Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio is a Stanford Social Innovation Review podcast. I share my gratitude to the SSIR team. Plus, I look fat at the end.
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Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio is a Stanford Social Innovation Review podcast. I share my gratitude to the SSIR team. Plus, I look fat at the end.
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Peter Panepento: Who Needs Campaign Counsel
Peter Panepento walks us through his report, “The Do-It-Yourself Fundraising Handbook.” Self-funding campaigns are rampant and Peter reveals how to do yours smartly. He’s a consultant and author of the report. (Originally aired September 2, 2016)
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d come down with distant my assis if you dared to infect me with the idea that you missed today’s show, who needs campaign counsel? Peter panepento walks us through his report do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook self-funding campaigns are rampant and peter reveals how to do yours smartly he’s, a consultant and author of the report this originally aired september second, twenty sixteen on tony’s take two thank you, responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here is peter panepento on who needs campaign counsel three glad to welcome back peter panepento from like a short hiatus from the show’s on early last month, he’s, a freelance writer and principle of panepento strategies, a communications consultancy working with non-profits foundations and companies that serve the sector. He’s, a former assistant managing editor at the chronicle of philanthropy, he’s at panepento dot com and at p panepento peter welcome back. Great to be here, tony way. Haven’t gone too. I know that. What? What brings you back so quickly? This is this is unusual. Generalise does not happen. What? What the hell brings you back so fast? Well, i think it is the release of this new report on do-it-yourself fund-raising that i will work with the chronicle of philanthropy to produce within the last couple of weeks it went live. And i think due to the coincidences of timing, we have another interesting report to talk about pretty quickly. Okay. Excellent. I agree. That is that’s the reason dahna let’s. See? Alright, so do-it-yourself fund-raising what are we talking about? Let’s, make sure everybody knows what this thiss category is all about. Yes, and it’s. Ah, pretty rapidly emerging form of fund-raising. Although it’s not brand new. So if you think back over time, you may have seen campaigns where people decide they’re going to aa run across the country or try to break a guinness book of world records. You know, world records record or shave their head for a cancer charity. Um, these are typically do-it-yourself campaign these air campaign campaigns where a supporter of an organization takes it upon themselves to take on a challenge or do something on behalf of their favorite charity, and then solicits their friends and family for donations. Um, you know, if you think back about terry fox running across canada back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, um, if you even think more recently about the ice bucket challenge where a group of people, you know, decided that it would be ah, great way to raise money for a lot less research to double ice water over their heads. Um, these air campaigns where the charity isn’t doing the heavy lifting their supporters are, and they’re raising money on their behalf. Cool. All right, um, don’t we just call this peer-to-peer fund-raising well, it’s a it’s, a subset of peer-to-peer fund-raising peer-to-peer fund-raising also includes a lot of really charity managed events, so, you know peer-to-peer fund-raising includes walkathon, ds and runs and bike rides and things that are scheduled events that the charity organizes and then people oppcoll out and raise money for charity. Okay, do-it-yourself is really self organized events where the charity doesn’t schedule an event per se or really go to great lengths to organize it it these are things that are really done by the fundraisers themselves, the people who hatch a really interesting idea or or want to take on a challenge of their own, to raise money and with online platforms. Now charities are kind of starting to steer people a little bit and helping them and giving them the tools to do these campaigns on their own in a bit more of a formalised way than they’ve been done in the past, right? Cool. Okay, so i see it’s a it’s, a subset of peer-to-peer but you said the charity’s not organizing their, encouraging you to organize on your own and there’s enormous creativity, and we’re gonna have a chance to talk about some of that on on dh support from the charity, i guess charities air recognizing that if they create this support infrastructure and we’ll have a good chance to talk about all that, too, then you know, they just keep that up and their supporters can can go off and do vast numbers of campaigns all on their own. That’s right? And yeah, and that’s really what’s exciting about this and why a lot of non-profits are really moving into the space and trying to be more aggressive with with helping their their supporters do this for them because it can really become a almost a turnkey way. Teo, get teo, get fund-raising revenue. Now, there are a number of things that you have to do to enable it, and there are pasta oppcoll into it’s doing well, right? We’ll talk about later, but what’s exciting and promising for a lot of organizations as it takes the onus off of them to have to organize some huge event with tons of volunteers and lots of dates staff to make happen. And it gives the tools to the people who are out there raising the money for them to do a lot of that for them. Excellent. Cool. All right, all right. Um, so i know you have lots of examples of great support let’s go in. And the first thing that the report recommends is that there be a a strong platform and we’re just have, like, two minutes or so before our first break. Just so you know, okay, well, i’ll quickly talk about strong platform, and then we can come back to it after a break up, you know, for sure what a lot of charities are doing, and really charity water is one of the groups that hyre knew this is they have created sections of their website where they offer fundraisers, although our, you know, supporters all the tools they need to raise money into do-it-yourself campaign and charity water has done it, giving people the tools to give up their birthdays or their weddings or create their own challenges on their website, and then it really walks them through the process of setting up the campaign, soliciting their friends and doing everything along the way that you need to do to actually successfully execute one of these campaigns as an individual. So a lot of organizations are now investing in creating these platforms almost in the same model that charity water has done. Groups like the world wildlife fund has created a a platform called panda nation, where people can engage in do-it-yourself campaigns and a lot of other organizations that, you know, largely national charities with some local ones, too, are starting to try to create these types of platforms that really give people everything they need teo to do these campaigns and gives them some guard rails and rules of the renault is help them do them well, yeah, panda nation, i love that at a world wildlife that’s called panda nation. Um, i think we might be talking about st baldrick’s to you. You admire a lot of the work that they do around this. Yeah, they are a little bit different in that they they organized people around a specific activity, which is having people volunteered to shave their heads to raise money, right? Ok, so they’re they’re narrowing the focus of what they want volunteers to do exactly what they’ve been able to raise tens of millions of dollars doing it, and they have that really built up a lot of a lot of support and a lot of supporters for their they’re caused by focusing all of their fund-raising really on this activity and providing a lot of the same tools that the other sites are provided to do that so they are a great example of of a group to emulate. If you’re looking at getting into this, uh, space, they’re a bit dinner structured in terms of what the options are and how they encourage people to do it, but ah lot of the same tactics and ideas that apply to other platforms are ones that they’ve really mastered it perfected over the years. Let’s, go out for a first break and you and i’ll keep talking, see if we have anything more to say about the platforms, and then we got conversation about cem. Examples of challenges and marketing and stewardship stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way hyre welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I feel like doing live listener love et cetera right now because i’m just about being back in the studio. It’s been three weeks. I’m pretty sure that was recorded so let’s let’s go abroad first with the live listen love going abroad. Brooklyn, new york now that’s. Not very nice. I’m sorry i take that back. Brooklyn, you’re part of the five boroughs. Let’s really go abroad! Mexico city, mexico welcome live listen her love to you brenholz tartus hi beh china and we have multiple china actually knee how? Seoul, south korea always checking in just like china on your haserot comes home, nita, we have a couple in brazil. We conceicao paulo, we can’t see the other city in brazil, but we know you’re there live listener love teo multiple listeners in brazil we get everybody up vietnam dung, vietnam live ilsen love to you is, well, let’s. Come back into the u s new bern, north carolina st louis, missouri, weehawken, new jersey, brooklyn, new york you deserve a second shot out since i was unkind to brooklyn, bridgeport, connecticut all live listener love to each of each of those and there’s more coming, when we do the live, listen, love course, we got to the podcast pleasantries, because how could we not? How could i who’s the week there’s, no, corporate, we its eye? I’m the host here. I need to be grateful, and i am, in fact, for the over ten thousand listeners each week listening on the podcast, most ofyou on itunes, then stitcher and then lots of other smaller platforms. Player dot fm and podcast, dot net or something, and there’s, one in germany, etcetera, over ten thousand podcast listeners pleasantries to you, the affiliate affections, always going out up our am and fm listeners throughout the country. Let your station no, would you? If you’re if you’re listening on am fm, if you’re one of our affiliate listeners, let your station know that you appreciate non-profit radio, they will appreciate that feedback, and i will, too affections to our affiliate am and fm listeners. Thank you for that indulgence. Peter panepento gotta be going too good to the audience, so thank you. You absolutely do. And you’re not doing this without an audience. Thie audiences, really? Why we’re here talking right now. So if you have to make sure that we’re engaging them and listening back to them to sew for it, i do. I do indeed. So thank you very much. Let’s. Talk about some of the examples. You have some cool examples you mentioned already. Mike fox? No. You to mention mike fox of the the mike. I’m conflating two things. Yeah, there. I got a guy. I got a job with cary out there. Yeah, this couple foxes, right? But somebody got the jump. So i talked about terry fox, who was a cancer patient in canada. Way back. I think in nineteen eighty who excuse me, made worldwide headlines for his quest to run across canada and raise money for cancer research, and he actually died on his mission on dhe never completed the quest, but he’s been a national hero in canada and had really became a model for, you know, the individual who was willing to take on big challenges for big personal challenges to raise money for a cause that matters. And a lot of others have followed in his footsteps over the years, and one of them was a guy named sam fox who, interestingly, raises money for the michael j fox foundation. So i guess we do have a lot of fox’s, trail blazers and do-it-yourself fund-raising but he got he got that job. Damn fox, who was somebody actually interviewed several years? You know, when i was working at the chronicle on staff, he ran the pacific coast trail, i believe, to raise to raise money for for the michael j fox foundation in support of his mother, who was i was dealing with parkinson’s disease and went through some pretty substantial challenges and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the charity as a result of that, um, and on top, on top of his efforts. They actually ended up bringing him on staff to lead uh, uh, basically one of the first do-it-yourself charity sponsor campaigns where he was going out and helping people create their own challenges for the michael j fox foundation. Those are a couple of pretty prominent examples of people who take on extreme challenges to do this. But there’s also a number of people who are doing pretty ordinary thanks to we mentioned head shaving earlier on dh we mentioned how charity water has really pioneered or kind of owned the space on people, pledging their birthdays to raise money for the charity. You know, people are doing all kinds of things there, you know, there organizing your own pancake breakfast. They are, you know, taking on, you know, all kinds of challenges to try to break in a book of world records records, whether it’s around tennis, volleying or bringing groups of people together to sing together and different things like that. So there’s a there’s, a lot of different modes that these campaigns models of these campaigns follow and that’s part of what makes it interesting and fun to see how people are doing this. There’s also the fear ones, there’s, bungee jumping. The report mentions singing karaoke e although i have to find it hard to believe that that’s a real fear. But i guess because somebody is afraid of karaoke e but i that to me is something i’m really but i guess that would probably be something that would not. Yeah, well, if you have, if you have stage fright, i guess that could be a legitimate fear. But anyway, people were you it would be facing us here, but actually, you know, maybe a chance for society. They created a campaign last year called the fearless champ challenge, which was essentially that people could buy-in basically acknowledged what their biggest fear is, and they could collect pledges up to it. You know, a certain dollar level on def. People hit the pole for the pledge than the person would then go and face their fear. Right? So you know, tony let’s say you, you know, let’s, you know, let’s say i am i my biggest fear is actually singing karaoke with you. I know you totally upstage. May i would, you know, tell my friends that you know, if if i collect five thousand dollars in pledges. My friend tony has agreed to have me sing with him. Uh, you know, and then, you know, once that pleasure was hit, you know, you and i would then go and do that, and we would report back with a video of well, did everybody so that they could then laugh at how fat i was doing it. So and they had quite a bit of success with that. They had people do everything from, you know, agreed a bungee jump, tohave spiders crawl over them to eat something that they are, you know, that you know, some food that they’re either afraid of r who are, you know, just, you know, disgusted by all kinds of different things. And again, that leaves the door open for a lot of imagination and a lot of different ways that people can can you can do something personal and fund now to raise money. Long term listeners. The show will remember that years ago, back when i used to chase likes on facebook, i had something under three hundred and a couple of high school friends challenged me that if they could get to three hundred, get me two, three hundred likes the facebook page. The non-profit radio facebook page, not mine. If they would get me to three hundred, then what would i do? And i agreed to do a blue pedicure. Get a blue pedicure on the way. We called it the blue pedicure challenge. And indeed they got me to the three hundred and i went to a salon across the street here on seventy second street in new york city. On die. Got it. I got the boot pedicure. And i chronicled that you could goto the my youtube channel and you will see there’s. There are, i think, there’s three videos there’s. One of me making the appointment and choosing my color had avery. You know, i was kind of a royal blue. I think i chose on dh then there’s one or two. But i think i did it into segments. The actual pedicure and there’s, the waxing, et cetera. The application, of course. The drying, the massaging. Um, what else? Ah, over the parapet treatment. Oh, the hot, powerful treatment that was that’s. A classic. So anything that was that was a highlight of the i have not gotten a pedicure. Since then, but lou pedicure challenges out there, and so, you know, i wouldn’t exactly say i was a pioneer in do-it-yourself fund-raising but it was a way of having fun is exactly what you’re talking about. Exactly, and you know it. You khun, you know, you could be really creative with these and do really personal things. And, you know, if you have, you know, if you have a following on social media or on youtube, this could be another great way for for youto capitalize on that and do some good for your favorite charity. So i don’t think i was familiar with the blue pedicure challenge. That’s. Pretty interesting. Yeah. You know that david has a keel. Who? Right, who runs a peer-to-peer form and is doing a lot of work in this issue. He came up with a for a charity a few years ago, came up with a hot pepper challenge. And, um, i believe he collected past pledges and had others collect pledges for the number of hot cuppers they could even one sitting so there’s. Lots of different ways you can do this. My dad would be into the hot pepper challenge habanero. Is like metoo fish for him. I don’t know if it’s a jew ji food for him. Hadi’s nero’s. Okay, let’s, go right. So we know that we have to have support now, here’s, where we start to get into the infrastructure. And there is, as you mentioned, there’s a cost involved with this there’s overhead. There has to be a platform for you to send people to when they decide that they would like to fund-raising for you in this way. What is this? What is this? This is the platform for the volunteers. We’re going to run their own campaign. What is this platform need thio provide them with? Well, it needs to provide him with a few things. And i know a lot of the the software vendors who served the space are very good at helping build these platforms to and actually have models for them. So if you’re working with one of those companies already there, there may actually be ah, ah, kid or some kind of starter thatyou could use through that vendor toe actually help you get that started. And i won’t name names on vendors here. We’re agnostic, right? No, no, no. Wait, hold