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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of fei bro dysplasia, pacific cans progressive. If you exhibited the tendency to miss today’s show i t c suite cross talk how do we improve the relationship between it and management? Our panel from the non-profit technology conference is joshua peskay, eh? At round table technology and robin jenkins with the hope program and capacity call out capacity means nothing until we unlock what kind technical managerial fund-raising board steve, hi with nets sweet encourages introspection and shares assessment tools and models that’s also recorded at the non-profit technology conference on tony steak, too. A big lump of thanks, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant radio by wagner, cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner, cps dot com and by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tello’s here are joshua peskay, eh and robin jenkins. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ninety sea it’s a non-profit. Technology conference in new orleans were at the convention center, and this kicks off day three of our coverage coverage, cracking like a fourteen year old. This interview is sponsored by network for good, not by the penguins. It’s actually sponsored by network for good, easy to use dorner management and fund-raising software for non-profits i’m joined by penguin one joshua peskay eh? And robin jenkins and robin also robin’s show your penguin for those who are not do not have the privilege of the video. Robin and joshua both have blow up penguins, probably three feet tall. Blackfeet black beak andi joshua, who were these courtesy is a courtesy of soap box engaged. They have a booth entirely filled with these giant inflatable penguins and have been doing that for the last ten years started when there was a lennox day preceding the conference that they brought the penguins for. Okay, so the penguins are not gonna be able to join us. We do have enough head sametz easy, joshua put it, had you on his? Yeah, we’re goingto neo-sage you’re putting the heck out of my head, said it’s, all stretched out now i think i have a fat head amy could take that for you. Thank you, amy. I don’t know. Wait. I would just leave this here. Okay. Uh, penguin madness on the third day of the and thank you to woobox who’s it’s a fox and gabe woobox neo-sage thank you very much for that. Nice folks. Joshua peskay a is vice president of round table technology. And robin jenkins is chief financial and operating officer at the hope program. And your seminar topic is unmet. Expectations and intervention between tea and non-profit leadership. Is that correct? That’s, correct way. Yesterday waited another session yesterday. All right, strategic tech planning. Yeah. Now you’re complicating my problems are today. We’re talking about bringing penguins i t and management together. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Can d’oh? Well, we did mostly multi task. You can’t wait to be single. Single focus. All right. Like direct mail. The best direct mail, you know, single single purpose. Yes. That’s. What non-profit radio? Okay, so, let’s, start with you, robin. What what’s the problem between management and why? Why? Why do we need this session? Well, sometimes they can’t talk past each other with different languages on dso, making sure that we can converse and a common language helps us to get to our end goals? Yeah, and joshua what’s the implication if we’re talking across each other well, i think that technology people in particular are guilty of not thinking of communications as a really critical part of their job and one main component sessions to be here. It is, yeah, it is an absolutely critical part of their job. And when they fail to communicate effectively, two executives about technology than the organization’s needs are ultimately unmet. That’s the unmet expectation in the title. Okay, so, robin, i understand. So, robin, you’re the you’re the leader in the leadership, a strata of this organisation, correct. And joshua was the vice president of technology. And what technology and technology strategy. Okay, tech guy robbins, the leadership. So he’s, actually, our vendor. So we actually a chance to practice in real time. Okay? Workflows kayman okay. You work together? Yeah. Let’s. See, you mentioned something. Well, now we’ll get to that about offers of children and skills. We’ll get to that. How do we how do we start? All right. Everybody needs to come to the center, you know, in a common language, right? I mean, he’s got their technical language. They tend to be very graphical. Maybe leadership, maybe not so much interested in the graphics. Is that? Is that a part of it? Okay, well, i was gonna say in the session were actually encouraging people there’s, there’s something in marketing that’s called a buyer persona where a market are actually develops an overall picture of the person that they’re attempting to sell. Tio what are they looking, what they read, what they listen exactly, you’re familiar with that, so we’re persona donorsearch dona we’re we’re giving them a template to develop an executive persona and encouraging people to actually create one. And then look at that when they’re thinking about communicating with executives around important strategic technology initiatives right now. But is it only the tech people who have toe come to leadership? Shouldn’t leadership be coming coming now? I was coming down. That’s not right, but coming, yeah. Reaching across the aisle wuebben their circle toward the circle that common space is that a common elliptical between the two circles? Yes, it’s. Not all on it. So, that’s, how i take my role is being able to straddle. Both groups and making sure that leadership is held accountable for how they communicate and what they need. Okay, so they are accountable as well. So should we start with our leadership persona? Is that is that a good place to can we develop together? Way could yeah. E-giving visual on someone you get included in the thing. Okay. Could be a link to it or were shooting video. We can. You don’t have. We don’t have a visual with you. I have it on my phone. But abila small. Okay? Yeah. If you had something penguin size, i do not have anything coincides and for just a small persona, but it’s a big personality. Okay, so how do we start now? The persona is different for every organization i write. I mean, for every person in every way. But we’re trying to reach to the c suite. Exactly. Or for the people who spend the money, you could okay. Who could be sponsors? Could be champions. Okay. Yeah. In a small organ might only be the executive director. Correct. We’re talking a lot of mean were there are twelve thousand listeners are small and midsize. Shop some of the marrow, you know, two or three people, right? So it may be a fundraiser. Executive director on dh, you know, maybe a marketing person. Morning communications. All right. I think these skills, though, in this workshop are are incredibly useful for anyone’s who’s communicating with someone who has a different perspective from themselves, which is essentially everybody all right. Because that’s really not more complicated, the fact that their executives is just part of the session title ultimately it’s about how do i who has one perspective communicate effectively with someone else who has a different perspective about a common need that we have but don’t think we have. