is setting them up for failure. That’s a recipe for disaster. The one person devoted to both of those. It’s just, it’s just not realistic. And even when um the leader of maybe there’s even staff on the team, I have a amazing client uh in the Boston area and she was on my podcast recently and one of the big shifts we made for their organization and there may be a 3.5 $4 million org was actually splitting these two departments because uh, she even said on my podcast, uh, gosh, some weeks, 80% of my time was being spent on marketing communications. And so then I got the development, kind of got the leftovers. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, that, that’s why you’re not growing, that’s why you’re staying small. And so we have to look at these root business issues, um, before we can say now what, what does, what should fundraising look like? It actually yields that number. Uh So let’s talk about some of the uh well, I wanted to contribute that, uh just amplify something you said earlier. The other reason that that’s uh aside from sheer hours in a, in a day and a week, why that’s a recipe for disaster is the skills are so different between relational successful individual fundraising and uh marketing communications. Just they, they’re different areas of expertise. You know, you wouldn’t, you, I’m speaking now to board members. You wouldn’t do that to your company. You wouldn’t have somebody uh devoted to uh sales and research. You wouldn’t do it. So don’t have someone in the nonprofit whose board you’re sitting on for which you are a fiduciary. And among the, the uh the, the board of most committed loyal volunteers and donors to that organization don’t, don’t subject your, your nonprofit to that. Yeah, they are two very different skill sets. I will tell you, I sit in as you can imagine a lot of interviews and so a lot of the work I do with people is like, OK, so we want to be here, we want to go there. What head count does that take? And then what should those people be doing? So oftentimes, I’m invited to sit in interviews and uh, I asked some pretty, pretty pointing questions and, and when I’m asking about relational fundraising, what we’re talking about, but the answers come back to me as appeal goals, event goals, how we’re slicing and dicing the database, you know, the print fees for the and report to bring up your what you’ve brought up. When the answers always pivot to more of that transactional fundraising, more of the event that, that type of cadence, that’s a red flag for me. But again, I’ve been accused Tony of like not liking events and appeals. I love them. I, I go to them but they cannot take 100% of your team’s time. So I’m looking for, do you know how to attract investment, local donors? Do you know how to lead them? Do you know how to solicit them and get their best gift? And then do you know how to get that gift every year? And then do you know how to get that gift year after year after year to where? Oh, we have a capital campaign. They might give a gift above and beyond. Oh, we’re starting uh an endowment campaign. They might be able to commit to a gift above and beyond. That is what I’m talking about. That is how we fully fund our organizations. All right, let’s talk about some, some specifics. That’s all I, I agree. All, all valuable. Um, le le let’s drill down to some specifics about, you know, making development and marketing, communications more uh well, higher ro I, that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re trying to get through. So, uh you, you’ve alluded to this already. Staff, staffing, the adequacy of the staffing. It’s, I mean, this is where there’s a, there’s a numbers, a very simple equation we need to do to start and then we can dig deeper and literally have this conversation this morning. Um So there’s, you were, you were busy this morning? I was busy conversation. You had a board briefing. I did actually, I, I love, you know, you know, I’m a morning person. So I love my East Coast clients who want me to do a board training at like eight in the morning. We here we go. Um So we have to do a math equation. And so what I said to them was, they told me the number they wanted to go to. And I said, hey, here’s a rule of thumb. The rule of thumb is for every $500,000 more you wanna raise. That’s a staff person. And so if your budget this year is a 2.5 that’s five people. Uh you know, jaws drop. Now, I said now hold on. That doesn’t mean we are cookie cutters and hey, you database person you got to raise 500 K. No. But what that does mean is I would hope your development director or your major gifts person has a $1 million portfolio and that balances out that database or kind of coordinator position. So as a rule of thumb, there has to be a math equation to say if we want to grow, let’s just say Tony from 1 million to 2 million. Ok, then we might need to hire two people. 00 my goodness. Which is even more reason you need to be in this high Roy model. And so this is the math equation that everybody skips. It’s like let’s just grind harder. Hope you can do it. I don’t know how the development teams are gonna do that. Their head count is not set up to yield that number. So of course, they can’t and hope is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. This goes back to the spend, Tony. We gotta hire people, spend the money to make the money. What do we do initially? All right. Suppose we’re take your perfect hypothetical raising, raising a million dollars. We want to raise $2 million in 2025. If we need to hire two people, how do we fund the two people before we start raising the money? This is I get this question to both people when you don’t have that money coming in. But like we know where the compass should be set, right? So this is where this, these are the tough questions we have to ask. So let’s say that one person comes on and then we have to say, um a what do we as an organization? Because this is not just the fundraising theme, this is also the executive director who needs to be sitting in those investment level conversations. Hey, what do we as an organization need to stop doing a get hours so that we can start doing more relational fundraising? So you just set me up perfectly today. So what I advised this team this morning was I said, let’s talk about 10 hours that your executive director to get back in their schedule. What could she stop doing so that she could start doing more of these types of activities that frankly are going to yield five times more money, 10 hours, 10 hours a month, 10 hours a week a week. That’s ambitious. All right. But you know, it is ambitious. So let’s call it. I’m not, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be ambitious. I’m just saying that’s ambitious. All right. So 40 we’re gonna start devoting, we’re gonna try to find, we’re gonna find activities where, where the CEO can spend 40 hours a month in new, new relational fundraising time or even, and even this group has a development director and she’s incredible. Um but even perhaps I know I challenged them and said, let’s look how much time is being spent more on transactional activities. Now, they’re just coming off a gas. So it feels really, like, really heavy. But let’s look and see how could we move that person’s 10 hours a week into these activities that are going to yield more money. So my point of like kind of telling you that is we can’t go 100% full on, on all of these initiatives at once. It’s ok that sometimes we need to take something that’s operating at 10% and move it to 40% and sit in that a little bit because we still, we still have events, we still have appeals, we still have emailers to get out and then look at ok, now we’re gonna take it to 60% and now we’re yielding more money and we can actually hire people to take things off other people’s plates. So it’s just not a one size fits all. There’s so many options. Maybe you should hire a contractor 1500 a month to be writing your news and appeals and whatever. Uh your, your development director is gonna make that money back five fold by having those extra hours in their schedule. Maybe it’s a contractor for some of the grants for some of the grants work grant event, um, a any of that kind of stuff. And so this goes back to the spend what you spend sometimes I’ll say, well, would you spend $15,000 this year on a writer or whatever? So that your development director can move from yielding 300 K a year to 800 K a year. I’ll take, I’ll kind of take that math all day long. Would you invest 15,000 to make half a million? Yes. So the gut reaction is, no, we can’t spend the money. Well, well, let’s really look what’s behind that. So the head count, we got to do the math. We’ve got to do the math and it goes, it goes deeper than just head count. It’s, it’s, it’s a time aligned with dollars. It’s freeing up time for the existing staff. So we can get to the point where we can hire the additional fundraiser, the second fundraiser. And again, we’re modeling that for the board. Uh, you know, and I know I know this is the second topic that I brought up to you and I know we’ve, we’ve touched on it. Can I, can I say it? You know. So, so it’s the, it’s the head count, right? It’s the staff, staff count. Uh, and then it’s ok. Well, maybe we even have the count. But as fundraisers, uh, we’re just simply wearing too many hats. Right. And so, yes, are we in charge of the mark and the fundraising? Um, but I also saw something so interesting, um, shows on Twitter and it was a it was a corporate marketing person and in essence, she was saying that even 5, 10 years ago, the vehicles as to which we did marketing, there are like seven core vehicles or something. And today there’s like 30 something of ways, that ways that we engage with our clients and we gotta do this with like there just keeps mo more just keeps lobbying on the plates of marketers and, and communicators and fundraisers. We cannot do it all just because it brings in $5 doesn’t mean you should be doing it as a fundraiser. So we gotta get, uh, we, we gotta get our, our, our, our path a little, little narrower here. We gotta bring it in. We gotta pick 3 to 5 things. And are we doing those things? Well, are they yielding what they should yield? Uh We have to willingly be reflective of our activities and our hours and take off those hats so that we can put on high ro i high revenue generating hats. Um This, the uh fundraiser has to be so reflective of the hours that they’re spending in a day because we, we always say, well, we’re wearing too many hats as fundraisers. Well, then take him off and decide we can’t get to those four hats until we have a team of four. And right now we have a team of two. Stop pause. It’s OK. The organization is not gonna go under if you switch your newsletter to every other month versus monthly for six months. You’re not gonna go under, or? Oh, my gosh, we didn’t do a giving Tuesday campaign and run around like crazy people and, like, make $7000. It’s ok. Go form relationships with two people and get five K each from them. It’s more money. Um, oh, can I, oh, can I give one other really exciting thing, Tony? No, I’d rather, I’d rather you not skip it. I just thought of this, you know, I like to talk in examples. One of my clients, I love them. I love all my clients. They’re so good. They’re so good because they’re a plus students and they take it and they go and do it. So they made this decision. They want to scale. They’re having, you know, cash flow has been uh up and down. They last year had done uh a couple events, uh one being a gal, one being something smart and they said we can’t do it anymore. Like it’s, it’s, we have to change the way we’re doing this. We’re chasing our tail. So they decided not to do their events and they hired me to help them move into this relational cadence. It’s been so fun to watch and it’s been nerve wracking. Right. Like what do you mean we’re not doing the gala that, you know, are the donors right? Here’s the beauty of it. I talked to them last week and they’ve been having, uh, one on one conversations with their donors who they’ve rarely had conversations with before and they’re getting to know them and it’s going great and like, oh, my gosh, it was an incredible conversation. They’ve gotten, uh, four significant gifts recently in the past. I don’t know, I don’t know. 4560 days, the net on those four gifts from building relationships leading them to a, through a journey, asking them for their best gift. It netted more than their galla did last year from four relationships. And I love this development director because she’s so analytical with the numbers and she, she had that for me and I was like, what? That’s incredible. That’s fantastic. And do that 10 more times and the hours that the, that the hours are so much fewer versus the gala. Does the, does the flower match the bunting who’s on table 18? Don’t sit her next to him. You know, all those, all those gala hours you, you take a, you take a, I think you take a uh like 20% of them and you can raise the kind of money from individual relational investment level conversations and relationships that, that you just exemplified. I, I, I I know it to be true. You do too. But you know, this team had to choose to take off that hat. And then when people said, oh, but what about the event? How are you gonna do it? But we love bringing our friends. Hold on. Our mid and major level donors are not giving their best gift at events full stop they’re giving. Oh yeah, the auction item, all the thing. Oh, here’s the tickets, here’s the table. So they made this conscious, conscious effort and I’m so proud of them because it, it like that journey of stopping and then starting feels real lonely in the in between. Sometimes. This is when I say you’re a faith based organization for this amount, for these couple months. When you’re like, I’m doing the things, I’m building the relationships. Am I going to see the results? And they did it and they’re doing it and even just these four relationships have, have netted more in the, the gala. Imagine what that’s gonna do when they’ve, when they’ve spoken to all of their donors and then they’re piping their donors and their boards going. 