on, hold on. Wait, give shoutouts. Teo ifit’s a resource related to what we’re talking about, right? This. Right? Right. So, you know, give you yeah, if you work with the black blotter, a donor driver or any one of those software companies, chances are they’re there now offering some kind of a package for this. And we’ll work with you on creating it. But what it essentially needs tto have in addition to a mechanism for actually collecting donations, typically are, you know, an explanation of how to do that. You know how to do it. Some examples in ways for people to easily set up a campaign. Um, it needs teo, equip them with ways teo message and use social media and e mail actually reach out to their friends and tell them about the campaign that they’re doing. Um and it usually gives them a mechanism for for, you know, reporting back to them and thanking them and actually collecting the donation. So it, you know, all of these platforms of bail tend to look a little bit different, and they give people some different options. But essentially you need to give people a currency. Experience that allows them to do every part of their campaign through your platform and give them the tools to do it very easily. The easier you can make it for people too, not only make the ass, but, you know, post photos and makes, you know, share on social media and and be very clear about how how they could be most effective in doing that better success, you’re going tohave with those with those with those platforms naturally right? You gotta make it easy for your for your volunteers. I’m absolutely ok once we have this. All right. So that’s there some investment? They’re going toe create this yourself which felt like not necessary, but or pay for for a module that’s a turnkey teo be integrated into your sight one way or another. Whether it’s, a vendor, you’re working for somebody you bring on for this. Oh, you purchased for this for this purpose? Exactly. All right. And then we need to be able to we need to drive our volunteers to this. Paige, this platform platform what’s your advice around that? Yeah. And this is probably as crucial. Is having a platform itself is actually making people aware that it’s there and getting them to engage with it, um and, you know, we you know, as we’ve been studying this and i’ve i’ve done this bull foot, the chronicle, and with david hesse kills peer-to-peer forum and talking organizations that air trying this there are some that have essentially created the platform and then not done much marketing behind it and have been, you know, somewhat surprised that nobody came and really used it and raised much money for them. Um, so you really need to do some marketing behind it. You need to think about what audiences or or groups are most likely to want to raise money on your behalf and then and then build a marketing campaign that actually makes them aware that it’s there and comes up with some fun ways to engage them in that, um, the canadian cancer society, which has had a lot of success and this is also invested quite a bit of money in search engine optimization, so that when people type in cancer and fund-raising their sight comes up, so part of it is being being smart about what people might be searching for if they’re our interest in your cause and want to do something about it, you know, making sure that you’ve done the search engine optimization and the google ads and other things that allow your platform to show up when people are actually motivated to do something they mean, you know, they specifically for health charities, they may be very interested in trying to do something for a disease that’s affected a level another themselves or or a friend who may have passed away due to a certain type of cancer making sure that you have your site top of mind and top of google, i guess, for situations like that is it is another important thing to be thinking about investing in on and then making sure that it has a prominent place within your own web universe, that you’re promoting it on your home page in your email newsletters, in any of the other things that you’re doing to make people aware that it’s there and that you’re you’re actually spotlighting examples of others who are doing it for you, too. On google adwords, we just had a show within the past couple of weeks exactly on that topic and the segment is called google adwords, a reminder that google offers ten thousand dollars per month. Complimentary add word add word edward edwards for non-profits so if if you want, if you’re not taking advantage of that, listen to that show on glad words and well, it will get you started, so i mean, essentially is no different than driving people anywhere else. You have facebook page, you have to drive them to that. You have a website, you want to drive people there? Um, you know, it zoho about the marketing and promotions. I’m surprised that there are organizations that are surprised if they set up a platform that nobody comes to it. You have to. Well, i mean, marketing and promotions is one of those things that for non-profits is sometimes a difficult thing to get budget for. So you, you know, and that’s one of the big challenges facing the sector, i think, is that it’s an overhead costs, and it becomes something that a lot of organizations are a little, you know, either budget conscious or don’t necessarily think of it, it is up front and they need teo but it’s something that’s really crucial in a. You know, in a in a, um, environment like this, especially when it’s not built around a specific events or one thing that the organization is doing. This is something that has to be almost on billing. Marketing, uh, because unlike a walkathon or ah, a single event that you can put a lot of weight behind it for a few months and then take the rest of the year off. Something you you almost have to budget for and and work on your round. Okay. Agreed on dh. Yeah, well, and certainly you invest this money. You want this to be a platform that’s going to be used? I don’t know. What’s what’s. A big number for your organization. Hundreds of times, thousands of times or tens of thousands of times. Yeah. You got to keep driving people to it more with peter coming up first. Pursuant, they have a new breakthrough fund-raising content paper for you, not a webinar. This was a content paper. You need to raise more money. This will help you get there, helps you break through two extraordinarily good, better fund-raising it’s. Like all the pursuing content, it is free free, free you’ll. Find the content paper at pursuing dot com click resource is then content papers couldn’t be simpler. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising it’s a game show in a local place as a fundraiser for your organization. That’s what these bees are spelling the concert standup comedy live music dancing you’ll see it all in the video from just one night, one of their many nights video is that we be e spelling dot com now time for tony’s take two i thank you so much for listening. We are over twelve thousand in aggregate, the big group, but i’m thanking you. You if you’re listening live, you’ve got your phone and your laptop, your desktop. I’m talking to you right now podcast. If i’m in your ears, i hope you’re not one of those, uh, in a public space and you got your speaker blasting if you are, then i’m telling you that everybody around you is looking at you right now, wishing you to turn your phone down or plug it in. But if that’s not you, then you can ignore that admonition. Thank you, podcast listeners if you are, if that’s your format so glad that you are with us and for the affiliate listeners. So, so glad that you are with us through your am and fm station. However, you’re consuming the show, i’m glad you’re with us. I am grateful for your support. The show wouldn’t be where it is if it wasn’t for each of you individually, you, you, you and you and you times twelve thousand if you are getting my insider alerts on a weekly basis. So you know who the show guests are each week and you know, the video that i do each week get advance linked to that i thank you for accepting that insider alert in your inbox, what each week, each and every week the guy sends the insider alert’s driving metoo maddening? No, i thank you about twelve hundred eleven, twelve hundred on the insider alerts, and this is not a promotion, so i’m not going to tell you how to get them. You can go to tony martignetti dot com, but i’m thanking you if you are getting them and what the heck for a lot of people, you don’t even need him. You’re gonna listen to the show anyway. You don’t need the insider alerts, however you’re consuming the show, however you’re enjoying it. Thank you for being with me, that is tony’s take two here is more of peter panepento. Peter panepento thanks for hanging in there again, your urination, your gracious guy see, i usually don’t have people on for the full hour and even rarer full hour by phone, but you’re you’re you’re reasonably articulate and ah, and engaging so s so i i thought, you know, that’s actually, my tagline let you hang on, okay, should that that kind of lackluster expectations and all your clients would be excited because you’re under produce your under promising and weigh over performing, i’m sure hyre okay, let’s, um all right, i just i guess i just want to stress something on this on this platform and the marketing that your you do that you’re doing to drive people to the to this platform, it really needs to encourage creativity around. I mean, that’s absurd and all the things you’ve been saying that all these vast examples, but of challenges that people have taken out, but you really want encourage people to think outside the the box of what everybody else. Has done the run, the whatever, yes, and so part of it is is giving them some some examples of things that they can do, whether they’re made up examples of things that you would love to see somebody try on your behalf or whether these are things that somebody may have done free organization already and telling the story about that and making sure that that you’re giving them some some guidance on on some of the types of things that they can do on your behalf is really important here. So, um, some, uh, organizations like the world wildlife fund on their panda pages, they actually they have categories of events that end challenges that people can take on to help guide, you know, things that they think their supporters are going to be interested in doing, but also giving them ah, platform to jump off and create their own ideas. Yes. Okay, um, or that you’re able to do that, and and then, you know, and the back end of it really market the fact and tell the stories of the people who are doing campaigns for you so you could spot light them? Um, i think that’s really helpful? Murcott charity water has done again a great job of this two whenever they’ve had somebody do a creative campaign for them, and they’ve had some creative ones, they had somebody swim naked from san francisco to alcatraz after they after they reached a certain fund-raising level and then they also had somebody who who hated the band nickelback. All right, right? This kind listens. Yes decided to basically listen to them nonstop for one hundred sixty eight hour straight at people if people don’t hate it enough to him and when we hold people then and he had a subject himself to that auditory experience, how many hours? How many bonem but they’ve they’ve done a great job of then in turn, you know, telling those stories, you know, creating block post featuring on their home page, creating videos about these things so that they can then show those back to their supporters as examples but also as ways to get attention for the organization. Yeah, cool. How many days is one hundred sixty eight hours? I don’t know what that is that a week? Maybe at seventeen? I don’t know, i was told there’d be no math on this interview, tony. You put me on the spot. You weren’t. You weren’t told that by me. That’s ok, that’s a long time. Hundreds, six hours. I wouldn’t even i wouldn’t have thought that the band nickelback had one hundred sixty eight hours. Maybe he had to replay because handup clolery place. And i hope i hope he was sleeping in there. Some point. Yeah, i was warning about that on dpi breaks also. Okay, let’s, move on. So now, after your your volunteers have done there campaigns or while they’re in the midst of them sorry, i should say what, while they’re in the midst of that, they need support. They they need to be told how to promote their own campaign inside your platform and latto asked and howto follow-up etcetera. Yeah, and this is another really key. Part of it is, once you get them there and get them to agree to do something, you have to walk them through the process. And, um, this is crucial with any peer-to-peer campaign. You know, a lot of organizations have gotten very, very sophisticated at making sure that they’re providing very clear instruction and motivations to their fundraisers around events that they’re doing and sending them e mails, you know, being available to feel their phone calls and questions and and providing incentives to them for reaching different fund-raising global’s along the way with these campaigns, you have to do the same thing. You really have to make sure that you have systems in place to be communicating pretty regularly with the people who agree tio take on one of these challenges and and giving them tips and advice and and maybe even many challenges along the way i do to help them be successful with these. So a lot of a lot of the more successful campaigns, they’re ones that you no have, ah series of e mails that they send out at various times to participants, you know, telling them how to how did for what’s that they’re friends, uh, you know, reminding them when they haven’t sent out ah message or collected ah, niu donation in awhile and giving them prompts and different things along the way to help them, um, help them be successful with the song fund-raising and some organizations actually have staff people who will, you know, reach out personally. By phone or e mail and make sure that their questions are being answered and that they’re getting the support they need along the way to do well, yeah, that’s where this is would be a challenge, i think, for some smaller shops you you need to be able teo provide that. I mean, well, are there organizations that are doing it all on lee automated, and they don’t have personal support like that, like, you know, a line you can call or someone you can chat with live? Is that maybe maybe that’s less common than i’m realizing? How common is that personal support? Well, i think, you know, for a lot of the larger campaigns are a lot of it is automated, and but but they do have some people who are minding the store and watching and making sure that when people are, you know, bumping their heads and facing challenges are now being very active, that they are following up with them and being being in touch with them. Um, so but, you know, in talking to a lot of these groups, this is an area that is a challenge for them is figuring out what is the right level of support to offer? How can they do this in a way where they’re not, you know, creating a whole new fund-raising arm in their organization, but are still providing that level of support and and, uh, service that’s needed teo do this well, andan other thing we’re hearing and because this is a pretty new form of fund-raising there are actual questions, a lot of organizations about, you know, who in the organization and, you know, should be leading these efforts and where it should live? Is it something that lives holy in the development department? Does it live in your marketing shop? Doesn’t live in some cases in your technology section because they’re the ones who are leading the platform. I’ve spoken to people and organizations who, where all kinds of different hats who are engaged in leading these campaigns and i think, um, i think it’s going to take a little bit of time to figure out what the best practices are in term and most effective practices are making sure that if you are going to lead do-it-yourself campaign that that you have fought through, you know how to, uh how how to structure and howto have the right people in the organization leading it. Your research didn’t lead youto find that there’s there’s one ah form of organization or location where this lives that’s that’s more popular than others. It’s really is pretty much a scattershot still it’s been a bit scattershot, but i think the groups that are most most advanced on it are ones that already have peer-to-peer fund-raising it’s part of their part of their tool kit. Um, i think the groups that, you know have people that are there organizing walks and rides and various other peer-to-peer programs are seeing the opportunities here first because they’re engaged with this kind of fund-raising already and they’re they’re talking to each other, so a lot of groups are doing this out of their, you know, their peer-to-peer arm of their organizations already, but, you know, world wildlife fund, you know, this has been a major technological investment for them, so they have technology people who are really kind of the key voices within the organization on that and for charity water. This was, uh, pretty much an essential and central part of the organization when it found it ten years ago, with these types of campaigns, so i think, it’s, much more marketing driven through that organization, so there’s different different avenues to get there, but for groups that are starting and now, and you are researching it now, these are questions that they’re starting to ask, okay, um, interesting. Ah, pronunciation. Now you say charity water, i say charity water, i’m putting the emphasis on water. So now i suddenly i don’t like to quibble on non-profit radio, although i am, but but i don’t know, i i think it should be charity water, because that doesn’t scott harrison want the emphasis on the water and not on the charity part? I’m pretty sure he does. You’re absolutely right. Charity water charted water, charity water, not charity. Charity, border, charity, charity water. I’m sure, but i’m pretty sure it should be charity water. Okay, well, we have actually we’ve got some live. Listen, love. We got new york, new york. A wonderful buy from charity. Water is listening, but also joining us a new afresh. Oakland, california. Boston, massachusetts and tehran, iran. Wow, live listen love to each of those and we got more if i didn’t say your country yet, then? Ah, you’re coming, so live listen, love going out to even more countries in a few moments, but okay, i’m a digression on princessa how? Yeah, where do you excuse me? Charity water, though? It’s it’s, charity durney water. Well, i just i think i just gave you the definitive att leased for purposes of this show, but this is the center of the universe. So as far as i’m concerned, that’s the way it ought to be for all, for all being in all time. But at least when you’re on my show, you know, yeah, i charity water, but i’ve never heard scott harrison, so i don’t know he’s the ceo of charity water for those i don’t mean to name drop not like he’s a friend. I just know of him. Charity water. Okay, yes. So you’re essentially all right. So i understand that there’s there’s there’s timing challenges around what level of support and when people need support, but essentially the principle is you need to be a cheerleader for your volunteer fund-raising resort out there, absolutely. And you need to be talking to them regularly and giving them instruction. And as you said being a cheerleader, encouraging them, but also giving them, uh, advice and help along the way. I helped them do this successfully. And, you know, while there isn’t a straight formula for a lot of these, uh, campaigns yet in terms of you have tto send seven e mails over the course of two months, uh, you know, to make these work most effectively what’s, very clear is that you have to have something that is that is regular and consistent and as clear as possible. And then you have to be paying attention to the results of those different communications and seeing what’s working and learning from that so that you can put your, uh, put the right emphasis on the right things. Moving forward. School. Okay, let’s, go out for our last break. And when we come back to peter and i’ll keep talking ah, about this, of course, and we got a bit of a double edged sword there’s opportunities here. But there’s also challenges. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trans sounded life that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i am his niece, carmela. And i am his nephew, gino. I love that drop. But i got i got i gotta tear listening to them. Well, i was just with them last week in down the beach. More live listener love. Here it is i promised it since since last tehran iran checking in live love going out to tehran, chunking china and also guangdong, china now taipei, taiwan. I don’t know if type has been with us much, but certainly ni hao going out to taiwan as well. And also newberg, newberg, germany cool gooden dog for germany gotta love the live love i do i do all right, peter, we have just, like, five minutes left or so roughly, i’d say, is that about right, sam? Get a little more than that, like, ten minutes. So let’s, talk a little about how this is ah, bit of ah, double edged sword. You alluded to some of the challenges, but let’s start with an upside. On the other hand, you’re getting lots of new donors which creates a challenge, right? You you’re getting new donors on dure also finding ways to engage some of the current donors you have who may be, you know, looking for something new and a new way to support your organization? Yes, but yeah, but the challenge that becomes whenever you get new donors is is how do you how do you bring them into your organization and make sure that they don’t become a one and done donor on dh that’s? I think a big a particular challenge for these kinds of campaigns because they’re not, quote unquote traditional in the same way where somebody who gives to you through a through, you know, a mail campaign or even through a personal solicitation, these air folks who are doing something that’s kind of unique and different and may only do it once for you because it is so unique and different, i think it’s probably in a lot of cases, a lot easier to take on a physical challenge once and ask people for money than it is to do it a second time. There’s a novelty to a lot of these things, so for a lot of organizations they are, they’re happy to get the money and build the connection with thes supporters, but they’re struggling a bit on how to how to do that stewardship and kind of move them up. The engagement ladder so that they do more things with some down the line. Um, and this has been particularly true for the a l s association after the ice bucket challenge or something they didn’t even plan for an organized to create a platform for this, but they suddenly had a lot of donors who were who were taking part in a massive do-it-yourself campaign who are now part of their donordigital face and they’ve been really, you know, thinking about and struggling over the last couple of years the right way and the most effective way to keep them engaged in the organization and to get them to come back and get more down the line. That was let’s talk about the number, then there’s two and a half million to something new donors to the organization, right? Yeah, i think. And on and on top of that, a lot of them had no connections the cause before they embark in this campaign for a lot of them, they don’t have a personal connection to a less, but they were made aware of it, and they were compelled enough not only you know, um uh, take the challenge. But also to write a check and give to the organization so they they have this massive opportunity, but they but they can’t communicate with these owners in the same way that they do those who are have been part of their network for a long time. Um, and they can’t necessarily count on, ah, high number of them that turn around and get to them again. Yeah, i know that that was one of the things that barbara, uh, sure, i can remember her last name remember the name of the ceo of charity water, peter barbara. She was a guest in any case, it’s not so much a lot. The last slaughter, who is up development person and, you know, they’ve they’ve come up with some some things that they think are working well for them, and one of them is is communicating a lot about the impact of the gifts that we’re given and talking about the progress that those gifts have made on dh then in turn, saying, you know, additional support will help us get, you know, here, here and here, so they’re they’re really putting a big focus on, you know, showing not only showing the impact of the gifts, but also showing that they’ve been spending those funds wisely and are getting results out of it. And that’s that’s been a message they found not only works well, but also validates a lot of aa lot of what people did for them two years ago when they did that. Yeah, well, that za smart way to start to engage people and they had all sorts of challenges in and opportunities when this thing broke without twenty fourteen i guess the in fact and it was almost two years it was two years ago it ended, right? I’m pretty sure it ended. Really. It was the equivalent of winning the lottery, right? For sure, you know, they suddenly had all of this great, these great, unexpected resource is but, you know, when you’re not planning for that there’s, you know, there’s a lot of challenges, that pompel offense, so you know, there, dave, i think dahna very responsible job of communicating about about those challenges and how they’re addressing them and what they’re learning along the way, but you know, it is it’s almost impossible to fall into something like that and have the and have everything in place that you need to be able, teo capitalize on a perfectly yeah, it’s fell in their lap, and, uh, that was, as i was starting to say, that was one of the challenges that barbara and i talked about when she was on in would’ve been october of twenty fourteen. She was a guest for the hour. In fact, we recorded that at the chronicle, flat to the studio, because they’re in washington, d c andi, i was down there and worked it out, but i actually remember that one. Yeah, that was that was one of that. That was one of the highest profile. You damn well, second to this one. Of course, that means break today, right? That’s, right, that’s, right. Okay, s so you know, how do how do shepherd these new donors to your organizations work longer term? All right, clearly. So that’s one and i think another another key challenges is budgeting for this. You know, some some of these campaigns kind of jumped the wall and becoming really successful. Um, a and a lot of cases you can’t plan for that and b you can’t necessarily expect to replicate in the next year. So if you have somebody who, you know, does a, uh do-it-yourself campaign and they raise two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars for you, um, you can’t necessarily expect that donor to do the same thing for you next year. So how do you plan for that? How do you make sure you budget, um, responsibly for that revenue and set the right expectations within your organization. That’s? So that’s another challenge that we’ve heard organizations reply or to us something else that’s mentioned in the report. That’s very closely related to that. Budgeting for for the future is just getting the volunteers to do repeat campaigns in the future. Right? Right. And that’s. Some that’s. That’s. Certainly a big challenge. St baldrick’s. Has been great with us. They’ve found a really creative way. Tio encourage people, tio take part multiple times and there’s their head chadband shaving campaigns um, and they’ve excuse me. Created am a secret society, i guess it’s not a secret society, but a society called the knights of the bald table. And if you take part in seven, uh, had shaving campaigns with them, they actually we’ll hold an event for you and have, uh, you know, basically ah, knighting ceremony for you. And you get a special pen and you get quite a bit of recognition for it. So, you know, there are some ways that organizations are tryingto deal with this issue and find some fun and creative ways to get people to come back and do something more than once. But it is a challenge because, you know, the first time i see i’m going to go sing karaoke with tony. My friends may think it’s a fun saying the second time they were like, well, i saw that act already. Yeah, right. Supported again, right, let’s like me doing blue pedicure challenge too, right? Right. Who cares now, now, now, if i did read pure a pedicure challenge, that would it would be different that way, a whole new campaign that’s completely different, but you can’t go back to the blue, you can never go back. All right, we have a couple more minutes left and what have we not talked about? What if i not ask you that you’d like to like to like to? Well, i think one one thing i think is really interesting on this is just the fact that it is such a a kind of an evolving form of fund-raising that that organizations are really craving information and craving opportunities connect with each other about it. So you know one thing that i’m working that try to identify our ways that not only can can we provide good resource is through the chronicle truth peer-to-peer forum and through other sources like this, but also how can we bring people together and get them talking about this war? And i certainly would welcome you know, anybody in the audience who is thinking about this and working on this, who wants to talk about it, to reach out to me, reach out to you and find a way to further the conversation because i i think because, you know, because it is such a evolving form of of a kind of formal fund-raising now you know, the book is still being written, so to speak, on how to do it well, and the more input we could get, the better contact, peter, because once this is over, i have no interest in the topic. I’m committed to nothing, so contact peter directly. Alright, i’m more than happy to take the no, i’m committed. I’m committed everything. All right, he’s on twitter, he’s at p panepento write the name of the report is the do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook is there? Ah, is there a convenient earl at a to chronicle site? Peter or no, i have a far from convenience. Okay, yeah, that’s the one i have, so just the do-it-yourself fund-raising handbook, you’ll find it on the chronicle of philanthropy site labbate and and i believe they are after labor day going to start really heavily marketing it, and including it and their philanthropy today newsletter another six to so there will be you know, there’ll be a lot of opportunities to see it, and if you follow me on twitter, i will be tweeting about it. And sharing the limbs there quite a bit over the next few weeks as well. Okay, very cool. Very cool. All right. So i want to thank you again for coming on quickly again, since just since august. That was very gracious of you. You do call report. So? So i’m happy to give voice to them. But now i’ve lost interest in the topic. So it’s all good. So we get fifty, fifty minutes your attention and that’s it. Yeah, i get that there’s a lot going on. It’s. A busy place? Absolutely. Well, i look forward to the next. The next time i help with something that is of interest to you for, you know, a half hour and hour that’s right about it trying to move on. And we’ve got another next-gen. Alright, do not assume it’ll be an hour next time. Thank you for well done. No, thank you very much. Peter. Thankyou. Thankyou, tony. All right. My pleasure. Next week. Have i ever let you down? Well, maybe there was that one show on fermentation that that was a bit sour. That was august second. Twenty thirteen. Sorry about that, you know, puns. The it’s. The most creative form of humor, unless you’re not the one who thought of it. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez, and this cool music is by scott stein. It was me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy, the stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane. Toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
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Oh, hi there. Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week, sean congo. He e mailed me. I work in the innovation space and i find your non-profit radio podcast super relevant to what i do loved twenty seventeen legal tips episode thank you twenty seventeen legal tips episode that was aaron bradrick on january sixth. Jean takagi blew it. I invited him, but he couldn’t pull it together, so he had someone from his office do it. I’m not sure if it’s drugs or alcohol, it might be i don’t know. Maybe it is you tell me it might be drugs or alcohol. I just don’t know. Sean continues, i just put an awesome review and rating on itunes and just wanted to pass on the love, keep doing your thing and inspiring us to crush it. Well, it’s actually be great is what i encourage at the end of encourage it’s more than just an encouragement and explicit demand. Be great. So it’s not quite crush it. But it’s it’s i think crushing it is. Ah, is lesser than be great any case, shawn still grateful whether it’s crushing it or be great. Thanks for loving non-profit radio. Thank you for the itunes raid in review. Um, and you can find us on itunes at non-profit radio dot net. Just saying, i don’t know is that inappropriate self promotion? I don’t know you tell me, he’s shaun congo neo-sage a w n k a n ew ngo and he’s at sean congo dot com sean, thank you so much for the non-profit radio love. Congratulations on being this week’s listener of the week and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get hit with ridiculous oh, gangly own itis if you got me nervous with the idea that you missed today’s, show, fire up your board fund-raising consultant and author gail perry will reveal proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities. Her book is fired-up fund-raising and that originally aired november twelfth, twenty ten this show’s been around a long time, you know, we’re coming up on seventh anniversary in july every every july is another fifty shows, so in november two thousand ten, we were about joy was never remember four months old. Is that right? Yes, four months old. So the quality of my questioning may not be up to what you’re accustomed to in these days, but the information still very relevant board fund-raising still very, very much an issue seven years later, and we didn’t only start talking about it in two thousand ten on tony steak, too. Naps and that’s right naps two weeks in a row are you gonna give me trouble with that? We’re about it off my back with the naps responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here is gail perry on firing up your board fund-raising from november two thousand ten, fire up your board fund-raising i’ll be joined by gail perry. Gale is a consultant and the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. Her book title pretty much says it all, she’s going to share proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities gayle’s book is published by wiley, and it is available on amazon gail’s. With us for the hour i’m joined now by the president of gale perry associates, gail perry is a consultant and author. As i said earlier, her book is fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action, published by wiley, available on amazon dot com. Gail is an international speaker on this subject, and she leads her own has led her own consulting firm for over fourteen years. I’m very glad that gale’s practice brings her to the show today. She’s joining us from north carolina? Welcome, gail. How you doing? I’m doing well. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you. Yeah. Why’s fund-raising important for board members. Well, actually, they they actually own for our big fun for it. And many say that they have a very bilich boardmember not agree with gail. I’m gonna interrupt you. I know you’re on your own. A vonage connection, i think. Is that you? Yeah. And it’s breaking up a little bit. Do you have another phone that you can call on and i will do a little a little song and dance while you call him. Okay. Please do this’s. Tony martignetti let me. Okay, i was all set for my song and dance like this, she cuts me off. We’re just having a little technical problem with trying to get a good connection from gail galley there matter-ness it sounds better. One we want to continue with the question why? And you cut me? I didn’t get to do my song and dance. You believe this? Alright, maybe. Maybe later notion. Uh, gail, you still there? There, gail that’s. Beautiful. All right. You know, this is live radio because this wouldn’t happen. Otherwise we have gale back, but we’re going to take this break. I’ll be joined by gail perry after this break. Please stay with me. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website. Philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent dahna. I’m joined now by gail perry. Our subject is fired-up you’re bored fund-raising gail, you’re with us, right? Okay, excellent, much, much better and let’s go to that first question. Why is fund-raising important for board members? Gale? Well, boardmember have such a responsibility to make sure the organization is successful, but the problem is that many organs many boardmember zehr not enlisted a recruited on dh, told when they’re recruited that theirjob fund-raising so at the outset, they should be told they should be told, and it doesn’t happen. I think that non-profits or embarrassed to ask him or afraid to bring it up, and i think it backfired terribly because then the staff wants the board to helping fund-raising in the board says what? What do you what do you know? What about yes, you know, the chronicle of philanthropy just yesterday in the online edition had an article about the frustrations among non-profits that board members don’t step up to this important obligation. And on the side bar there were four articles going back to i think nineteen, ninety seven since then, and all of them had the headline’s something like non-profit boardmember sze don’t step up. To their responsibilities, and here was basically that four or five maybe articles since i think nineteen, ninety seven, i know this is an enormous area of frustration for non-profits yeah, it is, but the problem is that i think i think non-profits bear a lot of the blame because i think i think, frankly, i think their expectations are way too high. You can’t expect untrained volunteers to be successful in fund-raising when they’ve never done it before and they may not have the personality for it, frankly, i don’t want on that boardmember soliciting because they wouldn’t be good at it. You probably have to clean up. Okay, we’re gonna talk about that later on. But what other roles there are around fund-raising besides soliciting, but so you think you think the responsibility lies with the non-profit wants a little more about that? Yeah, there’s a there’s, a sinus flandez says, we all get the boards we deserve on that means that the more time and energy you spend on your board them or you get out of him, and i think that non-profit leaders need to take take a leadership role with their board and give them training and talkto them about expectations and talk to them about what it is that the job of the board members is to do because somebody boardmember don’t know, and i’m frankly, a frankly, i think a lot of people who serve on board are very well meaning people, and they want to do a good job, but you got to tell him what you need. Yeah, that’s always that’s always the case, they’re passionate about the mission, and i know part of your messages toe unleash that passion, we’ll get to that they’re always passionate about, otherwise they would have turned you down, you know, they care, but you gotta figure out a way to make it easy for him and make it fundez form and what are some of the challenges that that are either organizational or personal to board members? Well, you know, the one thing they don’t know anything about fund-raising they be racking, i think it’s unreasonable to assume that somebody can do a great job when they when they’re totally untrue ride and i’m a battle that weary, hardened veteran of twenty five years and fund-raising and i’m very comfortable with that i got his sessions, like write articles in conferences understand the techniques in the technology, so one of the rules is they don’t understand it at all. I think four members think that fund-raising is all about asking for money, and we all know that that’s not particularly good fund-raising because good fund-raising is much more of a cultivation process in the relationship driven process, but if boardmember think it’s all about asking and it’s all about money, then they freeze, you know, from from my perspective, i think fund-raising is about changing the world and helping children and helping the environment and all the things that you’re raising money for, and the board members get stuck in this mythology of what they think fund-raising years, and they make it into this horrible yucky, embarrassing, um, tacky, poor manners, you know, that they made it back-up also its myths about it, but when you do it right, it’s, a really joyful experience and your matching donors with causes that mythology often is carried on by the organization. Yeah, you know, i think i think i think fundrasing got a bad rap all around because a lot of people are nervous about it. And they don’t they don’t understand it. They don’t know how to do it well. And and it does take a special skill set really does. What about the the meetings that board members are attending and they’d be used for your left looking she’s laughing at me on my own show? You believe this? I know you. I know you’re laughing, but i’m a delight. Board meetings don’t think that board meetings are boring, and i think the board members would tell you that they’re boring and i would say to you, if you have boring meetings, what kind of a board? And you gonna have a board board? Uh, and if you have a board board, i don’t think they’re going to take action and fundrasing so it’s very important that we make boardmember into a cheerleading session and a and a exciting motivational experience now, that’s interesting. Sometimes, you know, something called a cheerleading session is used pejoratively, but obviously you don’t mean that. How would you turn boardmember into a cheerleading session? Well, you know, i think it’s gotta have some excitement in passion to it. I think the leadership has got to be passionate and excited? I think you’ve got to talk about important issues. You’ve got a door way. Shit boardmember time with crap. Excuse me. You know, um thank you. You bring in testimonials from people who who, uh, who are being helped by your organization. I mean, just last night i was doing aboard retreat with our local women’s center, and i asked the director to tell us a story of something that had touched her heart recently. And she said she told the story of this woman who had two children, preschool children, small ones. Her husband lost his job and he abandoned the family. And she was that her last resort. She didn’t know what to do. She was going to get evicted from her apartment. She has no money. She had nothing. Two small children had never worked outside the home. And when gene, the director of the women’s center, told her that that the women’s center could help her with her rent for a couple months so she got herself established. The lady burst into tears and gene in telling the story. Last night she cried, had a blower nose and and you know, it was in front. Of all the board members and the board members really got it about how important their work. Wass and it was a very touching and motivational. It was probably the most touching moment i experienced all weekend work. Yeah. That’s. An outstanding story. And in a in a board meeting. And what was the reaction to board members? Could you see any? Oh, yeah. Physical reaction. Thank you, teo. I think they feel that the energy. So i think a lot about energy. I think that energy probably maybe is the basis of all this stuff. Let’s talk a little more about that because you think about it a lot. What do you mean about energy? You know, do you let me give you a little example? Do you have a friend whose energy is like the cold, clammy kitchen sink? You know what has been friday night with them? Right? But do you have a friend whose energies like the warm sunshine and you want to spend time with them? And one of my great fund-raising motta’s is winding down. Throw a party because what if you could make what you’re doing fun? You would trap people, teo and it board meetings air fun. If the board members enjoy getting together, if, um, if they if you could make your boar biddies into a party and let people enjoy themselves, you attract more people to your cause. And if you’re having a fund-raising of yet turned that into a party and you will bring me more money. There’s a whole lot of this attitude about, uh, being gregarious and being i mean, you changed the world by expanding your energy and influencing other people. And if boardmember zehr embarrassed about fund-raising and embarrassed about, quote, hitting up somebody or something, their energy is going to be like the clothes cold, clammy kitchen sink. So i gotta get boardmember away from their myths about fund-raising being yucky and get him pointed toward maybe friendraising so they could be excited about what they’re doing and really inspired about the work. And and there are other activities which we’ll talk about that that are appropriate around fund-raising. It’s interesting that the act of fund-raising can be seen as yucky and clammy and dirty and embarrassing and begging, even which is a very debased form of human action or the same action at same activity fund-raising can be seen is one of the most powerful shining examples of compassion and human. Yes, i’m talking with gail perry she’s, a consultant and author of the president of gale perry associates, and her book is fired-up fund-raising turn board passion into action. Gail, aside from the’s, very poignant testimonials at meetings, how else can can we in live in this thiss passion? Well, i like, i’d like to ask for members by the care. What do you mean? Just go around the table and ask or, you mean, write it out? How? Well, how logistically detail? How would we do that? Development director for hospice tried the question with her group this way, she said to our board members, and they were very stiff bunch of noone who didn’t like they thought their job is to manage money, not to raise it, you know, that kind of people, and she went around the table and she said, tell me what? Legacy you’d like to leave from serving on sport, right? They went around the table. Whoa. And he said you would have thought i’d open the floodgates. She said she had never seen such emotion in such passion in these people and she said she changed way have a meeting she had had with these people in three years in a again a very telling story. Gale, we actually we have a call and i haven’t even said the number. Look at this. If you’d like to talk to gail are calling number is eight. Seven seven for eight xero for one, two zero, eight, seven, seven. Forty xero for one to zero and we have a caller. What is your name, please? Hi. My name is marion marion. Hi. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. What’s. Your question for gail might. My question is, what are boardmember sze? We’ve made the mistake. Scale is already, uh, discussed in terms of we didn’t pre educate them about the fund-raising aspect. I guess going forward, you know, live and learn. How do we go forward in picking board members? How do we screen them and educate them before we picked them that this is going to be part of their job duty. And also does she have any ideas in terms of resources that we could use to get people over this hump of feeling like fund-raising is yucky because i agree with friendraising legally, maybe the goal is to ask those friends for money, and how do we educate our board members appropriately? Barry and i’m going to ask youto take the answer off off off line on the air because you’re breaking up a little bit, but we have your questions. Thank you very much for calling again the number the number to call is eight seven seven for eight xero for one to xero gale, what about the marin’s? First question on on screening board members? Well, let me give you an example. I’m chair of the board governance committee for statewide boarding here in north carolina, and we were literally a fund-raising board and we have changed our mission to write be much more specific about fund-raising and it’s, my job to be the rude i’m sorry, it’s, my job to be in charge of the boardmember recruitment process, not surprised, and so we’ve had people in action all over the state all year and, you know, feel feeling and potential boardmember and i have gotten off the phone with thes women that we’re enlisting, and i said, listen, i just want to go over with you, the expectations, and i don’t you to be surprised i said the really number one job of boardmember xyz to be leaders in their local fund-raising event in their local towns and do you have any problem with calling people for sponsorships and blah, blah, blah? And they’re very explicit to him, and they usually say, no, i’m happy to do that, and then i say and, you know, i just want to let you know that most of the board members almost all of us are contributing at the thousand dollar level is trailblazers and out of what be surprised about that either? And do you think that’s, something you could consider and the people i talked to said, yeah, i think i can consider that so it’s been it’s been amazing? That has been so easy for me to talk about it because it can be embarrassing, but somehow i’m not the person who enlisted them. I’m sort of like the policeman to screen them before they come on the board because they want to be accepted into this group of very high powered women, and they don’t want any surprises, and so they’re pretty grateful for the for the conversation with me, and they’re really what about putting these expectations in writing nothing that’s very helpful. So after you’ve gotten their verbal but there’s, nothing there a lot of organizations that have lots of written expectations that board members have signed and nothing happened. Yeah, well, ok, of course, that the writings need to be enforced mohr essential than the riding it out. Okay, think about it because you gotta oddball people or get him on the phone and very direct people don’t read stuff anyway, right? Well, but so are you suggesting a conversation and then something in writing? Onda writing, of course, needs to be enforced. People don’t enforce stuff going just although i do know a couple of boards that they give their boardmember xero sort of a report card at there place every board meeting about where they stand on their commitment. Yeah, well, i think we’re going to talk later. That’s wonderful! We’ll talk later and we’ll talk later in the hour about self assessment in just a minute, we have left before a break. Gale, can you share with our caller the sum of the second question cem resource is for making fund-raising more appealing. Yeah, and if i could suggest a my website gai o perry dot com, i have a ton of articles, uninspiring board members and lots of different techniques in conversations to stage with them to help them change their attitude about fund-raising i think you need to have a frank fear of convert xero fund-raising ization, um, and that i think that’s very healthy and what you call it cleansing moment, so let him throw up about it. Uh, and then you’ve gotta have a conversation about abundance versus scarcity and about the importance of optimism and the connection to their passion and then friend making such a big deal because, frankly, i held my speak all over the country on this, and i’ll tell everybody i would rather have a friend to my cause than a donor. Excellent gail, we’re going to take a break. Those resources are available at gail perry dot. Com and you’ll also find a link to those resources, which are which are excellent. I was through them on my block it mpg a dv dot com under the show today’s show post we’re going to take a break after the rake. Of course, gail parry stays with us and hope you do too more with gail perry is coming up first. Pursuant, they have the replay of the break through fund-raising webinar it is up and it’s pursuing so you know that it is free if you want to break through two extraordinary fund-raising this is going to help you out, you’ll figure out the invisible obstacles that are holding you back. Affiliates here is another resource you can take advantage of if you couldn’t make the live webinar catch it now sometimes the timing doesn’t work out for our affiliates, but now you get the archive version it’s up it’s at pursuing dot com click resource is than webinars couldn’t be simpler. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising how about a game show in a local place as a fundraiser? That’s what these bees are spelling bee concert stand up comedy live music, dancing check out their video it’s that we b e spelling dot com very cool events now time for tony’s take two. I love naps and get off my back about it. Yes, it’s two weeks in a row, back off, it’s my show i’ll do whatever the hell i want and i’m a fan of napping you only need research says about twenty minutes toe work more efficiently for the rest of your workday so give in to that post lunch slump. Naps are encouraged all over the world and my video has links to research the twenty minute research. And i’ve got a link to worldwide nap culture and also a link to a video that i did on minute sweets when i was at the d f w airport, where i wake up from an in sweet nap and i review that service minute sweets at airports, they’re they’re cool. I got a link to that also, the video is at tony martignetti dot com all about naps gotta love him. That is tony steak too live listen, love goes out were pre recorded but the love goes out on the day that the show is live then not. Now i have love, but it’s got going out now it goes out. Then this day, today in the future, the live love, everybody who’s throughout the world. We know they’re in asia. We know we got asia. Ah, we know we got california. We know you got new york, new york, they’ve been. You’ve been very consistent. New york, new york, new bern, north carolina consistent so the love goes out to the live listeners and quick on the heels of the podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand listening in the time shift very, very glad that you are with us. That’s the vast majority of our listening audience pleasantries to the podcast listeners and the affiliate affections got to do him am fm affiliate stations throughout the country later station know that will be be glad i get occasional feedback, but not too much from our am and fm stations. Let them know you’re listening. Please do a service to them and for non-profit radio our affiliate listeners throughout the country on the am and fm stations, the family of the family of stations non-profit radio i’m glad you’re with us affiliate listeners here’s the rest of gale perry on firing up your board fund-raising my guest is gail perry, the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action that is published by wiley and available at amazon. Gail, you left with a very interesting ah sort of ah, phrase, repeat that for us and let’s let’s think about that. Grantmaking i don’t want to see it. I said i would rather have a friend to my cause than a donor rather have a friend in a donor, and people are shocked when i say that it’s a little more about the reason is that i ask everybody, what will a friend do for you? You know, and friends to your cause will do everything in the world, including give money, and so maybe we do need to change our fund-raising in the friend making, because if you make friends out of your donors and bring them much more deeply into the cause and get them really involved, then they’ll stick with you for the long run, and we have a terrible problem in fund-raising ofwhat we call donorsearch trish in which is, of course, the fact that donors give once and then they slip away. Or give twice and they don’t stick around. I mean, do you know that the donor attrition and i do not know them, but before you, before you cite wth, um, i do know that it’s it costs a lot more time and money to find a new donor than it does to treat well and retain an existing donor. You know, i was reading some statistic. They said it was it cost ten times more to get a new donor or a new customer for business than it does to retain one of those attrition way halling statistic is that across the board, the probability that i will make a second gift, your organization, after i made the first one, is only fifty percent at really that’s the high fifty percent, really some other studies cited even lower