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Nonprofit Radio for August 22, 2022: Accounting For Nonprofit Leaders

 

Tosha Anderson & Zanni Miranda: Accounting For Nonprofit Leaders

In our penultimate #22NTC show, Tosha Anderson and Zanni Miranda introduce key accounting concepts to help nonprofit leadership avoid the common pitfalls they see. Tosha is CEO of The Charity CFO and Zanni is with Nonprofit Solutions.

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[00:01:51.40] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the effects of pseudo papillae Dema if I saw that you missed this week’s show Accounting for nonprofit leaders in our penultimate 22. NTC show Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda introduce key accounting concepts to help nonprofit leadership avoid the common pitfalls. They see Tasha is ceo of the charity CFO and Zanny is with nonprofit solutions on tony take to the endowment excitement webinar, we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies I. Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three d but they go on to mention deeper here is accounting for nonprofit leaders. Welcome to nonprofit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference. My guests now are Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda. Tasha is founder and ceo of the charity cf. Oh Zanny Miranda is operations Manager at nonprofit solutions. Tasha Zani. Welcome to nonprofit radio Thank

[00:02:05.94] spk_1:
you for having us. Yeah,

[00:02:07.50] spk_2:
thank you so much for having us on

[00:02:11.89] spk_0:
pleasure. I’m glad we’re gonna talk about this. But 10 things every nonprofit leader should know about their accounting

[00:02:17.66] spk_1:
Alright.

[00:02:23.44] spk_0:
I I suspect this is an often ignored um ignored area by by nonprofit leaders until there’s some kind of a problem I guess or until the the 9 90 has to be filed, you know, so maybe once a year they become, or maybe there’s board reports, but in between all that, um I suspect it’s ignored. Uh Tasha, do I have that? You’re nodding? Is that

[00:03:12.03] spk_1:
yeah, I think, yeah, I think it’s ignored because it’s for a lot of small organizations. It’s not their primary role. It’s not what they’re experienced in. It’s not their skill set and it becomes one of those things, it’s not an immediate issue. It’s not something I’m particularly good at, it’s something I’m gonna have to teach myself and I’m gonna have to um very kind of the procrastination that I put into it. And then it’s when things kind of abrupt Show up like our 9 90 return or we realized we have an audit or our books have gotten further and further behind and now we have to hurry up and scramble for that, you know, board meeting or something to that effect. Um that’s kind of best case scenario. Um worst case scenarios are other more significant things that might come up with our accounting. Um that that all of a sudden becomes more of a priority.

[00:03:34.21] spk_0:
Like, alright, we’re focused on motivation. What are what are one or two of those worst case scenarios?

[00:04:46.20] spk_1:
Well, some of those worst case scenarios, I think more abruptly we get a lot of clients that work with us that have a lot of government funding and government funding usually includes um some pop up surprise what they call site visits. So if you anticipate uh your site visit or kind of your audit, I use the word loosely with audit. But if you expect your funder to show up on, you know, this period and then they end up coming in sooner or more regularly, either normal or whatever. They just changed their protocol and you’re not prepared for that. That then calls into question your ability to manage the program, your ability to manage the finances of that particular program. And we’ve seen organizations be at risk for losing their funding. And we’ve seen that more often than not, which we’ve kind of talked about and the original presentation that Danny and I did some of the challenges around um not just, you know, keeping caught up with the accounting, but the succession planning um in the transition. I mean, we’re in the midst of what they call the great recession. And so what organizations do that put all of their eggs in one basket with respect to this kind of swiss be nice if you will position that holds also financial management. And when those positions turn over, we’ve seen organizations find themselves really vulnerable situations and it becomes very apparent when it’s time to start sending those periodic reports to your funders or when they start to come out, when you look at your records, it’s a problem.

[00:05:06.79] spk_0:
You’re referring to the great resignation. You mean succession planning. Okay.

[00:05:16.60] spk_1:
I’m

[00:05:35.54] spk_0:
listening. I’m listening channel. I’m channeling listeners. They’re gonna say, wait, great recession. That was many years. Alright. We know we know what you meant. Alright. So Zanny, why don’t you why don’t you kick us off? We got 10 things people are supposed to know nonprofit leaders are supposed to know. So let me ask you before we kick off with our our list. Is this specifically the C the C. E. O. Are we, are we at that level? You know, listeners here are small and midsize nonprofits. So that could be like one or two people up to. I mean 100 or 250 employees could be a midsize nonprofit. Are we in the meat with this? We’re talking about nonprofit leaders. I assume we are.

[00:05:57.71] spk_1:
I

[00:05:57.89] spk_2:
actually think that this information can be for any leader that is self designated or you know, does hold one of those executive positions. I think what we share in this presentation is really about making sure everyone is on the same page across the entire organization. So it’s really for anyone,

[00:06:28.03] spk_0:
uh, with, uh, okay. But we don’t want our Ceo and other other C suite executives ignoring these things. Certainly.

[00:06:30.92] spk_2:
No. Okay.

[00:06:32.33] spk_0:
Okay. All right. So why don’t you kick us off? What’s uh, what’s your

[00:06:37.25] spk_2:
first one is definitely benchmarks and metrics and making sure that you have defined expectations about what those are and how they fit with your organization and I’ll actually pass this one over to Tasha because this is definitely her area of expertise as the C. P. A expert.

[00:07:54.23] spk_1:
Yeah, sure. Uh, so really what we mean by defining benchmarks? Oftentimes, what we see is that not just the tactical work of bookkeeping and accounting is delegated to one individual, but almost the full financial management and responsibility. Understanding how much money is in the bank account. Are we receiving the funding that we thought we were, Are we utilizing the contracts that we’ve committed to our to our funders? Really high level, even where we are with our fundraising goals. And I’ve personally been someone that kind of delegated that responsibility and financial oversight. And I just think it’s imperative whether you’re a for profit business and non profit business at the end of the day, it’s a tax designation. It’s not just because you’re a nonprofit, you should not be delegating full financial ownership and responsibility of your organization to one single person. This is really where that leadership at the ceo level or executive director level, there needs to be some understanding of what your benchmarks are. What are you trying to measure in the holding people accountable to it? And I’ve seen so often where the accountant or the bookkeeper is delegated the responsibility of the budget and they might be doing the bookkeeping in the reconciliations and all that. But is anybody really looking at that budget and holding anybody accountable to it? So what we’re really encouraging is that the leader, you need to understand where things are and what expectations do you have? What processes do you have in place to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction? So

[00:08:19.70] spk_0:
following the budget doesn’t belong with the bookkeeper.

[00:08:23.50] spk_1:
The

[00:08:23.97] spk_0:
bookkeeper does the work.

[00:08:49.29] spk_1:
Yes, the bookkeeper prepares the reports, diving into Why is this off from what we expected? That is joint ownership, frankly, in my opinion, from from the individuals that are charged with that. So your program team, maybe your fundraising team. And I recognize we’re talking with small to middle size at a minimum. The Ceo is looking at this or the executive director and so often times I see uh leadership teams that are just delegating that responsibility and they’re not really immersing themselves in the financial management, the way that I think they should

[00:09:00.00] spk_0:
be alright. You didn’t have to, you know, you two don’t have to go in sequence. You could have picked one that you’re, that you’re an expert on. You know, you don’t have to do it the same sequence. You did it in your in your in your seminar. Alright.

[00:09:13.07] spk_2:
Well, I definitely wanted to make sure Tasha kind of came from the C P a standpoint,

[00:09:18.39] spk_0:
you know, make

[00:09:21.36] spk_2:
sure they all knew, Yeah,

[00:09:22.75] spk_0:
she’s the charity. CFO so

[00:09:24.30] spk_2:
she knows what she’s talking

[00:09:26.01] spk_0:
about

[00:10:08.64] spk_2:
and I have to say I come from the small nonprofit side. So we have a mighty team of three full time and one part time person. So we are, you know, definitely representative of some of the groups that are probably listening. So and these are all things, these are all things that we have learned through working with Tasha that um are very important and we went through a transition and planning and uh had a transition in leadership which then created a transition into changing our bookkeeper um to the charity CFO. So we went through a lot of what we’re talking about in terms of the the sort of scarier situations of how did we get ourselves in this situation? What does this all mean? Where all the, you know, how do we get everybody on the same page? So we definitely learned our lessons.

[00:10:21.81] spk_0:
Let pick one that you are familiar with that you can talk about what’s next.

[00:11:23.37] spk_2:
Yeah, let me take a look. So I know that so kind of speaking about like getting into a sticky situation or number four is I would have understand my compliance needs. And I think that when you do like Tasha was saying, when you have those government funders or even really complicated funding grants from foundations, sometimes they require progress reports, they require year end um reports that can be really calm complicated to do at the last minute and they can be really complicated if you have not set yourself up for success at the very beginning. And so one of the things that we sort of have said is that you really need to take a look at what the grant is requesting from you when they’re, when you’re in that grant search process. And before you apply or maybe right after you apply, making sure that you’ve got things set up with your accountant and things set up in your chart of accounts to make sure that when you’re going through and processing and actually spending money related to these grants, you’ve got everything in place, you know, from the onset, so that it makes it a lot easier to pull those reports and to get that information instead of scrambling and going through, you know, a year’s worth of credit card receipts.

[00:11:50.57] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:11:53.20] spk_2:
Mentioned

[00:12:17.33] spk_0:
compliance. And there’s, there’s state state laws also depending on what state you’re in. You know, there are, there are the laws that you have to be registered in each state where you solicit donations, that whole charity registration morass that I used to have as part of my practice. Um, you know, keeping keeping track of that. Um, there, there could be, uh, other, I mean, there are federal, there are federal rules that have to stay in compliance with, so there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot in that word, compliance.

[00:12:35.20] spk_2:
Yeah, exactly. It’s not just the funding that you get, it’s making sure that, you know, the things that you’re doing are following the law all year, not just when someone comes knocking

[00:12:43.02] spk_0:
and and Tasha, these often come up in audits right? They’ll be they’ll be uh I forget with the technical terms, but they’ll be like memo items in uh report items in an audit that you know, you’re not in compliance with something here. Things like

[00:14:10.94] spk_1:
that. Yeah, findings. And what’s really interesting. I have a funny story when so I used to be a CFO of a non profit organization and we had 14 different government contracts that were a little larger probably than maybe an average listener. We’re about, you know, 6 to 8 million a year. And uh that’s that’s that’s to me that seems large because so many organizations are much smaller than that. But really that’s not huge and what’s really, we went through every single one of our program contracts and wrote down all of the things we’re responsible reporting out to them. So not just on the financial compliance side but also like program outcomes and those sort of things. Anyway, we had five pages front and back on an Excel spreadsheet when we printed it out was five pages, front and back of all of the things that we were responsible for reporting out to someone. And so the more more complex your funding gets, whether it’s multiple foundations or government funding sources. When we hear the word audit. I think we think at the end of the year we have a C. P. A firm that comes in and does an audit. But oftentimes what people don’t realize that you may have multiple audits or inspections or reviews or whatever word you want to use for the same funding, right? You might get um, you know, kind of beat up at a local level through some pass through fun. Then you might have that sourced through the feds and then the feds might come in and do an audit, right? And then your auditors that come in at the end of the year that you hire will also do an audit. So I think that sometimes I’ve seen our clients not necessarily read the fine print of those grant agreements to know what they’re going to be responsible for doing and what frequency. So they find themselves kind of working reactively and scrambling to get that stuff.

[00:15:57.46] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications media relationships and thought leadership. You need one to get the other. You got to have the media relationships. So you get exposure and become the thought leader. Turn to will help you build those relationships. They’re former journalists themselves. And by the way, as you’re getting that exposure, they’ll help you craft your messaging. You get the increased exposure. You’re seen as a thought leader in your field. The thought Leader, the thought leader in your field, they can make it happen. Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to accounting for nonprofit leaders. You wanna know as any said, you want to know ahead of time what the requirements are. First to make sure that you can comply with them. You have the infrastructure either internally or or through a provider to do it, you know, and if it’s if it’s beyond you, then that that’s not a grant that you should be applying for because you can’t keep up with the I mean the money may look nice, but you can’t keep up with the back end requirements and you’re gonna end up in a bad situation. Okay.

[00:15:58.93] spk_1:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:16:00.26] spk_2:
Absolutely. No.

[00:16:01.56] spk_0:
In advance. I’m sure this especially applies to a government, a government agency. Yeah.

[00:16:07.28] spk_1:
And that’s funny. We we talked about that a little bit in our session just because there’s money available may not be a good deal. Just what you’re doing, not just the infrastructure. Um, there’s a lot of considerations where it might make sense for an organization to not accept funding. Um, it just doesn’t make sense. And asking ourselves those hard questions before we just

[00:16:25.90] spk_0:
before, Yeah. Look, look closely at what your obligations, your responsibilities are gonna be. All right. All right, well, let’s stay with you, Tasha. Why don’t you give us another another thing. Leadership should know about.

[00:17:33.03] spk_1:
Alright. I think another thing that leaders don’t always realize again, because most leaders of nonprofit organizations, they don’t come from the financial business management side of the biz right? Oftentimes you’ll see leaders that maybe come from the programmatic side of things. Um, and that’s fantastic for a lot of reasons. But what I think some people default to hearing, well this just can’t be done or this financial report can’t be created in the way that you want. And I really encourage leaders of organizations again, to define those expectations of what they’re looking for and ask their account to develop tools that help them measure if we’re on track or not. And this is usually by way of financial reports. And I hear this all the time. Tasha, you know, I get the standard set of financial reports from my accountants. It doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t make sense to my board. We don’t know where we’re at, we don’t know which direction we’re heading and what I tell people all the time that financial reports, Yes, your auditors will require to look in this perfect box and it has to look exactly like that. But that’s for the outside world. Think about what your organization needs internally and create those measurements, those tools, those financial reports. That makes sense for you internally. So that you can make business decisions based upon that and what a lot of people don’t realize.

[00:17:52.75] spk_2:
We

[00:18:53.12] spk_1:
Have over 150 clients. Probably many, if not all of them have some level of customization to their reports. So they need to get reports that make sense to them, not already nonprofits have to have the same internal financial statements. In fact, you shouldn’t have the same internal financial statements and start asking yourself what do you need to see? So I’ll give you an example. I have one organization that was really, really cash strapped. They had all the revenue sources in place. They could not understand why are we cash poor, Why do we not have any money? And the reality. After a quick look at some of the financial reports, I realized they were building their funders but they were never collecting them. There were some issues with the quality of their invoicing and some problems they weren’t troubleshooting and poor training and just some other issues that are actually pretty easily fixed. But going forward once we were able to get caught up on that building, the ceo want to make sure that never happened again. So she wanted to make sure she got a detailed listing of what invoices were still outstanding because she started understanding the, the, the timing of when payments were expected to come in and once things started to go off track

[00:18:59.15] spk_0:
basically

[00:18:59.70] spk_1:
immediately, basically

[00:19:01.09] spk_0:
talking about tracking your accounts payable.

[00:19:02.88] spk_1:
Yeah, accounts receivable in this case or payable

[00:19:14.25] spk_0:
receivable? Your receivables? Yeah. I took, I took accounting for poets in college. So I do remember that, um, assets equal liabilities plus owner equity. Is that still true?

[00:19:19.74] spk_1:
That is true.

[00:19:20.97] spk_0:
Axiom still still valid. Like a law of physics doesn’t change. Okay.

[00:19:25.52] spk_1:
In the nonprofit world, we say we don’t have equity because there’s no ownership. But the concept is still the same. We called net assets in the nonprofit world, but the concept is still the same

[00:19:34.74] spk_0:
assets equals net assets. Oh no, we

[00:19:37.60] spk_1:
called the net assets. Yeah.

[00:19:39.61] spk_0:
But the other side is assets, assets equals net assets.

[00:19:43.54] spk_1:
You could do assets minus liabilities equal net assets or assets, you know, equal, you know, however you want to do the algebra of the formula, you could say in multiple different ways. But um, yeah, we say assets minus liabilities equals net assets, but

[00:19:58.75] spk_0:
assets, my stuff, that makes sense to me, assets. Everything you have minus what you owe your liabilities, which I know, I know I’m grossly oversimplifying by when I said what? You know, but again, I took accounting for poets. So you’ll have to excuse that. I’m trainable. I guess I wasn’t, uh, yeah, equals your net assets. Right. Everything you have minus what you owe is is the net

[00:20:21.20] spk_1:
okay.

[00:20:22.47] spk_0:
We don’t have to go any deeper than that. We shouldn’t.

[00:20:24.85] spk_1:
No one wants to hear that. But

[00:20:26.63] spk_0:
Not profit leaders should not profit leaders should, I’m not a nonprofit leader. So I’m not, I’m not on the hook for this. Alright. Um, name another one. Somebody. Somebody throw out another another top 10.

[00:21:32.17] spk_2:
Well, I think, um, following up to sort of, what Tasha was already saying is that you can have all those in place, but if you don’t have anyone, um, doing checks and balances or even around to take over key processes. If someone goes or if someone’s out on vacation, that’s a really major risk. You know, we were in the training or the workshop last week and a lot of people really resonated with this, you know, don’t burn out the one person you have on your team who knows how to do payroll? Who knows how to do vendor payments? Who knows how to do the bank deposits. There can’t be just one person on your team who knows how to do all these things. There needs to be some, you know, some thought to succession planning. Some thought too. Um,

[00:21:32.59] spk_0:
or not even not even succession planning, just like you said vacation.

[00:21:36.04] spk_2:
Yeah, just process documentation.

[00:21:38.00] spk_0:
You know, we got somebody goes out on maternity leave. We still have to process, we still have to process vendor purchase orders.

[00:21:52.11] spk_2:
Yeah, we had someone chat in the comments saying I’m going out on maternity leave, but I still have to process payroll, which is not

[00:21:53.91] spk_0:
great.

[00:22:14.59] spk_2:
That’s not great for your staff’s morale. So definitely just making sure you’ve got some of those basic processes written down, trained, um, cross trained with different people and having backups in place so that people can take a break and people can, you know, not have that looming over their head when they’re supposed to be on maternity leave

[00:22:20.03] spk_0:
or, or

[00:22:21.18] spk_2:
family leave, you know, it’s not sustainable.

[00:22:37.49] spk_0:
Um, I have seen that too, in, in uh, clients that I’ve worked with. I do plan giving fundraising. Um, and you know, we have, we need vendor, we have vendors, there might be, there’s, uh, you know, there’s a company that that manages the soft that provides the software for playing giving calculations. Well that purchase order has to be paid. You know, my purchase order has to be

[00:22:49.87] spk_2:
paid. It

[00:22:51.37] spk_0:
seems sometimes to be one person who can do it and we’re all, we’re all screwed if that person is busy or away or whatever. Alright, let’s stick with you. Give us another one.

[00:23:26.25] spk_2:
Sure. Another thing that you brought up was having the right software to use. So, um, you know, we found when we were in our sort of leadership transition in our, uh, you know, transition between bookkeepers. We just had someone who was, you know, taking our information and then,

[00:23:27.07] spk_0:
you know,

[00:23:27.81] spk_2:
kind of piecemeal putting it together, like looking at the paper receipts, looking at this and really it’s just not sustainable long term to do that. And there are so many options with technology

[00:23:38.44] spk_0:
now to

[00:23:39.84] spk_2:
really make the transition easier. And a lot of nonprofits do qualify for

[00:23:46.85] spk_0:
discounts

[00:24:08.43] spk_2:
for some of these larger tech companies, they have a lot of for profit people using their services. So they, most of the time will have a nonprofit discount or even offer their their software for free. And really it just becomes a matter of making sure that the people in your organization are up to speed. And um, I think Tasha had an incredible case study that she shared about what, how she saw this kind of go sideways um, in her own practice. Okay,

[00:24:35.66] spk_0:
Natasha before you tell that story, aren’t there? There’s also scores of smaller companies that are devoted to nonprofit financial management we through the years. And non profit radio I’ve had one or maybe two of them as sponsors. You know, there they’ll say that, you know, quickbooks is basically they’re they’re, they’re thinking is Quickbooks is not made for non profits. You have to be able to do fund accounting and things and you know, so we’ve got, we’ve got the software solution that’s an accounting financial management devoted to non profits. You don’t have to modify Quickbooks or Intuit or something. Or maybe intuit’s Quickbooks, I don’t even know.

[00:24:58.47] spk_2:
But

[00:25:03.05] spk_0:
counting for poets, but you know, um, so you don’t have to use these major companies that there’s smaller, smaller apps devoted to nonprofit financial management. Right?