00, you mean we could do it like that? It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers, just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. There’s an anxiety in the nation uh attention. Uh It’s, but it’s a positive, positive energy. You can feel it. Uh It’s not the enjoyment of being in the middle of summer. It’s not the presidential election. It’s National Make A Will Month. August. August is National Make A Will Month. We are recording on Thursday the first, it’s the first day of the month I which I believe should be a national holiday. I think the banks should be closed. The markets should be closed all to uh commemorate the solemnity of the occasion. The kicking off the launching of National Make A Will Month. So I think the first day of August should be a a national holiday. I I wish you had been off on the first of August. Um Well, plus it fits in perfectly. So we got uh you have uh in July, you got Fourth of July, August. Now you have the launching of National Make A Will Month, August 1st every year and then in September, uh we, we get uh Labor Day. So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a vacation day for us each month during this, during the summer. So uh I think so it should be a national holiday. But uh it is all right until that, until that comes around, until we, we we get the commemoration, the respect for National Make A Will Month that it deserves nationwide. Uh We’ll have to just suffice with, uh you know, uh celebrating it for ourselves. And of course, I do plan to giving fundraising as a consultant. So National Make A Will Month is the time to either a be reminding your donors about National Make A Will Month and the importance of them including you in their wills or b if you’re not doing planned giving fundraising, now, then to recognize the value of planned giving, fundraising and the way to kick it off is the simplest planned gift, gifts in wills gifts in wills. So whether you’re talking to your donors or you’re talking to your vice president or your CEO or your board. August is the month to be talking about wills encouraging your donors to include your work, your nonprofit in theirs or encouraging your CEO or your board to get you launched in planned Giving. Hopefully you don’t really need your board approval, but maybe, maybe you want to let them know, not seeking their approval or consent, but informing them that you’re launching planned giving. I like that model better. And of course, you’re gonna start with gifts and wills because they’re the easiest planned gift. They’re the most common planned gift by far. So National Make a Will month. Um Let’s uh I don’t know how to lobby for national holidays. I don’t have to go to Congress. Uh I probably should wait so we probably should wait until after the presidential election and see which administration we have, uh, to see which, who would be, uh, or how to approach them best about August 1st being a national holiday. But all of August is National Make a Will Month. That is Tony’s take two Kate. You make a petition to get off August 1st. I will sign it with you. All right. I think we’ll have two then. Well, I know we’ll have two. We’ll have two. I don’t know. Who else could we get, uh, your dad? Oh, he’ll, he’ll be, your dad will definitely be into another day off. Extra national holiday. All right. So there’s three. We got three people. You gotta start somewhere, start, start small and then we’ll, we’ll grow, we’ll, we’ll go outside the, uh, the lion. What is it called? The Lion King? The, the store down by you, the food lion. Oh, Food Lion, the supermarket. Yes. The, the Lion King supermarket. Remember? Confusing Broadway and uh Emerald Drive in uh Emerald Isle, North Carolina. That’s ok. They’re similar. Yes. Food Lion. We’ll go outside the Food Lion supermarket. I mean, who doesn’t want an extra day off in the summer? Come on. I can’t think of one person. Right. Right. All right. Well, we’ve got Fuku but loads more time. Here’s the rest of high ro I development and marketing communications teams with Sherry Quam Taylor. You’re gonna have to bring the board along when you, when you make the decision to abandon. Let’s take the extreme example. The Gala, the annual Gala, we love our friends come, we, we raise so much money from our friends. II, I buy two tables of 10 and, and I, I, it’s, you, you, that you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to overcome board objections because, and again, II, I see a lot of board members, like I said, 20 minutes ago using this as a crutch as an excuse. You know, because it’s easy to invite friends to gas because they know that the friends know that you’ll go to their gala. So it’s a share, you know, everybody, it comes out equal in the end and, and each organization benefits. Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s not sophisticated fundraising. It’s, it’s, it’s galas and, and they’re, they’re not the highest ro I, so you’re gonna have to bring the board along on this heart. Can you, can you share what that, that ex example or something bringing the board along for? But we love the gala. It’s, it’s, it’s mission critical for us. Here’s, here’s what I’ll say and, and I’m gonna give props to this, this leader, the board is killing it. They have, they have said, oh, well, that’s now, that’s now because it’s happening. But here’s what I would say. This is where we started saying like, what are the symptoms? I think you asked me? Ok, hold on. But let’s look from a business perspective. Um, are we able to pay our staff living wage, competitive wage. Are we having to dip into reserves or are we having to tap into a line of credit every year? Are we struggling with cash flow? Half the month? Um Have I never, as the ed have been able to take a raise in years. All of these things are happening in our organizations where we are not raising enough money. If we keep doing the same thing and getting the same results that tells us what we need to do, we have to change, we have to go back to the root and change the model and that even how we’re approaching revenue generation. And so oftentimes, you know, a lot of people come to me and they’re growing and scaling and they want to diversify and just get stronger. But oftentimes people come to me and say we’ve tried everything else. So we got, we gotta shake it up. We have to have a paradigm shift. And I really think that’s in this situation, what that organization is ready for. They’re like, this is harder than it needs to be. And every year it’s harder than it needs to be. Um we have to do something different to get different results. And so in this case, the board was in agreement, I mean, this is a business decision, right? Uh Are we going to keep doing what we’re doing and getting the same results or do we actually want to accomplish what we, what we’ve set out what our organization has set out to accomplish. Um You, you can only squeeze a budget so much. Uh You know, you can’t do more on less. You know, you’ve, I’ve said that many times, Tony in our conversations. Um And so it has to be a root business decision to say we, our, our mission calls for scaling and what we’re doing is not yielding the dollars that actually allow us to do that. And so there has to be a resourcing change. Whether that’s staffing, whether that’s getting a consultant, whether that’s tools we’re using, there has to be a resourcing change that yields a new number. That’s what the board has to agree on first. Then we can lead them on a journey through a model, then we can help them understand this. But I will tell you when they start seeing results and even if it’s a $1000 donor going to a $2500 gift, it’s like, oh, they three extra that gift or, you know, 2.5 extra. Wow, this is working when they start seeing the results. It’s a bit of a like, oh, I, I didn’t think people would respond to this, but it really comes back to their own relationship with money and fundraising and being on the board and, and feeling like, oh, I, I don’t want to ask people for money. It’s the board that I’m on it. Really goes back to their own comfort level. But I always tell, tell board members, you’re not asking people to give more money to the board that you serve on or the, the organization that you serve with. You’re asking people to invest in an amazing mission and to change lives and you’re really offering an amazing opportunity for people to invest in. And I uh II, I wanna selfishly extrapolate it out even further into when these investment level conversations, when the $1000 donor goes to 2500 and then they later on years later become a planned giving donor and they have died. And now we get to the planned giving multiplier which I’ve seen 4600 times lifetime giving total lifetime giving 4600 times larger in, in the estate gift. And the gift, the simple gift in someone’s will and sometimes the, sometimes the plan giving multipliers is only like 450 or so or, but I’ve seen it as high as over 4000. So, and you’re not gonna, and you’re not setting, I guess I’m I’m uh I’m helping answer my own question the way you, you just fully answered it. I’m adding a little, you’re not cultivating gala attendees for planned gifts. You’re not gonna see that 4600 times planned giving multiplier from the person who comes to a gala 10 years in a row. You’re not gonna see it. They’re not going to include you in their will, they’re not committed but take the same person and open up in a relational convers uh a relationship with them with about investment level gifts through the years and you are cultivating them for the ultimate gift planned gift, but it’s not gonna happen from Gala attendees, right? You’re so right. So Tony, I feel like this is why we, we kind of get each other. Um A lot of people will say to me when they reach out like, what’s it like to work with you? And they’ll say, what do you think about us starting an endowment? What do you think of? I said, well, first tell me about your annual, tell, tell me about your relationships with your donors. Tell me how you’re leading them on a great journey all year long. But how are you soliciting them? Like if, if they’re not telling me, well, we, we do this and then we do this and then we’re doing this and we’re serving them and then we ask them, we solicit them and they do attend our event. Like if they’re not showing me that they know actually how to lead a donor through a great experience to their best gift on an annual fund basis. Let’s be real hard for them to miraculously wake up one day and be like, I’m gonna go ask this person for AAA gift by will or whatever. So we got to get in this annual fun cadence of leading our donors to their best gift. Then these types of conversations about a planned gift or gifts by what, what are, oh, they’re just a natural extension of our relationship, which is how it should be. Did you steal that from me? Natural extension? I, I didn’t mean to, it’s a natural extension of the giving that they’ve been doing for a, for a long, long time. But I absolutely, I, it’s a natural extension of the giving they’ve been doing for decades and, and I would say board member, think of yourself, think of a gala that you’ve gone to for the, for many years because a friend invited you because you always invite them to your gala. Are you gonna include that organization in your will? Good point. Highly, highly unlikely near zero possibility. Good point. Let’s move on to, well, you have to, you have to shift from the models we’re in to something new because if we want different results, we have to do different activities and, and spend our time differently uh and allocate hours differently. Um Yeah. Uh it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it takes time but in the short term that, you know, you’re not going to get the planned gift in four or five years. But, but you’re cultivating the person for that conversation years from now with all the work that you’re all the work that you’re advocating us doing. Let’s, let’s, you