than that. And so i would say that non-profits are failing miserably, a customer service and donorsearch so therefore maybe maybe maybe we do need to focus on our current donors and love him a lot and involving more daily rather than going out and beating our heads against the wall in the much harder work bringing and, of course, every organization is going to have their own statistic, which they certainly should be tracking their own their own donor, tricia, while they ought to be, i think, tracking their own donor attrition on dh if they find that number to be hi, that percentage to be hi. What? What can they be doing, teo? To reduce that to reduce the attrition? Got lots of things they could do you that wee hollow. How old movement in fund-raising called donor-centric fund-raising and that there was just a twitter chat on that topic that i was following a little while ago. Donor-centric fund-raising means that you are thinking about your donor rather than yourself all the time. And you communicate with your donor frequently with cheerful news about the results that you’ve achieved in the world with their gift. And you do everything you can to make the donor feel passionate and connected. You invite, um, two special things you send him special mailings. You you do not, uh, meaningful information about what you’re doing does not include a boring newsletter because studies show that most donors fund that non-profit newsletters are boring and they don’t read. Um and you know, somewhere some organizations have what they call a donor appreciation of the end if something signs boring that sign sporting, i’d rather go to a barbecue. Some eyes have to settle, celebrate the donors, but not to a donor appreciation of. So i think non-profits need to think a lot more entrepreneurially about what donorsearch customer service really looks like and be creative with whatever the organization does in terms of programming to bring violent, bring donors in so programming communications. Well, thankyou statistics show that the phone call thank you probably is the most powerful to keep a donor giving and connected, and i think one of the best ways well, i don’t know. Ah, great way for donors for board members to be involved. Eyes making those thank you calls. Absolutely. I have some clients who do that, others don’t but just a simple just called to say thank you not to ask for anything more, not even to invite you, but just to say thank you, right? And i’ll be. Burke is the great canadian researcher has done a study after study on the statistical results of what happens when boardmember say thank you and interfere, make a phone call to say thank you and hurt her very first study that she’s repeated over and over with many different sides organizations. Here’s the first study is amazing, she’s working with the canadian paraplegic association and they were doing a phone mail campaign all across canada, and the average gift of this campaign was twenty six dollars. And she did a test and had the board members make a thankyou phone call within twenty four hours after the gift was received to one out of every ten donors on that big campaign. So they they made their phone calls. The boardmember had a great time. They enjoyed it. It was theory well orchestrated. Five months later, they re solicited both group, the group that hadn’t gotten a phone call and the groups that had gotten a phone call. And so guess how much muchmore money? The people who were phone called game i don’t know, did a double thirty nine percent there, nine percent more from the ten percent so here’s proof that boardmember can directly impact the bottom line and fund-raising without having to ask for money, right? And that’s what we alluded to earlier it’s, not it’s. Not all about asking. Oh, and so that’s that’s what all of my message is all about? And i think border treats around the country, and i’m very popular with boards because i give them easy ways to make a difference and fund-raising that don’t involve asking, so they like me and also try to turn the retreat into a party and they like that. Yes, well, you’re very popular with tony martignetti non-profit radio, but we got to call you before i had announced the phone number to call. Well, i’ve been a little tweet out a minute ago, you know, thereby calling like that she’s tweeting while she’s talking to me on the phone. Now, what about that previous guest? I had alice march, the attention factor and that’s that’s not good practice norvig i’m sure you did it on a break. Did it break? But the number to call if you do want to talk to my guest. Gail perry is eight seven seven for eight xero for one, two zero, eight, seven, seven for eight xero for one to zero and gail is the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. What else? Gail? Besides the simple and the thing that something that everybody would love to do besides those simple and pleasant, thank you phone calls, how else can we engage board members? That is not a direct solicitation. Well, one of the when i was writing my book, i interviewed a lot of the bank of directors, and one one person just said something so tellingly, she said, if i could just get my board members open doors, that that would make my make my life so much easier, but they are embarrassed about opening doors, and they think it’s all about money, and they won’t do it. And so let’s, let’s give some thought about how boardmember can open doors in a way that is easy for them and playful and fun and is like throwing all their friends onto the bandwagon rather than being stiff and awkward cause you know, i like i like the metaphor of a bandwagon latto boardmember that everybody they know, especially their family and close friends, needs to know that they are very excited about thiscause, and they spend a lot of time on this call, and i’ll tell, i’ll tell boardmember that, um, you know you’re familiar with the concept, of course, of barrel marketing and the notion that ideas are viruses and they spread and hotel boardmember they need to be sneakers everywhere they go, they need to be sneezing on everybody, you know, to spread a cunt contagious epidemic of happy news about the work that they’re organizations doing to make the world a different place, a better place. So that’s just asking them remember, laugh then light back-up thinking they understand the concept of sneezing on everybody, they know if they can do that, so we have to we have to in order to help them sneeze properly. The have found out that board members don’t know what to say. If you really think about the good book, they don’t know what to say and that even boardmember have come to me and they say for when i have a chance to talk to somebody what i talk about, wait before we talk about what it is you want them to say, who is that they should be talking to, well, sneezing on who they need every boardmember even if they say they don’t know any quote, wealthy people unquote, every boardmember has relationship that can help forward their organization, it might be with a church group or a club or a foundation or corporation or maybe they’re wealthy. And what about their co workers? Well, their coworkers too, although sometimes co workers, um, is your employee anyway, sometimes that can be a little touchy. However many businesses adopt causes for their employees to get involved in. Okay, that is part of a team building so it’s, very broad, mostly personal relationships, personal networks, and this is this is a country back-up all the social networks that any one person has. I mean, i’ve got my hairdresser, i’ve got my dry cleaner, you know, i’ve got my extended family, which is very large professional friends, social friends, you know, most of these people know that i’m wildly passionate about a couple of causes and that they’re always invited right now, your advice is your advice, gail is gail don’t matter that’s why they went down to a party it’s a matter of getting boardmember into a different spirit about their call, okay, but what should they be? What should they specific? Find a spirit of inviting people on a spirit of sneezing everywhere, talking about it and not being afraid or embarrassed about talking. And what should they be saying? Gale? What specifically? Well, you know, like the women’s center last night we talked about wait, we did a little bit of messaging, we did it, we did a mingle exercise, and i asked everybody in the room to get up out of his chair and find another boardmember and just tell him why they care so on, and we did that three different times, they find three different boardmember zor four different board members and just shared a conversation that while they cared, and so i think, what a boardmember should talk about it. Why think here about the organization? Because that is an impact statement it’s not specific, it usually doesn’t have programs and services and data, and it has an emotional story that comes from the heart. Give us an example of a statement like that. Well, i believe in the women’s center because alright, i’m involved this organization on the passion about, i think politics for hobby and it’s a pack and, you know, i’m a active democrat and also it’s all fundraisers to be active in. Any politically and either side, because it’s good it’s good, it helps your fund-raising at multiple levels, i’m passionate about the democratic collison selecting women office, and i just believe that when mohr women are in the general assembly of north carolina, we have better laws for children, for victims, for the environment, and women deserve the voice and they need the voice. And so that’s my personal opinion about why i think my organisation is important, okay? And so the women, they’re people, they could say, you know, i’m just so worried because these these homeless women and children are the most fragile people in our society, and they’re right in our backyard, and it breaks my heart to see him, and we really need help and it’s an ideal way of opening a conversation about the organization that you’re so passionate about and bringing more friends to it that’s the whole objective and you know it say, boardmember don’t have to have a big each prepared right. They can just talk about their own personal opinion about what’s important, and they could do that because they’re not going to forget that they might forget the mission statement in the three million marketing messages, but they’ll remember why they care, you know, what’s another way, way, actually, before we move on to the other additional ways, i do wantto put a disclaimer in that gale’s evidence of me. I mean, advice of sneezing is contrary to the centers for disease control recommendations that your sneeze into your elbow that is not. She does not want to seize a terrible shoretz you sneeze openly broadly, and the b aerosol ing your good message throughout the subways and your community do not sneeze into your elbow. Gail, how else again? Thiss to me, i think, is the crux of our whole conversation. Ways specific ways that board members can be engaged. That is not a solicitation. How else? Alright, now two of my favorite ways our host tours and host small social um, i think it’s just thinking your temple non-profit if every single boardmember hosted on event in their home just to introduce their friends to the cause no soliciting, just introduce. Um, just think what networks your organization would open forth for the future. Boardmember, for example, we had a new director of the carolina ballet here in north carolina and almost like a ballet boardmember and i had a porch party to invite introduce people to the new artistic director and it was way had about twenty people who came and forty people invited. And you have a very big porch. Yeah, well, having a big old southern front porch. I have a lot of parties here in new york city. We have a balcony. Party would be a boardmember in the executive director squeezed onto a balcony. It’s about fourteen inches wide deep. But that’s that’s only applies here. Wait. We have a national audience listening, right? Not your we certainly do. In fact, that i have a porch party really goes over well in texas and some of other places i worked. But from that porch party, the ballet got eventually a wonderful new boardmember and a major donor. And it was the first time these people had been introduced to the ballet and i the boardmember didn’t have to do anything. All i had to do was have a little party and tell everybody that needed to meet this hot new gun town. So it was very easy. And it was i wasn’t very one. Self conscious are anything. See, the problem is that boardmember think it’s all about money, they’re not going to do it because they’re energy’s gonna clam up, and they’re going to feel self conscious and awkward, and they’re going to back away it’s, not about money, it’s, about introductions, right? What about making friends? Because even if people can’t give, they may have other relationships they can offer that can open doors. And if you think about the vast possible network that your organization could make use of, its better it’s, good to think in a very broad picture. Yeah, we have to take a break. My guest is gail perry, the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. Take this break, please stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s, aria finger do something that orc. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights, published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Gale, let’s, let’s. Spend our remaining minutes talking about let’s. Get at least just one more idea how boardmember is khun do something fund-raising related. That’s not a direct solicitation. Yeah, something else that i find very helpful. I call it the v i p prospect game. Always like to make everything into a game for boardmember because it’s sounds a little bit more interesting and fun. And you’re gonna explain what the viper prospect game is, right? Okay, no dark in jail today and here’s the but the issue i’m tackling is that board staff always asked the board over and over for names of people and everybody boardmember every boardmember starts to give ten names san and boardmember won’t do it because they don’t know what’s gonna happen to these people after they name has turned our turned him. So what i do as i tell everybody to take out a sheet of paper that they do not have to turn in and just think for a minute, see if they could make a list of up to ten people who could catapult your organization to a whole new level catapults. And i’m not talking about messing around. And on and then i’m quite i give about five minutes and our mind and that these three people could be representative corporations. They could be a state attorneys, they could be government agencies are elected officials, they could be individuals, corporations, foundations, united club social club um, and i try to broaden the basis for the board members to consider all the possibilities of relationships they have, they could catapult their organization, and so i give them practice, right, creating a prospect list and thinking about this without being self conscious, that they have to turn in the name, and then that step one step two is that i asked them to turn to the person next to them and just discuss one of the names on one of their lives. So what i’m doing that there is giving them practice losing from prospect identification to actually considering strategy and it’s, a low key, low pressure exercise that help support members, get them warmed up to the whole idea of thinking big, talking about specific individuals and then moving to strategy of how we can open the door and cultivate a deeper relationship with this entity or this person. And what i do after the exercises that i’ve tried to create a viper task force committee and of the board members to need after the retreat because we used to do this in a retreat for man meet after the retreat and come up with the prospect lift and the staff is going yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, because the staff has been trying to get the board members to do this forever, but the way they were being approached made the board members feel uncomfortable and the board members would back away. So again, you know, master, a playful, lighthearted approach to a topic that can be very scary for people has been helpful. Yeah, we just have about two minutes left. What about board members that aren’t going to jump on board with this? They’re they’re just so let’s call them just difficult board members, they’re not coming on board with these with these ideas. How do we manage those? Well, you know, i started managing my expectations. Um, i think it any board, you’re gonna have a handful of people who are dead weight and if you beat yourself up about trying to get these people at you’ll kill yourself. I just been tryingto tryto keep him quiet on and hope they don’t cause any disruption. And then i’ll pull out my term limits to make sure that we can rotate them off the board. Yes, written term limits, which also need to be enforced. Absolutely latto don’t. Okay, what if eso you you’re really so your advice is just bide your time until the term limit ends, and it could be in the beginning of their term? Well, you know, i think i have a friend who was is in the second director he when he had boardmember you weren’t showing up doing what they needed to do, he would go meet with him and he would say, you know, is there another way you would like to be involved with our organization or serve our cause? Because since you can’t quite do the boardmember job well and i say that, and he said they were relieved because they were feeling guilty. Yes, they felt guilty and didn’t want to let the organization down, and i thought that peer pressure is a huge motivational factor because nobody wants to look embarrassed in front. Of their peers. Everybody wants to do come to that board meeting prepared and having done their list that they said they would do so i find pierre pressure very, very helpful. And so you have to board meetings, have to praise the people who are performing, and you have to honor and recognize them. And i think i think it’s all about motivation and team building. Yeah, we have to leave it there. I’m sorry. Our time is up. My guest has been gail perry, consultant as president of gale perry associates and author of fired-up fund-raising published by widely available on amazon piela one. Thank you very much for being on the show. Thank you. Yeah. Remind people that my web site is gail perry dot com and their lots of articles on resource is there that you can? All right. Thank you very much. Ok, bye, gail. Next week, who needs campaign counsel? Peter panepento walks us through his report on self-funding campaigns. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we be e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein, here with me next week for non-profit radio, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great notice. I didn’t say crushing. Hey! What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful posts here’s aria finger, ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com.