[00:26:34.72] spk_1:
That’s right. That’s right. And it’s funny, I was gonna talk a little bit about that because I think that there are a lot of organization accountants that will say nonprofit accounting is super special and we have to have everything special. Um, and I, I don’t disagree with that completely. But the challenge is it creates a, it creates barriers for nonprofit organizations to be able to um work with some of these providers, especially if the proprietor like proprietary software or things of this nature, What I try to do with our clients is create software solutions that can work with nonprofits have a really low cost point price point on those things. And more importantly, the software is very user friendly. There’s a lot of free training resources. So we actually use Quickbooks. I’m not being paid to say that I have no formal partnership with Quickbooks, but I like the software because if they needed to bring their accounting back in house when working with us, they could find bookkeepers or accountants that have experience with with Quickbooks. And so sometimes I think it’s a matter of preference. I say as an account that has my own preferences for how I like to do things. I think it’s, I can say that, but what I think is um important for nonprofits to understand what technology is available out there to Sandy’s point and how can they use that to alleviate some of the manual um time consuming task going back to not burning out your one person that does everything. If you can find ways to autumn streamline that they can maybe focus on bigger value added work or just simply take a breather or focus on work that feeds their soul a little bit more than just doing data entry into the accounting. So

[00:26:50.44] spk_0:
Okay, Zanny said you have a story well

[00:26:51.15] spk_1:
in this particular case. Sure. Yeah, sure. So

[00:26:54.90] spk_0:
speaking

[00:26:55.97] spk_1:
of tedious work that burns people out and it’s very time consuming. So I started working with an organization way way back many, many years ago and

[00:27:04.76] spk_0:
they, this is not, this is not a story about.

[00:27:07.30] spk_2:
No not

[00:27:12.05] spk_0:
but it’s not okay.

[00:27:14.12] spk_1:
No I have a friend. No it’s

[00:27:15.73] spk_0:
not. Yeah

[00:29:06.76] spk_1:
exactly. No it’s about software and how software can change how we do things. So I started working with an organization which actually is now a client of ours um in a very contract away a few years ago and we realized that they were heavy credit card users, credit cards are debating the existence of all accountants out there for every nonprofit. I promised you can quote me on that. I’m sure. Uh And the problem is that there’s not a good system for collecting the receipts, it’s very manual. Um You have got a copy, you gotta scan, you got a code, you got to get into all the people. Anyway, they have about 20 credit cards that have hundreds if not thousands of transactions a month. The accountant, the finance director um is they hired that person for that high level skill analysis, Financial thought leadership. That person was spending a good week of her month. So 25% of her working days, reconciling and tracking down all of these hundreds of receipt if not thousands depending on the time of the year. And one of the things that we immediately realized this person actually left the organization and the organization was left scrambling trying to replace it. And one of the things we realized immediately, we could save a lot of time. If we just have software, your team is already making copies of the recedes, forwarding it to the account, the account has to use all these Softwares to stamp it with electronic approvals and all that. We could replace that whole manual back and forth email flurry of system with the software, like many of nonprofits out there now use things like expensive fi or dext or or something like this where the user of the credit card actually just takes an image identifies what type of expense it is if it’s designated to a specific funder, um, if it’s restricted or not and then submits it off to the accountant and the accountant just matches them up with what’s actually ending the bank account. So this whole flurry of hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary emails, all of this monotonous detailed work that you’re bogging your accountant down with. Um, now has freed up their time to be able to do other things. In this case, it actually saved them cost because we don’t have to do that much work and it’s not as labor intensive, but if you did have somebody in house that you wanted them to focus on higher value work that that’s more valuable to the organization. You can use technology to do that sort of thing. So I’ll echo what Danny had said.

[00:30:27.33] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. The free offer. It’s still out there exclusively for nonprofit radio listeners, complimentary 24 7 monitoring of your I. T. Assets for three months. They’ll monitor your servers, network and cloud performance, they’ll monitor your backup performance all 24 7. If there are any issues, they’ll let you know ASAP and you will get a comprehensive report on how you’re doing at the end of the three month monitoring. And they’re gonna throw in a few surprise offers as well. It’s complimentary, it’s on the listener landing page, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant mention deeper. Let’s return to accounting for nonprofit leaders. Tasha, name those couple of resources that folks could look at again.

[00:31:03.46] spk_1:
So again, I like kind of uh out of the box like package is really easy to use expensive. Fi is a really popular one. Um dext formerly known as receipt bank is one. So those are two that work really well with Quickbooks are very user friendly. Um, you can have your people that use credit cards a lot of times they’ll have like apps on their smartphones and so they just take a picture of it while they’re out spending, you know, the money rather than worrying about lost receipts and things like that. So those are two really common ones that are again, really low price point and easy to implement. Easy to use

[00:31:09.49] spk_0:
is dexter D. E. X.

[00:31:11.25] spk_1:
T. That’s right, yep.

[00:31:12.88] spk_0:
Okay. And expense if I. Okay. Yeah. Alright let’s stay with you. Tasha give us another, we’re halfway through our list by the way I’ve been keeping track,

[00:31:22.99] spk_1:
we’re not combining any of these.

[00:31:24.99] spk_0:
Alright if we end up as long as

[00:31:26.49] spk_1:
well we’ll tell you when we run out,

[00:31:29.94] spk_0:
as long as we cover the content. You know it doesn’t we end up doing them uh 10 things but we ate you know ate under eight topics as long as as long as you’re not holding back on non profit radio listeners that

[00:31:39.14] spk_1:
we’re not holding.

[00:31:40.16] spk_0:
That’s my concern. That’s my audit. That is my benchmark. Is that the content is there doesn’t have to be under 10 distinct rubrics. But we have done five anyway. Alright.

[00:34:04.12] spk_1:
Okay so the next one I would say uh that uh nonprofits don’t necessarily realize that there’s not a one size fits all with accountants. And I think I realized this when I started hiring my own accountants and staffing um the work as the charity CFO for on behalf of our other clients. And what do I mean by this like any profession accountants and their experiences, skills and expertise vary. So I kind of divide up in this 80 20. Roll the infamous 80 20 rule 80% of accounting is very transactional input output. You need somebody that’s very good at attention to detail, very consistent, very reliable thrives and routine. They like doing the same things over and over again. There are a lot of accountants out there like that. Um They do a great job Then there’s like the 20% of accounting, that’s the creative accounting but not you know, go to jail creative accounting. I’m talking moving the needle with the organization, building better budgets, building financial models, really thinking how we can implement best practices or re imagining what our accounting function can look like implementing software. For example these are the visionaries. If you will, you can probably guess which one of those I am. I find that most organizations, all organizations need both of those skill sets, the challenge is oftentimes, although the label on the title on the resume or the job is accountant or CFO or controller or whatever, but the reality is there’s two different types of accountants. Now, some people could try to do both but that’s not where their skill set is. So if you took someone like me a 20% and you put me in a job where 80% of my time is doing, you know, detailed work on routine tasks. I’m not gonna stick around for a long time, I want to do things that feed my soul and on the flip side if you take a more transactional tactical accountant, that’s really good and you expect them to solve all of your financial world problems, you’re probably not going to get as far as you would hope. And I think that many organizations think that they could hire an accountant to do all of those things and and I think that that’s not realistic and that’s why we see some turnover in these roles um or organizations struggle with, I just need somebody that does both of these things. And I don’t think people really realize that accountants are not all the same. And so many organizations, money is not such an abundance that we can just both of those accountants.

[00:34:13.35] spk_0:
So

[00:35:27.46] spk_1:
a lot of nonprofits have to decide what’s most important. How can I get both of those um Accounting needs met tactical detail because that’s 80% of the work, you know keep the wheels turning and the bills paid. Um and but how can I also get that financial thought leadership that I’m looking for. So what I’ve seen in some cases that organizations will maybe higher and operate person, I just did a podcast the other day saying like nonprofits are quitting their accountant and what I meant by that is non profits are moving um similar to Danny actually probably speak better to this than I organizations are moving to more of an operations person that’s kind of the hub and spoke and they’re outsourcing outsourcing some of that technical work right? Maybe it’s hr maybe it’s accounting, maybe it’s I. T. But you still have somebody that can maybe do some of the tactical work because they’re on the front lines. They’re interacting with the staff in a more significant way. Or maybe they’re outsourcing that financial thought leadership. Or maybe they have a financial thought leadership in house but they’re using some other staff people to help do some of the bookkeeping. So that again you keep people doing what they do best um and creating work that’s meaningful for them. So not all accounts are created the same.

[00:35:31.32] spk_0:
Not all made the same

[00:35:32.19] spk_1:
as the biggest takeaway.

[00:35:33.35] spk_0:
Alright. Um I have to ask though, are there any accountants who would say I’m in the 80%?

[00:35:39.97] spk_1:
Absolutely.

[00:35:41.15] spk_0:
I’ve got a whole team.

[00:35:42.20] spk_1:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because I have 32 employees and I would say probably 70% of my staff falls into that and we need to make sure that people see a path that they can take on additional responsibilities but not so much that they’re gonna be overwhelmed. Um

[00:35:59.67] spk_0:
I thought maybe all accountants think they’re in the creative,

[00:36:03.16] spk_1:
definitely not.

[00:36:06.28] spk_0:
Not that they actually are but that they think they are. It’s it’s a self image question.

[00:36:10.31] spk_1:
Well that’s a great point. I sometimes think as accountants are known to have maybe inflated egos of herself. If I dare to

[00:36:20.20] spk_0:
say. All right. That’s that’s where it was coming. That’s where I was coming

[00:36:22.06] spk_1:
from not

[00:36:23.07] spk_0:
where they are but where they think they are. All right, well, we’ll uh we’ll concede that you’re definitely in the 20% because you you can’t run a company called the charity CFO if if you’re if you’re not be the otherwise you’d be the charity bookkeeper,

[00:36:37.98] spk_2:
you’re

[00:36:39.11] spk_0:
not the charity bookkeeper. Alright. Um Danny, you want to contribute something.

[00:38:53.16] spk_2:
Yeah. So, you know, as Tasha was talking and and sort of talking about how, you know, technology needs. Like everyone can just use decks to take a picture and know what account to send it to and have everything all easy peasy kind of ready to go and like technology takes care of it, blah blah blah. Well, you can really get yourself into trouble if you don’t actually know what the structure of your accounting system is. So let’s say you have a program person who is using dext or even just you know, trying to code something on their receipt to share with their accountant. But they put the wrong chart of accounts. Well, the accountants just gonna do what the person told them to do. Say, okay, it’s in this one you told me to put it in there. Um And you don’t want them to be creative with that. You want the budget to match the chart of accounts. You want the chart of accounts and all of the expenses to go to the right place. But you don’t really know if that’s going to happen correctly. If you don’t train the people on the ground making the expenses sending in receipts if they don’t have the right information and you’re not kind of sharing that widely and having everyone understand with the chart of just the very basic things are and what, how to code things for your accountant. You’re really gonna get way off by the end of the year, you’re gonna, it doesn’t matter what fancy technology you have or if you have a 20% or 80% accountant, they’re doing what you’ve asked them to do. And so making sure that you’ve kind of got everybody buttoned up and, and learning what the basics are for your chart of accounts. And there’s not gonna be uh, one size fits all, like list of chart of account for every organization. That’s definitely something that comes out of programming comes out of requirements from your funders, It’s all related to your specific business. So we definitely went through some growing pains as we transitioned and had to essentially redo a lot of our chart of accounts because we realized our accountant that we had previously was sort of getting a little creative about which we didn’t provide any direction. And so they got creative on each month where these different same expense was going in a different chart. And so you have to sort of figure out how to unravel that. And then if it gets too far down the line, it’s really hard to do, it takes

[00:39:22.55] spk_0:
a lot, I don’t I don’t quite understand this one that you have to, you have to, so so you can educate me the way we were all supposed to educate the people who are spending the money when you say the chart of accounts, what why? I don’t understand why this is to everybody who’s out spending money, like you said, share the structure of your accounting system with widely, I don’t I don’t see what why that’s important.

[00:40:27.22] spk_2:
So let’s say, I mean I do this on a regular basis, so this is sort of my job is to make sure everyone in our organization knows what’s going on and how things code correctly. So, you know, let’s say at the beginning of the year, we’ve coded our organization provides professional development training, leadership training and um does some consulting work related to that as well. So we take a lot of our programming and we’ll bring it in house to people. So those are two different things. We have workshops that are open to the public and we have specialized consulting work that we do. So let’s say we have a consultant or a facilitator that we’ve hired to do a workshop. Well we’ve got a different chart of accounts essentially for saying how to split that consultants time. So we have one bucket that says, oh this is our consulting expense. But if you just put it in there and say, oh that’s a consulting expense or you know, this is a hired outside facilitator that we’ve brought in. But we don’t say whether it was for our workshops or for the, you know, the on site consulting specialized work that we’ve been contractually obligated to do with an organization.

[00:40:47.28] spk_0:
How

[00:40:48.49] spk_2:
are you going to know how much you spent

[00:40:50.86] spk_0:
for

[00:41:12.37] spk_2:
each of those different program types? So you really can have, and we have the same facilitators and they do different types of work for us at at all times, but we want to know at the end of the year what was our expense for our consulting work? What was our expense for our workshops and things like that? So we have to be very deliberate and understand when someone’s sending in an invoice or sending in a receipt that they’ve sort of coded that correctly.

[00:41:50.67] spk_0:
Okay, so it’s all a matter of like allocation to the right allocation to the right uh budget line or or general program area. The way you’re describing, you know, you have to you have two distinct areas, You are Alright, so allocating expenses and revenue, obviously two to the right, you know, not just that, it’s it’s just not generic revenue, but, you know, because at the end of the year we want to know what our expenses and our revenues are like in across. Well, in your example, you know, on both sides of the work that you’re doing, right? The public workshops and also the private consulting,

[00:41:58.74] spk_2:
right? Yeah. And so that can be really complicated if you let it sort of go down the wrong path. But you’ve got one of those really complicated federal funding grants and you’re not supposed to allocated a certain amount to this program. It’s really supposed to go to this program. Um,

[00:42:16.88] spk_0:
and

[00:42:17.10] spk_2:
you can kind of, you know, can be a lot of a bigger process to undo later on.

[00:42:22.88] spk_0:
Right, do it right the first time instead of trying to do forensic accounting to try to figure

[00:42:27.65] spk_1:
out. So

[00:42:28.76] spk_2:
it’s important for people who are, who are sending in those, you know, those pictures of their receipts on decks or expense. If I too have coded it correctly, before they send it to the accountant to make sure that they understand what account it’s supposed to go into or come out of.

[00:45:01.97] spk_0:
Okay, very helpful. Thank you. It’s time for Tony Take two. I’ll be on a panel endowment excitement, fundraising and management end quote. So where are you with your endowment? Do you have an endowment? You might be at zero or maybe you have a mid size middling endowment or you’ve got a vast endowment. The other three folks will be able to help you with endowment management principles. You probably don’t have a vast endowment. I bet there aren’t too many listeners who have vast endowments, but for the outliers, there’s something for you in this panel as well, for the vast majority of folks, no endowment or teensy weensy, itsy bitsy endowment or something in the middle. I’ll be doing the planned giving fundraising part of endowment excitement, fundraising and management. I’ll be the fundraising part. Talk about how planned giving is enormously valuable for endowment starting or endowment building. The other three folks there, the smart folks in endowment management. So we got the fundraising, we got the management doesn’t matter where you are in your endowment status capacity robustness, if you like. There’s something for you. It’s August 25 at noon eastern time. Oh and I should say we are sponsored graciously by an ex unite. Thank you and next unite. So to make your reservation, you go to N X unite dot com and you click webinars and panels and if you can’t join us on august 25th at noon, sign up and you’ll get the video. Of course it’s 2022 naturally. So I hope you’ll be with us either live or archive. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for accounting for nonprofit leaders with Tasha Anderson and Zanny Miranda. Tasha. Your turn. You wanna, you wanna contribute.

[00:45:49.01] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah, I’ll contribute a little bit more to that one. But to kind of sum it up for me what I tell people. There’s usually a lot of frustration. I don’t understand my accounting and I usually tell people, it’s not that you’re using quickbooks and quickbooks is not sophisticated enough. It’s that it’s not set up the right way and then the user that’s using it is limited. And what I tell people kind of garbage and not that the work is entirely wrong. Right? It’s accurate. The dollar amounts accurate, the vendor is accurate, but if it’s not in put a certain way, then you’re not gonna be able to get reports out a certain way. So you kind of have to think more globally. Uh, you know, how do you want this to come out and then you have to understand the intricacies of the system in order to get the end result. So what Danny is referring to is just understanding high level, what is it that you want to see? How is that information can be put out and then making sure that the inputs are going in the right way so that you don’t have that forensic accounting that you mentioned trying to go back and figure that out. And so many organizations go through that forensic accounting exercise every time they have a simple report. Um, a simple report.

[00:46:17.39] spk_0:
Yeah, I’ve seen some of that. I know it’s it’s expensive. It’s, it’s time consuming. Didn’t have didn’t have to have been done badly to start with. All right. Let’s move on. Let’s move on,

[00:48:42.83] spk_1:
moving on. So the next one I would say, um, that nonprofit leader should share more about their financial information in their financial position with other people within the organization. And what do I mean by that? I kind of alluded to it earlier that I have been in situations where it’s just the Ceo and I carry the weight of the financial management, the financial, he’s right. And I’m not just talking like, oh my gosh, we have enough money to make payroll. I’m talking about being the person, the point person to explain to the board why we didn’t hit our fundraising goals, why our program contracts not fully utilized, why we were over underspending and salary expenses because we have vacancies in the various departments or what have you. Um, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about. It all kind of feeds together. So if we understand what those KPI S, those benchmarks, those metrics for measuring, we have an accounting structure in place to properly categorize and track these things, not just by thunder, but by department we customize our reporting in a way that’s meaningful. Maybe that that translates to creating a income statement or a financial report, a budget actual by department and then sharing with those that run those divisions of the business, their area of responsibility. That’s where I like to get to that the fundraising, you know, professional within the organization actually gets a periodic report. So they know what they spent in order to raise the money and where we’re at and what we expected them to do the same with the program team, same with anyone else that has that area of significant responsibility. And so often I see that again, the financial person and the ceo bear that responsibility and they end up being the money. Police, can I spend money for training? No, can I do that? It’s kind of crushing for morale a little bit that you have to police every dollar spent. And in a perfect world we would include all of these individuals in the budgeting process. Okay, fundraising department, what what do you need to spend this year? And how much honey are you bringing it? Same with the program team. You know, all of the different people involved. I like to get input from them. They give me their budgets on what they believe they need to spend to meet the outcomes and the objectives that they’ve laid out to do. So if that means we need to add another staff person, if that means we need to pay for more programs, supplies or go to a couple conferences, whatever it is. Um, let me know. So that when whenever you come and say, hey, can I, you know, attend this conference this year, I can then in return say was that in your budget and assuming the cash is available, people start owning their own things and there and we hold them accountable right,

[00:49:19.57] spk_0:
Right? Like delegating responsibility for the budget that you’re responsible for rather than rather than as you said, you know, having to ask, I mean you’re, you’re empowering folks, you’re educating them and empowering them to spend their budget responsibly. And obviously, you know, that’s part of performance review and, and, and through the benchmarks and the metrics that we talked about first, we’ll know whether you’re, whether you’re doing it accurately or

[00:49:26.46] spk_1:
not

[00:49:27.23] spk_0:
wisely or not. I guess it’s probably better than accurately, but Okay, Alright. So like delegating, delegating budget responsibility and accountability as well, of course.

[00:49:39.06] spk_1:
Alright, where’s

[00:49:43.20] spk_0:
the role of the board here, Tasha in should it just be a quarterly review of of the overall financial picture? Should it be every board meeting? Let’s take a board that meets, take a worst case scenario, a board that meets monthly. Do they need to see a monthly financial picture? Can it just be quarterly, semi annual? What, what do you think?