got one more uh one more for, for converting to high. So we, yeah, so we talk, we’re gonna check that head count. Um You know, we gotta make sure fundraisers are not wearing too many hats. Ie all the mark. All the fundraising. Third thing is ok, so now we’ve removed the hats. Your fundraising team has to be properly trained. We can’t just one day say, ok, we’re gonna stop transactional. We’re gonna move to relational. People don’t know what that means. Uh Someone said to me once isn’t like I felt like individuals were, was relational and then like businesses and foundations were transactional. So, no, not at all. So I rarely meet a fundraiser who says I have a, I went to school for fundraising. I, I have a degree in this. Uh This is, this is what I, I’ve, I’ve dreamt of doing since I was four. No, everybody is in fundraising, whether you’re an executive director or on fundraising team from some wild journey. I mean, be included. Uh I, I was a program person. I was uh on the board. Uh I saw this need, this happened to be in my life and now all of a sudden, I’m a fundraiser and I kind of know enough to be dangerous, but I don’t know what, I don’t know. That’s what I hear all the time. And so that’s great that we have passionate people doing fundraising. Uh However, that is why they’re defaulting to what they’re seeing. The sector do, which is the transactional turn and burn. So if we simply just let them do that and try to keep grinding harder, you’re going to plateau back to our 95% comment. That is that to me is why that threshold exists. So the 95 the 95% is ok. The, but the, the your, your concern is that 95% of nonprofits never get over a million dollars in annual revenue and it’s 92%. I want to 92. Ok. Well, we want to help those folks. I don’t want to make sure you weren’t dissing the other 95 people that are listening. I want them all to be raising to their need so they can do more of their missions and if they don’t want to grow, that’s cool. Like keep doing what you’re doing and just keep killing it. But, you know, the 92% of nonprofits that are under a million, you know, 97% are under 5 million in annual revenue. Typically they have bigger visions and, and they could be serving more people, they could be moving to more regions. They want to do this kind of thing. And so don’t let the fear of investing in your staff or um you know, spending and investing in your team learning how to move into these activities. Don’t let that keep, let that be the thing that’s keeping you from achieving your mission when we’re talking about training, the training, you know, you know, another part of the problem is people do what they, what they grew up with, like when, when they were in school, their parents pt A had bake sales. So we need to have events. They’re not, they’re not literally doing bake sales, hopefully. But we know events because that’s, uh, the boy scouts, we used to raise money with, uh, light bulb sales with popcorn sales with the fertilizer sales with paper drives back when there was a, the, the, now I’m dating myself when paper it was, it was worth, it was worth recycling paper. I mean, it’s still worth it. But you could make, you could make money at it on a small scale. So that’s what they grew up with. But without training, they’re gonna fall back to their, to their girl scout and boy scout models. That’s not sophisticated, growth oriented scalable, professional fundraising. That’s not that, yeah, it’s not. And you know, it’s what does that look like? Sometimes people are like, I think we’re doing that. It’s like, well, but, but then if it’s, if we’re, we’re saying, hey, here’s three projects. Do you want to fund one of these or um, or, you know, let’s invite this major donor to an event and let’s put some extra big auction items on the event and hopefully they’ll get that. I mean, I hear this though. And so III I say to people are you able to put a plan together. Six months, 12 months, 18 months, based on that donor’s mission for giving, based on it being a win win, lead them on a journey to where when you ask them, if you can ask them that you’re confident they’re gonna give their best gift. And you know how to lead that conversation. You, you know, not only how to talk through the problem, the organization is solving the programs that you’re doing, the stories have changed lives, but you’re able to pivot into the investment level story to answer the tough financial questions to, um to lead that person, can I share with you how we’re funded, Tony to lead them through that and ask for their best gift and then get it and then do that every year. Are we doing that? Rarely? People are rarely. And so this is, you know, I’ll get up on my soapbox, you know, often times at the beginning of the calendar year, it’s like New Year Sherry. Would you like to speak on the cool new trends and creative things that fundraisers can be doing? I, I decline a lot of those, Tony because actually that’s what’s causing organizations from not growing of chasing the cool new thing. This, this process is actually really practical, methodical, natural human relationship building and having the skill set to then ask that donor and really offer that ex that opportunity to invest greatly. Uh I’d like to take it, I’d like to take it one step further. Go for it. You build these deep relationships and your donors will start telling you when they’re ready to make the next. I’m not saying that you wait for that. I’m not saying that at all, but I have that routinely. My work is planned giving routinely. I’m ready. I’m ready for a new gift, annuity. I, I wanna do another one. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m ready to have the conversation about, you know, a longer term gift. You’ll get the, the, it’s all the work that you’re describing all the work that you’re advocating for and the relationships become so deep that donors start telling you when they are ready. And again, if you don’t sit back and wait for that, you still have your needs and you still have your funding priorities, but you’ll get to the point where donors, some donors will, will share it with you and that, that they are ready and that takes time in a relationship. And we, we can’t build relationships when we’re on this f cycle, when to bring it back around. When our, when we’re expecting, our development leads to be a one size fits all shop and to do all the things. Uh We’re always gonna be chasing our talent. We’re never going to be raising to that number that we want to raise to and we’re always gonna have to kind of have this week by budget maybe the stretch budget. No, no. How do we fund the real need, the real need of your organization and then how do we resource it and how do we train the team to be doing the right things so we can do these awesome things that this sector is doing. We have big, big problems in the world to solve and we need to be doing the things that actually resource solving those problems. I think a part of the problem may be that it’s, it’s not very sexy. It’s not the latest thing. It’s not the hot trend for the New Year. This we’re talking about stuff that goes back. We, we’re talking about relationship building that goes back decades and generations. It’s just getting to know people and getting to the point where you can have these, I’m using intimate, not in a personal way, but doing business intimate. I’ll call it business, intimate relationships, business, intimate conversations. You can let them in to what your needs are to what the challenges are and invite them to help overcome them. You know, what a perfect uh kind of proof of this. Tony is oftentimes when I do board workshops and I’ll explain this kind of what we’ve done today. The board member who’s a, who’s a corporate person who’s, whose job is networking, whose job is sales, whose job is having great deep relationships with their clients. Um It’s funny to me usually in every training, someone will go. This, this is kind of what I do in my day to day life, but I’ve never thought about it in a fundraising capacity. That’s the ha moment we were talking about the board because we’ve been trained and sometimes they’re taking their cue from the staff and leader fundraising. Is this, send me 10 days for giving Tuesday. Here’s your linkedin Post uh email this holiday appeal to 10 people. We’ve been trained that that’s it. And we’re actually blocking the board from helping and networking because th that is what feels natural. This is what they’re doing, scaling and running their own businesses. So we’re actually like keeping boards from even being a highly effective networkers and fundraisers because they’re doing something that they think fundraising is, fundraising is over here. It’s relationship building and everything you just described is purely transactional. Yeah. All right. What haven’t we talked about that you wanted to? We, we have, we got some, some time left. What, what haven’t I asked you? What haven’t we talked about that? You want uh our listeners to know? Well, let me think about that. You know, here’s the other thing I’ll, I’ll just lay on top of this oftentimes. Um You know, I, I’ll just preface it with like I get to work with some of the most amazing leaders, executive directors who are subject matter, experts solving all of these incredible problems. Um Sometimes they don’t want to be fundraisers, right? Which an ex executive director is always a fundraiser. Um So oftentimes I find that even if it’s a larger organization, meaning like maybe there’s, let’s just say it’s like a $5 million organization, but maybe 4 million of that might be government funding or state funding. And so there’s kind of this smaller organization doing fundraising within the larger context of the organization. Uh, oftentimes that’s a subject matter expert who’s running that organization. Um And it kind of feels like, ok, so we need to grow that 1 million or that 750 we need to grow that time for a development director because I don’t wanna do the fundraising, the staff, I’ve probably said this, the staff on the board take their cue from the executive director, those top relationships in the pyramid, your executive director has to know how to do relational fundraising. Uh You, they have to know how to attract and keep a team that does relational fundraising. And so I just, I, I think I just lay on top of this of like, you need to invest in your team. Yes. And the executive director is the lead fundraiser on the fundraising team holder of the, the largest relationships likely or most complex relationships. However, you wanna look at that, you ed also have to know how to lead donors on amazing journeys and ask for what you need. Um That’s it, that, that’s why I, I work with the leader first the leader sets the tone for the organization, you know, culturally, you know, so many different ways, but also from a revenue generating standpoint. Uh And so it can’t just be, let me hire a fundraising team to fix the fundraising. I want them thinking how, what are the things we need to do that shift our organization into the activities that fully fund our mission every year. It’s a different angle. I follow you closely on linkedin and you have your Friday reframes. And I, so I want to propose a Friday reframe from, from executive director saying we need to hire a director of development because I don’t want to do fundraising anymore. Two, we need to hire our first director of development because I want to be more sophisticated in fundraising because I want someone to help me align my time with dollars around fundraising. You know what, when this launches, that’s gonna be my Friday reframe, right? And I’m gonna attribute you, you nailed it, you, you can’t, you, the, the CEO cannot absolve themselves of fundraising. It’s just that you need, you need to be more directed with the help of your development, your de your Chief Development Officer, Direct Development, whatever. Uh so that you’re, you’re, you’re speaking to the right people at the right time in the relationship and, and we’re cultivating them for an ultimate solicitation of, you know, an investment level gift. Yeah. And, and you know, if an executive director is hearing this and going, how would I do that? How would I, how would I have time in the day? I, I can’t even imagine that I go back to my advice I gave this morning. Let’s talk 10 hours, let’s talk five hours. Like that’s where you start, you have to move into those activities. Um, you have to model that for your staff and board. Um, oftentimes, then we throw something wild out. Like maybe you actually don’t need. Your first hire is not a development director. Gasp. What if the Ed actually could be bringing in 500 K more? And you had more of a development coordinator spinning the plates underneath that Ed and managing it and making sure all these relationships are, they were doing the pre email, the draft, the post, the follow up. What if that added 500 a million to your plate? Maybe you don’t need that development director first. There’s a, there’s a lot of options, Tony uh that I wish people would pause and you know, do that math equation and really, really weigh um that, that can yield more money than, than perhaps that they’ve been used to Sherry, Quam Taylor Outstanding. She’s CEO of she Yeah, my pleasure. She’s CEO of QM Taylor LLC. You’ll find them at kmail.com and you’ll find Sherry very active on linkedin. Uh What can I say? Thank you for sharing your thinking. Sherry, thanks for having me as always, love the conversation. My pleasure. Next week, empowering women. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by virtuous. Virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and go giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. I still love the alliteration, fast friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Pernetti. This show, social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the out of their 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 29, 2024: “How To Thrive When Work Doesn’t Love You Back”

 