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Roger Sametz: Your Board As Brand Ambassadors
Does your board know the basics of your brand? Do you? How many volumes in your story library and how do you build your board’s talent at sharing them? Roger Sametz is president and CEO of Sametz Blackstone Associates, a brand consultancy. (Originally aired March 20, 2015)
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Duitz hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host it’s st patrick’s day happy lafell napor egg. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d get slapped with a diagnosis of busan. O sis, if you made me cotton up to the idea that you missed today’s show you’re bored as brand ambassadors. Does your board know the basics of your brand? Do you? How many volumes in your story library and how do you build your boards? Talent at sharing them? Roger sametz is president and ceo of sam it’s blackstone associates, a brand consultancy on tony’s take two naps that’s, right? I said, naps. What about it? My show? I do whatever the hell i want. We’re gonna talk about naps. We’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here’s your board as brand ambassadors. Roger sametz is with me in the studio. He is the president and ceo of sam it’s, blackstone associates, boston based brand consultancy integrating brand editorial and digital strategy with design and digital media they work with academic research and cultural non-profits as well as corporations roger rights and speaks widely on brand building he’s at sam it’s on twitter and his company is at sametz se m e t z dot com. Roger sametz welcome to the studio hyre glad to be here. Pleasure, but it have you ah, why do we need board members to be brand ambassadors? Why important? Well, a lot of board members, you know, sign up to be born members and given of their time and money and expertise, and they don’t actually think they have to do more than that. But there’s no marketing or development department in any non-profit of any size that actually doesn’t need help, and board members have networks, so to the extent that they could be out there and actually talking to their networks in productive ways, are opening the doors for the fund-raising staff for being an extension of the marketing staff, that’s all to the good, and what does it mean to be a brand ambassador? Well, to be a brand ambassador means you have to sort of first sounds tautological. Understand the brand so that you could be out there and actually talk about the organization and what it means and what its vision is and how you might, you know, convince other people too participate, donate or even be another boardmember and this is something that can be trained, since, since people don’t come to the organization most likely with the skills, they can learn them, of course, well, boardmember is generally have no aptitude for learning things, or they might not be on boards, so sure, and a lot of the work we do with boards actually happens in ah boardmember ing setting, or perhaps a retreat setting or some sort of special meeting because if you come into a board and you know you’re the finance guy or you’re the you know, you’re the lawyer who helps out or, you know, help out and, you know, some particular aspect going out and chatting may not be something that you’re actually conversant in or have done, how come they’re not? We’re not natural ambassadors, brand ambassadors because it just come naturally? Well, i think part because we love the organization well, part of it may be that some people, of course, are better actually having conversations and drawing people out and others. But leaving that to one side, people come into organizations because they know some chunk of it. You know, you come in because you care about the kid’s education problems you came or you care about, you know, their hunger programs or something. But you may not know the full scope of an organization. You may only know that sort of bit that, you know, touched you. So part of the education process is getting people up to speed on the whole of the organization, and then, you know, coaching them like you would coach anyone to anything to be more comfortable. All right, on dh to start this coaching training we need we need to recognize that there’s a gap between i think, the way they weigh the organs, they perceive the organization on the way they like it to be perceived. The way they describe it on the way they’d like the organization to be perceived. Help him. See that there’s. Some dis constants there. Sure. I mean, often leadership in an organization or the person charged with stewarding. The board is pretty clear. That their boardmember zehr not really good ambassadors. And then there are plenty of board members who, when asked to go out and, you know, be ambassadors, sort of look at the clock or look at the floor or say, not my thing. Um, but there’s a sort of an easy exercise that one can actually do and it’s sort of fun. So take a board meeting, take twenty minutes onboarding pass out a bunch of four by six index cards and ask boardmember is on one side. Write down how you actually describe this organization, the friends of yours at a cocktail party or a barbecue or something. Give them seven minutes or whatever to do that, and then ask them on the other side of the index card to write down what they might like to see if the local newspaper we’re writing an article on the organization so typically a newspaper will write, you know, x organisation comma, eh blank comma. So, you know, there was three or four words there that come after the name of the organization that are sort of pinned to it in the first paragraph of some article, so ask the board. Members, what would you like to see their so the first side of the card is, how would you actually talk about this to some peer in a cocktail party? The second side is sort of this distillation, this aspirational take on how you’d like to actually have the organisation described. So you do that, and the reason you actually using index cards is so tony who’s sitting next to janice can’t say, oh, you know what jenna said so people have to commit to writing on dh. Then you go around the room and you share what people have written on both sides of the cards and two things. If history is our guide will happen, you either end up with or either or both, you’ll end up with very disconnected descriptions of the organization as you go around the room you start to get thes looks like, oh my god, we really are not singing off the same page, and then when you get to the second side of the card, the aspirational side, you’ll get these completely different visions, so just doing this exercise will make pretty clear to people that, hey, we could use some training. Yeah, sounds it sounds very eye opening, especially the aspirational side, the way you’d like the organization to be described. But in your experience, you see lots of lots of disparate answers to those. Well, you do. I mean, boardmember czar recruited or they sign up, but they’re not part of leadership. I mean, they’re not sitting in the, you know, ceo or executive director’s office, so they may never have actually been in on the vision of the place. So there’s some catch up to do ok? And, uh, they need to become masters of the the brand, the organization’s brand. What are what are some elements of brand this a very ethereal thing that a lot of people regrettably reduced to logo, logo in tagline or something? Dahna we know it goes a lot deeper than that i’ve had guests on who have made that very clear, but what are some of these? Whatever some of the concepts around in brand that we’re trying to grasp? Okay, so if you think of brand not as the label on the toothpaste box and certainly brand in the context of non-profits is fairly recent and there’s still a fair amount. Of resistance around that because there will be many people who think it’s too commercial. But if you think a brand, not as to your point not is the logo a locally sort of a symbol of the brand. But if you think about it as what an organization means, what it promises, the expectations it sets well, then that’s a whole different way of looking at brand so boardmember is have to sort of understand that, but took sort of get to that. I have to sort of get under that hood. There are some sort of grand basics to go over. So we started meeting to go to talk about what is an organization. Means so you need to understand. Okay. What’s the organization’s vision. They may not be clear on that. What are our areas of focus? Which means, you know, if we’re an anti hunger organization, how we actually, you know what? One of the areas in which we’re working to accomplish eradicating hunger. What of the roles we play? You could be a convener. You could be, you know, an inventor. You could be any number of things. But constituency out there are not gonna remember seventeen programs that you have, so you need to sort of boyle is down into a finite number. I don’t know three, five areas of focus and rolls that people can actually remember. And then the sort of more evocative side of this what are the brand attributes that you want? Associate it. So these air generally adjective. So to take commercial metaphor here, you know, volvo has always been associated with safety. Then they sort of managed the product and brand slightly differently, and they kept safety and added performance. So organizations tend to have attributes that they own that are already associating with them, and attributes that they would like to have associated with them, which will call aspirational. So if you work through these areas of focus, the mission envision the rolls and the attributes both owned an aspirational you get a pretty good sense of the underpinnings of how an organization can be presented externally. All right, we need to dive deeper into some of this because it sounds i mean it’s very basic to the organization, the its promise. What are the expectations? I know when you didn’t mention that i know is part. Of it, how do you measure success? This is not something that, you know, if it’s not already clear, we’re not gonna be ableto answer all these questions in a in a board meeting is strategic planning up a part of this process? Well, strategic planning certainly could be part of the process, but leadership also may know some of this, but the board may not, so no, some of it so you certainly could have sessions where you educate or you could use the board, too, actually surface these by putting a big post its around the room and actually putting these topics down and writing down different suggestions and then sort of figuring out where you are, okay, we’re gonna go out for a break and when we return, of course, roger and i’m going to keep talking about your board as brand ambassadors stay with us, you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Let’s do some live listener love and let’s do it starting abroad. Tokyo, japan and multiple tokyo, japan and musashino in japan. Konnichiwa, seoul, south korea always so loyal soul. Unbelievable! Anya haserot to our listeners in seoul and in china, we’ve got none jing and guangzhou konnichi wa live listen love here in the u, s st louis, missouri, sioux falls, south dakota, san francisco, california, new york, new york welcome each of you and, of course, podcast pleasantries to those listening wherever you are at whatever time on whatever device pleasantries to the podcast listeners over ten thousand of you and to our affiliates, affiliate affection love each of you let’s have a little rations on non-profit radio an abundance of them i admire. I like now. I like a little rations. Roger i yesterday i was speaking at a at a a present. I did a presentation on hosting a panel, and i met a boardmember for ah who’s on the big apple circus board. I don’t know if you’re familiar with big circus, there sure are a lot to new york and one of the things she lamented is that they’re not too well known, but i think she was an excellent brand ambassador because within a minute she had me understanding how first, reminding me that it is a non-profit which a lot of people don’t know, but that they use clowning techniques to help children in a bereavement program that they have, and also a clown, techniques in education, on some of the outreach in the school programs that they have, and she ticked off like three or four things within a minute or a minute and a half that i had no idea of the big apple circus did. Um, and i just i i complimented around being ah ah, an outstanding bruh broad no, outstanding brand ambassador that was jenny keim, virginia chambers kind. But jenny keim is what she goes by. I was really struck teo to meet a riel what i thought was a real good brand ambassador boardmember well, it seems like she was pretty clear on as we were talking about before the break the organization’s rolls? Yeah, it’s areas of focus, she made it clear to you, you know that it wasn’t on profit, which could have been ambiguous, and she clearly engaged you. So whether she comes by this naturally or it’s been soaking in it or had some training you, but i don’t know, but that is what we’re aiming for. I urged her i told her that if her fellow board members are not as good ambassadors as she, that she should listen to this exact show because you were coming on the next day, just yesterday, some of these basics that we were just talking about seems to me that the organization should already know all the stuff that you mentioned mission values, expectations who with constituents he should already be known factors leadership certainly should know all of that, but sometimes they actually get a little bit down in the weeds. So if you’re an organization that has seventeen different programs or you’re an academic research organization that has seventeen different labs or whatever, people often sort of stay at that program level and don’t actually think about how can we group thes into, you know, sort of higher level categories or buckets that people could more easily understand because they’re so focused on, you know, keeping the ship going. In the right direction, so sometimes they don’t think about that, and also there’s we determined over these over the years, people within non-profits see their value as self evident, you know, i work here, i believe in it. You should believe in it too, and they don’t quite understand that it actually takes more work to get someone who’s only connected tangentially or not connected at all to understand it. So there’s work to do to move from that sort of internal. Ah, phew! Point to being externally focused, what you need to do if you’re trying to, you know, get more donors or increase your participation or, you know, whatever, with people who are not in the fold, how do you find boards take to this work? Are they enthusiastic about the idea that we’re gonna be talking about brandy and being an ambassador or however it’s described to them? How did they how did they how did they take to it? We’ve always found that people were actually quite thankful because they’re they’re nervous. They know that part of their role is to be ambassadors, but yet they don’t really know howto ambassador for might arise, yeah. So, you know, any sort of help that gets them into position of, you know, both comfort and sort of fluency so that it feels natural and not nervous about it. That’s great and a lot of the exercises that we sort of put together, they’re helped by wine there, helped by camaraderie fluid. Sure. So you could make these exercises fun. And to the extent that they actually build fluency within a specific person, they’re also building deeper engagement of your board, you know, across all the members. Do you find red or white? Wine is a better, better beverage to accompany this. And then i think people could choose either one. Is you’re you’re agnostic. Teo. Totally. Okay. Okay. Um how let’s. See, when? When organizations are coming to you for for help in this area. What kind of symptoms are they showing? How do they know they have a problem? Well, we talked about that index card exercise before the break, which is sort of a diagnostic tool. But i think organizations khun simply know they need some more help from their board members. I mean, any non-profit board needs their board to help open doors for fund-raising and that’s only gonna happen if the boardmember is, you know, comfortable in fluent and can you no understand enough to actually make that happen? No, okay? And they so is it usually the case that the organizations do recognize themselves that they’ve got some some shortcomings around their their boards participation in fund-raising sure and or is just a good idea, okay? And do you describe when you’re when you’re when you’re about to come to the board, do you describe it as we’re going? We’re going to help you, coach youto be good ambassadors? Oh, absolutely, i mean, there’s no reason to hide around this kind of people, you know, they’re ashamed of it was just one oh, no, no, they’re generally