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. So, it’s not only i t and management let’s. See? Amy, you have those, okay? The penguins are local. We’re going to call on them. Right? I told you this is this’s improvised penguins, by the way. Incredibly effective communicators. I mean, it zoho their way. They have to find each other right in a sea of penguins. Where are they? All look the same. What? Find each other? Oh, yeah. Find individual penguin you’ve never seen like march of the penguins. That thing with the guy? You know that the female penguin comes back with the fish he’s gotta find like her killed turner in, like, a million penguins. That all look the same. Like, how do you do that? We’re gonna call doing through communication. They have a unique calls that are very, you know, very effective. Why don’t we just create a penguin persona? Oh, yeah. It’s got the alliteration like a really big fan of fish cold weather extremes lighting on belly bilich magazine reader subscriber like water parks love the slides in water polo yeah, okay, all right. Let’s, let’s stick with our likes, polar bears. You know, you know, sharks are just starting with joshua peskay non-profit radio, so watch it or i’m shutting our eyes. They put the penguin in your seat and you’re out. Penguin talks a lot less than you do on robin and i will continue all right. It’s time for a break pursuant. Their newest paper is the digital donation revolution. You’re online donors have high expectations of you because of the swift transactions that they could do it amazon, zappos and other fine retailers that have easy user experiences the digital giving bar has been raised how do you get over it? Get the digital donation revolution the latest it’s on the listener landing page. Tony dahna em a slash pursuing to radio now back to it. See sweet cross talk. Okay, let’s, build our see sweet persona. How do we how do we start with this? So if i think of actual examples in my own organization, so i have a staff member who was very open and eager for change change but doesn’t always understand how that can impact their lives. So i have to make the tool that we’re thinking about implementing real to this person. How will it change? So i asked them questions. What do you do? And what would this have with this tool? Improve your work efficiency, your understanding, communicating with others, getting things done quickly worked quickly. So that’s how i begin to approach it. Okay on dh who is it? That’s asking these questions? Eso i’m asking the questions of the staff person of the person no more of this just not even someone who has either. Is aversa rights he or someone who doesn’t have much experience with it? Ok, ok, so we’re going a little broader than just okay. Okay, good. By the way, the penguin is also better dressed in you. The color blue is not becoming skin like pencil radio. Howard stern was nicer way sometime. Okay? And then what do we do with the answers to these questions? Right? So then i translate them to round table or two. Joshua i say this is the thieves or the people that i have. Then how can we make sure that we can communicate our pitch the proposal properly in the way that they can understand it and approve it? I mean, in the end goal, my goal is to get it approved. So how do i get to that place? Okay, joshua. And then what are you doing with this information that robin’s giving you? I’m really helping to make sure that we’re understanding not on ly what problems the organization has, but what challenges the executives have that we need to understand and communicate about how we’re going to overcome a lot of executives may be pressed by either they are intimidated by the technology that that might be changing, and they might not want to talk about that with other staff, but that could be a block for them or they have other pressing priorities that aren’t technology related and don’t think this is really worth their time, so if if we need their time and we need their buy-in what? Usually we d’oh understanding their challenger, okay, is critical something? I heard it in an interview i did yesterday duitz seems related come to me with a solution, not a problem. So you’re you’re suggesting not not just coming to the leadership in the decision makers with what the issue is, but with technology solution, but that also includes recognizing their needs and what their challenges are not just the challenge that you’ve identified, i’ll put it really succinctly, i shouldn’t come, teo, if you’re the executive, tony, i shouldn’t go, and i’m the me and robin like that like that i should like asking you for the problem. You’re the one who tells me the problems we say, oh, great here’s a way that we think we can solve that, then you say here’s some challenges that i have with that, like, oh, if i have to learn a new piece of software, i’m not sure that i’m ready to do that? We say, oh, here’s, that we can help you overcome that challenge so that we can solve this problem for you. Okay, if i don’t know those things and i don’t ask, you’re not you’re not querying the leadership. You don’t know what the troubles are, so i can build on that a little bit with a specific example. So my executive director, she has a really special quality of asking a lot of questions. That’s what i’ve learned is, if i can think through what she’s going to ask and what she’s going to need it, i can get it down to two questions based on our conversations, and i know i have i’ve solved a lot of her problems if i come out she’s still asking questions, and i haven’t predicted and i don’t know very well what her what her issues. Okay, so you’re you’re you’re you’re putting a thought into your that’s, right? You’re whatever weekly meetings are your proposal, executive directors were proposal. Okay? Yeah. Okay. How do we move this persona along? I feel like i feel like we haven’t developed this person yet. Yeah, well, i could get you. More specifics of the persona when you’re breaking it out, your whoever your person is right, you’re kind of saying here’s a little bit about them. So this is the one we have in this in that session is erin the is the first one, right? Just air in the diner, erin e r i n her and and she’s she’s got an avatar of a unicorn, right? Our unicorn executive director and, you know, she’s, super smart, but super busy. She probably has personal demands on her life as well as professional demands. And she really wants her organization to thrive and be successful and her staff to be, you know, well equipped with all the things they need. We should hope so. But she also she also has a lot of pressures around budget around the board asking to do things so so that’s kind of like a snapshot of her right. Then you have in the middle section, like here’s, the things that are most important to her that she’s working on right now, like these air, the air forms are top priority rights fund-raising i’m trying to fundraise for, you know, two thousand nineteen, you know? The next one is i’m dealing with hr issues right in the next one like these air, so from my perspective, like the it guy, like i need to understand that, like, it is not in her top four things, this is just not, you know, so unless i can appeal to these problems and say that the work that robin and i are doing is going to help with these things or help you focus on them even