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of paracusis if I had to hear that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, this week it’s how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. Thats Mikko Marquette Whitlock new book. And he returns to share his wisdom. The mindful techie has advice, like honor your priorities, negotiate your boundaries, embody your well being, mind your meds and quite a bit more on Tony’s take two hails from the gym. Turn off your speaker phone lady were sponsored by virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and go giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation, forming your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. It’s a pleasure to welcome back again and again, Miko Marquette Whitlock he is the nonprofit techie. He’s a workplace well being strategist. His new book is How to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. A practical guide for taking care of yourself while changing the world. His practice and his book are at Mindful techie.com. And you’ll find Miko on linkedin. Welcome back, Miko. Thank you for having me, Tony. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. No, thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you back to talk about this book which I very much enjoyed reading. Uh easy read. Valuable, lots of lots, lots of tips. Here’s what to do. If you got five minutes, if you have 15 minutes, if you have 30 minutes, we’ll get to that. Every, every, every chapter is chock full. Uh I love the book. I real, I enjoyed reading it. Tell your story. You were uh you, you, you were in a, in a dark, sad, uh burned out place at one time. Yes. So I’ve, I’ve worked across nonprofit and, and government sector most of my professional career and I very much enjoyed the work that I was doing. Um I worked in a number of different roles related to communications and technology and in my last role before starting my current work, I was communications director for a large organization focused on ending HIV and Hepatitis. Uh We worked with public health officials in the US and around the world and the continent of Africa and the Caribbean and, and lots of other places. Um And I really enjoyed the work. Um But that mission was very heavy and the, the mandate that I was given in terms of building a team, building out a department. Um that was a lot and it caught up to me. Uh I started out, I was really um excited and, and willing to put in the extra hours, willing to, to go the extra mile above and beyond. Um But it reached a point where that wasn’t sustainable and I hit up a really low valley. You know, I was, I was depressed. I had gained a lot of weight and I didn’t feel like I could bring what I was feeling, what I was experiencing to anyone in the organization. I had this idea that that was inappropriate that I needed to sort of suck it up and figure out how to, how to essentially figure it out on my own. Right. That’s, that was the space that I was in. And I reached a point where I faced a potentially life threatening illness. And that was the beginning of a wake up call where I realized that there had to be a different way to do this work. Um that it, it shouldn’t be an either or, or a binary choice. There has to be a way that we can take care of ourselves and do this work in a sustainable way. And one of the questions that I kept asking myself as I was moving through. This is that if I’m burned out, if I’m not at my best, if all of us are sort of at some point of our journey, we’re, we’re experiencing something similar when we’re working in the sector, then who would ever be around long enough to actually do this work, who would ever be around long enough to do the work that this sector was created to do. And that was the start of a, a journey of, of healing for me. And fortunately for me, I had a supportive team, I had a supportive organization and that allowed me to think more holistically about what I needed to uh take care of myself while doing the work and setting appropriate boundaries that empowered me to be able to support my team in doing the same thing. And um that was the start of our journey that brings me to where we are here today. How many years ago was your wake up call? Um That was more than 10 years ago. Were you able to stay with that nonprofit that you were working with as you improved your your own well being you, you I stayed on for a few years um after I had this inflection point. And um one of the beautiful parts of that journey was that I began to share this story. I began and I began to share this journey and I spoke at a conference I believe I it was, it was intent. I gave a short, one of the short ignite talks about my experience. And one of the reasons that I ended up doing the work that I’m doing now and the way that I’m doing it is so many folks came up to me after that short talk where I shared this, this my journey and sort of where I was in that journey, they shared that they resonate with what I was sharing. Um So that let me know that I wasn’t alone. Um They wanted help with these challenges and they wanted to hire me to help them. And a light bulb sort of went off and said, you know what I, as much as I’ve enjoyed the work that I have done, I had also reached a point where I had done what I had been asked to do and I was ready to figure out what was the next leg of my professional journey. And this seemed like a natural progression for that. I think that’s instructive because you, you were able to stay in the organization as, as difficult as the work had become for you. Uh Personally, I don’t mean the substance of the work a as maybe sort of as, as toxic as the demands had become, put it that way you were able to stay, you were able to negotiate your own boundaries and uh a acknowledge your, your limitations, things like that, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get into, within the organization that had been so difficult for you to, to be with and that it had driven you to, uh needing a wake up call. Absolutely. And I wanna be clear that it wasn’t the organization that did something to me. Um, it wasn’t, um, like a particular person that did something. What we’re talking about is, is structural and systemic um, issues that contribute to this being not just a um experience that’s that I experience, but it’s, it’s like an experience that’s very common to change makers around the world that are doing this type of work. Let’s uh II, I define um mindfulness. You and I and Jason and Beth Cantor have talked about mindfulness, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked anybody, you know, what, what does it mean to you, please? Mindfulness as I think about it is, it’s an innate quality that we all possess to essentially pay attention to the present moment, to be fully present and to do that without judgment, right? And when we think about mindfulness, we often associate it with formal practices like meditation and yoga. Those are certainly ways to cultivate mindfulness. Um But this innate quality of being able to pay attention is something that has existed since the beginning of our species. And as a matter of fact, when we think about caveman Daves and the lions and the bears and so on and so forth, a certain level of mindfulness was required in order for us to be aware of threats and to be able to respond accordingly. And so when we talk about um mindfulness in that sense, it’s not a part of a particular religion or particular tradition. Um It’s something that we all possess. Um but there are different ways to, to cultivate that, but that’s how I think about mindfulness. Interesting uh uh additional component to it is that, you know, without apology, to being present, without uh having to justify it to, to, to, to others or to an organization or, you know, anyone out, anyone beside yourself. Um Because, uh you know, I asked that, you know, sort of at the outset because II, I think, I think, I think of your book is essentially creating mindfulness. Uh You have lots of different steps and, and just mindfulness, intentionality and all without uh all without apology. Yes, all without apology, all, all without judgment and being able to extend to yourself grace that even in the space of being mindful and intentional um that what you are experiencing might not feel good, but being willing and being courageous enough to be with whatever you are experiencing allows you to figure out. Ok, well, how do I constructively move through whatever it is that I’m experiencing at this moment? There are so many outside forces too that are, that are challenging us. Um You know, you talk about prolonged uncertainty, social anxiety, you know, these, these forces acting on us that we’re very well not aware of, well, not, not aware that it’s happening and not aware of how toxic they are. Share, share your thinking around those. Yes. So there are, when we think about the the work in the change making sector or the nonprofit sector in particular, there are certain externalities that contribute to for some of us, the overwhelm that we experience at work. Um One of them is um and particularly in the US, you know, we most organizations work around what we consider to be a 40 hour work week, right? We put that in air quotes. Um And that is really a relic of a of, of a previous area era that made certain assumptions about what your family situation looks like. It assumes that you’re one person is able to go out and make enough money to be able to support the entire family, the other person stays home and takes care of the kids in the house and, and all those things. Well, that has shifted our economy has, has fundamentally transformed. Um We think differently about who stays at home. And um you know, in many cases, both parents are working. Um And so what childcare looks like is, is very different. So you have that aspect of it, the pandemic. Um The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally reshaped our life and our work and it has surfaced what for some, some of us has already been there and it has exacerbated things um to you to your point about the uncertainty, right? What’s what’s happening next? What is this, what is, what is the residual impact gonna look like in terms of our life and the work moving forward? When we think about A I, for example, with a lot of folks that I work with now, there’s lots of anxiety about, you know, will I still be relevant, right? How will my work transform? Right? Um People are feeling anxious about feeling like there’s yet one more thing that I have to learn, one more tool that I have to learn in order to stay relevant in order to um stay up to speed and to actually make a valuable contribution um to this work that I care so much about. So all of those are weighing on us in terms of the overwhelm and then you have, you know, the sector in general where we have been structurally underfunded to, to begin with, right? So that creates another set of externalities that, that, that further compound things I think that’s important to understand, but it’s not the place that we stop. So the book is, the book recognizes that those things exist, but it also recognizes that as individuals inside of organizations, you may not be in a position where you have the influence because you’re maybe you’re not a manager, maybe you’re not at the board level, maybe you’re not the CEO or executive director, you may not be able to influence a top down approach to culture shift in your organization in a way that improves well being overall for your team and, and for you. But there are things that you can do as an individual. Notwithstanding that um to begin to experience a shift, to begin to change your experience over time and to begin to make space over the long term to address the issues um at a broader level. So there’s the um what I call the spheres of impact um in the book where similar to when we’re flying, many of us have probably heard this from flight attendants, you know, in the event of an emergency, an oxygen mask might drop down from the ceiling in that event that that that happens to secure your