[00:52:09.36] spk_1:
Yeah, So that’s a great question. I think it kind of depends on the organization, uh, small struggling organization, I think probably needs more oversight than one. That’s pretty well figured it out and they’re pretty mature. I would say kind of best practices that you always provide financial reports at every board meeting. Um, maybe you don’t pour over it in a huge level of detail, but the reality of the fiduciary responsibility is up there with one of the top board responsibilities. So I personally would never recommend having a board meeting for which finances were not considered solely for that reason. Um, I will say a lot of the nuts and bolts of the oversight, the financial oversight. Oftentimes happens at the finance committee level. So oftentimes the finance committees will be reviewing more detailed reports on a monthly basis, asking whatever questions they need to ask, then, you know, usually a summarized version of that information is given to the overall board. I mean, we don’t definitely don’t want to spend board time discussing why we’re overspending and office supplies. Right? When we’re ignoring the, you know, the big elephant in the room on why we’re off of our fundraising projections by 50%. I think you had those conversations before. So we want to keep it really high level. Um, but the, the details get done at the finance committee level and the, um, the, the high level discussions happen at the board level. And I’ve seen the spectrum of some boards that are really involved in the financial management so much to say that it probably crosses the, uh, you know, some boundaries in terms of your role is oversight and not actually managing the organization. Um, and then I’ve seen some words that are probably too passive, uh, and will come back around once financially the organization starts struggling. And what I’ve seen that consistent, um, a consistent presence and a consistent accountability from the board. That’s what keeps organizations in a good place. I mean, if you just keep coming in and out once things start to get a little rocky may be having some consistency and some accountability will keep the pendulum swinging from one way to the other. So to answer your direct question, every board meeting I think should have a financial review. Um even if it’s only five minutes to just update everybody on, are we on track or we off track is usually what I like to tell people

[00:52:31.79] spk_0:
and it helps to have a finance committee that’s paying closer attention. If you’re, you know, if your board is has that expertise and and frankly is big enough, you know, a five person board may not, may not be big enough to have a finance committee and you don’t want to have just one person looking at it because that that’s a mistake. I think

[00:54:00.86] spk_1:
I want to say something to before we go into the last one, I don’t want to run out of time. But what I think is the most important thing cause I wanna, I wanna validate what you’re saying that not every board is big enough to have a finance committee. Um and not every board has an abundance of accountants lined up trying to join their board. I recognize that fact, what I think is really important, what I think what I like to do for our clients is to create the financial information um presented in such a way that they can have the board can ask questions and have fruitful conversation. What do I mean by that? Oftentimes they get all these really long reports with all these numbers. They don’t actually know what any of it means. And there’s this intimidation level where many board members just don’t feel comfortable asking questions out of fear of looking silly or uneducated. Right. And so what we do, we put together an executive summary. And so I would encourage anybody listening to have their account and create some sort of executive summary to give a narrative that explains the context or what’s really going on and more of a written format. Because if you just simply give financial reports, you’re gonna keep butting up against the same problem. So what I try to do is create a process that will drive conversations at the board level. So if we write, hey, we are off from our fundraising goals. This is a red flag or you know, maybe not in those exact alarming words, but they may not necessarily interpret that just by looking at the report. So, but if somebody read that, they could say, well, what are we going to do about fundraising?

[00:54:11.56] spk_0:
Right, context.

[00:54:14.57] spk_1:
Yes. Yes. And I think that that engages boards more to have some of those financial conversations. Um, so if that’s not being done, I would really recommend

[00:54:24.64] spk_0:
that. All right. Sandy, you have, we should be wrapping up with another one or two unless we combined or something. But as long as the content is there, you have, Do

[00:54:31.81] spk_2:
you think we combined a couple, particularly around succession planning and making sure you’ve got your processes in place? Because they’re sort of,

[00:54:39.89] spk_0:
we didn’t leave anything out there. Well,

[00:56:31.28] spk_2:
there’s one thing that I think Tasha was almost alluding to and if you if you’re answering yes to any of these questions, does my organization feel siloed? Are we not getting the right reports from my accountant as my program staff and development team, not communicating any of those details about what requirements are or when reports are due. If your board is sort of questioning things and they can’t figure out what’s happening if any of those things are happening, it’s really not your accounting, it’s your culture and so making sure that across the board accounting doesn’t just stop with the accounting team. It doesn’t just stop at the Ceo or the chief or executive level, I should say. You know, it’s really a team effort. Everyone in the organization, from the receptionist to the program staff to the board president, they all need to know maybe not every single detail of course, but they need to have a general picture and an idea of what is happening in the organization. And some people need to have more information than others. Like I would say, a program staff person needs to know very detailed information about their accounting as much or as the same amount. So they can have a great conversation with the accountant to make sure that they’re on track that they’ve got their budgets aligned and sort of creating a culture where you’re unsure what the other program team is making and how much money they have to work with versus how much you have. You know, why does my executive director keeps saying no to me spending money on these things that I think will boost morale or will actually get better outcomes for our program. What’s happening is that if those are questions that you’re having, it’s really time to examine what’s happening in your culture and maybe try to change some of that, um, sort of fear or change some of that mindset around sharing information about money,

[00:56:56.55] spk_0:
accounting may not be your problem. Maybe something deeper. Sometimes technology is blamed to the technology may not be the problem that maybe the culture in the organization Zanny where is nonprofit solutions and where are you? You may not be in the same place as

[00:57:46.31] spk_2:
I know. Now, now everyone can be everywhere. Of course we are based in SAn Diego. Uh, that is not our geographic limit though for nonprofit solutions. I also live in SAN Diego. Um, but we are online, so we do a lot of virtual workshops and trainings and we can also do our contractual work. Um, so if anyone wanted to hire us for leadership training and um, we do have a lot of management training for new managers. So that is all can be done virtually and we’re now that things are starting to get a little bit easier to to come together. We used to do everything in person and so now we’re slowly getting back to in person but I would say the majority of our work is virtual so we can really be anywhere in any time zone. What’s

[00:58:04.96] spk_0:
the website for nonprofit solutions?

[00:58:06.91] spk_2:
It’s N. P. Solutions dot org.

[00:58:11.39] spk_0:
Okay, Tasha, where where’s the charity CFO, wherever you are, That’s where the charity CFO is.

[00:58:27.72] spk_1:
That’s right. Well, our office, our headquarters and all of our team are based here in ST louis Missouri. So although we work remotely with our clients, our team is centered here in ST louis. We do have not Office, we collaborate here, however, um only about 30% of our clients are here in ST Louis, the rest are all over the country from coast to coast. So we work with clients all over the place in the United States

[00:58:38.12] spk_0:
and what’s what’s the website for charity? CFO,

[00:58:40.91] spk_1:
yep, it’s the charity CFO dot com.

[00:58:44.29] spk_0:
Okay, I love I love Missouri because I lived for five years in Warrensburg. Warrensburg where where Whiteman Air Force Base is,

[00:58:53.37] spk_1:
I

[00:59:03.01] spk_0:
was in the Air Force for five years. So I lived in Warrensburg, we used to spend more time in Kansas city because it was closer but we went to some ball games in ST louis. Okay. All right. Uh Tasha Anderson, founder and Ceo of the charity CFO and Zani Miranda Operations Manager at nonprofit solutions. Thank you very much. Thanks for each of you sharing. Thank you.

[00:59:19.83] spk_1:
Got

[00:59:22.92] spk_0:
a great balance between professional C P A. And the the practicing learning client who’s who’s got some significant accounting responsibility but not a C P A. I love the balance. Thank you

[00:59:32.47] spk_1:
very much. Thank

[00:59:33.73] spk_2:
you. Thanks

[01:00:48.65] spk_0:
to our listeners for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. Thanks so much for being with us Next week. Our final 22. NTC show your tech problem is actually a people’s problem. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O. And by fourth dimension technologies. Their product is I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits, but they’ve got the free offer going on. So that is at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D just like three D. But they do want to mention deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for July 25, 2022: Cybersecurity 101

 

Matt Eshleman & Sarah Wolfe: Cybersecurity 101

Our #22NTC coverage picks back up with a summary of the tech threat landscape, key policies and procedures to have in place, and how to make the case for devoting resources to IT protection. Our guests are Matt Eshleman and Sarah Wolfe, both from Community IT Innovators.

 

 

 

 

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[00:02:05.14] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast my goodness. Last week’s show was great fun. They’re all fun. But the last weeks 600 show was great fun. Oh I’m glad you’re with me for this week’s fun show I’d be thrown into an echo Griffo sis if you clawed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, Cybersecurity 101. Our 22 NTC coverage picks back up with a summary of the tech threat, landscape key policies and procedures to have in place and how to make the case for devoting resources to IT protection. Our guests are matt Eshelman and Sara Wolfe, both from community I. T. Innovators, non tony steak too. My boys just cracked like I’m 14 years old, please start your plan giving with wills. We’re sponsored by turn to communications. Pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like 3D but they go one dimension deeper Here is cybersecurity 101. Welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 NTC. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. Our coverage brings me now Matt Eshelman chief technology officer at community I T innovators and Sara Wolf sales

[00:02:15.50] spk_1:
manager

[00:02:16.64] spk_0:
Also at Community I. T. Innovators. Matt serra. Welcome to non profit radio

[00:02:23.14] spk_1:
Thanks. tony It’s good to be here.

[00:02:25.34] spk_2:
Thank you. Glad

[00:02:42.84] spk_0:
to have you. Pleasure to have both of you. Um Your session topic is defending against Bogart’s and boogie men understanding and pitching cybersecurity for the accidental techie sarah. Why don’t you get us started? Let’s define accidental techie. I think we have a lot of them listening but they may not know it.

[00:03:13.44] spk_2:
Yeah so accidental techies are the people at an organization that are not necessarily somebody who’s been trained in I. T. But is relatively tech savvy and so they end up being the ones who help their coworkers with tech issues or are the ones that end up wearing the I. T. Support hat even though they might necessarily have they haven’t necessarily gone through professional training for it?

[00:03:32.14] spk_0:
Okay. Right so they know enough that they know more than others but they’re not they’re not professionally trained in technology. Okay and and matt why are why are Bogart’s and boogie men your your description says an accidental techies biggest nightmare what’s lurking there?

[00:03:38.23] spk_1:
Well I think yeah

[00:03:51.34] spk_0:
I don’t even know. Yeah I’m not even an accidental techie. Okay there’s the first problem you like you’re suffering a lackluster host obviously. Okay. Alright

[00:04:28.24] spk_1:
so they I think the takes the form of kind of your your biggest fear and so yeah whenever it appears it it shows up as as what you’re most afraid of um you know and I think for for folks that are supporting nonprofit organizations. Yeah there is this fear of of kind of what could be lurking out there, What kind of threats could impact your organization. Uh and for many folks, especially the accidental techies, they don’t have that background training and experience in terms of how to protect their organization. And so that’s why we wanted to to have that session to help provide some tools and equipment so that people that, you know, have that responsibility, but maybe not the training can pick up a few, a few tips.

[00:04:40.74] spk_0:
Okay. Why don’t you, why don’t you start us off? What would uh what would you like folks to know about that? They don’t know well enough, but they ought to.

[00:05:30.74] spk_1:
I mean, I think the biggest thing for for folks to understand is just I think the importance of what’s called multi factor authentication. So M. F. A. It’s often referred to uh it’s something that, you know, which is your password and then something that you have and for most folks that would be an app on their smartphone. Um and what this gives is an extra layer of protection, you know, we all know people’s passwords get compromised and and kind of stolen all the time. But if you can add that extra layer of, you know, an app on your phone to protect that login, then you’re much much less likely to have your account compromised. And kind of, what we see is that most compromises then, you know, will then lead to other things that you know have significant damage in terms of, you know, emailing, you know, all of the contacts in your organization’s database, uh sending out malicious links, you know, sending out updated payment information so that can kind of lead to a lot of other bad things. And so if we can protect that account with M. F. A. Then the organization becomes a lot more secure.

[00:05:46.54] spk_0:
Okay. And you’d like to see this mandatory? Not opt in

[00:06:16.74] spk_1:
that is exactly right. You know, Microsoft and the other big Um you know, tech providers are starting to enforce that now as a as a requirement, but if you’ve been in office 365 or if you’ve been in Google apps for a long time, uh it’s not required and it’s something that organizations need to take a couple of steps in order to set it up and roll all their staff provide training uh just to make sure that it’s set up and working correctly.

[00:06:27.54] spk_0:
Okay. So we should be doing it, we should be opting in where it’s optional and we should make make it mandatory if we’re the we’re wearing the hat of the uh the accidental techie,

[00:06:32.04] spk_1:
yep. Exactly. Right.

[00:06:37.94] spk_0:
All right. All right. Sarah, what else, what else can you share for? Are these folks

[00:08:13.14] spk_2:
I think for the next biggest thing uh is, you know, making sure that your staff, you know, are actually aware of the different security risks and things like that? Having a security awareness training program is one of the best ways to make sure that even if something, you can have all of the fancy tools in the world, every single like filter and everything, something’s going to slip through. And if you have staff that know what to look for and know not to click on something or not to go on that website or not to, you know, enter their information in various different places. Them having the knowledge is going to be one of the biggest returns on investment in terms of security, antivirus. Uh, we only, we had so few um, issues with antivirus last year, out of the 696 security incidents that we were dealing with, Only seven of them were viruses and only 45 of them were malware. And so it’s much more important for staff to be able to identify what’s a spam email, what, spearfishing. How can I tell if I’m looking at an email from somebody else whose account has been compromised and having the training to make them aware of. That is definitely worth the investment. And there are great tools out there, like, no before that, you know, are really easy to use.

[00:08:31.84] spk_0:
Okay. And so, uh, no, first of all, it was no before like K N O W K N O W before. Okay, I didn’t know about this, but I figured out no. Before. All right. But that’s not that’s not really saying much but any case. Um So is that a security training? Like is that online security training that folks can get it? No before or like how is this accidental techie gonna push this and and offer the training in their in their non profit

[00:10:02.94] spk_2:
That’s great. Yeah. So uh that’s a learning management software and that’s specifically for cybersecurity behaviors and tools. The way that you’re going to pitch this for your organization is to first gather your data, get your plan of attack. And a lot of times you know that involves one Looking for friends in the company to support you to getting data and you know trying to make sure that if you are able to um like find partners either within the organization or maybe even reach out to your board governance committee, um those people are going to be able to you know, help leverage some of the existing requirements that you have, if an organization needs to apply for cyber liability insurance a lot of times multifactor authentication is going to be one of the requirements. A staff security training is going to be one of the requirements. And so being able to leverage those and then putting it putting your plea into terms that people understand if your E. D. Is looking at, you know, what is the comparing the cost of of security, education software versus you know, financial compromise. Like there is a definite argument to be made there

[00:11:03.94] spk_0:
it’s time for a break. Turn to communications, media relations and thought leadership. Peter pan a pinto, a turn to partner was on last week. He’s a former journalist at the Chronicle of philanthropy. His partner scott is also a former journalist so they know what to do and what not to do to build relationships with journalists. Those relationships are going to get, you heard turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to cybersecurity 101 you mentioned cyber liability insurance. Is that is that something else? We should be flagging for these for these poor accidental turkeys.

[00:11:08.54] spk_2:
The

[00:11:08.75] spk_0:
beleaguered, beleaguered, accidental techies.

[00:12:16.64] spk_1:
Yeah. I think we’re seeing more and more organizations go through a cyber liability insurance kind of renewal process. Typically that’s something that’s handled by the, you know, the finance department of the organization. What we’re seeing is that, you know, for cyber liability insurance or even for financial audits, they’re becoming a lot more technical. And so it’s likely that if you’ve got any any tech aptitude at all, then you’re being enlisted to help fill out these applications to provide the detailed information that’s being requested. And so yeah, we’re seeing a lot more sophistication being, you know kind of demanded by these insurance companies in terms of, you know understanding which controls are in place because we’re seeing even cases where if you have not turned on multi factor authentication for all your your systems you won’t even be eligible for coverage. Uh and so it’s pretty dramatic that you know organizations are now being, you know, it’s a good idea to protect the organization, you know, for these cyber security controls. But there’s this also this extra layer of requirement from you know, insurance carriers now to say hey like you have to have this so we’re not gonna provide you insurance.

[00:12:40.94] spk_0:
Okay, okay. Sarah, let’s go back to you. I’d ask you about cyber liability insurance and then matt usurped unceremoniously uh usurped your your your your platform. So let’s go back to you what else, what else can you contribute for these for these folks?

[00:13:53.94] spk_2:
Yeah. So with with cyber liability insurance it’s something that oftentimes is getting you know much more of a top down decision making process. Somebody will have, you know, these things like the ransomware and and wire fraud and issues like that have been, we have bubbled up more inter in like the public awareness and so there’s a lot of top down pressure for these things to get adopted and you know there one of the things that they’re also going to ask for is you know, what are your plans? Do you have an acceptable use policy for your I. T. Do you have a plan for when something does go wrong, you know what do people know what to do, who to reach out to, what steps to take? You know because you know you you hope for the best to plan for the worst. And there are a lot of really good resources out there for developing these sorts of acceptable use policies for for creating incident response plans and you know you can um really it can get overwhelming sometimes the number of you know different resources that are available and what to use and what not to use. So you know partnering with somebody who does know you know a little bit more about cybersecurity or is providing that knowledge to the community. Um

[00:14:43.94] spk_0:
Let me guess that that that’s the work of community I. T. Innovators. Am I going out on a limb taking a taking a stab in the dark? Yes. Okay well we’ll get I’ll give you a chance for this for the shout out. Alright explanation. But I’m gonna ask you first what are what are some resources for folks? I mean I’m you got me feeling bad now for these people because we’re like we’re enhancing their to do list but this isn’t even their job that they’re paid for. But yeah we’re talking about looking into insurance and having policies and now now now they are now realizing they are beleaguered because it’s not even their job, they’re just got foisted on them because they know more than all the baby boomers in the

[00:14:53.77] spk_1:
office.

[00:14:56.64] spk_2:
Sometimes it is baby boomers who are accidental techies.

[00:14:59.85] spk_0:
All right. It’s probably not too often. Thank you for that, but probably not not too often. All right. But so what are some resources that folks can can rely on? You said there’s there are many, where can we look?

[00:15:14.44] spk_2:
So I’m going to start with the the self interest pitch first. Uh community I. T. Has a great um library of publicly available resources on our website and our Youtube channel um that are really great for digging into these kinds of things. Um A great

[00:15:30.38] spk_0:
places website. The website

[00:16:00.74] spk_2:
is uh community I. T. Dot com. Um and the one of the other places that I know that matt has as our cybersecurity expert has a lot of people start is with the cybersecurity framework by nest the um and that website have a link to it. It’s N I S T dot gov two slash cybersecurity framework.

[00:16:03.65] spk_0:
Okay. And I S T dot gov slash cybersecurity framework. So N I S. T. Obviously is a government agency, National Institute

[00:16:11.61] spk_1:
of Standards

[00:16:12.97] spk_2:
and Technology

[00:16:24.44] spk_0:
Technology. Thank you. So. Okay. Um Alright, so there’s a couple of resources um including community I. T. Innovators. Anything else you’d like to share with that folks can rely on?

[00:16:47.44] spk_1:
I’d say that there’s no shortage of resources out there. Techsoup is also a great resource. So in addition to the donations that I think we’re all familiar with Techsoup also has a courses and training and so they have some free resources that I would encourage folks to check out there. Um, so I think, yeah, there’s, there’s no shortage of resources that are out there to help people learn. I think, you know, the big, the big challenges is really putting it into action.

[00:17:16.24] spk_0:
What about a little uh, can we give some uh, psychological support to these beleaguered folks? Now? I’m telling you, you have me feeling very badly for them? Um, what we’ll get back to the to the bog arts and boogie men, I promise. But but uh, let’s let’s take a little digression to how we can support these folks other than recommending things for them to be aware of just like how can how can we support them otherwise.

[00:17:25.34] spk_2:
So I think that, you know, I’m trying not to turn this into a pitch for joint for having an MSP come in and like do you own this stuff for you? Because

[00:17:33.45] spk_0:
what’s an MSP

[00:17:34.70] spk_2:
MSP is a managed service provider.

[00:17:38.13] spk_0:
Thank you. That’s what you are

[00:17:40.09] spk_2:
support, we have

[00:17:41.20] spk_0:
drug in jail on non profit radio So yeah, but I, I saved you from from any any lengthy sentence. Okay, a managed service provider. Okay,

[00:18:35.14] spk_2:
so that is that is one of the ways you know that you can get support. The other thing is you know, really leaning on the rest of the community Text suit is a great place to look for resources and you know, the entire community is a place to ask questions. Um There are also you know on linkedin and facebook and places like that. There are communities that you can reach out to for wanting to event looking for ideas, looking for recommendations. Those are all um possibilities. I uh definitely enjoy seeing how many you know how ready people are when people post on the N 10 forums like I need help with this and like there are definitely people jumping on,

[00:19:12.74] spk_0:
it’s an enormously supportive community. Yeah I I fear that even though I say it a lot because amy sample Ward is on the show very often. She’s our technology contributor. Um and so she’s often saying it to that intent is not only for technologists but I I still think people have that misconception. Um It can be for folks who are not even you know not even responsible for technology in their office but they’re just using it. You know you’re just using it in your non profit and In 2022 like who is not using technology? I don’t think we’re running everything by index cards even if you’re on an excel spreadsheet, you’re still using technology. So.

[00:19:22.64] spk_2:
Yeah.

[00:22:28.84] spk_0:
Yeah. Well that yeah and line printers now you’re talking about when I went to college so be careful Sara it’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. You heard the four D. Ceo jug in last week. Talk about I. T. As a service for nonprofits. They know they’re in a service business. Their I. T. Infra in a box. The I. T. Buffet. If you will is structured around service, take what you need and what fits your budget, leave the rest behind. They know their work is to serve your I. T. Needs comes from the Ceo directly fourth dimension technologies tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper It’s time for Tony’s take two. This is my silver jubilee in planned giving and august is national make a will month next month. So let’s start talking about your planned giving program launch with wills wills. Why should you start your planned giving program with wills This week? three easy reasons. First they are the most popular planned gift by far expects 75-90% of your planned gifts forever to be the most simple planned gift. The gift by will. So it just makes sense to start with what’s gonna be At least three quarters of your gifts anyway Behind door number two there’s no donor education. Everybody knows what a will is. Everybody knows they need a will and everybody knows how will’s work. You don’t have to spend time and money educating donors explaining to them the concepts of life insurance as a planned gift or charitable gift annuities or remainder trusts. You’re sticking with the basics, something that everybody understands and Behind door number three there’s no staff education, everything I just said applies to your staff to everybody knows what wills are, everybody knows how they work and everybody knows that they need one. So you don’t have to train your staff on life insurance and gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts completely unnecessary. You’re starting with the basics and you may never ever decided to go further and that won’t matter. But the place to start is gifts by wills for those three reasons, three reasons for today in any case. And that is Tony’s take two. We’ve got just about a butt load more time for cybersecurity 101 with Matt Eshelman and Sara Wolf Matt.