more, i’m fighting a losing battle, right? Okay, yeah, okay. Okay. And then was there another component to the they’re going to the three point is yes, so the third probono hand is then is so if you think of these, like, three columns, right? So we’ve got like, this is about erin. These are the problems and challenges she faces than the last one is here. In order to successfully communicate with aaron, here are the things i’m going to dio, right? I’m going to ask her about the problems that she’s facing in the organization. Okay? And this is what robin, this is what you try to anticipate, and i’m going to communicate the why, what and how if everything were doing very clearly. I’m going to prepare fully from conversations with her, so i don’t not ever waste her time, right? I’m going to anticipate questions she’s goingto ask about things we want to do. This is where robbins. Incredible, right? So, robin, when we had a big meeting with her executive director, she reached out to me and said, we need teo spend probably four hours making a slide deck and here’s all the questions i think she’s gonna have, right? So you you take the time to do that and it’s, in my opinion, it’s stuff we all i think i know, but i think doing it, we’re not regularly. We’re not being fundez being intentional about it. Yeah. Okay, so and so that’s and so it’s. Like a little one sheet thing, you can stick on your office. And and now it’s a reminder to you like, okay, these are all the things i need to do before i go talk to aaron or send her an email or ask her for something, right? I need to understand these is her problems. And these are the things i need to do to communicate successfully, okay? Okay? And is that what about in terms of actual words like, i mean, your your your session to talk about language? Does it get down to that granular level or words? Natural words? How does that how do we find the commonality in the words like avoiding jar? I mean, avoiding technical jargon. All right, you help me? Yeah shouldn’t be trying, you know, i guess if you tell me no, i think you’re you’re right, it’s that sometimes even the number of words someone may not have enough time, do you have to really keep its distinct? In short, i’d say there’s a even bigger gap between fund-raising and where we need to translate it into fund-raising funders will understand too healthy development team to communicate their proposals. So a couple of times we’ve had to go back multiple times to understand how to phrase something, even to the point where we have a specific budget of twenty five thousand that means i may only be ableto order for laptops and not five, because i really am above twenty five thousand with five so it really there are, you know, boundaries that we have to follow on dh. Communicate. Get down, tio. Okay, okay. Joshua language. Anything you want to add about this is a language really specific example that we give in the session. We’ll give it here, too. And hold out on video. Listen, i’m not going. Teo, cut your mike again. We’ll get the penguin’s. I have offstage talent breeding. I would never i would never claim to be more effective than the penguin at a change management executive communication. One of the questions is if you’re, you know, expressing like, hey, i think we should go to sales forthis is another problem that comes up the executive, maybe read something in the times or maybe here’s something from a boardmember and says, you know, we should use slack everybody else using slacks, we should you slack and a lot of people or folks like robin, your operations are kind of like, is that really what we need to be doing right now? And the pushback on that with an executive? Give me challenging. So a question, a specific phrases. What? Help me understand what problems we have at this organization that slack is going to solve for it. Right? And then then follow-up question. Is how does solving that problem help our organization and it’s a softer way of kind of, you know, walking them back from an idea that might be a bit something came from a boardmember has a wild hair, right? Exactly right? And so that that question i always push people to come back to the question of please tell me what problem we’re trying to solve here, that’s what i have to understand and then on lee then cannot communicate. You know, whether slack is the right resource, right tool to do that exact or, you know, maybe there isn’t really a problem or maybe there’s a better way to solve it. Okay, yeah. That’s related. Teo. Something you mentioned in your description, which is, uh, the boardmember child and nephew. Uh, i have a nephew took a coding course. Yep. And, uh, i think he could help the organization with his computer science skill. Right? Rare. You’re found course certificate, right way do with joshua. Well, i mean, i’m not going to sound really redundant, but it’s the same. So help me understand what problem we have in this organization that a recently graduated she’s going programmer could could be effectively applied to solving right if we can identify that, that, in fact, there may be an opportunity for that person to help us, but if we’re hammer looking for a nail and we’re not a nail it’s going to hurt? Yeah, you know? And so okay, andi, rock god, robert doesn’t add to that we actually had an example where we wanted to show a boardmember how much something costs and what we folded into that was the cost of me spending time with that person who was volunteering, so they sold them, they see true cost. So there’s a real life example, this is a real life example, and we show them the true class, and they were shocked, so i would say, don’t be afraid to show them under the hood so they truly understand the impact of what they’re asking for you in your your role as cfo. You get a lot of that, you know, coming down from boardmember zor, maybe your executive director sort of these ad hoc, you know, i read this article type or i heard about slack type, you know, we should be looking at this there’s a lot. Of that that come to you. So i want to get compliments through our board before i sit, go any fire there until they’re an amazing forward. I really mean that, so no, we don’t get too much. But when we do that’s where this example came in, where we really showed the true cost of personnel time training, if this person doesn’t stay, you know, this person doesn’t last long enough to actually get the work done. What does that cost? So so we have a good bounce with our board, but we do want them to understand sometimes what their suggestions metoo institutional costs and including time, right, right, and what that’s resulted? That is, of course, because they fundez us. Then they understand they’re going to raise that much more. But this other person, the way they responded was actually very helpful. They said, look, you know what, let’s, let me join the committee with you so i can dig in and understand how this works. And so now he’s working with us, you threw an opportunity. That’s, right? Yes. Excellent. And pick you up on that? Yes, you may be okay, but i appreciate you asking. For you, teo, turn around to the other side of that close to your mind. Sorry, so i’m picking up on what robin said i’m go and going back to his redundant any of the problems, if if executive director came to me with that and said the boardmember want that if i’m i have a good, strong relationship, i’m okay having candid