own oxygen masks first before you support someone else. The same applies here, many of us including including me, part of the experience, part of the burnout that I experienced was the result of me jumping head first and wanting to serve this higher mission, wanting to serve my organization and my team, but I had not fully resourced myself. And so I experienced short term success, but I reached a point where I petered out and that began to have some negative consequences across a number of different areas of my life. And so when we think about this, in terms of um where do we start as individuals. I always invite people to start with, what are you doing to fully resource yourself first. Notwithstanding all these other externalities that are, that are pressing up against you. If you’re able to fully resource yourself first, you’re positioning yourself to long term in a, in a sustainable way, address some of those other issues. I often remind folks that you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it and that you’re, I mean, you’re your theories and your, your strategies are are I think, right, right in line with that. Um And, and that we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of others. I love your reminder about the the airline uh you know, the airline briefing. Um Yeah, you, you, you, you have to take care of yourself first and then you can be graceful and generous, thoughtful, empathetic, productive, valuable or others or other stuff. So before we talk about um change your five, your 55 strategies for change. So just to make it explicit what’s on the other side of the journey, what is, what is thriving when, when, how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back? What does thriving look like? Thriving means in the context of us as change makers that are doing good work that are having a mission to change the world that you are sustainably resourcing and taking care of yourself. So that you are positioned to give your best in service of whatever mission it is that you are serving. What that means at the individual level is we are finding healthy ways to navigate even the difficult parts of our work. Um We’re avoiding um or, or reducing the likelihood that we’re going to, to burn out. And then on the mission side, what we’re looking at is um essentially elevated and amplified impact, organizational impact. Um because you aren’t having the cycle of burnout. And we know that on the organizational level, what does that actually translate to? It means that you’re probably gonna have issues with retention, right? As a hiring manager, I understand how costly in terms of time and also in terms of money to actually hire a new person. Once someone leaves, right, there are estimates that show that it costs 2 to 3 times the salary in some cases of the position. Um And the time wasted to, you know, put together a position description, do the recruitment, bring someone on board, get them up to speed to fill this gap that was left by a culture that perhaps created this cycle of, of, of turn, for example. So th that’s just very, that’s just one concrete example. So uh my, my, my thought process on this is that if we’re able to intentionally apply some of these concepts to our situation that we can create healthier individuals and healthier organizations that are able to more effectively meet their missions over the long term, in a sustainable way. Let’s talk about how to get there to change, change. Absolutely. So the change is change are the commitments that in my view, when we are embodying these commitments that we are positioning ourselves to do the work long term and sustainably while also taking care of ourselves. Um One of the ways that I think about this is if you are driving a car and you have your, your dashboard, you have the different indicators that show you your fuel level, that show you the oil level that show you the temperature of the engine, that show you how fast you’re going. All of those things are simultaneously important in some respect to understand how well the car is functioning and helping you to get from your starting point to your final destination. Similarly, we want to be operating at a certain minimum level in each of these um commitments in order to be functioning at a high level and sustainably as a change maker. So really quickly, what does it look like in terms of change? So the C is for connecting with your why or reconnecting with your why? So why do you actually do this work? What is your um end goal um that can be as noble as you wanting to end homelessness or it can be, you know what you want to make enough money to retire, right? The there’s no judgment. The, the invitation is for you to be clear about what that, what that Y is Miko. Let, let’s just tick through the, the five. So folks get, folks get the overview and then we’re gonna all, well, of course, we’re gonna come back. Sure. Um The H is for honoring your priorities connected to your Y um The A is for acknowledging and confronting those limiting beliefs that might get in the way of fulfilling that Y um the N is for negotiating and renegotiating boundaries. The G is for generating space to go within and then the final one is bringing them all together, which is embodying well being while well doing. 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 response of 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 how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. So let’s focus on the connecting to your why. But you, you, you, you, you spend a lot of time talking about goals. Uh Well, what is, you know, identifying your why and goals and prioritizing? But what, what uh how do I just identify my why? Absolutely. Uh So one of the places to start, if, if you’re struggling with, with your why is really just first understanding that it doesn’t have to be this lofty high-minded thing that comes down on high in terms of your why, right? You can be very specific about, OK, for the next 90 days or for the next year, my vision of success in this particular role or in my life overall is fill in the blank, right? So my vision for success or my, my why is that I want to, in my case, have a fully staffed communications department so that we can move the mission of the organization forward, right? That’s very concrete, very time bound. Um It can be loftier and more broad than that. But if you’re struggling with making it more concrete, I invite you to shrink the time frame and get very practical about at the end of that time frame. What’s the result that you want to see and work backwards from there? So once we’ve identified, then how do we take steps to uh to actually truly connect with our y So the there are two parts to this. So one is thinking about how would you go about the work of actually fulfilling that, that’s an important part of actively connecting and reconnecting to it. So what are the, what are the measurable goals that you are engaged in? Um What are the day to day action items that you’re engaged in to actually move that forward? So that’s one aspect of that. The second aspect of that is what is your ritual look like on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis of actually reconnecting with that. So for me, I have a planning tool um that I use that, that I created called the Intention Planner. And I use that on a daily basis. When I’m planning my day, I identify what is my intention for that day. What’s my vision for success? And it’s tied to the larger vision that I have for that quarter and, and for that for that year. And that’s one of the ways that I connect to and, and reconnect with that. I just want, I just want listeners to know that uh the intention planner is also at mindful techie uh dot com. Alongside, right alongside the book, there’s the intention Planner. So you’re using your intention planner. Yeah. So the, so with the book and with the planner, this is not a theoretical work for me. So this is not something that I’m asking you to do that. I’m not doing when I created the intention planner I didn’t intend to have that be for sale. I created it because I didn’t see anything out there. That made sense for me in terms of how I think about intentionally planning my day as a change maker. And so I had a podcast interview, cinema similar to this. And the host asked me, so when is this gonna be available? And I like, but when I was like, oh, ok, people actually want to buy this. And so I made it available for sale similar with the book. There’s lots of research that backs backs up the process and the approach that I take. But this is really a practical approach that I live by and that I teach to my clients. This isn’t something that I sort of just summarized a bunch of articles or books that are already out there. This is, this is, this is actually the, the path that I live and this is actually what I teach. OK. Um And then, so once you have, once you have goals identified um and time bound and tied to your, to your, to your larger y and your work um prioritizing. Yes. So honoring your priorities. So prioritizing essentially means that at any particular point in time, you can have a gazillion goals that you want to achieve that might be relevant to or aligned with your why. But the reality is that we have a finite existence, right? We have a limited amount of time and resources and energy, even though our energy is renewable, if we are, you know, taking care of ourselves. And so what that means is that we have to identify, going back to your, your, your question about mindfulness. What do I have the capacity to focus on in this moment? Right. What do I have the time and energy to focus on in this moment? And that’s gonna let you know what your priorities are. So if you have a gazillion things on your to do list for this week, based on how much time you actually have available, what do you actually have the capacity to focus on? Uh and what’s gonna be the most relevant for you in terms of moving um your, your y forward for folks that are struggling with identifying priorities. One of the analogies that I really like is an analogy from um the book called the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papain. And they give us the imagery of a domino display. So if folks have seen these memes or you’ve seen the videos online where you have these large set of dominoes that are set up, right? And you knock over the first domino and then that has a cascading effect where it knocks over all the rest of the dominoes that first domino using a s analogy would be the priority, right? So if you’re struggling with where to start, I often invite people to think about if I could only focus on one thing for this moment, what one thing could I focus on that by doing that would make everything else on my to do list, either easier to do or irrelevant to do because I’ve chosen the highest ranking priority for this moment. Uh So I invite people to moment by moment, just say for this moment for the next hour, for the next day, for the next week. If I only accomplished one thing, what would that one thing be? And then you rinse and repeat that process uh as you get better and better with identifying and focusing on those priorities. What do we do with the distractions that, that uh uh are, are, are bound to uh are, are bound to come to us to, to face us. You know, I don’t know whether it’s an email distraction or it could be a bigger personal distraction. You know, we’ve got our priorities for the, let’s say, even just for the day. But, but there’s stuff incoming. How do, how do I navigate myself around the distractions or do I maybe the distraction? Maybe, maybe that’s a higher priority than what I set aside for the day? You know, how do we, how do we deal with this? And then not, then not uh beat ourselves up over it. The first is, is simply acknowledging that distraction is a natural part of the human experience. So we have internal distractions. So those are the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, um, maybe, um going back to the caveman days, maybe there’s actually a legitimate fear, um, that you have about getting eaten by a tiger or attacked by a bear. Right? That, that’s, that’s a very real thing and then we have external distraction. So that’s the email coming in, that’s the phone buzzing. Um That’s someone walking into your office. Um You know, so th those, those distractions are real. So the first person starts by acknowledging that those things do exist and that you can get back on track. Um Once you acknowledge the distraction, that’s where the mindfulness piece comes in, right? Uh The second part of this is being flexible. So to your point, something very well might come up, that changes what you thought was the top priority and we get to be flexible, we get to give ourselves permission to allow things to, to change. Um Just because you have a clear sense of direction right now, that doesn’t mean that that may not change. You know, we, we can be flexible to change based on our life and how our work is flowing in a particular season. So when we acknowledge those two