[00:22:29.94] spk_2:
What

[00:22:30.17] spk_0:
else? Um, let’s go back to

[00:22:32.94] spk_2:
what,

[00:22:33.16] spk_0:
what we can the rockets and the boogie men that

[00:22:36.24] spk_1:
we want

[00:22:36.47] spk_0:
to help these folks look out for.

[00:23:01.04] spk_1:
Um, yeah, I would maybe also just kind of come back in terms of what’s good about investing in this training is that it’s, it’s good to see progress And I think that’s one of the benefits as Sarah mentioned the know before platform. It’s great. You know, spend a little bit of money to invest in a platform because then you can actually see the progress of, you know, how many people are taking and passing these little trainings and then know before does a little thing called test fishing and you can actually see the percentage change of how many people in your organization are kind of clicking on stuff that they shouldn’t. And so, you know, whenever you test, yes,

[00:23:34.04] spk_0:
it’s great test phishing emails to your enemies in the office, report them when they click, when they click after two days after the training and they click, you can, you can turn them in. Now organization advantage. Now there’s an advantage to being an accident that you’re no longer beleaguered. You’re empowered. Yes, send, send, send a, send a test phishing email to my boss who just turned me down for getting the day after christmas

[00:23:46.84] spk_1:
off. So

[00:23:47.30] spk_0:
yeah, so it’s great.

[00:24:31.44] spk_1:
You can, you know, you can see, you can see progress and so not all of cybersecurity is kind of like doom and gloom and you know, battening down the hatches, you know, against the onslaught. I think it can be fun. It can be engaging. You know, uh, you know, I think organizations that yeah, do elevate it. And it’s something that, you know, people can talk about and talk about openly as opposed to, you know, being being silenced and kind of feeling bad about themselves. If they, if they clicked on one of those messages, right? Like that’s not the approach you want to take. You want to take the approach of encouraging that learning because, you know, if you got caught by a suspicious message, uh, you know, it’s likely somebody else got that too. And so having this kind of culture of openness and engagement. Yeah, is really successful,

[00:24:37.54] spk_0:
right? I agree. Unless it’s your boss who turned you down for the day after christmas, that then it’s then it’s vindictive reported

[00:24:40.64] spk_1:
to the board.

[00:24:49.24] spk_0:
Yes. Oh, without a doubt. So All right, well let’s stay with you matt. What else? Um what else can we? Yeah,

[00:26:00.74] spk_1:
I think the other thing that we started to see more of would be kind of financial fraud or what’s kind of called in the, I think the official terminology wire fraud. So you know, it could be something as simple as those messages people get, you know, that look like they’re coming from the executive director saying, hey, I just need you to buy these gift cards. Call me real quick. I got something for you to do. You know, we’ve seen people get caught up by that, you know, even to more sophisticated cases where people are getting tricked by well crafted emails that say, oh, I need to update my payment information or hey, we’ve got a grantee and they had a problem with their bank account and here’s the new bank account information. So uh you know, that kind of falls into an area where it’s, it’s not just a technology control. You know, there isn’t some product that you can buy that’s gonna magically make that go away. Um but it’s a combination of having training, maybe having some good spam filtering tools in place, but then also having some policy and procedures so that you’re talking about that with your finance department, uh, so that you, you have good processes in place. So it’s payments aren’t made just by one person making a change, but there’s some some review and some betting maybe we need to call somebody. So I think again, it’s it’s not just technology solutions, but really that that kind of the people in process comes in into these equations as well.

[00:26:22.74] spk_0:
It seems like they’re getting more sophisticated. Uh, the little savvy er like uh your your account renewed for $399, you know, click here to see the invoice. You know, I don’t know, they just seem, they seem like they’re improving

[00:27:35.94] spk_1:
well. And I think you’ve identified a key understanding is that uh this is this is a cyber crime. This is a criminal enterprise, right? This is financially motivated. And the bad guys are doing it, you know, not just to kind of go in and wreak havoc on your network, but they’re doing it to make money. Uh and so I think that’s also helpful for organizations to keep in mind, right? You know, you can be the greatest nonprofit in the world and be, you know, have the most noble mission. No, they’re not attacking you because of your mission. They’re attacking you because you have money and, and you might get tricked into yeah, doing that $399 renewal or maybe you updated a payment information and and that was $25,000. And so uh, you know, the mission, you know, does not matter For those, uh, you know, cyber criminals who are financially motivated and it’s a lot easier to, to kind of trick somebody into giving you $400 than it is to, you know, write some super sophisticated virus that’s gonna go on to your computer and encrypt all your files. Then you’re gonna have to try to figure out how to pay them in Cryptocurrency. Yeah. It’s just, it’s a lot easier to try to trick people into giving you money than it is to write, write a new virus. Yeah.

[00:27:49.14] spk_0:
Okay. And then of course there is the community of nonprofits that, that are at risk because of their mission. And because you know, we’re living in a polarized time. It’s, it’s no longer

[00:27:54.27] spk_1:
just

[00:27:55.34] spk_0:
um, hot button issues, you know, like gun rights or, or abortion.

[00:28:00.21] spk_1:
I mean,

[00:28:06.74] spk_0:
it seems like a lot of missions could trigger someone to do something malicious, you know, technology wise. Uh,

[00:28:27.94] spk_1:
yeah, I would say so. We really see that, um, primarily for organizations that are in the space kind of like government think tanks, policy groups, you know, kind of good good government. Those tend to be the kind of attack attract the most attention. Um, and then I think organizations that work on, you know, human sexuality and uh, you know, family planning and abortion services like are in that category as well. Right,

[00:28:39.24] spk_0:
Sarah, let’s turn back to

[00:28:40.94] spk_1:
you, what,

[00:28:41.21] spk_0:
what, what more can you share with us?

[00:31:26.84] spk_2:
Well the one of the things that you know in in that theme of you know it is financial, these these this has become a business enterprise and it’s become you know not necessarily organized crime but it has become something that is a multibillion dollar business. And um That is something that we’ve definitely seen. We’ve seen an increase in the number of incidents that we end up responding to like from 2018 to 2021. The number of cybersecurity incidents is that that community I. T. Was able to track tripled. And so you know there isn’t a way to really fly under the radar anymore and you’re right, these people are getting smarter. It’s not just all Nigerian princes looking for for oil or gold or whatever. It’s you know, there have been times where you know, we’ve seen examples that have been caught in the tools or that did get through and did nearly create an issue. And I sat there and looked at the email chain and I was like, I can’t tell where this jumped in and then you like have to like really highlight and look in and look in the details and you go, oh, oh okay. Like there was just like a one letter change in somebody’s email address, you know, or and like that can you know if if you don’t have the training and you’re not necessarily aware of that stuff and then the redundancy that that matt was talking about um making sure that, you know, it isn’t just up that that all of the keys to the castle aren’t in one person’s hands. Uh so that you can, you know, make sure that there’s additional eyes to see, you know, what you missed or to make sure that this is the real deal is, you know, really important. Um you know what, it’s, it’s definitely a frame of mind thing. You don’t want to be constantly consumed with worry and you know, be paranoid about everything and because that just takes, we’ve got a whole lot of other things going on in the world right now that we don’t need to be panicking about cyber security all the time and just doing a few relatively low cost things can really help with peace of mind. And you know, it’s worth taking the time, you know, penny wise, pound foolish is one of the other sayings that comes around a lot, you know, just to make sure that, You know, you don’t end up having to deal with a $25,000 wire fraud

[00:31:30.01] spk_0:
issue sarah. What were some of the questions that you got from the accidental Tuckey folks who were watching,

[00:31:38.84] spk_2:
they

[00:31:38.91] spk_0:
were with you?

[00:32:14.44] spk_2:
Yeah, there were some questions on like where do we start, like how do I like uh we, we pointed people to the Nist Nist framework has a chess checklist um of things that you can start thinking about and looking at as you know, places to start. There were also um questions about how do I how do I make sure that I can, you know, convince my my edie about this and

[00:32:18.14] spk_0:
leadership by in

[00:33:06.84] spk_2:
leadership buy in and you know, we really for that we really said, you know, try if if if if you’re, if you’re leadership isn’t necessarily into it, you have to get like there’s no right or wrong way to go about things that can be top down, it can be bottom up but making sure that if it’s something where your leadership isn’t as invested, making sure you gather allies, you gather allies and you gather financially focused um data to back you up. You know, cyber security is getting more frequent and it is getting more costly to have to address issues after the fact. And so, you know, those were, you know, some of the really big questions and focuses

[00:33:34.34] spk_0:
you and you had mentioned allies early on the value of having having friends uh sympathetic to the to the cause all you know, making this case together to to the ceo or wherever it needs to go. Um All right, matt you want to leave us with some well matt, let me ask you any questions that you uh that that Sarah didn’t mention that you, that that hit you as particularly interesting important.

[00:34:43.34] spk_1:
Um I think it’s important for for folks to to realize that, you know, just because their data in the cloud doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s, it’s backed up or it’s protected in a way that they, that they think it is. And so I think, you know, nonprofits have done a really great job of getting their data in the cloud platforms. You know, there’s been a lot of great donation programs and discounts and so non profits, I think have done a really good job of technology adoption. Um, but what we see is that they haven’t been maybe as strict on kind of the policy and the governance and some of the other supporting, you know, processes. So we think it’s really important that you understand where your data is and understand how it’s protected and just make sure that that lines up with what you, you know, your organization expects, you know, is it okay if somebody downloads all of your organization data on their personal computer? Like is that an okay thing to have happened? Let’s make, let’s make sure that we talk about it and understand that, uh, you know, and I think the same thing goes again, you know, if somebody deletes a file today, do we need to be able to recover it, You know, a day from now, 30 days from now, a year from now. And so I think just having some of those baseline settings and kind of testing them is a really important step to take

[00:35:01.54] spk_0:
backup recovery. You know those are not necessarily covered by just being in the being in the cloud and how what’s the time to recover?

[00:35:22.44] spk_1:
Right. Yeah. So I think a lot of those, you know quote unquote old school you know security methods or techniques are still important even if you’ve got your date in the clouds again having that third party backup, having an offline copy. Uh those are all really important steps to take to make sure that your organization’s data is well protected.

[00:35:24.94] spk_2:
Okay.

[00:35:26.14] spk_1:
All

[00:35:29.04] spk_0:
right. Why don’t we leave it there then? I feel like we’ve covered this.

[00:35:31.14] spk_2:
I

[00:35:31.51] spk_1:
think we’ve got the foundational element. Is

[00:35:41.34] spk_0:
there anything alright, is there anything on your mind just like oh wait I gotta get this in. Is there anybody, I

[00:35:41.67] spk_1:
mean I’ll put in a plug for multi factor authentication again I think it’s worth saying at least a couple more times

[00:35:46.63] spk_0:
because

[00:35:47.47] spk_1:
it’s the it’s the most important step that that that many organizations can take.

[00:35:54.74] spk_0:
Okay Sarah parting thought

[00:36:16.33] spk_2:
just gonna emphasize what matt said about the managed backup just now um you know it’s really important to know your settings and to discuss them because you know a lot of times data loss is actually accidental and so if you have a way to get it back that can save you a whole lot of heartache and headache.

[00:36:20.38] spk_0:
Okay we want to avoid

[00:36:22.00] spk_1:
both. Thank

[00:36:34.53] spk_0:
you that’s Sara Wolf sales manager at community I. T. Innovators and also matt Eshelman Chief technology officer at community I. T. Innovators. Sarah matt, thank you both very much.

[00:36:37.33] spk_2:
Thank you so much.

[00:36:38.26] spk_1:
Thanks tony it’s good to get to talk to you.

[00:36:39.97] spk_0:
All right, pleasure and thank you for being

[00:36:42.51] spk_1:
with

[00:38:02.03] spk_0:
nonprofit radio coverage of 22 N. T C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference. I’m glad you’re with us next week tech policies to reduce toxic productivity. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. This is # 601 by the way, I don’t know if you’re counting. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. And by 4th dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go on to mention deeper. Our creative producer is claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez, marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein yeah thank you for that. Affirmation scotty be with me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. Mhm. Mhm

Nonprofit Radio for June 13, 2022: Appealing To Tomorrow’s Major Donors

 

Nejeed Kassam: Appealing To Tomorrow’s Major Donors

There’s $50 trillion set to change hands in North America by 2050, enriching today’s millennials and Generation Z. Let’s talk about cultivation and fundraising strategies to reach these generations. My guest is Nejeed Kassam from Keela. (This is part of our coverage of #22NTC, hosted by NTEN.)

 

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[00:01:40.64] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with blended vaginitis. If you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show appealing to tomorrow’s major donors, There’s $50 trillion North America by 2050 enriching today’s millennials and generation Z let’s talk about cultivation and fundraising strategies to reach these generations. My guest is Najid Kassem from kila. This is part of our coverage of the 2022 non profit technology conference hosted by N 10 On Tony’s take two. Trepidation about new york city, we’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o And by 4th dimension technologies I. T infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Just like 3D but they go one dimension deeper here is appealing to tomorrow’s major donors. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10 with me now is Najid Qasem Ceo and founder of Kayla Najid, welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:02:18.54] spk_1:
Thanks so much Tony and just for the folks that are listening because I might have a conflict I’m also on the board of directors at N10 and so really really proud to be part of the governance team at antenna and grateful to all of those of you who attended NTC this past, I guess almost a month ago now. Wonderful.

[00:02:31.14] spk_0:
Thank you for thank you for letting me know. We have Miko Whitlock and Jason shim. I have to see if they’re still on, but we’ve got, we’ve got Beth Kanter coming up. Um,

[00:02:32.86] spk_1:
I mean those are, those are my people, that’s my tribe. So you’ve got a great, great lineup coming up

[00:02:57.34] spk_0:
well. And you’re on the, you’re on the board of a terrific organization. Any sample ward is our technology and social media contributor. So she’s on many times a year sharing her wisdom on, on those subjects. We’re gonna talk about your seminar topic. Great transfer of wealth, how to reach the next generation.

[00:03:00.54] spk_1:
Absolutely.

[00:03:07.04] spk_0:
And you say you’re in your description that there’s a $50 trillion dollar transfer coming. What’s, what’s on the horizon?

[00:04:22.34] spk_1:
Well, you know, I think a lot of the topic is just about the fact that boomers and those, the generation, the great generations as I like to call them, are starting to, to, to find peace and move on to whatever happens in the next stage of our lives and you know, as well as they pass our grand, my grandparents passed away. Um, the last couple of years and you see that generation, my parents are starting to get older and thinking about the next, you know, the next chapter of their lives and so for those of us that are gen, x, gen y and I guess gen z is now, um, you know, a lot of money ultimately is going to transfer between generations, the boomers and their parents Postwar really generated absurd amounts, like, like, you know, unthinkable amounts of wealth and, and that’s all transferring and there’s a bunch of really interesting factors that are, that are going to change how giving is done. What’s gonna happen to that? Just the demographic, you know, general demographics in the United States and so, you know, a lot of money is going to change hands and, and that’s going to have a profound impact on getting because for a whole host of reasons we’ll talk about today.

[00:04:25.00] spk_0:
Yeah, So you’re expecting that millennials are going to grow the

[00:04:28.50] spk_1:
wealth that’s

[00:04:30.28] spk_0:
left to them. Well, if they spend it, then we’re hoping they’re gonna be giving it away because otherwise we have nothing to talk about it. If they’re all buying super yachts, then you and I may as well end right now, shut the mics

[00:04:43.04] spk_1:
off. I mean, for the sake of humanity, I really hope that they’re not just buying superyachts. How about that?

[00:04:49.40] spk_0:
Okay, right. Super yachts, private

[00:04:51.42] spk_1:
islands.

[00:04:53.18] spk_0:
You and I

[00:04:54.38] spk_1:
can’t possibly conceive of tony

[00:05:04.04] spk_0:
Okay, I hope not. I hope it doesn’t go that way. Alright. Otherwise, like I said, you know, you and I are done in three minutes. Okay, let’s go on the safe assumption on the humanitarian and um magnanimous assumption that uh, they’re gonna be giving a lot of this wealth away and, and they’ll be growing it too. Right?

[00:05:16.14] spk_1:
Absolutely.

[00:05:21.44] spk_0:
So you’re encouraging us to focus well before we get to the, you know, what to do, how to reach these folks.

[00:05:25.94] spk_1:
What

[00:05:41.94] spk_0:
are, what are some of these factors that you alluded to? Why are you expecting? Why? I think the, the estimates I’ve seen of transfer from baby boomers to millennials is not 50 trillion. I’ve seen 20-30 trillion or something like that. But you’re saying so in

[00:06:00.54] spk_1:
20, in 2014, um, um, For Boston College or some researchers at Boston College did a research and their prediction was 58 trillion would, would be transferred to the next gen. And that I think it includes gen x and gen y and ultimately gen z. So it’s not just millennials would be in the amount of 58 trillion, but when we’re talking 30 40 50 ultimately, I think it’s the same. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a huge amount of money.

[00:06:28.14] spk_0:
It is. Okay. And so you’d like us to approach are younger donors Because we’re talking about, we’re talking about anybody 60 and under, where, you know, I

[00:06:41.44] spk_1:
would say like when does gen x start 50 and under maybe probably 55. I don’t know whatever gen x is. But yes, I think millennials are the the the most commonly, um, the most commonly thought about populist, But ultimately I think, you know, the age of the internet, the age of artificial intelligence, all of these kinds of things are, are, are ushering in new ways to engage donors. And I think that’s the crux of it.

[00:06:59.74] spk_0:
Okay, okay, now you’re using millennials and gen X interchangeably.

[00:07:18.54] spk_1:
No, No, No Gen X is what 1965-1980? Millennials are 1982, Some say 2000, some say 96. And then gen, Gen Z is people that are too young for me to think about.

[00:07:31.34] spk_0:
Okay, we’re not there yet. Um, Alright, what, what’s your, what’s your advice around talking to these? Um, millenials and gen xers?

[00:09:03.54] spk_1:
Yeah, I think you asked a great question previously and I’ll get to this question, but let’s talk about why they’re different because I think that’s really important to note. There’s a few factors that are, that are super interesting. The first one is, household sizes are smaller and you might think, why does that matter? Well, there are fewer millennials and gen Z s than there were their parents. And so between, I think it’s from 1962 around today or 2018 or whenever this data was published, Household size in the us has gone from 3.6 people per family to 3.1 people. Now that might be only half a person, but that’s a substantial number of people. And what it means is the people inheriting money are actually gonna be fewer, right in terms of their populace, but they’re gonna have more capacity in terms of their wealth. And so I think this data point is actually quite um, it’s interesting, it’s a little bit terrifying in some ways because you know, you’re gonna organizations, the sector as a whole is going to have to seek, you know, a a lot more from individual people as opposed to being able to diversify in the same way. I think that’s a very interesting piece of data and one that I think is going to change the dynamic, especially of major gifts because, you know, currently you think about the people, the high net worth individuals, the families, they care about health care or they care about this or there’s a lot of yours, Right? I think with that next generation there’s gonna be a lot of ants because there’s less people inheriting larger amounts of money. And I think excuse me, that’s quite profound. Don’t you think tony I

[00:09:25.94] spk_0:
do. I think I have a person, times tens, the many tens of millions of exactly that we have in this country that’s significant. Uh, you know, we’ve always thought of the average family as, you know, a family of four. All right, so you’re saying

[00:09:28.56] spk_1:
you’re

[00:09:41.34] spk_0:
saying the average is 3.6, but look 3.6 rounds to 43.1, barely, barely, barely three. So, you know, with 3.6 and four, 3.1 is a big difference.

[00:10:03.74] spk_1:
Absolutely. And think about it like this, if somebody, you know, earns $250 million over their life and they built a portfolio of real estate and wealth and influence ultimately. And they take that and they go to one kid, okay, let’s say each kid, you know, 100 25 million, but when one child is inheriting all that money, your major donor pool is ultimately getting smaller and and so now they have more power, they have more influence, they have actually ability to write bigger checks, but organizations are gonna have to do better at collaborating to generate these things because whether we like to admit it or not in the sector, tony

[00:10:20.21] spk_0:
Another, the other 125 million goes to the Super Yacht.