up for it, okay? All right. There are for the help askew described. Okay, um, so let’s, let’s talk a little more about some of these some of the basics of the brand there’s, some more elements to it that we haven’t talked about, like like who do we serve, where we focus on what is a mother? Sure. So so almost any non-profit is going to have a range of constituencies, so, you know we’ve been talking about donors, donors are one constituency people actually take advantage of your services and offerings. That’s, another constituency, you may have partners, you may have government agencies you may have, you know, people you’re trying to recruit as staff. So all of these people have slightly different needs about what they need to know about your organization that orders or connect in ways that make sense for them. So you need to identify constituencies and what they care about so that you can sort of rearrange things in ways that make sense for them. I mean, you would do the same thing and planning a website. You named one very interesting potential potential employees, people who use you’re hoping to recruit to the organization. Ah, a brand ambassador, boardmember could easily be talking to the next cfo or or any person, any level? Absolutely. And, you know, given that non-profits generally pay less than profit organizations, you have to want to be there. So to the extent that the brand is another reason to want to work in that work for that organization that’s all to the good. But you have to understand that in order for that to be, you know, a magnet, our next step once we’ve well have we exhausted all the basics of the brand before we go the next step, i think we have i think, if we understand, you know, areas of focus and rolls and the only thing we didn’t talk about was sort of category, which sounds a little odd, but sometimes boards have a hard time articulating what exactly are you know, are you an anti hunger organization, or are you a social services organization really instant? You find that we often find that, and so that that sort of stymies people, that that first level of conversation, if they can’t even clearly say, you know what category the organization? So it sounds simple enough, but when you sort of put to the test, it isn’t that simple, and often it actually takes some work to both evolve and then subsequently get agreement on interesting. So so that actually it’s a good agreement on so there’s differing opinion as to whether we’re we’re social service or community based? Or, you know, however, we defining ourselves, you get your getting different opinions around that you will get different opinions. And you’ll get different language, even around the same opinion can share a any chance you, khun recollect what we’re working with, that we’re working with one organization at the moment. That’s a non-profit that actually helps. Non-profits and part of the organization thinks they’re in the capacity building business, which he’s probably accurate but not particularly mellifluous to talk about and part of the organization thinks they’re in the business of shifting power and influence to change values in society. These are two very different ideas. Yeah, now they actually do both. But if you’re out there talking about it and you pick one or the other, you get a very different picture. And how does the process mediate these different opinions? Well, this would actually happen at a leadership level and not a board level one would have one would have the chats, and we do have the chats with senior leadership to sort of nail this. All right? This is very, very esoteric stuff. You’re dealing with this brand well, yeah. It’s always interesting and there’s a lot more to it. Then, you know, the star burst on the side of the toothpaste box. All right, um we once all the board members are, are comfortable with the brand basics, then we’re going to help them put together a new elevator speech, right? Sure. Ok, everybody wants one. This is a couple minutes like, i basically what i heard about the big apple circus from from ginny kind well, everyone, you know, elevator speeches just shorthand for what’s your high level message, but implied in this it’s the notion of being able to have everybody on the same page. So one template that you can use actually comes from a game that some people may have played earlier in life called mad libs, which was, if you remember, there was sort of a story on a pad and there were blanks, and you were asked to fill in a noun or a verb or an adverb, and then when the story i read back, you know, some level of hilarity and because of the words don’t make any sense. So when you do this on a brand focused level, you’re actually looking for more specific things, so the template runs something like it will try to draw this in radio air, okay, for whatever constituency, so if you’re an arts organization. You could be art’s interested. Public could be prospective donors. Could be artists? No, for ex constituency. Your organization is what? So that’s, where you get that sort of category answer and you provide another blank. What do you provide? And then how we’re through, how do you actually provide it? And then what value to deliver? And how is the organization worthy of participation? And how is it worthy of support? So these are all blanks. So, again, it’s an exercise with big sort of post its up around the room, and you put lots of different answers in and then the board together sort of calls. Okay, what are the best response is here. And then you start to sort of string it together, along with adjectives that actually could come from your brand attributes. So an example might be so let’s. Take, for example, wgbh, which is a public television stations radio station in balkan. There we worked with. So the big category answer might be public media powerhouse or content engine, which were both a lot more evocative than television and radio stations. Um, the second part of that might be trusted. Guide to new worlds and new ideas that sze what the organization is. Yes, of course. So it’s a more evocative answer than a literal answer. Yeah, but that hey, you’re out being ambassadors so you can certainly be we’re not trying to divine this is not a definition that is not a dictionary process and it’s, not a tax form, okay, you know, in terms of areas, well, they’re they’re in news and drama there in public affairs therein kids programming, they’re in science, so you get to nail the sort of areas of focus they have signature programs like masterpiece everybody knows downtown and that what do they provide? They provide opportunities for exploration and interaction and an independent voice, especially if you’re talking about the news and public affairs programming. Where did they do this? Well, it’s locally, the boston area but now that everything streams it’s much farther, and of course, it’s multi platform so there’s a more complicated answer toa wear then there might have been in years past, and then you can end with, you know, it’s for you and supported by you. Or you could take another completely different example i referenced anti hunger organization a while ago so the constituency might be for those who care about in this case, we’re talking about massachusetts seven hundred thousand people in massachusetts who actually don’t know where their next meal is coming from. So that’s the constituency, the people who care about that and then project bread what’s the category, the leading statewide anti hunger organization. And what do they do? Offer fresh approaches, ending hunger? What are they? By pioneering funding, facilitating a range of programs and through education advocacy, they actually have programs that meet people where they are rather than just handing food out of back of a truck, and then you get into that next level of details? Well, you know, how do they actually do this? So it’s programs that are in the community programs that are schools with kids, programs that are building sustainable food ecosystem? So then you get into more detail and then what’s the benefit. Well, it’s all the sort of fulfill a vision that’s the opposite of hungry isn’t just full it’s healthy, which then musicians the organization differently against sort of just emergency food and nutrition versus full nutrition vs and then you go, you bring it down to donors, which is with the support of people. They also sponsor a large hunger walk. Those who walk and our corporate partners, we’re able to eradicate hunger in the state. All right, two two excellent examples. A little long, but but i think the examples help help us teo to fill in the in the template. Um, okay, we’re going to give ah, roger. We’ll give you a break for a couple minutes and there’s going to be mohr with roger coming up talking about brand ambassadors and tony’s take too, of course, before that more with roger’s sam it’s coming up first pursuing do you need to open a convo in your office on sustaining e-giving or persuade someone that it’s valuable or see for yourself? How much money gets raised? Maybe you go crazy for infographics on your pinterest boards? Is that you, mr or ms pinterest? Pursuing has a new infographic on sustaining giving it’s at pursuing dot com click resource is then intra graphics couldn’t be simpler, and we’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising how about a millennial game show in a local club as your fundraiser? That’s what? These bees are spelling bee concert standup comedy live music dance check out the video it’s at wi be e spelling dot com now for tony’s take do as i said, we’re talking about naps in praise of naps i’m a big fan of napping research shows you only need about twenty minutes to feel refreshed and be more efficient, and your brain is working better it’s getting better oxygen and blood flow. However, i’m not ashamed to say that i do not unfree quickly go longer than the research recommends. Naps should be encouraged in offices, i think. Why? Why? Why do we fight that drowsy drunk feeling after lunch? You can’t keep your head up, you know what i’m talking about? Givin put your head down and when you’re home, take advantage, indulge i even have a favorite napping blanket. I think everybody does. I hope that i don’t know i do, but i think lots of people do. I hope this mine is soft, it’s cotton, the soft as just the right weight. Very important the weight. Check out the video in praise of naps at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two you’re probably glad it’s over here’s more roger sametz. Roger. Sam it’s. Feeling a little under the weather, but he’s mustering? Well, if you hear your silence that’s ah that’s cutting rogers mikes that we can give him a cough. But he’s made the trip down from boston. Thank you for doing that. It’s. Been a tough boston winter, as most of your listeners probably already know we do. And it’s not been much better here. Today is the first day of spring. I believe march twentieth and it’s snowing outside. We look out the window right now, there’s pretty brisk snow coming down in new york city. Bob all right, anything more you want to add? We don’t need another example. But anything more you want to add about this this template, but helps with the elevator speech? Well, i think it does two things. I mean, you actually end up with an elevator speech is not going to be eloquent language by putting things up in this mad libs posted format, but it will give you the content. So then, you know, either some sub committee of the board or staff can then be charged with actually, you know, wordsmithing. It so everybody likes it, okay? But getting the content down is important, and then the other thing it does, of course, which all of these exercises do is get boardmember is engaged. So to the extent that people sitting around a board table or wherever you’re sitting in doing this are participating in developing messages it’s already getting into their heads. So we stand a much better chance of people becoming comfortable with something if they’ve had a part in evolving it much more so than if you just took, you know, a piece of paper and slid it across the table, foisted on them and say, memorized, memorized this on dh have it prepared for the next for the next meeting? Yes, quite. Okay. All right, so they’re involved in the involved in the creation of it. Um, this is going tio this is one of the tools that were empowering board members with basically i mean, this is what we’re trying to make comfortable, confident brand ambassadors and, uh, another tool that you recommend his stories. Yes, well, you know boardmember sze, can we, like anybody, can sort of talk about an organization either from the top. Down or the bottom up. So the top down would be starting with your elevator speech. And then presumably, if you haven’t run to get another ice cube, the person you’re talking to, you might tell a story another boardmember might swell around it a barstool and actually just start with a story and end up with the elevator speech. So a bottom up approach, okay, but this only really works if people have the stories one way or the other, and what happens is boardmember because they’ve experienced the organisation themselves in one way or another, you know, they might have a story, um, but they might have on ly that one story and, you know, the other board members would have different stories, so the extent that you can sort of pull these stories and even get a story library going, perhaps online, internally online, then people have more things that they can talk to and they can sort of pivot. But if you want to sort of think about a story there’s, of course, another template to try to actually do that, and you could sort of start by thinking, okay, if if this were a movie title. What would be the name of the movie? And that will lead you immediately to some sort of evocative top end to the story. And then, of course, you want to talk about, well, who’s in the story, who’s the protagonist. So this could be a person or it could be an organization. Then the next step to think about is okay. So where what’s the problem? What? What has to get solved? And then where does your organization come in? So what programs or services get marshaled to help solve that problem and then what’s the end of the story? And is thie ending? You know, finite? Or is the benefit ongoing? So you can use that very simple template and really think about okay? How does your organization, you know, participate in either other organizations or other people’s lives to make a difference? Where where else might these stories emanate from your example, was board board members. Maybe each person has a story or something, but they can also filter up from the program’s staff that’s out, actually doing the work. Um, i know a lot of organizations like to invite people who are benefiting from the work the people of the organization is serving, have them come to board meetings and tell their story sure, you could absolutely do that. What you’re going for is something that’s authentic where you khun, you know, show that you made a difference and that you’re not sort of, you know, overreaching, you’re not trying to say you made you more of a difference and people would believe, yeah, but sure, i mean, you know, every organization writes up profiles or highlights people, those are generally stories, whether they’re set up a stories that have sort of a, you know, beginning middle and an end that has a benefit, you know, that varies, but what you are going to make sure that you have it, you know, you have an impact statement at the end, you have a benefit to show that you know, why people should participate or why people should be donors and just, you know, give them a reason to believe we gotta get these stories down too, what under two minutes? Right? If if i’m in a conversation with somebody at a reception or something, you know, i can’t hold their interest too long list, i’m a master storyteller? Well, you might be, but yes, i think you’re right under two minutes or, you know, if you’re writing it out, you know, under two hundred words. Yeah. Okay. All right, um and you mentioned a story library like internally online. What? What is that? What you could do a story library in any number of ways. But if your organization has some sort of internal web set up that’s a great place to post them if it doesn’t have that, you know, you could just compile them. But the whole idea is you don’t want stories to just leave an individual’s heads if they’re really good and they could be shared and, you know, people can use them in conversation out there in the world. You might even be sharing them on the web. Well, with the public doesn’t have to be behind a, you know, an internet or anything, you know, a lot. Meet a lot of what we’ve been talking about because we’ve been talking in the board. Ambassador context is useful for word ambassadors, but of course, it’s useful for staff. It’s useful for senior leadership? Yeah, potential donors have thes stories air there’s quite a bit of talk among