things, that distraction is a natural part of the human experience. Number two, we get to, to be flexible and give ourselves a little bit of grace to, to change. Then that allows us to, to do the third part of this, which is about um doing our part to set boundaries or parameters that protect our priorities. So if you are working on a, a time bound project that has a tight deadline and you wanna remain accessible, one of the strategies I’ll talk about in the book is establishing your rules of engagement and that’s where I might say, you know what um Tony, I’m working on deadline, but here I, I recognize that that an emergency might pop up if that’s the case. Here’s the way that you can reach me if and, and the true emergency pops up. I’m gonna have my phone. Um beside me, you know, feel free to call or text if, if this is actually a true emergency. If not, you, you won’t hear from me until the rest of the day until I finish this particular project. Right? There are, there are strategies like that, that we can right size depending on the appropriateness for our project or for our organization um to support us in honoring our priorities. Recognizing that distraction is a natural part of the experience, but also doing our part to minimize the distraction so that we can um focus on as much as we can the most important priority for the moment. So we’re right. So there was a very subtle transition and we went from acknowledging your limiting beliefs to uh negotiate boundaries where, which is negotiate boundaries was my favorite of the, of your five. Because they are, they’re essential. II, I just II, I don’t know, I’ve just known this for, for a long time that they’re essential to, to well being and honoring yourself. And I, I think when we talk about negotiating bounds, I think it’s important similar to the distraction for you. So simply acknowledge that for many of us that this might be an uncomfortable thing for us to do. Let’s just acknowledge that it’s uncomfortable, right? That it might not feel good and part of setting and protecting boundaries means we have to simply acknowledge the reality that there will be disappointment. You will be disappointed, you will disappoint someone else as much as you try not to. That doesn’t mean that you’re being unkind, but that just means that sometimes things aren’t perfectly aligned in terms of what we need and when we need them from different people and it’s ok if when that happens, the the the larger point is how do we respond when those things happen? And in the book, I talk about ways in which you understand when and how to say yes to things or no to things or not right now to things and how you can do that in a way that preserves the the personal relationship, how you can do that in a way that helps to educate the other person um about what your needs are, how you can do that in the way that you can help the other person figure out, OK, is there another way that I can support you in, in helping you get what you need while I also honor my current priority for this moment and vice versa? Right? How can you process and deal with the disappointment when you may need a want or desire something in a certain way by a certain time frame and the person that you are um inviting or asking to support you with that is not able to give you what you need right then and there how do you then you know, process and, and deal with that. Um You have exact language that we can, you just copy, you can copy and say not right now or no, I know this is not right for me. Like basically ever, you’re, you’re more, your wording is more eloquent, but you have the exact language we can just, I can just copy it into my email actually. Absolutely. So, and there, there are different options. Um And the the invitation is to use your best judgment um and to recognize, but all the things that we’re talking about this is a continuous practice. This is not something that you do one time and you sort of flip the switch and you’re like, you know what I got it all figured out. One of the beautiful things about the life that we’re living is that we get an opportunity to start again and again and again, to practice over and over and over again. Uh And when we can recognize and when we can accept that, I think for some of us that helps to lower the level of anxiety that we feel about, you know, moving through life and moving through work and trying to figure out like, how do we put these things? That’s a practice in a way that is sustainable and it works for us. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit Donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. These characters at the gym. You know, they, they, it’s not, it’s not the same characters all the time because people come at different times and uh I go at different times. It’s always morning. Um I, I don’t get there after like 10 o’clock in the morning. Usually. Never, probably never. So, but you know, you see different people. And uh uh this woman, I’ve seen a number of times this one time she had her speaker phone on and So we all had to listen to the conversation that, uh, her friend was telling her about. There was this, uh, it was the night before and there had been some kind of an assault, she was assaulted or her boyfriend was assaulted or so somebody was assaulted in a parking lot. Uh, and then, you know, they, they like, saw assaulted, like, just, you know, like pushed or something, you know, nothing like beaten up but still an assault, not appropriate but, you know, not bloody or anything. Apparently based on the story, you know, a as it was relayed to me via this woman’s uh speaker phone. So there she went home and her guy was with her. It’s not clear what the relationship is. They went home, they called the police and the police came, the, then there was, there was some, there was some questioning but then a neighbor comes over and the neighbor is an attorney. So he was asking the detective who came to the, to the house to, to take pictures of the woman or the, uh, and thank goodness the neighbor is an attorney because otherwise I wouldn’t have thought of that myself. You know, this woman is saying, and, you know, I, I don’t, I, I mean, I just, I, I don’t need to hear Peyton Place, you know, as the world turns the guiding light, you know, I don’t, we don’t need to hear these, uh on speaker. Turn your damn speakerphone off, go out in the hall, go out the building actually going to be on speaker. You should be outside the building for Pete’s sake. Exasperating with these women. Well, with the people, th this was a woman who just uh I don’t know, she just didn’t figure it out. So we all had to listen to this five minute uh drama unfold with the, the, the, the police and the, the neighbor lawyer. And thank goodness. And, uh, so please, you know, it’s to turn your phones off to turn the phone off or jump right outside, you know, or Pete’s sake. I mean, I don’t even bring my phone to the gym. Literally, it stays home every single time. I don’t even bring it. I, I don’t need it, but if you need it for timing or something, don’t, don’t, don’t take calls, don’t, don’t take calls on the speaker phone for PT or even on the phone. We don’t want to hear even just your side of it. I Thats Tonys take too Kate. He sounds very aggravated. No, I’m not angry. I’m exasperated that she doesn’t get me angry. I’m, you know, I’m having, I’m having a good workout but she’s exasperating. I feel like Jim should have the um, you know how movie theaters have the little messages, like don’t talk or text during the movie. I feel like Jim should have that as well. Yeah, I don’t know whether they projected on the wall or something, you mean? Or, or, I don’t know, sign, you know, turn your damn speakerphone off. That’s the sign I would put up. They do have signs for, wipe down the equipment when you’re done. Uh, it’s a very civil gym. Maybe I should talk about some positive thing. It’s very, it is very, everybody’s so polite. It’s not like my New York City gym. I used to belong to, uh, I mean, they have sanitizers everywhere and, and wipes and towels. Maybe I should talk about something positive about this North Carolina gym. Hey, uh, great fun. Last week with the, uh 700 the show, by the way. Oh, I know. It was so nice to see everyone and everyone was so happy. The game was so much fun that Claire did. It was quiz. Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was fun. She stumped me in a couple. Um, and, uh, but uh, Scott and Gene and um, Blair all did uh generous uh social posts in different places. Scott was on Facebook. Uh Claire was on, it was on linkedin J. Did a big blog post at nonprofit law blog.com about the show. Yes. Very uh, very generous. Where’s your social media presence? You’re the, you’re the J Yeah. Where the hell is your social host for the 7/100 show? You’re embarrassed. Uh No, I’m, I’ll be honest. I know I’m Gen Z but I am so bad with social media. Like I never post, I know. I, I should, I should post a little something. Go, well, maybe for the 700. Not that you should be active in social media. That’s up to you. But, but just for the 700 show. Yeah, it would be appreciated. Yeah. Let leave it at that. We’ll leave it at that. Get on it. Well, we’ve got VU but loads more time. Here’s the rest of how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back with Miko Marquette Whitlock, talk about the uh FOMO versus Jomo. Absolutely. So going back to your point about distractions earlier when we talk about FOMO, FOMO is what some people describe as fear of missing out, right? So one of the examples that I give when I’m training people about setting boundaries, I give the example of at one point in my career um that if I were working on deadline, sometimes I would procrastinate or I would distract myself with email. And part of the reason for that is that I fear that if, if I wasn’t responsive and sort of looking at my email inbox all the time that I would miss something very important that I would drop the ball on something for a team member or a client or a member and that, that would have disastrous consequences. And so I feared literally missing out for some people. It’s about social media, connecting with friends and family and fear like you’re gonna miss the the latest and greatest gossip or you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna be the last person to know about this party or event that’s happening that your friend is hosting or whatever it is. Uh So that’s very real and that’s very legitimate. So we can acknowledge that. And as part of shifting away from this, when we acknowledge that this is a real thing for us, the other end of this is Jomo. So this is the joy of missing out and the joy of missing out invites us to recognize that, you know what? I only have a certain number of hours in a day and in a week, I’m only gonna live a certain number of years and tomorrow is not guaranteed. And so I get to make peace with the fact that I can’t do it all and have it all. And so I get to make an intentional choice about what I choose to give my time and attention to right now. And what I choose to intentionally miss out on. Uh one of the ways I’ll talk about this in the book is to proactively identify your regrets, right? So whenever you are making a choice to enforce boundaries, there are gonna be certain things that you’re gonna miss out on, right? You’re gonna, you may have to miss a happy hour right after work with your, your colleagues for a certain time period. If you’re working on deadline on a special project for example, um you might have to deal with the fact that because you’re saying no, um, that your relationship with someone that you really care about in your life might shift, right? And you have to make a decision about whether or not that is something that you are willing to, um accept and how you’re willing to process that. So, um understanding this and, and processing it in this way, can position you to get to a space where it’s less fear and it’s more about joy. Recognizing that you get to make an intentional choice as opposed to reaction based on something that happened. Your example of the party invitation doesn’t resonate with me because I just knew that I would never be invited. So I just, you didn’t fear missing out, didn’t land with me. No, not, not the parties. No. Um You know, this is, it’s beautiful. Um because, you know, this is a life practice and over your life as people know you, they’re gonna, they’re gonna come to recognize that you’re not routinely saying no, you know, o over, over their relationship with you, you’ve been there for them, maybe, maybe something they had urgent rose to the level of um offsetting your other priorities for the, the day or the week or the month, depending how dire the, the the emergency or crisis may have been. You may have been there for them. So over the over, over the span of your relationships with people and with organizations, even institutions, they’re gonna come to see that you don’t, you don’t routinely say no. You don’t reflexively say no as you’re enforcing the boundaries. But