[00:10:23.84] spk_1:
Of course, sorry, tony slipped my mind. So

[00:10:27.56] spk_0:
there we are. So we’re done again again, we’re done. One kid and one super yacht, there’s your 250. Alright,

[00:10:33.59] spk_1:
You just you just cut generosity and a half and I think we started, Alright,

[00:10:37.34] spk_0:
let’s reduce the super yacht, you know, let’s say in

[00:10:40.44] spk_1:
70

[00:10:44.94] spk_0:
five, let’s do 75 million on the Super Yacht. Another 50. Another 50 to be very generous

[00:12:26.14] spk_1:
with. I’m gonna cut you off because I’d like to share a couple more pieces of data that are useful. The first one, is that, Is that migration has changed over the past kind of 30, 40 years Kids or kids in that 3.1 case right, families are actually staying more geographically close together. And that was especially heightened during the pandemic, where 52% of people aged 18 or 29 were actually at home with their folks in 2020. Now, if you look at data from Um, I think it’s 2004 is when it starts people, both seniors. And so like the parents of these boomers who many of them have passed now, but also the kids of these boomers are staying closer together, which means, you know, they’re more integrated into their families. And what that at least the research that we read and I understood or interpreted was that that can actually mean that maybe people are more aligned with their parents, beliefs or they’re more engaged with them? Or at least they certainly know their parents interests better. Now. The question we’re going to have to figure out is is that going to make them more likely to continue the legacies? Let’s say I I’m I’m let’s say there’s a high net worth family. Okay. And they’ve spent years giving to poverty alleviation? Well, these kids or kids that inherit this money because they’re closer to those parents, both geographically and, you know, in many other ways, are they going to continue that legacy? Are they going to rebel against it when they give? And it’s a question we don’t know the answer to, but it’s an interesting piece of data well,

[00:12:31.04] spk_0:
which also leads to, uh, you know, our our subject of appealing to these

[00:12:32.07] spk_1:
folks

[00:13:45.64] spk_0:
so that they don’t, by default, abandon the philanthropy of their, of their parents. I mean, they may do it consciously, but you don’t want it to just happen because you never gave it a shot to, to avoid it from happening. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They’ll develop your media strategy for you. What are the parts of that? It starts with identifying your core messages then defining those channels, those outlets where those messages ought to be heard. The places where you want to be known as a thought leader turn to will do the legwork to approach those outlets and as they close opportunities for you, craft your message appropriately to the specific audience you’re gonna be talking to. That is a media strategy. That’s what turned to communications can do for you because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O now back to appealing to tomorrow’s major donors because I want to keep talking about the trends before we get to the Yeah. And I think there’s one

[00:14:14.84] spk_1:
interesting one that we can’t forget and that’s women outlive men, um, by like, I think it’s like five years on average in the US now. So it’s like, that’s a, that’s like, you know, a meaty 56789% of people’s lives. Right? And so it’s interesting because unlike, you know, unlike, unfortunately similar to many other things in our history, you’ve kind of focused on like older white men that’s been like, you know, kind of it’s you see it in representation in politics on boards of directors and ceo position in funding for investments, whatever it might be.

[00:14:27.65] spk_0:
Call it what it is. We’re talking about sexism.

[00:15:27.04] spk_1:
Sure, look, I’m a person of color. I I don’t and my wife’s a person of color who is a woman. She has it way worse tonight. Right? And so the interesting thing is my wife’s gonna be gonna outlive me almost for certain. I mean for sure in my case, but, you know, demographically as well. And so philanthropy forget about just the transfer of wealth. The transfer of wealth is going to be inter mediated by the transfer from men who are dying at, you know, whatever 70 something to women who are probably dying 56 years later. And so philanthropy is going to be affected by the fact that decision making historically and giving has been made by the primary breadwinners. But as we see more women taking positions and leadership making more money. We see women inheriting money, they’re gonna give differently. And I don’t think we exactly know how that is yet. But that’s like I said, it’s like a stepping in the in the in the transfer, right? So I did a point that’s super relevant to this conversation.

[00:15:40.94] spk_0:
There is research about the way women give being different than the way men give. They want to be more involved. Uh, they were more involved in in how the money is used. Um, it’s less transactional for them. And uh,

[00:15:45.73] spk_1:
that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.

[00:16:06.54] spk_0:
Yeah. And um, they like, you know, they like to have more of a role in how it’s spent. Um, and it’s, yeah, I don’t, I think there’s, there’s other research to that. They like to be not only involved in how what their gift is is going to do, but be involved in the organization generally. So maybe they’re giving they’re giving what we’re talking about major donors, I think is what

[00:16:17.80] spk_1:
the research

[00:16:18.85] spk_0:
research is. Um, but they’ll also be, they’ll increase their volunteering with your

[00:16:23.94] spk_1:
organization, which

[00:16:27.64] spk_0:
may have nothing at all to do with their giving. Uh, they again, less transactional more, much more relational when it’s when

[00:16:33.69] spk_1:
it’s and I think what’s interesting is like, there isn’t much data on that yet, Right. Because of the demographic realities and the power dynamics that have been so, so unfortunate. And so you see

[00:16:44.44] spk_0:
like, Yeah,

[00:16:50.04] spk_1:
and that’s, I think you’re gonna see more of the research and ultimately more from that because it’s valuable, you know,

[00:17:00.64] spk_0:
the sexism in fundraising is, uh, I think long standing and obviously shortsighted, um, not just in fundraising, right.

[00:17:03.23] spk_1:
tony and everything, to be honest.

[00:17:05.64] spk_0:
Absolutely, yeah.

[00:18:37.84] spk_1:
But what’s interesting is there’s also been and I’m not, you know, I want to kind of move on because there’s also been quite a significant ageism in fundraising. You said it yourself, we spend, what is it 80% of our time on the top? 20% of donors? I think that’s the math that everyone teaches at fundraising school. Um, but what’s interesting is that’s shortsighted ultimately. Yes, I understand it completely. I really do. But what is interesting is, and this is something I touched on in my lecture 10 10 was, you know, the investment in youth giving has actually been minimal to be honest, because it hasn’t seen us providing as much instant return on investment, which is true. It’s a long game, not a short game, right? And but youth, the youth, especially in the context of this transfer of wealth, are going to inherit all that money. And if you haven’t laid your groundwork, you can’t suddenly show up at their door and young people giving even if they don’t have wealth yet or at all. But yet for the sake of this conversation is different. A couple of interesting trends. The first one is young people and I say this millennials I think is the research that I’m quoting are much more influenced by their peers. So young people, I think the data point is our 46% more likely to donate if a co worker does and 65% more likely to volunteer if a co worker does. That’s fascinating to me because it actually it’s a social activity in a weird way. You know, the power, you know, we’ll talk about social media maybe in a bit. But that’s interesting. The second data

[00:18:45.66] spk_0:
point. That’s Yeah. So that’s just that’s co workers, not even necessarily friends.

[00:18:51.84] spk_1:
I assume the data is similar for friends,

[00:18:55.34] spk_0:
friends giving up their birthdays, friends doing peer to peer campaigns.

[00:19:06.54] spk_1:
Well, I think, and I think I have a peer to peer data point that in my notes, let me just see if I can pull it up. I’ll see if I can find it. But let’s keep going. Yeah,

[00:19:12.64] spk_0:
Okay. But coworkers. That’s that’s quite an affinity for co worker giving.

[00:20:19.84] spk_1:
But and you know, we see it, look, I have a lot of young millennials in all my staff and they’re wonderful and amazing people and they’re definitely, you know, whenever something personal giving, that’s the other point. The second point, this is actually a nice segue giving us much more personal to millennial generation. And that has a couple of ramifications for example, to segue from our previous conversation When you know, we have, I think we have staff from 15 countries at Kayla um, on our team born who are born in 15 countries. And so, you know, whether it’s an issue area they care about or something happening in in a in a home or or former place of theirs, they share the plight and also opportunities to engage, right? I think this is a beautiful part of our culture because it helps, you know, But I can, I can watch this in action. I can see I’ve made donations because our coworkers feels an affinity or a passion or, or a sense of connection to a cause. And so, you know, I think that is interesting because I’ve watched it kind of firsthand, right, tony I think that’s super. That’s it kind of reinforces from a non data perspective kind of qualitatively exactly what this data point is showing

[00:20:51.14] spk_0:
interest. But I think, you know, what else, you know, uh, anecdotally I’m a young baby boomer and I’ve never done that. I’ve never given because a coworker gate, I mean I haven’t, haven’t had coworkers for something like 20 years, but back when I did for the short time that I did and I could stand being an employee of someone else. I, I never gave for that reason.

[00:22:47.24] spk_1:
Well, and I think the social media thing is, is I can’t find the data point and I apologize, but I think it’s essentially the same thing. It’s that folks are influenced, not in a bad way, but like folks are inspired is a better way to put it from their communities ultimately. And it’s not church or synagogue or mosque or united way as much or community centers anymore. It’s what they’re seeing on social media, what matters most of their friends and what that actually is kind of segue. Me too is that they’re giving is much more personal for millennials than it was. You know I say our generation I’m right at the cusp of being a millennial but I consider myself at least emotionally outside of it. And so things like organizational status, tax deductibility, organizational legitimacy are much less at the forefront of their decision making. They you know the rise of go fund me where people are giving to people directly the rise of um of of of not having the intermediary of an organization. Um the rise of not carrying the fact that they’re not going to get a tax receipt which is gonna offset a percentage of their donations. Millennials aren’t necessarily looking for that break or something tangible. They want that feeling of making an impact right? There’s a huge feel. It’s it’s why we see the rise of you know be corpse attracting more staff and the why that almost every millennial says when you’re looking for a job impact is a part of that calculus. And so you see those I’m gonna go out and say values of a generation applying themselves or or or or showing their face in giving in a very different way from from me and you and our parents and I think that’s very interesting.

[00:24:09.24] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. Their I. T. Solution is I. T. Infra in a box it’s the I. T. Buffet, it’s budget friendly. It’s holistic. You pick what you need and you leave the rest behind the different components that are available. I. T. Assessment, multi factor authentication for security, other security methods, cost analysis of where you’re standing, what you’re spending money on the help desk and there’s more you choose what’s right for your I. T. Budget for your I. T. Situation as it exists. Like they’ll help you fill the gap between where you are and where you want to be. That’s the I. T. Infra in a box. Fourth dimension technologies tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return to appealing to tomorrow’s major donors. Let’s turn to what nonprofits can do to huh exploit this and using exploitation as in a non pejorative sense. Take advantage of or

[00:24:09.64] spk_1:
C the opportunity I think.

[00:24:15.14] spk_0:
Yeah in the data and then the and then the trend.

[00:24:17.12] spk_1:
Yeah.

[00:24:18.01] spk_0:
And you know I think enormous wealth transfer. So let’s talk about the

[00:26:02.74] spk_1:
really low hanging fruit like the most boring fruit that you could possibly and and and that’s like you know when high net worth individuals give for major donors for major giving. Excuse me as major donors. They don’t see it as I. Samuel l smith is making the donation. It’s me the smith on behalf of my family. The smith family. It’s a family. There’s so much of that family legacy idea and so when organizations are so privileged to get those kinds of donations don’t just look at Sam look at SAm’s wife and look at Sam’s kids and make those connections with the family and that’s for two reasons. One, it’s the right thing to do. Super obvious. But to it’s actually laying the groundwork for, for relationships in the future, share the impact being made, engage the families, the kids. Especially because if you want to get another gift, if you want to, you know, create opportunity from that, it’s going to happen likely either when the donor dies and his or her wife does it or husband, but much more likely their kids continuing that legacy. So engage with them. Like that’s not hard. It’s like, you know, bring them, bring them in, engage them, take them out to lunch instead of just the major donor or the couple or whatever it is. It’s an easy thing to do is encouraging families to come and come around recognizing the families, not just the person and then offering entry points for the kids to um, to engage the organization as volunteers. You know, we talked in the, in the lecture and, and Nathaniel gave a great example about youth councils and, you know, bringing on kind of communities or boards of youth. Often the kind of, yeah, kind

[00:26:08.60] spk_0:
of advisory like

[00:26:09.50] spk_1:
engagement boards I think would be the best way to put it. But yeah,

[00:26:13.03] spk_0:
I’m,

[00:26:15.91] spk_1:
I’m just in our notes, we call them like youth, hold on. I’ll find the exact term we used.

[00:26:22.30] spk_0:
I

[00:26:22.64] spk_1:
think they’re called youth councils,

[00:26:24.24] spk_0:
you’ve counted. But what you would call them for the folks. Youth council,

[00:26:27.60] spk_1:
right?

[00:26:40.94] spk_0:
You want that, you want that perspective in your, in your event planning, certainly in your event planning, but in your fundraising, you know, you may, you may not be thinking of peer to peer well,

[00:26:41.52] spk_1:
and that’s actually my next point

[00:26:43.60] spk_0:
Are in their 30s and 40s, you may not be taking a peer to peer campaigns.

[00:28:54.04] spk_1:
And I have a feeling a big part of there’s a, there’s a symbiosis between that data point on giving from coworkers and peer to peer. So peer to peer kind of had a lot of sex appeal a few years ago, and then people were like, is it that valuable? I’m here to say peer to peer is phenomenally valuable, but not necessarily because people think it is or thought it was. I think a lot of people thought, oh, it’s gonna spike our donation. I’m in it for the long game here. To me, Pierre, Pierre is an entry point to engagement with an entirely new group of donors. I think the numbers in the 80% of people who give through a peer to peer campaign are first time donors to the cause. And, and if you don’t store them effectively, which we can talk about later or on another show or I’m sure you have really qualified folks talking about it, you’re gonna lose that donor to bring them into your giving ecosystem as an organization, but they are an entry point where somebody else is doing the lead generation for you, right? Ultimately that giving about coworkers, I give to every single period of your campaign. One of my staff’s writing in a, you know, um, cycling in an event or running a race or I don’t know whatever it might be. That’s an entry point. That’s an entry point. And it’s an entry point to diversify your donor base to access new donors to get your giving list up and, and we all know in the space, the donor retention is a lot cheaper than donor acquisition. Every data, like there’s absurd amounts of data that show that and peer to peer is a great example and, and it’s how you engage a generation and I’m gonna take it a step further. Millennials like to feel agency, they want to be part of something that goes back to that feeling that personal nature of it. When you get folks engaging with peer to peer, what you’re doing is not just getting money. You’re, you’re, you’re building advocates right? Like the youth council, but much more scalable, ultimately right. You’re getting perspective, you’re building advocates, you’re, you’re finding new ways to get into communities and you’re ultimately empowering social media to do the work for you and why wouldn’t you do that? And I think it doesn’t have to be a big event or a race. It can be, you know, that we can use peer to peer much more creatively to, to think about the long term opportunities, does that make sense? tony I

[00:29:21.34] spk_0:
had a guest, yes, it does have a guest who used the example of a local animal shelter they hosted a dog wedding for and, and you know, again an event to attract younger donors and, and it was phenomenally successful. I know you said it to my

[00:29:44.94] spk_1:
staff, they would all go like all these, it’s just, that’s a lot of them have dogs and you know, you know, it is what it is and it’s, it’s wonderful for them cause a lot of them are having kids, right? tony look at that number kid that 3.6 to 3.1 that someone’s not having Children and so, but that’s a way to encourage an entire demographic, you probably would, wouldn’t get to otherwise. I think that’s brilliant. It’s brilliant.

[00:29:51.44] spk_0:
Her other idea was a bark mitzvah.

[00:29:53.74] spk_1:
I’m

[00:29:57.81] spk_0:
trying

[00:29:59.08] spk_1:
to make a joke with mazel tov like,

[00:30:04.45] spk_0:
like

[00:30:05.12] spk_1:
it’s there, it’s there,

[00:30:19.34] spk_0:
it was all about to share that with her. Um, yeah, very good, very good, very good. Um, yeah, as somebody who thinks that the only good puns are the ones that I think of, but I thought I thought bark mitzvah was very good, yes muzzle top outstanding, very good, very good. Alright, tony I told

[00:30:28.50] spk_1:
you I have now been a dad for two years and so my dad joke. This is just, it’s, it’s coming, it’s rising, you know?

[00:30:40.34] spk_0:
Well you’re still just approaching it because is very good. When the jokes start to be about your genes, you know, then then then they’re then they’re tired. They’re

[00:30:47.42] spk_1:
tired. You’re

[00:30:59.84] spk_0:
just you’re just approaching but but you’re still in the you’re still in the humorous category and not high rolling. You’re not, you haven’t, you haven’t transcended into the eye rolling. Alright.

[00:31:00.18] spk_1:
There’s two more topics I want to touch on briefly before we run out of time.

[00:31:17.24] spk_0:
We have time. Okay. Wait, are these still in the category of what nonprofits can do to, to attract and appeal to and or steward, you mentioned stewardship I want to, you know what be doing do talk

[00:32:23.04] spk_1:
about? I think there’s two factors that we all that. So I I don’t know if this is a do and bring me back onto shore if you need me to. But let’s talk about family foundation and donor advised funds for a second because engaging both of these things is actually critical to capitalizing on the opportunity of of the transfer of wealth. So, you know, for whatever tax reasons, right. A lot of folks might build family foundations or or engage with staff so that they can receive the tax benefits on the event of some kind of liquidation. Whatever it’s selling the company or having a windfall or whatever it might be. But what’s interesting is two things to think about the first one is how are we thinking about that as part of the transfer of wealth? Like what can we do with that? And the second one is, that’s a give now benefit or, you know, benefit other communities. It’s like give now from a tax perspective, give later for the organizations. And so to me, I think laying the groundwork engaging family foundations or high net worth individuals early as that process is starting is going to be super valuable because folks could pass with dispersement quotas very low, at least in Canada. And I think in the States they’re relatively low as well.

[00:32:39.16] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:33:40.24] spk_1:
5%. So I think Canada just went from 3.5 to 5% in this past budget last week. Actually, well, exactly because their foundations, right. But yeah, so, but the thing is those are, those are like grounds for giving, you know, from a generational wealth because ultimately the kids might be forget about being involved, tony the kids might be actually driving that even when their parents pass on, so the gift has been made, but the, but the, but the beneficiary hasn’t benefited yet. And so it’s this liminal state that if we forget about as organizations and I speak as a board member of six nonprofits or five or whatever the number is, we’re losing an opportunity as part of this transfer of wealth. So laying the groundwork starting to build relationships with both the foundations and the daft or the daft, depending on the structure, getting the kids involved in other ways. Like peer to peer, I think, not forgetting the family foundations and the daft components to generational transfer would be shortsighted.

[00:37:02.03] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m returning very shortly To New York City for two weeks. In fact, as you’re listening to this, I’ll be in the city And you know, I lived in the city for 15 years, but I’ve got some trepidation about returning. Um and I don’t think that my situation is any different than yours. You know, returning to old Patterns, old places, it might be an office, might be returning home after having been away through the pandemic. That’s my situation. I haven’t been in New York City since early March 2020. And so things on my mind do I remember how to get around on the subway. I feel like that’s like riding a bicycle. Um I don’t think I’ll get on too many uptown trains when I want to go downtown, but you know, the familiarity, the old alacrity, the smoothness, the comfort, it’s not quite there. I’m gonna have to check check my subway map app more often than I used to where you know, I used to just pop downstairs. Oh yeah, it’s right this way pop pop pop. I know the turn, I know which uh entrance I wanna use. I know exactly where to stand waiting for the train. I don’t have that, that level of comfort anymore. And Covid of course, You know, I did see that. Covid rates are declining in Northeast. But I mean new york city is still a huge city densely populated. So we got some trepidation there. I’m gonna have to be more scrupulous about my masking than uh, than I am here in this little beach town in north Carolina. And then the other part is just, you know, identity. I was a new yorker for 15 years And yes, I, I moved out of New York six years ago. So it’s not, I didn’t move out because of the pandemic. I left several years before, but for two weeks, I don’t know, can I be a new yorker again for two weeks? Is that that allowed? Am I a tourist? I don’t know. I’m, I don’t think I’m an expat new yorker living in north Carolina. I don’t feel like that. No, but am I a tourist returning for two weeks? Interesting. What’s, what’s my identity? How do I fit in former resident? Not, you know, that that’s somewhere higher cash than tourist returning resident, but just for two weeks. So interesting. You know, and I’m sure that you have got lots of these kinds of thoughts going on as you return two old patterns, old places That’s Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time for appealing to tomorrow’s major donors with najid Kassem by the way. You’re on five boards, you were dismissed from one of the boards. I’m not at liberty to reveal at this time, but you’ll, they’ll be in touch with you.

[00:37:11.43] spk_1:
Good to know. tony I’ll expect the letter.

[00:37:14.13] spk_0:
Now the donor advised funds and the foundation. Yeah, very good. But when I said, when you know the kids are involved now, um, ultimately, I mean the kids may have already taken over, but ultimately when their baby boomer parents have died, then the kids are gonna be involved, especially in the family

[00:37:38.83] spk_1:
legally required to, to make disbursements. So if you haven’t gotten on the ground game now In 5, 10, 15, 20 years when there are these huge amounts of money, which they constantly have to be giving away, you’re gonna be behind the eight ball and that’s unfortunate position for folks to begin

[00:37:59.33] spk_0:
good. Yeah, no good advice. And that is right in line with what nonprofits can be talking about can be thinking about and and likely acting on. So yes, now you’re, you’re still in that you’re still in the, you’re still in the game.