non-profits about around non-profits around around storytelling, right? And as i said earlier, you know, storytelling is simply sort of the inductive way of describing your organization that’s supposed to starting from the top down, which is sort of more than deductive way, but both are valid, and it has to do with how you’re comfortable talking with people, okay, what’s our next tool that we want teo arm, are board members within making them confident? Well, we started to talk about donorsearch let’s, let’s focus on that for a minute. So most organizations because they do more than one thing or not monolithic and as we already discussed their constituencies or not model to think either even within a donor community and if you think about major donors for the moment, they’re just not good do bees, they’re generally interested in giving money to some organization that they believe will advance goals that they personally care about. So if you take the goal around major e-giving to be connecting institutional priorities with donor passions and interests and you understand that the people aren’t monolithic and the organizations not monolithic, then it behooves. You to come up with different ways that people can connect, so this is another way that you can actually work with your board to evolve what we call ways in. So for instance, taken orchestra could be a tiny little orchestra, really big workers treyz some people are going to care about performing the traditional repertoire, some people are going to care about commissioning new music, probably a smaller number. Some people are going to care about the space that music is performed it, and you know what? What shape that’s it some people are going to care about kids education programs if there are such some people don’t care about building the audiences of the next generation, and the answer to that is yes, so some donors will connect in one way, and some donors will connect in another but it’s important that for your non-profit that you actually evolved what thes different ways in our so that if i’m, for instance, i’m going out to talk to tony, and i think he’s wants to support kids education, but he really wants to support community outreach. I’m able to actually pivot and talk to you about community outreach. Of course, implicit in all of this, and we could have talked about this at the top of the hour, is they need to listen because you’re going to have any conversation with someone outside your organization. You have to also understand where they are otherwise you’re just pushing things at them. Yeah, yeah, you’re a billboard. So you wanted you wanted to be a conversation, so you have to learn enough about the person you’re talking to two actually take what you’ve learned in terms of these areas focus and rolls and stories and mission in category and no talk to the person in terms that are meaningful to havers you like to rehearse this with boards once you once you farm doing with the tools? Is there some practice? We do a lot of role playing, which is also fun and also better served with wine. Ok, so you can set up small groups. There’s not much that isn’t isn’t helped by wine. I find my favorite is seven young blanc personally, but well, it depends whether your board meetings here in the evening at seven. Thirty in the morning. Yeah, well, bloody mary zahra possibility. No, i would not have not tried, but if their evening now most activities in life, i find very easy, well lubricated by wine. Well, you have an italian last name. I do, um but yes, a lot of these can be when you have after you evolve the kinds of things we’ve been talking about, whether it’s in small groups or people making, you know, presentations to the larger group, anything that has people actually use what we’re talking about rather than just sort of take it in because the more people use the information that we’ve been discussing, the more comfortable they ll get and them or it’s actually in their heads, and they make it their own. So never are we asking anyone to like, you know, memorize words or spew things back, it’s all about understanding that the content and the concepts and then being able to actually talk about it in words that are comfortable your own? Yeah, on your own that connect with the person that you’re actually talking with. How long is this process to build the board, ambassadors, brand ambassadors? Well, these air separate different kinds of exercises that we’ve been talking about it. And there’s, no, no fixed timeline are sequenced to any of this. You could certainly come up with, you know, three or four these workshops, depending on how often you want to meet so you know it, it may be better to do oneaccord er just because the board has other things to do and you have to hijack some time here, or you could do a concentrated session if you had, you know, a two day retreat and you, you know, take some of that time, okay? Yeah, the ways in i mean, they should be already known to the organization. There shouldn’t be anything new here in terms of identifying how you khun be supportive. Well, there’s always a difference between things that exist and actually sort of understanding it and remembering it. So if you, for instance, well, let’s, take a life sciences organization example, um, you may care about the work they’re doing in a specific disease area. I may care about how they’re using new technology. Somebody else may care about how their training scientists of the next generation. So you may know that the organization actually doing those things but you really care about that disease area that you care about. So in order for you to feel comfortable talking about the technologies that i care about, you do have to learn more about it and sort of, you know, soaking it a little bit. All right, yeah, so right, right again, everybody got their own perspective and reason that they’re with the organization. Exactly. We need to share all these and everybody’s converse and in all the ways right, because the goal of an ambassador is to be able to meet people where they are not to just go out, as you said earlier and be a billboard that, you know is inflexible and this is an electronic billboard isn’t going to change any so you need you need the information, the confidence, that fluency and, of course, the content, which is largely what we’re talking about during this hour to, you know, start someplace and be able to pivot to someplace else and, you know, not be flustered in the middle. You, you also work with boardmember is to overcome potential resistance points as their out ambassador rising? Sure. Well, i mean, everything doesn’t go smoothly. We’ve been talking about ways to make boardmember is more comfortable. That doesn’t mean you’re not goingto bump up against some donorsearch prospect that just, you know, says no or i don’t believe in you or comes up with, you know, some reason why, you know he or she should not entertain a conversation with you so there’s no guarantee it’s all going to just, you know, fall into your lap. So again, we keep coming back to role playing and the’s group sessions, but and leadership or bored or the fund-raising staff probably knows the points of resistance, so one thing the board can do is come up with what the arguments are for dispelling that. So this is a good thing to do in small groups, you could even sort of picture seeing a couple people on one side of a table in a couple of people on the other, and, you know, one side has the resistance, and the other side has to with what we’ve just been talking about, you know? The rolls and areas of focus and the impact stories try to convince the, you know, the first party. No, you’re wrong, you know, or give it another thought so that you can in fact, bring some more people into the fold. Okay, um, before we move on anything, anything more we can talk about with the with respect to these resistance points. Anything else there? Well, they’re different for every organization. I mean, we worked and some tell a story tell somebody you worked with has some are harder to overcome than others. I like stories. So for a large ballet company that we worked with. Ah, one of the points of resistance that we we heard often was, you know, i fall asleep hard to forget what the argument for that might be rather than take a nap earlier. Well, the persons of phyllis stein or whatever or, you know, write them up. We were just write them off. I fall asleep at the ballet or i fall asleep at the opera. Are we really going to get anywhere? Not necessarily. Ok, some of these you don’t get anywhere, okay? Or, you know, there aren’t any words or i don’t get the story or for modern ballet, whether isn’t a story, i really don’t get the story, so you have to explain, you probably have to actually sort of inculcated people about what they’re actually seeing in hearing. But there are some things that, yes, it’s harder to overcome. Some things are easier to overcome. So going back to wgbh, the pbs station in boston, one of things they tell you what done before you go kill the gbh story, we’re going to go out for a couple minutes, okay, give your voice a break, and we’ll come back and we’ll go right to the gbh story. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked. And naomi levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to, he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. I’m peter shankman, author of zombie loyalists. It’s! And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Welcome back again, too big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, as peter shankman just said, more live listener lovemore live listeners have joined us. Woodbridge, new jersey, east bridgewater, massachusetts, and brooklyn and queens, new york welcome live listen love to each of you schnoll a france bonsoir got shane i india somewhere in the uk uk unfortunately your masked we can’t tell where but we’ll presume it’s england, but live listener love to india and the u k listeners also and, uh also joining us moscow and kano, us, brazil. I apologize if i pronounced that wrong. But you know who you are listening in? Brazil also got italy, but we can’t see where you are. We don’t know what city or town i’ve been to italy four times, so i should be able to say hello in what am i missing? What am i missing? Child? Go must die. I can order a meal and i can find my way to hotels. That’s about by restaurant in hotel italian is about what i speak. You could start with bum jo know when jordan was really good. Thank you, roger. You don’t even have the italian. Name? I don’t. Thank you. Thank you. Um okay, let’s. Ah, so we were overcoming our resistance points. So anything and you were going to tell a story about wgbh? Sorry, that’s where we were. Yeah, well, it’s not so much a story as so it’s a little different from some other non-profits in that it depends not only on individual donors, it depends on sponsorship, so one goal of a particular board is actually to help with sponsorships. So many organizations, of course, do have sponsors and sponsors requires slightly different value proposition than perhaps an individual or a major donor is goingto have. So some of the areas of resistance were because it’s a public television station, for instance, i don’t want to support you because you’re too liberal. Okay, so then the board got together and came up with some arguments around that or it doesn’t congress pay for everything? Well, no, but so that’s a point of ignorance that you could then sort of overcome or isn’t your audience to old? Well depends, you know, too old. For what? And it’s also younger than you think. So there. You know, there are things out there that are often misperceptions that board members will get hit with or in fact, staff will get hit with that one can marshal arguments for so yes, that’s different than falling sleep with the ballet. How does staff support this? This whole ambassador rising process? Well, in a lot of these organizations that were working with, you know, we’re facilitating these sessions, but staff, of course, has to organize them and make them happen, and to our earlier point probably procure the wine. But an interesting side effect of all of this, not the side effect of the wine is how what comes out of these meetings then benefits staff so they’re learning right along with the board so they will be clearer on the organization. They will be clearer on some of these arguments. It will be clear they will learn new stories so there’s a definite, you know, relationship between, you know, staff on board, they’re not just there in a supportive role, it’s actually making their jobs, you know, more successful, actually, even though it’s a bra board process, the staff is vicariously elearning right and that’s a that’s a goal, even though it was not necessarily sort. Of, you know, a stated goal, but we see it happen all the time. You’re sort of raising both sides of the seesaw in the in the course of doing these exercises. Okay, then, it’s not a seesaw anymore. Both sides arising it’s some kind of rising platform. It’s just a seesaw that’s level a level level seesaw. But then that’s not really a seat it’s not really. See? So it doesn’t have a fulcrum in the middle. One side rises and the other side falls. But both sides rise. I don’t know. What’s that a jungle that’s a jungle gym. We’ll find another metaphor. Okay, beating you up, you know you don’t feel well, um, ok, we’ve we’ve we’ve covered the resistance points, and this sounds like something that would be valuable to revisit over over time, not just do once and, you know, kind of put on a shelf well, like brand building, which is also a process and not an event. All of these could be processes and not events. So to the extent that you take some of the exercise we’ve been talking about, instruction them over some period of time. It also serves an organization. Or well, to bring these back at some kinds of you have different periods, first of all, boards change, so everybody isn’t going to be always up to speed in equal way and this notion of fluency like practicing anything else, you know, piano, swimming, whatever you have to do it, so you can certainly come up with a short role playing exercises at some other point. You khun certainly revisit stories you could revisit rolls and areas of focus. All of this stuff could have a sort of rinse and repeat kind of cycle. We talked earlier on about strategic planning, something formal, possibly being a part of this. Do you find many organizations that really don’t have the basics in mastered so that they can carry on further? Well, lots of organizations have the basics and not have a strategic plan, which is fine, you know you’re not always in a strategic planning mode, but if you are, if your organization does have a new strategic plan, all of this is even more important, because there’s no stresses you playing that we bumped into that doesn’t depend on its success by having people think and act in your favor. So all of what we’re talking about on the board of the staff level is helping you to convince people to think and act in your favor, otherwise would be to plant. Just sit on a shelf. Yeah, well, they all depend on some actions. Yeah, that’s something i’ve had guests lament that a strategic plan gets done and then they’re really does just get parked on a shelf and it doesn’t live, doesn’t evolve, and the organization doesn’t really benefit from it. Other than it’s a checkmark the board can now move on to the next project. Right? So if you go back to either the ways in that we were talking about or just being sort of clear on the different aspects of the organization you could sort of back into ok here. These aspects are a strategic plan. What do people have to think and do and feel in order for this to be successful so that they will, you know, realize section to be of the plan. And then how can boardmember sze help? So sure you could bring that in as another discussion topic. Now we just have about thirty seconds left. Roger, but i want you to share with me what you love about the work that you do. Oh, all right, well, i have to think about that for a nanosecond here. I think that the top answer would be because we worked with so many non-profits and they’re in so many different fields that first of all, it’s never boring and there’s always an opportunity to help these different organizations achieve their different missions. You know, we’re all about brand building not just to build the brand, but brand building to help organizations evolve and to better navigate change and that’s just about every non-profit roger stamets president and ceo sam it’s, blackstone associates, they’re at sam it’s dot com and he’s at sam it’s. Sam eat easy on twitter. Roger. Thank you very, very much. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. You. You you must have done quite well next week. Trust me, you really have no choice. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. And by we be spelling supercool spelling bee. 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