conversations, we actually have some in our workshop on howto, like develop resilience toe having difficult conversations, i might ask the exact director is the real problem here that we need to find something for this person to do, to engage with the organization to satisfy this boardmember if that’s actually the problem we have to solve, then i will solve it right? But that’s not the problem, then maybe this isn’t the right opportunity, right? But let’s, be honest about what the problem is exactly i can find something if that’s if that’s what you’re asking me to dio, you know, and we’re guard listen, whether benefits organization, because it may be on a macro level benefits because this this boardmember or yours and you will be happy donor, exactly important insider to the organization and and that’s, the perfect example of, like, i may not be able to see that as a mighty person, so i’m not open to seeing it and don’t know how to ask the questions. I’m hopeless. Okay, okay, now you teach something maybe that’s because it was in your other session which i which i forbid you from bringing you said, push back and difficult conversations no that’s in this session that’s it it’s going to be a way we don’t have a hard time keeping my boundary. I’m enforcing that and let’s let’s talk about that, some having having that difficult conversation, who wants to start? So actually, the topic is now pushing back. When when you’re getting resistance, is that it? Yes, doing it appropriately and right. Eso joshua could speak really well to this because we talked about this thing other evening, but in my case, i think i’m very clear on where we need to end up, but open to changes in the path and because i’m very clear on where we need to end up it’s not problematic when people push back. Okay, so you know, if you’re not confident, what? Where you think you need to go, then you question in yourself if people you know push back on you but a cz long as i’m clear on where i think we need to go, then it’s much easier to have those cards. Conversation you’re advocating for something that you really believe in. That’s. Good for the organization. That’s. Right. Ok. All right. So how do we do it? Well, essentially, there’s there’s. I think people think there are other good or not good at having difficult conversations with people and it’s a skill that you can build like any other skill. And were we give a couple examples. This will sound kind of out there, but the example, the first example, we give us something called the ten percent challenge. Where for a week you go. And this was not something i came up with this they got him. Noah kegan who came up with this and you go. Any retail transaction you have? I go to starbucks to buy coffee. I asked for ten percent off. And if the city of a coupon, you have a discount code, i said no, i’ve just i would like you to give me a ten. Percent discount because i just, um, asking and i’m hoping that you’ll give it to me and you’re not pushy about it or anything you just you just and you do that every time you bison, you force yourself to do that every time for a week, and what you’re doing is essentially, like the equivalent of a push up for having difficult conversations. You’re building the muscle? Yeah, you’re building the muscle for, you know, dealing with that discomfort around having may be a difficult conversation, what that there’s other things you can do, and it allows you to maybe talk to your executive about something that you think they’re not going to be very happy about and say, you know what? This thing that we set up isn’t going very well, here’s, why it’s not going well, here’s what i think we need to do to fix it and have that, you know, very candidly because our tendency is due over promise and under deliver constantly because it’s easier on an interpersonal level for me to promise you the world and then once i’m not in the room with you and doing stuff, just get it good enough. And then hope that you don’t notice that. It’s. Not really what i promised. And you want to do exactly the opposite. When i’m with you. I want to really calibrate expectations conservatively, even though you’re you may not like it, right? And if i, if i can get over that difficulty, that discomfort and get really used to it, and i’m going to be much more effective with that, okay? And where do you go? Out? Ten percent. Ten percent challenge? No kegan k a g a n you did it, it’s it’s. Kind of it’ll seem kind of cheesy because it’s kind of been like what i refer to is the opto bro community, you know, like all that, you know, like the, uh, you know, the tim. I mean, with all due respect to this group who i’m a huge fan of. And i suppose i should be dead, but you know what? They’re like the kind of young dot com guys who are, like here’s, how you optimize everything in your life. So it’s, like the young white venture capitalist crowd, got almost exclusively male who were like yours, that you optimize your fitness, your diet, your productivity or everything to be like a super you know, dotcom entrepreneur. So i refer to them. I shorthand them is opto bro’s? Isn’t that what we all aspire? Yes. Okay, let’s. See, we’re going to aa. We’re gonna bring the penguins back. Amy! Hey, could we get the penguins? Oh, and i was so dull. What did i say? Penguin wanted penguin. You know, this is aaron here’s, the arrows! Aaron the yeah, this is air in the air in the back, headset back honor because they’re stretching out, but, well, they’re in the on dh er wait, you need robbins to caress way brought in the frame garrett to bring robin another one. Okay, we need teo or we got everybody now. I guess that’ll do it right. Okay, now that you’re showing that penguin, don’t do that. Okay, there we go again. But it’s, aaron and yu want t this is the other one said, oh, that’s our other next hour, both very dapper in both eyes. All right, all right. This is the panel, aaron and cedric. Oh, and also joshua peskay a vice president, roundtable technology and also robin jenkins, cfo, chief financial on operating officer at the hope of program. Thank you so much. Thank you. Last thiss interview sponsored exclusively by network for good, easy to use donordigital and fund-raising software for non-profits thank you so much for being with non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc we need to take a break. Wagner, cps. We recently had segments on storytelling, but you don’t want your excellent storytelling to be so excellent, so compelling. That it leads to too many restricted gif ts based on the stories that’s where wagner comes in their block post is avoiding restrictions from donations inspired by storytelling. Regular cps dot com quick resource is then belong in a moment its capacity call out right now. Time for tony’s take two. A big lump of listener. Thank you. No discrimination, no hierarchical. Thank you’s. If you are supporting listening to this show, supporting this show, gaining knowledge and help from this show for your organization, for your work. I’m glad. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. You’re getting something out of it. But we are on this end too. And i certainly am so glad that the show helps you. It helps you do the good work that you need to do. Thank you for being with us, it’s that simple. My video of gratitude if you wanna get a little more complex at tony martignetti dot com now time for steve. Hi and capacity. Call out. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc non-profit technology conference in new orleans. This interview is sponsored by network for good, easy to use donorsearch and fund-raising. Self aware for non-profits and my guest is steve. Hi, he’s. Solution consultant at net sweet. Welcome, steve. I thank you. Welcome pleasure. You want to welcome you to my own show? Well, i feel welcome. You are. You are genuinely welcome. Your seminar topic is capacity is more than a buzzword. Yep. Alright, that’s short. But i feel like there’s a lot in there. Iss what are we talking about? When we say capacity? What do you mean? And that was the whole point in the session. The whole point of the session was varies depending on where you’re sitting and yet there’s so many definitions of capacity. Everybody talks about it differently. So the idea of this session was too, really walk through all the different ways that people talk about capacity, how you can measure it, how you act on it when you know what it is. And so one of the key things was providing context to the word capacity. So the only way you can really talk about capacities by putting something in front of it. Like if you think about a car, it has seating capacity. Where if you think about, you know, a truck. It has towing capacity. All right, so that was a lot of our framework. So what are some things that might go? A friend of, uh, acquisition capacity fund-raising capacity. So fund-raising bassett is a good example. Organizational capacity program capacity, you know, financial capacity, technical. So we did it’s been quite a bit of time on technology, cassidy. So we’re around, you know, duvette right systems, right operations, the right technology, the right tech staff skills also. So there’s, you know, layers to how you can talk about capacity within an organization to meet their mission. All right, what with it being the non-profit technology conference? I feel like we should start with technology capacity. Absolute, which is a phrase i’ve never heard. Yes, i’ve heard those two words never put together. Yeah, what now, make sure you know that our listeners are large over twelve thousand there in small and midsize non-profits so they may very well not have any devoted technology staff correct. They probably sure they still have some some technology capacity right on, and we’re gonna help them try to measure it right? And we’ll flush it out more because i can’t even think about other things, too, say about it right now, but i’ll know more in about twenty minutes. Exactly. Um okay, but so, you know, a very good chance they don’t have dedicated technology staff, right? They’re outsourcing everything that they need or they’re piecing it together through. Ah, they’re executive director. And maybe you don’t an office manager or something. Okay? Technology capacity. Okay. What is that? So one thing to think about is the technical capacity. So what do you have enough? Do you have someone on staff that knows enough to able to talk to the vendors you work with and to be able to do the right sort of planning so that you at least understand the systems you have and the need you have so it’s a simple term of technical questioning. Meaning you know the right questions to ask. You know, you have a person driving the strategy. You have somebody making the decisions around your technique technology. And so one of the things that we do at my work is we donate software. Yes. Through social impact. Yes. And so what? My role is before we donate to software what we want to do. Is ask a simple set of questions to see if they have enough technical capacity to be able to implement the software. Oh, i know how you fit into this. Because i had peggy duvette on the show. Yes, just maybe two months ago. Or so you could. You could. If you miss that one, you go to twenty martignetti dot com and you could search her last name. Do you, e t and you can listen to how oracle net sweet social impact has all kinds of free not only product, but also consulting to go along with that to help you build your capacity for use the product that you will get from social impact from from oracle, that sweet social done. You could go back and listen to that. Okay. So now, steve, hi. You fit in determining whether an organisation has the capacity in a technical side. Correct. Tio tio, use what? Your company don’t generously donate. Correct. Okay, so how do you measure it? So we e so one of the challenges we had way had all kinds of grand ideas of how to measure. So he had all these thoughts around, you know, really? Deep interviews and but all of those things take time. So what we ended up doing as we came up with a very simple set of, like, twelve questions, and they’re all kind of very high level questions, but give us a set of information. For example, we asked, do you have a tech plan? These are these questions answered online? Yes. It’s a form that they fill out a hell of a lie you’re building your capacity for for intake to the donation program through social impact. Correct. You are. Congratulations. We had our own constraints and your talk. You’re walking your walk? Yes, it was one questions in your do you have a tech plan? One is. Do you have an i t staff and most people say no, but the second the answer is no, we don’t. But we have a volunteer that has a lot of tech skills that helps all of us allow it a lot. Another question was around. How much time are you willing to commit to a project? How much do you have? A financial understanding accounting in those kind of questions. Right? So the software is khun khun take on financial financial management, right. And i just use this is the one example of measuring technical capacity. And so then the idea is ok. Now we understand our capacity. Where do we where do we have gaps? And then what are some creative ways to fill that so for our non-profit to think about their technique capacity, that’s simple to just sit down and look at it. And then if you decide good. Okay, i got to stop for a minute. Yeah. What if what if an organization is not planning to apply? Tio oracle, that sweet social impact for donation? Can they still use these question? I mean, how would they manage our measure, their technical capacity? So our questions are pretty specific to our program. If they have an organization i think is looking to measure their own, i would look at the end ten and ten just lost the new launched a new technical capacity survey as well. That one is much more broad and open. Okay, so i would look to somebody, something like that for a more generic won. The example i use is just a little straight. Why? You would measure it in what you would do with a one way of measuring the inten a technical capacity survey. You could find it. And ten and tn dot org’s. Yes, kruckel second capacity and that’s a new one that they’ve just launched. And it kind of helps you give, get a clear picture of the technical capacity of your full organization as a whole and then gives you when you take the survey, it will spit out results afterwards of oh, you were a little short here. Go read this book here. Oh, you’re short here. Here’s a website. You should go visit. So it gives us set of recommendations as well. So that once you understand you capacity now you have a set of actions to follow-up right as well. So there is that much more public. Ours is for a very specific purpose. Yeah. So that was a key part of our whole presentation. My