occasionally, um, you do say no and, and they’re gonna, they’re gonna, when, when you do, they’re gonna, they’re gonna have the grace for you that you’ve shown them over the span of your, your relationship with them again, whether it’s a person or institution. Absolutely. So this is about recognizing that in most cases, people are reasonable and going back to the examples with the language, it’s important to do what we can to mitigate misunderstanding. Um And to provide sometimes providing context is helpful. And so um in the book, I give examples of how to say no, because I, I understand the perspective that no was a complete sentence. Yes, that is true. If you talk to, you know English professors. Yes. No, it was a complete sentence. And we also understand at least in, in the Western world, in English. Um It matters how that’s communicated verbally like in terms of your tone, it matters if, if you’re telling someone no period over text or, or, or over email that can be interpreted in many different ways, right? And so the more we can do to provide context, the more we can do to provide options in my opinion. And in my experience, um the more we can get to what you’re talking about, which is people beginning to understand and be able to extend each other grace, right? I think where we get into trouble is where we avoid having these conversations. Things go left unsaid. People have these storylines in their head about. This person doesn’t like me or this person is mean or, or this person thinks this or thinks that uh and that can often make a bad situation worse. Whereas if we just have the courage to be upfront, be proactive, um, over time, we get what you’re talking about where we’re able to have this ebb and flow of people giving each other grace. Um When things just don’t align for whatever reason, talk about getting good with apologies. Absolutely. So this is tied to this idea that there are going to be failures in your life or learning opportunities as I’d like to think of them, they’re going to be disappointments, right? You’re gonna disappoint people. People are gonna disappoint you. Um It’s not going to necessarily be intentional, but it’s just we’re all living our lives and that’s just a consequence of the fact that we’re sort of all doing, you know, different things at different speeds and we have different things that we’re called to and, and so on and sometimes you are going to, even if it’s unintentional, you’re going to, you know, hurt people’s feelings, um, disappoint people and a accepting that one of the ways that we can um remedy, remedy that and continue to have healthy relationships is to get good at acknowledging when that happens and to apologize when that does happen. And one of the examples that I give in the book is a little model of an apology from uh the de I strategist conclusion, Strategist Amber Cabral, where she talks about this idea of acknowledging by saying, you know what, I’m sorry, or apologize for X fill in the blank, whatever the X is, um moving forward, I will fill in the blank, whatever the change of behavior that you’re going to follow, moving forward. So I can model this now. You know, Tony, I apologize for canceling our interview last minute. Um Moving forward, I’ll make sure that I give you advance notice if I need to make a shift and schedule whatever it is, right? And actually making a commitment to do better, right? So that you’re not continuously having to apologize for the same thing over and over again. I think that’s the key here. Let’s take a break from the, these very valuable strategies and tactics. Um tell a story, tell a story about a, a client person or institution that made their way through. Uh you know, the, the um the difficulties, the unwellness, the mistakes, mistakes as you, you call them in the book, we may have a chance to talk about mistakes and, and found their way again, either as a person or institution to uh to, to thriving to, well being. So one of the, the examples that I give the book um is from a client um Sheri that I met when I was doing a series of training for nonprofit professionals on leadership and resilience in Virginia. And she was at that time, a VP of communications for a community foundation. And she came to one of the classes I did AAA full day class on essentially mindfulness based approaches to leadership. And one of Sharia’s biggest challenges was around setting boundaries. And this was at work and also at home, one of the, at, at work, one of the biggest things was around feeling like she had to be constantly connected to her devices and to her social media because she, after all, she’s the VP of communication. So like if, you know, if she’s not fully connected and being, you know, 100% responsive all the time, then like the world’s gonna fall apart if she’s, if she’s not doing that. And that’s the job you had when you were with the NGO. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, we talked about some of the strategies that we’ve talked about here today. Um You know, we had, and we had an opportunity to work together beyond that, that one full day class. But one of the things that was changing, life changing for her and, and this, these, these are her words essentially is the idea that she could set those boundaries like, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world, right? And that she could release this idea of having to be the perfect VP, having to be the perfect mother, having to be the perfect wife. And to recognize that if she wasn’t resourcing and pouring it into herself and setting boundaries to allow that to happen, that she wasn’t gonna be good to any of those, any of those roles for her being good at her work, being a good wife, being a good mother. Those were things that were critically important to her. And so this allowed her the freedom to actually release that and be more effective in her role. Um Another example that I would give on the personal side for, for she, she was able to stay in that job and fulfill her commitment to her family and, and do, do both in, in a, in a way that she felt she was succeeding. Exactly. And so this gets back to one of the ways that she was able to do this. So looking at the personal side, um, she has, she and her husband have three young boys. And so as you can imagine, for, for parents out there, that’s a lot of laundry. And so one of the things that really overwhelmed Sheri was this idea, she had this idea that in order to be a perfect mother and wife, that laundry had to be done and folded and clean, you know, 24 7. Right. Like, you can’t have what she called the laundry chair. And one of the things did she call it the, the laundry chair? So, it’s essentially where you have, you have clean clothes but they’re not folded. They’re just sort of sitting in the laundry chair as she called them. Right. Exactly. So, essentially people are sort of picking out the clean clothes from the, from the laundry chair as opposed to pulling them out from a, from a drawer because they’re not always folded neat, uh, neatly, um, all the time and she made peace with that. That was one of the things that she was able to release and let go of and to say, you know what, the clean laundry is not gonna always be folded neatly and you know what? That’s ok. It’s not the end of the world. My husband and my Children still have clean clothes. I’m, I’m guessing too because of your advice in the book that you, you would, we would encourage Shari or others, you know, to take things incrementally, a small, a small step. Now, you know, we can all decide on our own whether we think the laundry chair is a big step or a small step, you know, for Sheri, maybe that’s a big step, but whatever it is, right, incremental. Take a step, take something manageable. Absolutely. And so the, the book, um, I emphasize this throughout which is to start small because the reality is that we know from the science of behavior change, um, the smaller the smallest bite of change that we can chew off, that we can do sustainably, the more likely we’re able to stick with that over the long term. Right? And so we see this with people that make a commitment at the beginning of the year. So, you know what, today’s, this year is gonna be the year that I’m finally gonna get into shape and get fill in the blank, whatever your ideal body type is, right? And they’re going hard for maybe a, you know, a day or two or maybe they’re lucky, maybe they make it through the whole month of January and then they sort of jump, drop off and you don’t see them anymore. And part of that is because, um, they went from sort of 0 to 100 overnight and that wasn’t sustainable. Now, there are examples of folks like, you know, ex marine David Goggins, like a very extreme example, like people that can do that, right? But for the vast majority of folks, that’s not the case. We have to take it slowly and we have to start small and be consistent with the small wins and then we can gradually build up to, to bigger things more sustainably over the long term. This week, I’m gonna dedicate 90 minutes to working out and that, that is. Yeah. And, and, and throughout the week I’m gonna devote 90 minutes. I mean, there’s a, something more manageable than, you know, taking on a whole year. Absolutely. All right. All right. Uh So, all right. We’ve connected to our, why honored our priorities, acknowledged our limiting beliefs, negotiating boundaries, generate space to go within. This is one I had to read. II, I had to spend more time with this one. Absolutely. Uh Personally, I’m just my own personal journey through the book, uh which, you know, there’s obviously a lot more detail, you know, you just got to get the book. Um again, how to thrive when work doesn’t love you back. Um Because you know, there’s only so much Miko and I can talk about in our time together um generating space to go within. What, what’s your thinking here? So we talked earlier about the instruction from the flight attendant secure your own oxygen mask before you help someone else secure theirs. This particular part of the book is focused on the space and the activities that you’re engaged in to refuel yourself. This is the area where if you aren’t making space to do this in a consistent way, really, none of these other things are gonna matter that we talked about. And the way that I think about this is you, some of us have probably heard the phrase time is money, right? And time is the most important thing that you could have. I actually disagree with that. I think our energy and our vitality is the most important thing because you can have all the time in the world. But if, if you’re not well enough and you don’t have the energy to actually maximize that, then what good is all the time in the world to you. And so this particular chapter is um generating space to go within is about how you carve out the space in the midst of all the things that are happening in life and work to make sure that you’re continually refueling. One of the simple strategies that I give as a starting point for this is about establishing what I call your start and your start routine for your day. Um Particularly if you have a very demanding and very challenging and sometimes unpredictable um, work schedule. This particular strategy is about however small that is if it’s only five minutes that you have at the start of your day, doing something that you do just for you, not for your kids, not for your partner, not for your dog. But what are you doing for yourself? Is that sitting by yourself and having a cup of coffee? Is that, um, sitting on your porch and, and, and looking out at the backyard? Is that doing yoga? Is that meditation? Is that listening to your favorite music? Whatever that is. What are you doing to pour into yourself? Even if it’s as little as five minutes or less? And then what are you doing on the back? End of your day before you go to bed or after your work day ends to do the same thing. Um You know, ideally, you know, over time, maybe you are able to create more space, right? But the invitation here is to think about for your particular day. What do you have the capacity to take on and making space to do that? One of the examples that I often give is that I have proactively identified like short, medium and long term versions of my workout. My workout is one of the things that’s very important for me in terms of how I generate space to, to, to go within and, and renew myself and energize myself. There are days when I need to do a five minute version, there’s, there are days when I can only make time for maybe 32nd stretch and an ideal day, I have 30 minutes or more to, to do that. I ask myself, what do I have the capacity to do today? What does my schedule allow me to do? I do that, whether it’s the 32nd stretch or the 30 minute workout and I give myself credit for having worked out for for that day. Um What that allows me to do is it allows me to be realistic about how my life and my work is unfolding. And I also need to be realistic about the fact that every day I wake up for any number of reasons. I’m not always