[00:38:13.82] spk_1:
I’m still, I wanted to end at some point with five weird facts about legacy giving that I found, which I think you would really enjoy. I

[00:38:22.12] spk_0:
probably will. Let’s not, it’s, it’s not the show though. It’s still tony-martignetti non profit radio So hold, hold back with the, with the anarchy and we’ll get, we’ll get to the five points. we still have plenty of

[00:38:27.56] spk_1:
time

[00:38:31.02] spk_0:
alright, the five, five idiosyncrasies maybe of plan giving or legacy giving as you call it.

[00:38:34.79] spk_1:
And I think which is relevant obviously in the transfer of wealth conversation of course. What

[00:38:49.12] spk_0:
about what about more advice about thinking about acting on younger the younger generations, millennials generation, z you mentioned stewardship, what are we talking about? So

[00:38:51.08] spk_1:
I was just, I was just gonna go there and talk about

[00:38:52.72] spk_0:
community.

[00:39:56.92] spk_1:
So, so I think one of the pieces of advice that Nathaniel especially gave is like the post gift engagement, especially in peer to peer. And I thought that was really interesting because, and it’s two kinds of post of stewardship, the stewardship of the donors who give to peer peer campaigns, which is valuable and we talked about expanding the donor base, but I think what she really drummed down on is how important it is to actually engage with the fundraisers, the folks who are actually doing the period, like, you know, who are the, you know, for those of you who don’t know a peer to peer, you have a group of fundraisers who raise money for the cause and donors make donations in support of those fundraisers and the money goes to the organizations, but the fundraisers, they’re kind of like your champions, right? They’re the ones who are casting a wide net who are sharing and promoting, who are engaging their social media’s and I think one thing that we often forget is to thank the fundraisers, we do a good job of thanking the people with the money fine and maybe we don’t do good enough a job but you write a check general, you’re gonna get a thank you. But the fundraisers are actually your access to market their your go to market strategy, so to speak and so

[00:40:03.19] spk_0:
you’re right. They created the campaign.

[00:40:05.66] spk_1:
Absolutely. They did all your work for you

[00:40:15.91] spk_0:
birthday, whatever. Yes. Yeah. Are we are we are you seeing that? Are we bad at thanking the fundraisers? We are we

[00:41:37.01] spk_1:
are um it’s very automated, it’s thanking for signing up more than thank you for what you’ve done. So a lot of like the impact or or community reporting people often forget the fundraisers and there’s you know, we’ve seen that anecdotally, we’ve seen that with our product and I’ve seen that in some of the research as well. And so where you know, Nathaniel gave this great example, I’m trying to remember but she said send a personalized impact report to the things that the fundraisers care about because generally when you’re signing up as a fundraiser for a peer to peer campaign, you give insight into the things you care about the reasons you’re doing. My mom, you know, my grandmother passed away from acts or my you know, my my aunt did this or or someone at my work struggled with that. And so you’re gonna get some insight into what they care about and if you want them to run these things again to do it participate next year or in subsequent years to get more involved as a donor themselves or a volunteer that follow up is so valuable and make and spending the time Doing it for for each of them, even if it’s 10 minutes, you know, make a call, put their name on an impact report, it’s so little in terms of cost or time, but the value of the return and ultimately that feeling of values align, which was, you know, I’ve tried to come through, come up over and over again through the, you know, this conversation about millennials, they’ll feel valued, they’ll feel values aligned and ultimately it’s the right thing to do, but but also it will help you getting them to get engaged in other ways or or

[00:41:56.31] spk_0:
again. Yeah, Alright, very smart, very savvy. I’m disappointed to hear that we’re not being good about the fundraisers. It’s I

[00:42:17.30] spk_1:
think it’s easy because there’s lots of them and it’s hard because we’re not used to it. Right, peer to peer is relatively new, it’s not built into the muscle memory of us as fundraisers and I think that’s yeah, a lot of organizations, especially mid to large ones are actually getting peer to peer officers now. So you know, you’ve got your major grant donor officer or program manager, you got your recurring donor, you got your peer to peer now because the R. O. I. S. Is so strong both from a brand perspective and from the donation perspective. Right.

[00:42:24.33] spk_0:
Very good. Thank you. All right. When you said you had I think you said you had to

[00:43:45.90] spk_1:
I think I think the stewardship one is interesting and it actually comes to you know again it’s that personalization element what what millennials want to hear however you’re engaging them if they’re the kids of high net worth if they’re part of peer to peer campaigns or if they’re just giving in general as part of the transfer they want to see much more intimately or much more directly what’s happening with the money? Right. What are you know the older generation is like how much are you spending on administration? That’s actually a lot less. They don’t care as much and you can see that because of how they’re giving, what they care about is what actually happened to that money. I don’t care if you use 13 cents or 18 cents or 23 cents for administration. How many malaria nets was I able to get from that or you know what value did my gift or my time bring to the cause that I care deeply about and that subtle difference in stewardship is actually quite substantial in how you treat it. So you know it’s not a budget or or or a financial document that you’re sending as part of stewardship it’s a lot around stories around data on impact and and around around making them feel like they were a part of that, which I think is quite different from what we saw in this boomer and other generations. What do you think? tony

[00:43:50.96] spk_0:
Yeah, no, I agree. I think there’s been less attention to that.

[00:43:56.00] spk_1:
It’s

[00:43:56.78] spk_0:
been it’s been growing, but the boomers are probably dying at a faster rate than they can, they can gain the they can gain the benefit of. I’m one of them, I’m happy to be a younger one.

[00:44:32.29] spk_1:
But but I also think it goes back to the values which we’ve sort of been talking about, right, that different reason for giving, right that the reason people millennials take certain jobs or do certain things or engage with certain, you know, community activities or civil society, it is different. And if we don’t steward differently with that, we’re not only missing an opportunity. We’re kind of not meeting folks where they are.

[00:44:34.29] spk_0:
Look, if, you know, if you’re ignoring this, the difference in the generations, you’re, you’re doing so at your peril. You know, you’re, you’re ignoring critical difference is that there’s a difference between your 70 year old donor and your 40 year old donor

[00:44:48.88] spk_1:
and I don’t want your old donor and

[00:44:51.30] spk_0:
You’re 25-30 year old donor

[00:44:53.59] spk_1:
absolutely and I don’t want it to be like we’re just doing this to get more money. Like as much as that’s easy to do. You want to connect like it’s the right thing to

[00:45:14.49] spk_0:
do. Yeah. Including families has always been, especially in planned giving, but it’s, it’s just, it’s just smart. It’s just smart business, um, engagement, which leads leads to more, more, greater impact, whether it’s volunteering or giving or just thinking well of your cause.

[00:45:23.26] spk_1:
You know, you

[00:45:24.25] spk_0:
know, I don’t give to the organization anymore, but they were very good to me when my mom died,

[00:45:30.19] spk_1:
yep.

[00:45:35.29] spk_0:
All right. All right. The Big five now giving, I will, I, I prefer the phrase planned giving so I’ll tolerate, I’ll not accept, but I’ll tolerate your legacy giving moniker.

[00:45:46.49] spk_1:
This kind of, and I’m gonna type

[00:45:49.97] spk_0:
each

[00:46:47.28] spk_1:
of them back to the conversation we’ve had today. So this isn’t out of nowhere. So first data point is 50% of like of, of planned donors give to their organization for more than 20 years before making a planned gift. So when we talk about engaging folks If you’re 45 or 50 right now, you’re part of that gen x or you’re, you know, you’re an elder millennial. If the, if the data point stays strong 20 years, it’s gotta start now, You know, if you want. And that, that’s why this transfer of wealth is super interesting. Number two donors, aged 44 older represent about 75% of all wills and more than 80% of the total value of all charitable requests made. So again, 44 is a young, it’s, you know, it’s not, we’re not talking people in their seventies when people are thinking about their wills, their thinking about the, when their kids are still in single digits often, right? Like, you know, we, my wife and I did our will when she was pregnant. We didn’t have a will before that, but we, you know, we did our, our will our wills. I guess there’s two of them

[00:46:52.80] spk_0:
was donors, 44 and over represents 75% of all existing wills

[00:46:58.73] spk_1:
and more than 80% of the request

[00:47:07.58] spk_0:
And more than 80% of all right. I guess I’d like to see a finer breakdown. Like that’s 44 and over. You know, What’s, what is 60 and over look like

[00:47:10.18] spk_1:
and I don’t have that off my fingertips. But I would bet it’s even it’s the vast majority. I

[00:47:14.95] spk_0:
would bet I

[00:47:33.48] spk_1:
would bet again, Absolutely, absolutely. Number three, 50% of donors age 50 and over with no Children had charitable estate plans, but among similar donors With Children, only 17% had philanthropic plans. That one was actually quite interesting to me.

[00:47:41.08] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:47:42.58] spk_1:
So

[00:47:43.91] spk_0:
your, your folks with no Children are better plan giving prospects than your folks with

[00:47:49.55] spk_1:
Children and

[00:47:50.57] spk_0:
There’s, there’s a difference of 33%.

[00:47:56.28] spk_1:
Absolutely, yeah. In terms of the number of them that have wills. Right, Which is fascinating.

[00:48:01.27] spk_0:
That’s the population is have a charitable request in there

[00:48:07.50] spk_1:
will be 30

[00:48:14.67] spk_0:
3% if you’re, if you’re 55 and over, No, 50 and over, You’re 33% more likely to do it if you’re 50 and over and have no Children than you are if you’re 50 and over and had at least one child.

[00:48:36.57] spk_1:
Yes, absolutely. And again, why is this relevant? Because in this transfer of wealth, more and more people are inheriting money who don’t plan to have kids. Right. And that’s super interesting and incredibly relevant. Um,

[00:48:38.77] spk_0:
You know what, that’s even, it becomes more interesting even on another level, because yeah younger folks are less likely to have kids from the current 55 year

[00:48:48.91] spk_1:
olds. So

[00:48:54.57] spk_0:
assuming human nature isn’t, isn’t changing then that the Delta is gonna change between between the population, that doesn’t have Children in the population. That does, because the population that doesn’t have Children is going to grow up.

[00:49:16.17] spk_1:
And you look at that first data point where most people are gonna make requests to folks that they’ve engaged with for 20 plus years. that’s again relevant because more people are not having kids. So you got to engage them earlier. Because if you do the likelihood of you getting a request is, is going to be like you said, the Delta is going to be higher and higher. Right? Very

[00:49:28.23] spk_0:
interesting. And

[00:49:52.27] spk_1:
ultimately Planned gifts from single, never married donors are actually 13% larger than from married donors. So it’s interesting is, again, how do you focus this? This is, this is part of the lecture he gave on like how do you focus your time? Of course, you have unlimited resources. You focus on everybody. But thinking about folks who haven’t been married, um, or are no longer married and without kids, you’re gonna get bigger donations. Right? And, and that’s super interesting. Especially in the context of people not having kids. A lot of this transfer is inter mediated by that,

[00:50:07.06] spk_0:
that those have always been your best planned gift prospects, folks who are unmarried and no

[00:50:11.65] spk_1:
Children.

[00:50:23.46] spk_0:
Um, not to not to exclude others from your program. If you have the, if you have the luxury of knowing who has Children and who never married and a lot of that, you can just find out from, uh,

[00:50:26.19] spk_1:
social media.

[00:51:04.96] spk_0:
Well, yeah, that’s true. Um, then then those are your, those are your, you’re ultimately best prospects. And thank you for using the word Penultimate correctly. I appreciate that so many things. So many people think that penultimate is is the better one comes after the ultimate because its penultimate. So she correctly, thank you for using Penultimate, it’s among my favorite words along with, but the ultimate, it’s the

[00:51:11.86] spk_1:
Ultimate, the Bark Mitzvah. Ultimately Pet owners are 70% more likely to give request than non pet owners.

[00:51:15.06] spk_0:
Pet owners.

[00:51:33.86] spk_1:
So free will, which is a will’s website in the US. It like helps folks create their wills. Did some really interesting data around the charitable giving of pet owners and folks who have pet owners are much more likely to make requests, 70% more likely than non pet owners. So I have no idea how to use that piece of data, but it’s so obscure and so interesting that I included it as my factoid and I’m sharing with you

[00:51:46.06] spk_0:
for folks who are in a, in an animal oriented non profit you know, they know

[00:51:48.68] spk_1:
that a lot

[00:51:49.97] spk_0:
of pet owners are very concerned about the life of their pets after their own deaths.

[00:51:55.36] spk_1:
So

[00:51:56.60] spk_0:
they’ll make, they’ll often make

[00:51:58.39] spk_1:
gifts for

[00:51:59.55] spk_0:
the care of their

[00:52:29.65] spk_1:
pets. Interesting. I, I think what’s interesting is going back to millennials and the demographic data that we’ve seen as most folks, you know, a lot of people who don’t choose to have Children choose to get a pet. It’s like a pretty common, you know, trend, I think. And so, you know, that’s interesting because there they still have a lot of love and they’ve made a choice which is so personal and they want to continue a legacy, Not just for their pets, for what you said, but rather just in general. And so they see their way to, to continue. They don’t have Children. So their legacy is gonna live through their gifts. And I think that’s, that’s, again, speaking to the 3.6 to 3.1 number of people in the household and that number continuing to, to change.

[00:52:49.05] spk_0:
Thank you very much.

[00:52:51.52] spk_1:
Let’s

[00:52:59.35] spk_0:
let’s take care of a couple of things when it first, don’t you shout out to Nathaniel Fung, since you mentioned a few times, So

[00:53:24.35] spk_1:
was was my co presenter on this. Um I got to give a lot of the nerdy theory that I shared with you all today, but Nathaniel did a phenomenal job of sharing the case studies that she’s done. She spent a lot of years, decades I think, working in health foundations and health giving and she just brought incredible examples of youth councils and examples of campaigns and how they started them. And so it was, it was an absolute treat to, to speak alongside her.

[00:53:32.65] spk_0:
Nathaniel is director of philanthropy, where at

[00:53:32.82] spk_1:
the BC Women’s Foundation

[00:53:34.75] spk_0:
Women’s hospital

[00:53:36.48] spk_1:
british Columbia, women, women’s hospital, where my son was born.

[00:53:41.35] spk_0:
And Kayla, you give it a shot for Kayla,

[00:54:30.04] spk_1:
I mean, always happy to, to to serve such an incredible institution um for those of you who don’t know, Kayla is, is fundraising um intelligence and donor management tools, built, you know, with the most powerful, exciting technology. But built by fundraisers myself, being just one of many and ultimately our goal is to help folks, you know, have a great um donor management experience, to help increase the predictability and to help nonprofits grow. They’re giving it’s a Crm, it’s an intelligence tool. It’s got beautiful and amazing forms you can pick and choose if you want crm, you want forms, you want intelligence. But ultimately it’s a it’s a technology company with the sector at its at its core and I encourage everyone to to always take a look at kayla k e l a dot com.

[00:54:37.34] spk_0:
Dot com, awesome dot com. Very good. Look

[00:54:38.81] spk_1:
at

[00:54:43.18] spk_0:
dot com. It definitely rhymes what? Almost com

[00:54:49.84] spk_1:
Alright.

[00:54:52.84] spk_0:
And he’s the ceo and founder, thank you very much for sharing your ideas.

[00:54:55.18] spk_1:
tony always a pleasure and hope to see you. Hopefully not two years from now, maybe before that.

[00:55:00.40] spk_0:
No, thank you. Well, will you be in you think you’ll be in Denver if it’s actually live?

[00:55:05.47] spk_1:
Yes, yes I will. Next.

[00:55:06.74] spk_0:
NTC 23. NTC I believe I’ll be there too. All right,

[00:55:10.81] spk_1:
wonderful. Thanks. tony

[00:56:29.54] spk_0:
my pleasure and thank you listeners for being with Non profit radio coverage of 22 NTC. Thanks so much. Next week, It’s your RFP process as our 2022 non profit technology conference coverage continues. If you missed any part of this week’s show? I beseech you find it at tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o And by 4th dimension technologies I T infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with Me next week for non profit radio Big non profit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 6, 2022: Responding To Microaggressions & Discrimination

 

Dan Berstein: Responding To Microaggressions & Discrimination

Resuming our #22NTC coverage, Dan Berstein helps you identify these situations, decide whether and how to speak up, and mitigate your own potential biases and accept feedback. He has mental health resources for you at bit.ly/mhskills and bit.ly/TMHDashboard. Dan is from MH Mediate.

 

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[00:01:52.84] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with an echo Griffo sis if you clawed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show, responding to microaggressions and discrimination, Resuming our 22 NTC coverage dan Burstein helps you identify these situations, decide whether and how to speak up and mitigate your own potential biases and accept feedback. He has mental health resources for you dan is from Mh mediate Antonis take two tips for Israel. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. And by 4th dimension Technologies IT Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D Just like three D but they go one dimension deeper here is responding to microaggressions and discrimination. Welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 N. T. C. The 2022 nonprofit technology conference. I’m joined now by dan Burstein. He is founder and mediator at M. H. Mediate dan Welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:01:55.74] spk_1:
thank you for having me again.

[00:01:57.36] spk_0:
My pleasure. The 21 NTC brought us together, I believe it was it last I believe it was last year,

[00:02:03.14] spk_1:
yep, that’s right last

[00:02:17.44] spk_0:
year. Alright glad to have you back your session this year is tools to help a leader respond to microaggressions and discrimination. Uh now your work is in the is in the mental mental health mental illness

[00:02:48.54] spk_1:
space. Yes, so, you know, my work is focused on helping people have better communication about mental health and that’s what we talked about last year was how to have those kinds of conversations, especially during the pandemic and remotely. Um and one of the issues that comes up a lot is there’s stigma related to mental illness and it comes out with microaggressions and discrimination. So that’s why this year’s topic was tools that can help any leader, you know, notice and respond to these kinds of incidents of microaggressions and discrimination which aren’t just in mental health. They happen across the board. All kinds of different kinds of identities um can be hurt through discrimination and microaggressions. But my focus area has always been um you know, conflict resolution and mental health.

[00:03:14.54] spk_0:
Cool, Alright, so your examples come from that community, but the lessons apply broadly across identities.

[00:03:17.18] spk_1:
That’s right,

[00:03:17.96] spk_0:
okay, let’s let’s define microaggressions and discrimination, let’s start microaggressions, let’s make sure everybody understands what we’re talking about.

[00:06:35.14] spk_1:
So, so a microaggression, uh it can be a number of different things, but basically it’s any kind of comment or even a situation that includes an implicit message that some kind of identity group is less than or bad or has some kind of problem associated with it. So basically it’s talking in any kind of way that um endorses stereotypes or stigmas um and so I’ll give you an example with mental illness. Uh So I myself I have bipolar disorder and I include that often in my professional bio and in my work, and one time I told a colleague that um you know, I have bipolar disorder and he said, oh, really, Oh wow, you’re doing so well. And he said it like that, which was, you know, it sounds positive. A lot of microaggressions sound positive, and actually the message implied is, oh, I wouldn’t expect someone with bipolar disorder to present very well, and so it actually comes across as kind of negative in the meaning um even though it was a friend who meant to be supportive, um the stereotype gets embedded in the message. So a lot of times microaggressions, people think they’re being very nice and they are trying to be nice, but their their beliefs that um in this case that mental illness is something so damaging and debilitating, you wouldn’t expect someone to do well and and with with it um it gets embedded in and what they’re saying. And so there’s a lot of different kinds of microaggressions that um can come out and in in these different kinds of ways, but it’s a it’s an interesting thing. Another, another form of it is um, oh, you know, um you know, everybody, everybody has depression, you know, everybody has bad days and that would be considered what’s called a micro and validation where, you know, they they’re not taking it seriously when you tell them that you have a mental health condition. So it can go in a lot of different directions. There’s a lot of different kinds of messaging. Um and there’s actual academic literature reviews that catalog so many different ways. Um those kinds of messages could be in there, but basically the messages that are commonly unfortunately and inappropriately associated with mental illness are maybe this person is dangerous, Maybe this person doesn’t really have a serious problem and they’re making more out of it than it is, Maybe this person is inferior. Um Maybe I’m gonna treat this person like an infant or like they need my help. Um you know, so these are the kinds of messages that come out where, you know, even saying things like, oh, do you need some help or do you want some help with that? That can be seen as um you know, huge micro aggression in the world of disabilities where um if people, you know, mental illness is considered an invisible disability, but a lot of people have visible no noticeable disabilities and and being constantly offered assistance can be considered seen as a microaggression as well. So there’s there’s a whole literature on it and um it’s a it’s a difficult thing to handle because people often mean, well when they’re doing it and and it happens all the time in day to day life.