presentation of capacity was the there before you even talk about capacity. The key is to understand what? What? What capacity? Trying to understand what gold you have once you understand your capacity. And that would help you determine what type of assessment to do so, for example. Yeah, help. If your goal was to increase your outcomes, your program outcomes so you want to be more effective in the work you do to meet your mission. That would probably mean you would need to do like two different assessments. One is organizational effectiveness. How well do your staff work and how clear our their goals and isn’t tied to the outcomes versus a resource falik assessment to figure out ofyour right funding? Do you have the right revenue streams to support the right staff and then to do a staff have the right skills? So tying those two things together then allows you determine what needs to change in order to have more outcomes from your organization? Ok, boy, that’s a mouthful. It’s a lot. A lot. I’m gonna take a little aggression. So what is your work now, if you’re you strictly devoted to measuring the capacity of potential grantees for the social impact program, so no, i do two things. One is i designed this. The assessments that we use to figure out their capacity design that survey. Okay? And then i designed the interventions that go with it. So once we have their assessment, then we figure out what path they need to go down and what they need to get ready to be able to implement the software. And then once they’re implemented, i figure out, well, there there’s this capacity, we create interventions along the way to help them grow in their capacity so that they’re more successful in what they’re trying to do. Okay, like, but i know a standard part of a program is there’s a monthly monthly webinar for grantees drive that right? So there’s quarterly probono and then there’s regular opportunities to get help and assistance? Yes, we don’t know that there was something webinar maybe i’m wrong, okay? Yeah, i know i’m not sure, but i do a lot of interviews. Yeah, you’re being kind because it doesn’t exist. Not only you’re not sure about it does exist. I just realized you’re you’re good. He has branded oh yeah, you’re branded with nets sweet it’s, the old it’s our old logo on the old alright doesn’t say work along. All right? Yeah. Okay. All right. We got a good amount of time together. Yeah. How do we know what i’d love to talk about it? Unless you were going to take it out. Please go ahead. Thistle. Abstruse for me? Yes, absolutely. Zoho that was the whole purpose of the session was because when people talk about capacity, they it’s such a buzz word that it means nothing like this whole session, if we’re not careful, belongs in george in jail. It’s. And it is the whole thing was jargon joe and that’s. What? Really? So so what? The way i’ve structured the session was i first talked about. There are standard models of doing organizational capacity assessment. Mckinsey has one there’s, an organization called lisk that has one that’s called cap map. And then there’s an organization called the unit. I think it’s a unity foundation. And they have a model so it’s, a very purposeful, driven model. And they measure it in different ways. So you can do a capacity assessment as a self assessment where you just every staff person kind of takes a survey. You look at avery quantitative way to figure out what your what your capacity looks like that way, then you khun benchmark yourself against others that have taken the same survey or what they do is usually give you a report that says here’s your capacity here’s the actions need take here’s your strengths, here’s your weaknesses that’s quite an algorithm. How did they figure all that out? Yeah, and that’s that? Yeah. Then that’s. Why? You should leave something like that to the professionals? Because i don’t know. Okay, you are a professional. You designed a twelve question survey. Yeah, yeah. It’s a week really scaled ours. Now you’re touching at the perimeters of this, but gosh, i mean all right. What? What are the factors that go into it? Depends what kind of capacity you’re measuring me. We gotta break it down so i can break it down. So we had a list of six things. So is it really hold your list? Hold you. Listen, it sounds like something interesting, but is it really worthless to say the phrase organizational capacity? It is useless. It doesn’t mean anything. Yes, it factors in all these different capacities, right? That that is so it’s a broad. It really is unhelpful. Right? And organizational capacity. For what? For what? That’s? My follow up question. Capacity for what? Okay, okay. So that was one of my biggest struggles was as i walk around, you know, the vendor booths, and i will go to sessions and i could hear people and, you know, all of these vendors and several of, like, capacity building initiative. So what? What does that what does that mean? And what does that? How does their non-profit actually act on that? It just becomes, you know, like other words that people throw around there, just buzzwords, and it doesn’t have enough of a meeting. So that was my goal. Was that really actually give it a meaningful contact? Okay, now i see how worthless that is. Georgia. Organizational capacity really is all right. You had your your your clickbait and i’m clicking six list of six. Yeah. So though, so when the when the those three surveys, when they would do their type of assessment, they can’t keyed in a on key areas. One was leadership in governance. So that’s the top level? Do you have the right leadership? You have the right board structure because that really drives a lot of things. The second level then was around do have the right strategy and plan. And then the third was like program delivery. The fourth was around the right staff and structure to do that part. And then the last was resource is in the last was the final, final one with zsystems. Okay, so the penultimate was resource is, yes, the ultimate was back-up saying last night wasn’t the last one that was my sixth and ultimate. Yes, uh, okay, s so all right, so we have these six areas that okay, so these are the two categories that the tools that you mentioned, like the mackenzie said, this is what they’re surveying, yet they’re breaking down into differently. Yeah, okay, different layers of capacity, okay. And then that that broad. All right, go ahead. Yeah. So when you take those six, then it becomes much more meaningful to talk about capacity. Because if you break those down, you take the first two for example, leadership in governance and strategy and planning. If you if you do an assessment on that to see how effective you are, the gore, the and creating a strategy driving towards your mission and then does the board actually have the right governance structure and the leadership have the right tools in place to actually make changes that build your ability to meet those things. So that becomes more meaningful, rather entire organization capacity, which is such a fluffy where that means nothing. When you get into the details of does your leadership do the right things to move you closer to meeting your mission? Okay. So now you’re talking about tying capacity goals yet to the to your plan. Yeah, well, see your organization? Yes, exactly. Organization as it exists. And then you need a plan for filling the gap between what you need and what you have yet to reach the capacity that you’re striving for. Right? Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Those sentences makes sense. What i just said they make sense. Okay, all right. Got to take a break. Tell us this new tellis moughniyah liz from a company tell us, has been has allowed my business to support my favorite charity without even feeling the pinch of writing a check. I am donating money every month that i would have spent on credit card processing anyway. Also, their customer service is far better than we’ve ever had. End quote, one hundred percent business satisfaction with tell us the businesses you refer are going to love it. You will get the money. Watch the video at tony dahna slash tony. Tell us now. Back to capacity. Call out with steve. Hi. All right. So if you don’t have the means, you need one of these tools. You need some kind of professional. You said that earlier? Yeah. That’s. Where? Bringing bringing the professional. You really need some help measuring your capacity in whatever it was through. Whatever chadband whatever channel you want to talk about correct way that you’re concerned about you. And if you’re concerned about your whole organization, then it’s the six sound like the place to start, but you need help, right? And so on, but i think it’s, in a large organization, you really, really help if you’re small and you only have six staff, right? There’s really boils down to is simple questions, because then you don’t need the complex question because you don’t have eight departments to interview, you don’t have one hundred staff, you don’t have this big, unknown kind of presents from my wife’s organization that is no full time staff, you know, they just have a couple, you know, like, eat part time staff, they’re never going to need an organizational capacity assessment. They know they know what they can and can’t do, but so at that level, what they need to acknowledge, though, is do they have a strategic plan? Do they have a mission statement? Do they have a vision statement? Is their board engage, you know, and asking some simple questions like that and then doing it on a quarterly basis and then actually investing in that and finding someone that could maybe come in on a pro bono basis and just provide an outside opinion of whether things were going well or not on that organizational top level leadership? Because i think with small organizations what tends to happen is obviously they don’t need this, you know, one hundred question assessment, but what they do need is to have somebody tell them if they’re spending enough time strategically thinking versus just meeting today’s needs. So that’s, where we really spent the rest, that second half of our session was we were focused in on well, i gave an analogy, so the analogy i used was beer. So my whole session was your themed. My slides had beer on it. I gave away beer during my session was wonderful. It was a nice ice breaker. So the idea was, i gave somebody a beer. I said here, hold this beer. And then i threw a ball to them and told him to catch the ball. They were able to catch the ball, and then i did it again, and then somebody in the audience says, well, why don’t they set down their beer so they can catch the ball use here? And so i was like, oh, that’s, a great question. I was hoping somebody would ask that that was the whole idea for the exercise and i said, the reason you don’t want to sit down your beer is what we want to do is pretend to beers your mission and what often happens at a small non-profit is we put all of our capacity into catching the everyday balls we set down our beer, which is our mission, and nobody ever takes enough time to really think about how do we meet the one year goal, the three year goal in the five year goal? What changes do we need to make today? So for example, was going go back back to my wife’s small non-profit they wanted in five years from now, they wanted to be able to have my wife retire as the founder, but as an unpaid executive director, you can’t hire another executive director and tell him that it’s a freak job. Yeah, so she’s like, well, if i could want to retire, i need to be able to pay an executive tractor, so but in order to do that, i need to have more students in our program and in order to have more students in our program, i need to have a second studio, but in order have a second studio, i need to have a better staff set of of skills so that i can handle capacity, so i don’t have enough people in my organization to handle more students, so she worked backwards from there and figure out which capacity she needed to start with fixing, and what she needed to start with was management. So she took her executive director roll started breaking into an admin role, a program role and an executive director role, which usually doesn’t happen it tiny non-profits usually it has one leader, and they control all the power and it’s that founder syndrome of a lyman charge, and then what happens over time those that when that founder leaves, you have that? Oh, my gosh, is that huge hole? So she saw the capacity need of ok at the leadership level on strategy level can’t be me. We’re going to spread the beer around everybody’s, going to have a cup full of beer, and we’re all going to hold the mission and hold onto it together, and we’re going to share a part of it. So i think that’s the difference between what’s needed at a tiny organization versus a large one if you’re complicated, if you’ve a lot of politics, a lot of messiness, you need someone from the outside to come in with a very rigid tested nice framework. Toby, evaluate your capacity at the leadership level at a small one. It’s usually it’s just having coffee with a friend that understands is coming to a conference like this and having somebody just sit down. You share what you d’oh give you a beer and throw balls at yes, exactly. So what? The way my wife did it was she went to a dance studio owner conference she’s a non-profit dance studio. She had other studio owners tell her and do an evaluation of how she was working. So she benchmarked against them. She told him how she was doing and they’re like all you’re doing this wrong. You’re doing this wrong and the leadership level. So it was a peer evaluation rather than a formal evaluation. All right, first of all, shout out the name of the organization. Oh, my wife’s organisations called leap of faith arts ministries. So it’s a very small non-profit in the chicago land area. Okay, okay. All right, so this is very helpful because we’re breaking it down now for smaller organizations. Yeah, there’s also there’s a good degree of self assessment. I mean, inspection going, yes, there are a lot of founders who would not be willing to divide their job. Yeah, the way your wife did in tow three parts and that’s a that’s, a real struggle because you’re putting all the burden on one person, which is great because that that one person is there for a reason they’re really good at their job and they do it well, so it makes sense tow have them keep all of that stuff. But at the same time, you’re not building a long term capacity for that organization cause when the founder leaves, then the whole order dies. And it’s also not healthy for all these different functions to be in right, ready in one place, because even if the founder doesn’t leave or doesn’t die, eventually they go on vacation. Yeah, they do on dh if if if if