motivated. Right. I’m not always inspired. I’m not always fully energized and that’s OK. We all have peaks and valleys and, and ebbs and flows. But what can I, what do I have the capacity to give myself in that particular day or in that particular moment? So, you, you need to, you need to make time because, you know, a lot of people say, well, when I find the time I’ll, I’ll, I’ll work out. But the, the, the time is never going to tap you on the shoulder and say, you’ve, you’ve got, you’ve got five free minutes or you’ve got 90 free minutes, you’ve got to be intentional and, and set the time for yourself. And then, you know, likewise you explained, you know, give yourself credit. That’s a, that’s an important mindset shift, I think, give yourself credit for the five minute workout rather than berating yourself for not having done the 30 minute workout. Absolutely. And so for me, whether it’s a 32nd stretch or the 30 30 minute workout, it’s, I can check it off in my planner that I did my, my workout for me. They’re, they, they are equal in, in my eyes. Uh One other thing I will share is in terms of a tip is one of the things that I think sometimes stresses people out about this is that people feel like sometimes they have to, if they pick a ritual or routine, it has to be the same one every day and it has to be at the same time in the same way every day. And I wanna invite people to reconsider that I have a bucket of things that I choose from. I have a bucket of things that are ideal based on if I have the ideal amount of time. Um, but maybe it’s not working out, maybe it’s, you know, going for a walk some days if I have time. I, I like to do all of the above. Right. The other part of that is like on days like this, I typically like to do my workout in the morning today. I didn’t do that. I was preparing for this and doing some other things before I joined you here today, Tony. And so I looked at my calendar and I’m gonna do it this afternoon and that’s fine. I, I think of it, I think I about to talk about this in the book, but it’s sort of like, um, eating breakfast for dinner. You know, breakfast is one of my favorite meals. It’s there iii I love the idea of having breakfast for dinner. It’s a for me there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So I wanna give people options to consider, to make this work for them. It, it doesn’t have to look like someone else’s schedule or routine. Um, the point is that it, it works for you and that it’s serving you giving yourself grace. Absolutely. If you can give yourself grace, then you increase the likelihood that you’re able to extend grace to other people. And if we’re in a continuous cycle of being able to extend each other grace, then how wonderful would that be to live and work in the world where we’re able to do that for each other? This is the chapter where you have um advice about intentional meetings. Yes. Share some of your thinking there, please. Yeah, so there, there’s some basic things in terms of intentional meetings. Um The first is really asking the question. Does this meeting need to take place? I think we Presuppose in many cases that a meeting needs to take, take place so that it’s the right solution. Um instead of thinking through, you know, Tony, let’s just schedule a meeting and talk about it later. Well, what if we just talked about it now? And, and maybe it’s like a 32nd answer and we don’t need to schedule a meeting for it, right? And so one of the ways I think about this in terms of answering this question is this being necessary, you know, do we have an agenda? Is it clear? What question we’re trying to answer or what problem we’re trying to solve? Are we clear about who needs to be there? Are all those folks gonna be there or we’re gonna have to have another meeting about the meeting because a key person wasn’t there, we gotta get them up to date. So we just gotta have another meeting about, about that to catch them up. So thinking about even just those basic things that I just share with you asking the legitimate question is this meeting necessary, having an agenda with a clearly stated intention about what’s the purpose of this meeting? How we’re measuring success? How will we know that we actually achieve that because we’ve answered the question, right? Or we have addressed the issue, we’ve identified some next steps to help us to, to move forward. Um Our final thing I’ll share about this is thinking about what is the length of the meeting need to look like. For many of us, we assume that by default. And I think this is really the partly we can blame some of the technology out there. Um That’s fortunately has evolved, but um for many calendar settings for the longest time, the default meet length of the meeting was an, was an hour. And so we just, we had a meeting and we just sort of stretched it out for an hour when it really didn’t need to be that, right? And so thinking about if a meeting is important, do you really need an hour to, to dive through what, what it is that you need to, to do if a meeting is longer than an hour? I really question if people are clear about that. Um What the intention is I work with a client in planned giving that. They, they have a biweekly every other week meeting on the, on the calendar, but we are often canceling it because there are no agenda items. So, emails go around, let us know a day but the day, the day or two before, but the meeting and the agenda items and, and then we’ll find out the day before there are no agenda items. So this, the next week’s meeting is canceled. Absolutely. I admire that. So we have the space set aside, but we don’t always use it. Absolutely. And I think that’s a smart way to make sure you have the space set aside. People can schedule accordingly, but you can also give people back their time if you recognize that. You know what, we don’t really, we don’t really need to have this meeting. And there’s, there’s a lot more advice, you know, you, you talk about the devices spending time away from your devices, but you and Jason and I just talked about all those uh time saving and, and uh apps that make you more efficient and strategies for using your apps and your devices. So we’re not gonna, you just, you know, if you want to get the, you gotta get the book, that’s all, you know, you gotta get the book for you. If you want to talk about, you wanna know more detail about digital social distancing. Um because we’re gonna move to embody well being while well doing the e and change. Yes. So embodying well-being while well doing is the way that I think about this is when you have reached a place where you are embodying at a certain minimum level, all of the previous five commitments in terms of connecting to your why? Honoring your priorities, acknowledging and confronting limiting beliefs, um negotiating boundaries and generating space to go within. When you are actively doing work in all those areas, it have to be like 100% in all those areas. But you’re moving the needle in some way in all those areas, sort of simultaneously, then you’re setting yourself up to be in this cycle of what I talked about previously where you’re in the practice, right? It’s not perfect, right? But you’re, you’re moving the needle, you’re in the practice. You, you are consistently and sustainably refueling yourself and you’re setting yourself up to be able to, to live your life and to do your best work in a sustainable way. That is really what this final commitment is, is all about. We are a little over our time together. Do you have, do you have more time or do you have to go? I don’t want you to be stressed. I’m not stressed. You’re ok. I built in time before and after. So we’re good. All right. Thank you. I do, I, I did, I, I did too. Uh I’m fine too. Um You, you you talk about taking your meds. This chapter define our meds for us. Yes. So our, our meds are mindset, mindset, exercise, diet and sleep. Yes, mindset exercise, diet and sleep. So, one of the things that is challenging for folks when we talk about this particular topic is sometimes we don’t believe that the simple basic things actually work. And so we’re always on the search for like it, it can’t be that easy. Like there has to be like a more complicated solution. So I’m just gonna read a gazillion books. I’m gonna watch a gazillion, you know, Ted talks, I’m gonna, you know, scour social media for this hack or for that hack because the stuff people are saying about um you know, our mental fitness, the stuff people are saying about just getting some movement in walking and exercising stuff. People are saying about eating your fruits and vegetables and eating a balanced diet and, and sleep. Um like that can’t be, be the thing. The truth is now we have decades of research, like literally decades of research, like going back to like the eighties. And even before, if you do meta analysis, you look at meta analysis of, of the research out there and you look at performance, you look at health outcomes in a whole range of areas. There are some factors that are that, that are within our control, that are pretty consistent and it’s these right, you know what your mindset or mental fitness or in other words, like, what do you believe, um, is possible for you? Um, how are you taking care of yourself in terms of your mental and emotional well being? That’s a critical aspect of our overall well being. Are we getting enough movement exercise? Are we eating the right things? And are we getting enough sleep? And this is not just theoretical or regurgitation of advice? This is something that I know to be true because it’s something that I’m actively practicing for myself. Um And I’ve seen tremendous results with that and it’s actually going back to my particular story and my journey, it was one of the things that I had recommitted to that made a tremendous difference in me being able to navigate the, the valley that I shared with you all earlier. And it’s something that when I share this with, with clients. Um It’s something that makes a tremendous impact as well as a matter of fact, one of the first places that I start when I work with a client, um I wanna know, have you worked with a therapist before? And when was the last time you went to a doctor? Because oftentimes one or both of those things and how you’re addressing those makes a tremendous difference in my ability to be able to support you over the long term. I can give you all the strategies in the world. But if your basic health and well being um isn’t being taken care of, then we’re not really setting you up for success over the long term. We’re just sort of putting a band aid over, over a gaping wound, right? Uh And what we wanted to be able to do is to set you up for, for long term success. Now, I’ll give you one last example here. So I share with you previously the example of the, the dominoes and prioritization knocking over the first domino and it knocks over all the other dominoes for me in my personal life. My first domino is going to bed on time. Why is that? I know that I go to bed on time. I’m more likely to get up on time. If I’m more likely to get up on time, I’m gonna have time for my start routine, which includes prayer and meditation and working out and all those things. I’m gonna have space to think about and plan my day before I jump into doing things like this and working with clients. And when I do that, I’m gonna be fully available, I’m gonna be fully present. I’m gonna be energized. I’m not gonna be sleepy um or cranky and I’m gonna be able to do my best work and I’m gonna be able to be fully connected and engaged with the people that I’m connecting with. When I don’t do that consistently. It has a similar ripple effect in the, in the opposite direction and So that part of what I wanna get across in the book is that the things that we can do as individuals to change our experience with how we are showing up at work and how we’re taking care of ourselves. None of this is rocket science. It’s, it’s really not, it’s, it’s very basic, it’s very simple, but we have to be committed to, to doing it in a consistent way. We have to be willing to give ourselves grace and to, to practice continuously. I’d like to leave it right there with, with you, Miko. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your own story and your valuable strategies and tactics for reaching AAA thriving state. Uh The book is How to thrive when work doesn’t love you back, a practical guide for taking care of yourself while changing the world. You’ll find uh Miko’s book and his practice at Mindful techie.com. You’ll find Miko on linkedin Mika. I thank you again. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tony. I appreciate it. Next week. Sherry Quam Taylor returns with high ro I development and marketing communications teams. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I do beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by Virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your 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 Martinetti. This 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.