[00:06:49.54] spk_0:
Yeah, I’m thinking of the uh example of, you know, saying to someone who’s a person of color, you know, you’re so articulate or you’re you know, you’re so well read or something you wouldn’t expect

[00:06:55.18] spk_1:
and yeah,

[00:06:57.34] spk_0:
what you’re gonna say.

[00:07:53.34] spk_1:
Um and so one of the tools that I’ve shared when I do the workshop about microaggressions is a guide by kevin Nadal. Um that says um how do you handle a microaggression? And the first question is, did this happen? You ask did this, do I think this is a microaggression? Because you know, some of these things can be ambiguous enough that you have to ask yourself like, well, what’s going on here? And then then there’s the question of like, well should I respond? Because if I do um it could be a huge nightmare for me that this person’s gonna get so offended that I point out that they did the microaggression. And if I don’t then um I might get mistreated forever. So it’s, you know, it’s a really tricky world we live in with microaggressions because it can be so subtle and so understated. Um although certainly if it happens a lot and there’s a significant pattern of the men, it can become a hostile work environment situation. Um, you know, as well. So it’s a very tricky tricky confusing world when we talk about microaggressions.

[00:08:38.34] spk_0:
Yeah, I’m seeing this. You know, your your your session is two tools to help a leader respond to microaggressions and discrimination, I’m seeing difficulty just in the identification. Yeah. So if if the um if the if the person who this is who this is aimed at doesn’t doesn’t speak up, doesn’t call it out either on you know, in the moment, which is as you described, you know, which can be very difficult or later. You know, maybe privately to the to the to a to a leader. How is a leader to identify? How can you be so sensitive how how Yeah, that makes it wait. I’m the way I said it makes it sound like it’s impossible. How can we increase sensitivity to help leaders identify these microaggressions?

[00:11:19.74] spk_1:
Well. So so first I I need to flag the difference between microaggressions and discrimination. Okay, microaggression is sort of like evidence of an attitude, evidence of stigma that maybe there are stereotypes of an attitude. Whereas discrimination which we’ll talk about in a moment is an action. So it’s much easier to respond to discrimination because that’s where something actually is done and the person is treated differently versus the mere expression of the microaggression itself, which is much more confusing and complicated. And so it is it is tricky. And The main message that comes out of the workshop that we did at N 10 um is you know, be aware that this is going on, be sensitive, be ready. Um instead of being defensive to hear what someone’s attitude is when they say when they do bring it up and be understanding that it’s not easy to bring it up sort of like when we think about the, you know, the Me Too movement and sexual harassment. Um that every one person who complains there’s a lot who don’t because it’s so fraud. So having some empathy to understand that when someone does come in and they are complaining about something that they experienced as a microaggression. That’s hard. So the guide I mentioned. So it makes it very clear like it’s tricky to speak up because you don’t know if you, if you even can prove it happened and then you don’t know um you know how people will react if it’ll affect your relationships with your friends or your co workers or whoever. And so it is fraught to even bring it up. So the big message from microaggressions is just be receptive to people’s feedback, Be understanding that this happens and and do your best to have empathy for what it means when someone does come forward and and creating a culture where people are less defensive and more open minded about changing how they communicate on a regular basis. Um, you know, one of one of the projects that I have is called the Mental Health Safe project. And it’s about giving people tools to respond to microaggressions and discrimination. And one of the things that we’re working on is developing a stigma mediation program where people can come and talk these kinds of things out without it being punitive just so that way they can sort of work through some of the um stress of handling, you know, these microaggressions because it’s it’s confusing, right? The example I gave you this is a friend of mine who was trying to be supportive and said something that was very hurtful and that you know me being open with the bipolar disorder, I get that all the time and I know that no one’s trying to hurt me. So the question is, okay, well how do I, you know, how do I help them not do this again without making them feel really bad about themselves, You know? Um so it’s it’s a micro aggressions can be the trickiest issue. Then there’s also the discrimination stuff which we can talk about, which is a little less tricky.

[00:11:35.74] spk_0:
Right? Easy, easy too easy to identify.

[00:11:38.51] spk_1:
Still very tricky though. I’ll tell you some stories, it’s still very tricky, but it’s just like clear.

[00:11:45.04] spk_0:
There are also laws around discrimination that helped

[00:11:48.94] spk_1:
they help, but they’re not perfect and there’s still a lot of problems, you know? Um so I’ll talk about that. I mean if you want to transition we can I can talk about that right now.

[00:12:53.74] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They’ll develop your media strategy. What’s that all about that is identifying your core messages, defining the channels the outlets, where those messages ought to be heard, who are the people who should be hearing your messages, who need to hear your messages doing the legwork to approach those outlets and as you are closing opportunities, crafting your message is appropriately to the audience that you uh you close the opportunity with. That’s a media strategy. Turn to communications can do it for you turn hyphen two dot c. O. Now back to responding to microaggressions and discrimination. I hear empathy. It sounds like empathy goes a long way. You know, when when someone is bringing this to a

[00:13:00.25] spk_1:
leader,

[00:13:26.14] spk_0:
you know, understanding what it takes for the person to have done so to have the have the courage fortitude to open the door. You know, to I mean the door got opened by the by the person who committed it. But to to bring it up as an issue is it takes a lot. Thanks a lot. Alright, so what’s the, like, what’s the next step for a leader? Now? We’re talking about tools to help leaders.

[00:13:31.24] spk_1:
What

[00:13:41.24] spk_0:
do you do when someone does bring this to you? Hopefully you’ve treated the person with that empathy and respect what should a leader do next?

[00:16:16.14] spk_1:
So, I mean, my advice would be um outside outside this program to use the guide that I reference, but you can get at bit dot li slash mh skills is the U. R. L. That I have of resources and you can look at that in more depth. But basically this guide, we’ll walk you through number one. If you think you’ve experienced a microaggression, how to think about what to do to handle it and talk about it. And on the flip side, if someone says, I think you’ve um done a micro aggression towards me, uh it walks you through what to do. Um and then, you know, when we’re talking about in a leader perspective, it’s like, okay, so let’s be aware of microaggressions happen, let’s be, let’s be ready with these resources. Let’s have empathy when someone comes to us. And then let’s also have perspective about, you know what it what it means because we live in a world where everybody has stereotypes and biases all the time. We want to all keep growing, but we have to keep it in perspective. You know, was this microaggression part of some kind of deliberate bullying campaign, in which case you respond differently than if it was a one off comment. Um was it associated with some kind of adverse employment action? Right? Was it, you know, it’s someone being excluded from? Um important conversations at work and they also are saying, I think it’s because of um my identity, I think it’s because this person doesn’t treat me the same because I have a mental illness. So they’re not giving me the same kind of projects or they’re not um giving me the same kind of feedback that’s different than just having the microaggression. So I’m not trying to trivialize the microaggression, but when you’re a leader micro aggressions are happening constantly all the time. Um and and so it really um depends what it is if the person is well intentioned or not, if it’s a pervasive pattern of, you know, bullying type conduct at the workplace or if it’s, you know, you know, a one off event, um if it is associated with some kind of, you know, actual different treatment in the workplace or if it’s just a comment that by itself is still a problem, you know, it’s still a problem to have a loose comment, but um it may not be connected with saying, well, you know, I I I have this micro aggression towards dan’s mental illness, that’s why we don’t put down on any of the tough projects, you know, that that would be um you know, a much more discriminatory act, that would be disparate treatment. Um and so, so it’s important to look at sort of the whole spectrum of when does something go past being a one off microaggression comment to uh, you know, mean one to them bullying and then to like different treatment in the workplace

[00:16:22.34] spk_0:
perspective is

[00:16:23.11] spk_1:
important. All

[00:16:27.44] spk_0:
right, context, context. Uh is there another example you can share

[00:16:29.76] spk_1:
of micro,

[00:16:31.58] spk_0:
a micro aggression? Yeah,

[00:16:33.95] spk_1:
maybe

[00:16:34.80] spk_0:
these are helpful.

[00:17:43.44] spk_1:
Sure. So this is this is just in my personal life that I think is interesting us. So I I’ve given awareness presentations in a lot of context over the years. And um I gave a presentation to a school class for a friend of mine and afterwards the friend said, oh, we could tell he has bipolar disorder. The friends that this the students said, oh, we could tell he has bipolar disorder because he got upset whenever we weren’t paying attention. And I said, oh, you know, I was trying to follow your protocols. I had seen the teachers react like that, you know, and have certain like it was a charter school that had this this whole culture and she said, oh no, no, we tell all of our teachers to act like they’re bipolar and that way the students will stay in line. And that wasn’t meant to be an insult, but it certainly was another example. I was giving a presentation for the american Bar Association and someone came up to me and I spoke to them and I mentioned my wife and they said, oh, your wife, she must be a very special person to take you on, you know, So

[00:17:46.14] spk_0:
they’re all bad. That’s egregious.

[00:19:17.44] spk_1:
Yeah, well, I I’m sharing the more egregious ones, but I have a lot of them, you know, there’s a lot of um or there was one time where um I was four months out of having been hospitalized for my illness and I was getting involved with an organization that had a speakers bureau. They said, we only take speakers who are nine months out of the hospital, which by itself I think is actually discrimination. Um, but they said because but because it’s you we want you now and we’d like you to speak. Um, you know, in this program we’re doing for students because it’s so hard to find someone who has a mental illness like you and isn’t very overweight from the medicine. Uh No, I don’t want anyone hearing this to think that you should be afraid of medicine because you become overweight. This was this was a very um, you know, uh ill informed mental health advocate, but that was a very, you know, that that those were compliments, right? That, oh, I’m more articulate than they expected for someone four months out of the hospital and I’m thinner and better looking than that what they expected. But that’s that’s not a good experience to hear those kinds of things. So, these are examples of where people say things that are well meaning and nice. Um, but they’re but they’re not really, they’re not nice ideas inside them that, you know, that that’s what a microaggression is. Is this this presumption, someone with mental illness can’t speak when they’re right out of the hospital. Someone with mental illness is likely debilitated by side effects and overweight. You know, someone with mental illness is a lot to take on why would someone want to marry that person. Um, You know, these are, you know, they come out as compliments, but they’re the premise is ugly.

[00:19:45.14] spk_0:
Um, can we deviate from helping the leader and you’ll be helping the folks who are may be subject to this? How how do you do you know, what’s your advice when when you feel that you’ve you’ve been wrong with with a microaggression?

[00:23:38.94] spk_1:
Um My advice is kind of sad because um you know, I do a lot of work in this area because I want people to have tools, but the reality is, and you’ll see this if you look at the guide I mentioned, um it’s not a good situation to be in when someone makes a microaggression, because first of all, the odds are, it’s a commonly held stereotype, which means if I tried to um counteract it on a regular basis, that’s a big burden for me to assume. Just taking the time out of my day, I’m trying to live my life. I don’t want to have to correct somebody about the microaggression once, let alone all the time. Um and that’s and that’s even with me as a professional who’s doing education, I’d rather focus on what I came to speak about? Not the microaggression. So no matter what, it becomes a huge burden, but then it’s like, well, well, how do I tell my friend, right, my friend who just brought me to give this talk now just said something very insulting. What do I do in response? And it really is a fraught situation. And so my advice first and foremost is similar to the guide is practice self care. So think to yourself, what do you really want out of this situation and what’s actually possible. Um Oftentimes for me what I did in those actual situations is I kind of made little sarcastic jokes because I I’m pretty quick on my feet. Um and and that’s my coping mechanism. So with my friend who said the thing about um, oh we tell our teachers to um to act out their bipolar. I said, well maybe I should come give a talk at your meeting tonight for the district because you know, that’s what I said right after, you know, and I do a little quips like that, but like those quips are not, they don’t really get you anywhere, you know? So, um my I guess my advice is just to to look for support, practice self care, think about what you want. Um I’ve been doing a ton of work this year, especially and addressing not just microaggressions, but published instances of discrimination in my field of mediation. And it’s very painful. People are very defensive. They don’t want to hear it. Um it really has affected my professional relationships because when I point out something that someone wrote that is bigoted towards mental illness, they take personal offense. They don’t want to speak to me. Um so I have reached a point where I have become more assertive, I’ve actually gone back and contacted people from years ago from different events that have happened and said, hey, you know, this, this bothered me and I, you know, because um because now that I’m doing it, um but it’s still hard and it’s still, I I can’t I can’t say it um yield some kind of incredible results. So, um I would say to anyone who’s experiencing this, hang in there, look for for peer support, make a decision yourself of what’s right for you and recognize that, you know, it’s important to take care of yourself, especially because it’s a marathon and not a sprint and this is gonna keep happening. So, um that’s that’s the unfortunate reality is that if you’re living in one of these identity groups, you’re going to be subjected to regular stereotypes that people don’t even realize they’re making. Um and so I’m not saying that makes it okay. But um this workshop gives tools to help you understand your options and and help you um you know, figure out where the lines are, where it’s discrimination, etcetera. But even when it’s discrimination, it’s it’s difficult to make a case, you need evidence to make a case of discrimination if you’re gonna actually hold someone accountable um under the americans with disabilities act a lot of times, judges don’t take mental illnesses as seriously as other disabilities. So even when you get to a point where you’re making a claim, you might, it’s not like I could say you’re gonna have a perfect reaction. Um so um it’s sort of a sad answer, but a realistic one. And um the part that’s better is it’s better than nothing. My answer is better than nothing and that, you know, So that’s what I had for about Over 10 years. I had no I had no options. Now. I’ve done all this research and I can say here’s some here’s some kind of sad options. So.

[00:23:54.54] spk_0:
Alright. No, but it there’s a lot of wisdom I think in, you know, what works for you, figuring out what works for you developing your own coping mechanisms. So, yeah,

[00:23:57.54] spk_1:
on the reality, I’m

[00:23:57.66] spk_0:
stuck with reality, right? And I’m sorry you’re subject to these two. I’m sorry this happens to folks

[00:24:04.74] spk_1:
happens to a lot of people. And a lot of

[00:24:06.94] spk_0:
groups.

[00:24:08.94] spk_1:
Let’s

[00:24:09.20] spk_0:
talk about discrimination. Let’s you’ve you’ve alluded to it a few times.

[00:24:12.85] spk_1:
Let’s let’s let’s

[00:24:16.64] spk_0:
shift their um It’s it’s now distinguished discrimination again, please. I know you did

[00:27:08.34] spk_1:
earlier discrimination discrimination occurs when someone is treated differently based on having that identity group. So a lot of times you’ll hear adverse employment action. So if someone is fired or given a, you know, poorer job assignment or something. Um You know, but there’s a lot of different ways discrimination can manifest and it’s not just employment. Um I’m there’s a lot of different laws to talk about different kinds of discrimination. The law that I’m gonna reference is the americans with disabilities act. The americans with disabilities act protects people who have um all different kinds of disabilities, not just mental illnesses from having discrimination. Um And there’s there’s a few different ways that that discrimination can occur. So one way that it can occur is screening somebody out if you screen someone out based on having um in this case the mental illness or health condition um in my field of mediation and conflict resolution, they actually have things um published that’s that recommend don’t take a case if someone has a mental illness that is not okay. That is discrimination by eligibility criteria. Um And um that is something I’ve been complaining about more recently, but when I when I first trained as a mediator, I was scared because they said don’t take a case if someone has a mental illness. And I thought, oh my, oh my, I just came out of the hospital for bipolar disorder. So um and I kept it a secret before I started being open. But um eligibility criteria is one type of discrimination where you screen someone out related to that. There’s something called undo inquiries or illegal inquiries. And this is, you know, um I think that I think there’s an analog for other groups but with a disability, it’s what if someone’s asking you questions about whether you have a disability, what your disability is, what it’s like for you. Um They’re not allowed to do that. So it’s similar to screening, but it doesn’t have to be related to screening people can’t just start asking you questions about your health conditions. Um And there’s different rules in different situations. Um There’s different timings and employment where some questions are permissible but in general it’s a good rule of thumb to say um you’re not entitled to invade someone’s privacy. So like let’s say you see someone and they have a service dog you can’t just go up to them and say well what’s your disability now that I see you have a service dog. Um And so there’s actual regulations and laws about this. Um And and so that’s the second type of discrimination is you know if someone’s asking questions um about you know the nature and severity they would say of your health condition. Um So we’ve got so we’ve got eligibility criteria. We’ve got the inquiries. We also have just general disparate treatment that’s if you get just treated differently in any way and you and you get and and so it’s not like you’re screened out. It’s not that someone’s asking you questions but someone thinks you have an illness or they or whatever you know whatever it is and they decide to do something different.

[00:29:43.44] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies their I. T. Solution. It’s I. T. Infra. In a box it’s the I. T. Buffet budget friendly. Like your average cafeteria right and holistic. I’m not sure how whole ism fits into cafeteria. Maybe it’s a cafeteria with with all the meals laid out at the same time. So you can choose from the breakfast or the lunch or the dinner all through the same pass through the cafeteria so there you go. So it is it’s just like an I. T. Buffet so you’re picking the parts of their offerings that you need and that fit your budget and you leave the rest behind. What’s in the buffet? I thi assessment multifactor authentication, other security methods, overall cost analysis help desk and there’s more you choose what’s right for your situation for your budget. Leave the rest behind the I. T. Buffet it’s I. T. Infra in a box. It’s at 4th Dimension Technologies. They’re at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper It’s time for Tony to take two. I’m going to Israel in november. Have you been to Israel do you live there if you live there can I stay with you know that’s no forget that’s okay that’s okay. But what tips do you have? How well if you know the country if you’ve been there if you live there what do you recommend? I’m gonna be spending most of my time in tel Aviv and Jerusalem but not exclusively and I’m pretty mobile I can get around so what ideas do you have? I’d be very interested in places to eat small. I love small. Local non touristed places in terms of food but also sights sights to see. Yeah, I mean of course I can do my own research. I will but if you’re in in in in this this is real insider maybe you can help me out. So if you’ve got ideas I’d be grateful. You can get me at tony at tony-martignetti dot com or the contact page at tony-martignetti dot com. Thanks very much. That is tony steak too. We’ve got just about a butt load more time for responding to microaggressions and discrimination with dan Burstein.

[00:29:54.84] spk_1:
And as you mentioned,

[00:29:55.97] spk_0:
you mentioned not getting uh sophisticated projects

[00:30:52.24] spk_1:
right? Not getting sophisticated projects where you know and people and this happens where you know in a in a mental health case. You know if you if you look at the case law for the A. D. A. This happens where someone comes back from a medical leave where it gets known in the office, they have a health condition and suddenly people just start treating them differently for one reason or another and there’s evidence that people make comments that the person um is too anxious to handle things or you know whatever whatever it is. Um But but but that’s that’s that that is the disparate treatment um type of discrimination. So for if we’re tracking it there’s three so far out of four. So the first is screening. The second is inappropriate questions. The third is disparate treatment. And the fourth which which is special for disabilities is um if someone asks you to make a change because they need an adjustment because of their disability and you don’t do it. That’s another type of discrimination for disability. There’s there’s different.

[00:30:57.63] spk_0:
Yes,

[00:32:00.34] spk_1:
exactly. So that’s a reasonable accommodation and you don’t have to do it depending on if the if it if it would be a financial hardship or if it would fundamentally alter your service or if it would ruin the services for other people, it’s all decided case by case. But in general I’ll give you an example of when I asked for an accommodation when I travel and give workshops, I’ll call the hotels and I’ll say I need you for a disability accommodation. I need you to give me the quietest room you’ve got because I have bipolar disorder in my sleep is necessary to protect my condition. And I you know, and and it’s free, it doesn’t cost you anything. I just need you to block the room. Whatever room you know, is the quietest. And I talked to them about it, put me in that room, that’s my reasonable accommodation. So that’s an example of an adjustment. I had a reasonable accommodation where I said I’m emotionally triggered because we’re talking about discrimination right now I’d like us to meet by email instead of by zoom and and that was a request for an accommodation. So those are some examples where you know, sometimes you know people can make excuses why they wouldn’t do it, but when it’s something free, it’s like why wouldn’t you just do the accommodation. So um but those are those are the four different types of actual things you can look at. Did someone screen someone out? Did they ask an inappropriate question? Did they treat you differently or did they reject a request for a reasonable accommodation? Those would be the ways we look for discrimination.

[00:32:19.84] spk_0:
And what’s your advice for leaders now? We’re trying to tools to help leaders.