getting to the next level which i hear a lot right, you know, how do i do? It is important to you? Yes. Then having a founder. Or maybe two people, maybe not literally just one. But write one or two people holding all the keys and the power that’s all the potential for the organization is is unhealthy. Limited instrument, of course. So yeah. So that was a start assessing start looking in for introspection. Yeah. Figuring out where the you know where the consolidation of power is, so that you can spread it out so that more people are involved. So then we then we continue the conversation to a much more tactical level. So we ended with all right. So if we want to be able to spend more time thinking, capacity, thinking, strategy, thinking, leadership, the on ly way we can do that is to stop doing other things. So you you need to be able to sit down and okay, where am i spending my time? That isn’t helping the mission. What tasks am i doing? What tax my staff doing mohr introspection. Right? So then you look down and you go, okay, well, wow. We’re spending a lot of time on our finances were spending a lot of time tracking our donors that we’re spending a lot of time. Tracking manual pieces of paper for our students doing registration, doing so you talked to start to take those things that there are systems in ways to automate those things. So it’s almost taking a laundry list of, you know, work for three weeks, right down where you spend your hour every hour to write down. Oh, i spent this on adam and i spent this some finance. I spent this and just doing like, a catalogue of your time and then looking back and going so well, i spent a lot of time doing stuff that really doesn’t change our outcomes. It makes us run, and it has to be done. But i could probably give that decided piela won doing it. Yeah. So so then that’s where you start to break down and build capacity because it allows you to focus on the mission in the vision and strategy, and you start to offload those things. And almost everybody went to get a capacity. Says that the first two things they think it’s all i need to raise more money. I need to hire more staff. That’s the only way that we’re going to build capacity and really to me, it’s not that you, khun. If you get your staff trained, they may be able to work better if you get the right systems. It may take away some of the work that you spent all your time doing. If you start to bring in probono staff to do some of this look for a probono accountant look for probono lawyer look for, you know, ways to supplement your staff because of you, in my experience every non-profit that i’ve been at when we ask for more money, or we ask for more staff, the answer is always no. So when i talk about capacity, i say let’s, just stop talking about the illusion that there’s more money and more staff so let’s take and go in two directions. The only way you can do it is supplement your staff, increase the skills of your staff, or look for ways to automate things that your staff shouldn’t be doing that a system can do for you that’s where we ended and that was a really fun cover, that that was the fun part of the conversation to me once we get past the gobbledygook of the word capacity. And the words organizational capacity because really what all what it’s all about is what do you choose to spend your time on? What tasks do you choose as your priorities and what? Where do you invest? The resource is thatyou’re non-profit has been given to meet your mission. What kind of questions did you get? The questions i got from the audience were really about one a lot about the tools. Which tools should i use? Of course, that’s where we started the other one, though, was what do you do? One leadership stands in the way and doesn’t want to change. Or what do you do when thie organization is so small that you know, these tools get away don’t know. Sorry latto clothe first one leadership leadership is resistant. Yeah, so i think when leadership is resistant to this, i think the best way to do it is to celebrate small winds, so arguing with the leadership and trying to prove your point usually doesn’t work. So i think what the way i’ve approached this in the past was do small experiments with just the other staff around you find ways to involve a volunteer or automata. Task and then celebrate it and show hey, you know, we did this little thing over here, and it saved me three hours a week, and now i’m able to do this other work. So i think a way to convince leadership is to prove success when you change capacity on your own, and then eventually you can show them dahna that it is worthwhile for them to spend time, maybe bite it off in small bit and do a test and show show the improvement. Yeah, exactly. Small level. Okay, we got time for one more question that you were asked and but because you can provide the answer. So the last one that since this is a technology conference is doesn’t make sense to do a technology specific assessment and i think that’s another way to answer the first question. So one of the ways that you can get around if somebody doesn’t want to do a full organization assessment, there are some great ways to have somebody just come in. Look at your technology set up, you know, hyre of endor or ask money report members. If they have a solid person, have them come into an inventory of your look at your tax strategy, i think that’s a simple way to start to prove the worth wildness of spending time looking at capacity is just to start with a technology capacity assessment and just have a vendor committed. Do it for you. That it’s. Not all that expensive. If you can find it probono it it’s. Very effective, too. Okay, we’re gonna leave it there. Yeah, steve. Hi. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope i didn’t confuse you too much of a good overview. I mean, it’s a it’s, a dense topic. But it is a really done you broke it down. Well, for the small order. Good. Steve. Hi, he’s. The solution consultant at net sweet. Thank you again. Thank you. Appreciate it. My pleasure. This interview sponsored by network for good, easy to use dahna management and fund-raising software for non-profits. And you are with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of eighteen ntc wrapping up our coverage right now. This interview. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Next week. Attentive and productive with steve rio at bright webb. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported by pursuing toe online tools for small and midsize non-profit it’s, data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuant radio by wagner, cps, guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com and by telus, credit card and payment processing. Your passive revenue stream, tony dahna slash tony tell us, are pretty creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and our music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. You’re listening to the talking alternate network to get you thinking. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you stuck in a rut? Negative thoughts, feelings and conversations got you down? Hi, i’m nor in sometime, potentially, ater tune in every tuesday at nine to ten p m eastern time and listen for new ideas on my show. Yawned potential. Live life your way on talk radio dot n y c hey, hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? 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