[00:35:04.84] spk_1:
Well, my advice with Leader for Leaders is to be really mindful to these things. As red as red line issues where, you know, like, okay, we’re gonna be careful what questions we asked were going to be really careful if we ever do any screening, we’re gonna have practices. So we know we’re acting consistently and we’re not um liable to have this disparate treatment a lot of times what you have is in the workplace or anywhere. People are just doing a lot of ad hoc stuff based on gut feelings instead of having procedures and that’s where bias will start to creep in and people don’t even realize it. Um And so having having some clarity of just being more attentive to trying to be consistent. So you don’t fall into those four traps of discrimination. That’s that’s one piece of advice for leaders. The other is, you know, the same thing, like listen, when someone tells you um I’ve I’ve been in the process of contacting major like law schools and organizations that have actually printed guidance that says um in print that that mediators should treat someone differently when they have a mental illness. And I’ve said you’ve gotta update this, you’ve got to take this down and some people listen. So um one organization changed it right away that they had said to watch out if someone might be violent based on if they have a mental illness, they changed it. But some people get very, very entrenched and um and and and it’s sad there’s a there’s a real bias in our society that’s demonstrated by research that people just don’t notice mental illness discrimination as much as as other groups. What I what I have found is it’s painful because I we’ll try really hard to explain it and show it and have evidence. And even then people, you know, look at me like they’re I don’t know if you’ve seen Westworld, like they’re a Westworld robot. I don’t know if you’ve seen this where the West in the show Westworld, the robots just can’t process things that don’t fit their narrative. Maybe someone listening will understand what I’m saying. Yeah. So it’s just it can be very uh this idea of being open to just noticing these things and addressing them. Um I think it’s the most important thing and and and and the other thing I’ll say to a leader is um these are opportunities to build relationships when these things happen, you know, instead of viewing it as something to be defensive as a liability? It really becomes a liability when you evade it. But if you tackle it head on and just listen to the people for feedback, most of the people who are going to complain about microaggressions and discrimination are so used to being battered by these things that any small gesture that you actually do to listen is gonna be noticed and it’s gonna probably mean a lot. So, you know, that’s, that’s my suggestion. You know, I’m usually not looking for much from people when I bring this up and it’s like very sad to see these walls go up and to watch them get so entrenched and to watch the problems get bigger and bigger and bigger when it could have been a great opportunity to show compassion and understanding and growth that the organization. So, um, you know, that’s my hope is that people will, will take that opportunity

[00:35:25.44] spk_0:
dan. What were some of the questions that you got in this session?

[00:35:46.14] spk_1:
The questions I got in the session? Um, we’re, we’re generally people had specific instances because we did talk a little bit about reasonable accommodations and other kinds of events. Um, and, and people would ask about, um, you know how to how to respond to microaggressions like you asked, but also, you know how to speak up about it. Um, not much different from what we talked about here. Nothing, nothing earth shattering that comes to mind right now.

[00:36:09.13] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Um is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you want you want folks to know about either microaggressions or or discrimination? Again, we’re trying to help leaders in small and midsize nonprofits.

[00:37:15.53] spk_1:
Yeah. Well what I would say is um I’ll just share some information for leaders. So that way you have it to contact me. So this is my life’s work, this is what I’ve been doing um you know, with all my energy um and so I’m available. So anyone who wants to um contact me can do so easily and ask me questions directly and you can email me at dan at M. H. Mediaite dot com. Um You can get the resources from the session at bit dot li slash mh skills. Um If you’re interested in um seeing more kinds of resources that are out there for handling mental health in the workplace. Um There’s a program called the talking mental health dashboard and you can read about that at fit dot li slash tm h. Dashboard. Um And then a lot of the work that I’ve been doing with microaggressions and discrimination falls under the umbrella of the mental health safe project which is bringing together people to try to have resources for these things. Um And that’s an easy U. R. L. It’s M. H. Safe dot org. So you can go to any of these places and contact me um you know, I’m happy to answer questions anytime. I really um I feel like it’s important that we bring more attention to these issues and have more resources. So um that’s what I would add.

[00:37:30.13] spk_0:
What’s your mediation practice?

[00:38:17.52] spk_1:
My mediation practice um has been mostly families that are um having communication issues um and it’s transitioned more and more from, you know, in terms of the from the direct mediation, I also do a lot of work places um but into into training programs because my big my big goal is um that everybody had these skills as opposed to needing an outside person like need help. Um So I’ve done a lot of these large scale programs that have been grant funded or for organizations um where we set up online resources that are available 24 7. so you know, the next project that I’m doing it was of um is funded by the Ai CDR Foundation and we’re working with um national law enforcement to roll out resources for law enforcement officers to have more empowered interactions about mental health using a lot of the principles of conflict resolution um that go through all of the work I do with my company. So um yeah that’s coming out soon.

[00:38:36.72] spk_0:
Uh we have a drug in jail on nonprofit

[00:38:40.20] spk_1:
radio

[00:38:41.82] spk_0:
Ai CDR.

[00:39:25.32] spk_1:
Oh so a is the american arbitration association I cr is the International Center for dispute resolution. The two of them came together and they have a foundation, the A Ai CDR Foundation and they fund dispute resolution programs And so um I have a program that was funded by them through five different grants called the dispute resolution and mental health initiative. And what we do is we create resources for different communities. We’ve done it for families, for housing providers, for libraries now, for police um where we set them up with these online modular platforms where they can learn the skills they need and have tools they can use um in their regular practice as opposed to it being a one off training. So that way um they have, you know, ongoing access to resources um and in the hopes that they’ll be able to improve these interactions with mental health stakeholders

[00:39:47.32] spk_0:
dan Burstein, founder and mediator at Mh mediate you know how to reach him dan, thank you very much. Thanks for sharing.

[00:39:49.72] spk_1:
Thank you for having me,

[00:41:15.81] spk_0:
my pleasure and thanks to each of you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 ntc. Glad to have you with us next week, 22. NTC coverage continues with appealing to younger donors for the great transfer of wealth if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to Communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c. O And by 4th dimension technologies i Tion for in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits, tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D Just like three D. But they go on to mention deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by scott Steiner. Be With Me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95 go out and be great. Mm hmm. Mhm.

Nonprofit Radio for May 23, 2022: Many Ways To Test Your Digital Fundraising

 

Jeremy Haselwood: Many Ways To Test Your Digital Fundraising
As our #22NTC coverage continues, Jeremy Haselwood walks you through 30 variables you can test throughout your digital fundraising, including your homepage, donation pages, Facebook ads, and more. He’s from Fundraisers Unite.

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Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:00:11.54] spk_0:
mm hmm. Hello

[00:00:12.80] spk_1:
and welcome to tony-martignetti non

[00:00:26.24] spk_0:
Profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad

[00:00:28.04] spk_1:
you’re with me. I’d

[00:00:28.35] spk_0:
suffer the effects of

[00:00:29.56] spk_1:
osteoporosis if

[00:00:35.44] spk_0:
I had to raise my eyebrows to the idea that you missed this week’s show many ways to test your

[00:00:38.94] spk_1:
digital fundraising As our 22 NTC coverage continues,

[00:00:41.82] spk_0:
jeremy hazelwood walks you through lots of

[00:00:44.59] spk_1:
variables you can

[00:00:45.66] spk_0:
test throughout your

[00:00:47.00] spk_1:
digital fundraising,

[00:00:48.43] spk_0:
including your

[00:00:49.12] spk_1:
homepage donation pages, facebook ads and more.

[00:00:54.24] spk_0:
He’s from

[00:00:55.15] spk_1:
fundraisers

[00:00:56.13] spk_0:
unite

[00:00:59.54] spk_1:
On Tony’s take two doubling

[00:00:59.99] spk_0:
down on please share

[00:01:03.84] spk_1:
redux. We’re

[00:01:03.95] spk_0:
sponsored by turn to

[00:01:04.97] spk_1:
communications pr

[00:01:06.57] spk_0:
and content for

[00:01:07.35] spk_1:
nonprofits. Your

[00:01:14.04] spk_0:
story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. And by 4th dimension technologies

[00:01:16.94] spk_1:
I

[00:01:17.12] spk_0:
thi infra in a box

[00:01:19.24] spk_1:
the affordable tech solution for

[00:01:21.08] spk_0:
nonprofits.

[00:01:22.54] spk_1:
tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just

[00:01:25.67] spk_0:
like three D.

[00:01:26.67] spk_1:
But they go one dimension deeper.

[00:01:29.64] spk_0:
Here

[00:01:29.88] spk_1:
is many ways to

[00:01:31.61] spk_0:
test your digital

[00:01:32.66] spk_1:
fundraising.

[00:01:35.14] spk_0:
Hello and

[00:01:36.00] spk_1:
welcome to

[00:02:11.54] spk_0:
Tony-Martignetti non profit radio coverage of 22 NTC 2022 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. Those very smart folks who help you use technology as you are doing your mission as you are doing your social change work everyday. They’re helping you leverage technology. My guest now is jeremy hazelwood. He is digital fundraiser, author, trainer and marketer at fundraisers United Jeremy Welcome to nonprofit radio Hey, Tony, thank you for having me here. I’m so excited to be here and talk digital fundraising. Absolutely. That’s what we’re here to do. I’m glad you’re excited Thank you. Alright. I’m glad to see you get excited about digital fundraising man. It’s my passion. So it’s like I wake up and I’m, I’m excited every day because I get to help companies raise money and do more good in the world. So

[00:02:31.26] spk_1:
it took a while to figure

[00:03:16.54] spk_0:
out what it is that gets me up. But that’s, that’s definitely it. This is it. All right. And your session is aptly named 30 ways to test your digital fundraising. You would like to see nonprofits develop a testing plan testing regimen. Yeah, yeah. I think it’s something that’s very underutilized just in my experience working with nonprofit, especially from a digital side. Um, my background is like I worked for agencies that marketing and fundraising agencies that serve nonprofits heavy and direct mail. And my role with them was to really bring digital and make it, um, just a better channel for their clients to raise funds. I noticed they do a lot in testing when it comes to direct mail, but when it came to digital,

[00:03:17.90] spk_1:
it was kind of

[00:04:06.44] spk_0:
bland and one message and I’m like, there’s still so much that we can learn from digital, we can learn it so much more quickly than we can with direct mail. Okay. Um, is there a way that you’ve organized these, these 30 ways. I don’t know if we’ll be able to tick through all 30. Yeah, depending on how much you have to say about them, but we might, you know, we’ll see well organized by like channel um, facebook goal etcetera. Yeah, it’s actually funny. Like the original concept for this session, um, that I pitched to NtC was like 100 ways to test and it was gonna be a 60 minute session. Actually. No, no, that’s not. I have a, I have 100 ways to test within fundraisers unite. But for N TC, I was gonna do like 60 ways to test 60 and 60 minutes and then They’re like, well we only have the 30 minute sessions available. I’m like, let’s do 30 in 30 minutes. Um, 40, There you go. See the math works itself out. But, but for the sake

[00:04:21.13] spk_1:
of like organizing to

[00:04:22.15] spk_0:
your point. Um,

[00:04:23.16] spk_1:
I did, I focused

[00:04:24.42] spk_0:
on some specific areas. So I looked really

[00:04:27.44] spk_1:
at email, um

[00:04:27.92] spk_0:
social media,

[00:04:29.46] spk_1:
um, search

[00:04:30.33] spk_0:
engine marketing and

[00:04:32.66] spk_1:
let’s see

[00:04:44.64] spk_0:
um, donation page and social media. Really your facebook ads, not like all social, but so email, facebook ads. Search engine marketing, your donation page and your homepage. So these are

[00:04:45.20] spk_1:
The five areas that I

[00:04:46.29] spk_0:
focused on for the session

[00:04:47.78] spk_1:
for NtC.

[00:04:50.34] spk_0:
Okay, let’s start with the homepage and the donation pages because odds are

[00:04:53.91] spk_1:
everybody’s got one of those

[00:04:59.14] spk_0:
both of those and I do see some pretty weak donation pages, uh,

[00:05:02.69] spk_1:
lacking

[00:05:04.20] spk_0:
technology,

[00:05:05.26] spk_1:
lacking visual appeal.

[00:05:07.84] spk_0:
Um, so, but let’s, let’s start with, let’s start with the home page and you know, we’ll go beyond those two, but let’s make sure we cover the homepage and then donation pages. So what’s your advice around the homepage?

[00:05:18.01] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:05:19.05] spk_0:
so with the homepage, I mean

[00:05:20.52] spk_1:
naturally it’s like

[00:05:35.54] spk_0:
you want your donation page, there’s so many boxes at the homepage, has to check when people come to your website, they need to know who you are, why you do what you do, who you do it for um in a way for people to connect with you. And some of

[00:05:36.31] spk_1:
the things that I talked about it and what people

[00:05:38.45] spk_0:
don’t realize too is like there’s things

[00:05:40.21] spk_1:
that you should test on your

[00:05:41.28] spk_0:
homepage. Um and there’s tools that you can use to test.

[00:05:44.03] spk_1:
Also, I didn’t get into the

[00:05:45.10] spk_0:
tools within the session,

[00:05:46.79] spk_1:
but you can use

[00:05:47.52] spk_0:
like um optimized

[00:05:49.00] spk_1:
lee or um

[00:05:50.57] spk_0:
omni convert. These are

[00:05:52.21] spk_1:
tools and

[00:05:53.29] spk_0:
actually google optimized you

[00:05:54.67] spk_1:
can use. These are tools that I

[00:05:56.44] spk_0:
we don’t have time to

[00:05:57.17] spk_1:
go into those, but what they

[00:05:58.41] spk_0:
essentially do is help

[00:05:59.38] spk_1:
you kind of a b test

[00:06:00.49] spk_0:
different elements on your homepage, for example, resources. Those

[00:06:04.69] spk_1:
3. 1 more time I’d like to

[00:06:05.80] spk_0:
share.

[00:06:06.47] spk_1:
Sure, sure. Optimized

[00:06:08.90] spk_0:
lee.

[00:06:09.84] spk_1:
Omni convert

[00:06:11.48] spk_0:
and google

[00:06:12.96] spk_1:
optimized and google

[00:06:14.11] spk_0:
optimize is free, but there are certain limitations, but

[00:06:17.26] spk_1:
basically these are

[00:06:18.14] spk_0:
like conversion rate

[00:06:19.29] spk_1:
optimization tools for your website or even

[00:06:23.94] spk_0:
for your donation page and to summarize

[00:06:25.59] spk_1:
what what these tools

[00:06:26.94] spk_0:
do is let’s say you’re one time that your homepage

[00:06:30.69] spk_1:
loads, You’ll

[00:06:31.42] spk_0:
get image a, as your homepage better and the next

[00:06:35.30] spk_1:
time your web page loads,

[00:06:36.63] spk_0:
it’ll be image

[00:06:37.37] spk_1:
B of the homepage banner.

[00:06:40.04] spk_0:
So it’s kind of randomized

[00:06:40.92] spk_1:
if you will, just

[00:06:41.68] spk_0:
to simplify. So

[00:06:42.74] spk_1:
when people see your

[00:06:43.45] spk_0:
website, they’ll get a version

[00:06:44.72] spk_1:
A and version be of your website.

[00:06:46.94] spk_0:
So you can test

[00:06:47.76] spk_1:
different things on your

[00:06:48.64] spk_0:
website, like an image

[00:06:50.23] spk_1:
or a call to action or a headline or

[00:06:52.27] spk_0:
something like that. Um, that’s generally what that does. Um, that’s again, I didn’t get into any of that because it does get to be a little more technical. Um, really what my point of my session was and really the point today is like,

[00:07:05.74] spk_1:
here’s what you

[00:07:06.65] spk_0:
can test and then we can also get into

[00:07:08.72] spk_1:
why it’s important to test,

[00:07:09.85] spk_0:
which a lot of it’s kind of common sense knowledge, but that’s not always common practice though. Um, but when it comes to your home page, one of

[00:07:17.79] spk_1:
the things that, that I

[00:07:18.71] spk_0:
always recommend is like testing like your hero image, which is like that first image that’s at the top of your home page. Um, some nonprofits might have a video running up there instead of an image, but testing that using, like, especially if you’re

[00:07:32.64] spk_1:
doing a campaign,

[00:07:34.34] spk_0:
um, if you’re running a

[00:07:35.81] spk_1:
campaign like right now, I don’t know

[00:07:37.81] spk_0:
when people will hear this, but let’s say it’s

[00:07:39.80] spk_1:
a springtime

[00:07:40.85] spk_0:
campaign, your email is springtime campaign oriented. You’re, let’s say you’re running

[00:07:45.74] spk_1:
facebook ads. It’s springtime campaign

[00:07:47.75] spk_0:
oriented. Um,

[00:07:48.97] spk_1:
so like let’s

[00:07:50.25] spk_0:
have like your

[00:07:51.43] spk_1:
hero image on your

[00:07:53.04] spk_0:
page be that

[00:07:53.77] spk_1:
same campaign

[00:07:54.94] spk_0:
as opposed to like

[00:07:56.06] spk_1:
here’s what we do or

[00:07:57.45] spk_0:
here’s how you can volunteer,

[00:07:59.14] spk_1:
like make that image

[00:08:00.58] spk_0:
coincide with the rest of your campaign elements.

[00:08:03.94] spk_1:
Right? Make

[00:08:04.47] spk_0:
it timely make it integrate

[00:08:05.61] spk_1:
with your campaigns,

[00:08:06.69] spk_0:
test that with the campaign versus not testing it if

[00:08:09.68] spk_1:
you don’t have the tools

[00:08:11.03] spk_0:
and watch

[00:08:11.82] spk_1:
how your donations

[00:08:12.82] spk_0:
will increase because that message is right there in

[00:08:15.19] spk_1:
the front for people to see.

[00:08:16.62] spk_0:
Um, so

[00:08:17.83] spk_1:
you know, that that’s one thing that you

[00:08:21.84] spk_0:
can test is your hero image using a campaign image as opposed to like a

[00:08:22.83] spk_1:
general branded image or

[00:08:28.24] spk_0:
some other kind of call to action image. Um, so I’ll pause there, see if you have questions or if you wanted me to

[00:08:30.72] spk_1:
kind of roll into the next

[00:08:31.91] spk_0:
one, you know, go to the

[00:08:32.85] spk_1:
go to the next homepage

[00:08:34.13] spk_0:
idea.

[00:08:34.72] spk_1:
Okay. Yeah. Next one would be like your

[00:08:37.09] spk_0:
donation

[00:08:37.87] spk_1:
button text. Um,

[00:08:40.04] spk_0:
pretty much every

[00:08:40.80] spk_1:
nonprofit. I haven’t

[00:08:42.02] spk_0:
Seen one and I don’t

[00:08:43.18] spk_1:
know how long

[00:08:44.37] spk_0:
that does not include that donate button

[00:08:46.28] spk_1:
up in the upper, usually

[00:08:47.38] spk_0:
right hand corner.

[00:08:48.42] spk_1:
Uh, and most of

[00:08:49.52] spk_0:
them will say donate and I think

[00:08:51.45] spk_1:
that’s fine. I don’t think

[00:08:52.42] spk_0:
there’s anything wrong with donate, but what if instead of donate it said give now

[00:08:58.04] spk_1:
or make

[00:08:58.64] spk_0:
a difference

[00:08:59.42] spk_1:
or feed a

[00:09:00.32] spk_0:
family, you know, whatever

[00:09:01.72] spk_1:
that call to action,

[00:09:02.71] spk_0:
maybe fund

[00:09:04.24] spk_1:
a research study.

[00:09:06.24] spk_0:
Um, so

[00:09:07.12] spk_1:
we’re very accustomed to just saying donate now because it’s

[00:09:09.60] spk_0:
very direct, but it’s also

[00:09:10.99] spk_1:
very transactional.

[00:09:12.48] spk_0:
Um, but again,

[00:09:13.54] spk_1:
I’m not saying that it’s,

[00:09:14.48] spk_0:
it’s not going to

[00:09:15.59] spk_1:
work for your organization, but if we

[00:09:16.97] spk_0:
don’t test, we don’t know

[00:09:18.19] spk_1:
right.

[00:09:18.86] spk_0:
Um, and I think there’s certain

[00:09:20.52] spk_1:
kind of boilerplate

[00:09:21.54] spk_0:
templates that is non profit as an

[00:09:23.94] spk_1:
industry we go

[00:09:24.86] spk_0:
with because we know that in general this

[00:09:27.09] spk_1:
is what’s supposed to work. And I don’t

[00:09:29.71] spk_0:
remember you

[00:09:30.76] spk_1:
remember years ago act Blue

[00:09:32.36] spk_0:
did well with Chip in.

[00:09:34.44] spk_1:
Yeah,

[00:09:36.06] spk_0:
something like

[00:09:36.69] spk_1:
that. But I’m sure they, I mean

[00:09:57.94] spk_0:
they have lots and lots of records that they’re mailing too. So I’m sure they tested and, and chip in. You saw the blue button and said and for them it was like chip in, you know? Yeah. Well, but, and even to that point it’s like chip in and that could be like vernacular. That’s that organization and their audiences like they associate with that non profit you know, So what’s the vernacular, the language

[00:10:00.72] spk_1:
that you’re a nonprofit would

[00:10:01.69] spk_0:
use, you know, maybe it is chip in, you know, maybe it’s feed a family, you know, whatever that is, but test that out. Um, if you don’t have, if you have zero data, your new nonprofit or you’ve never tested before, then you probably have data on what donate now is doing for you. Like let’s switch it for a month and try to keep everything constant If we, if we have too many factors going, we’re not going to know what works, you know, so you always want to change

[00:10:24.81] spk_1:
One thing at one time.

[00:10:26.14] spk_0:
Um, and if all

[00:10:26.91] spk_1:
things are the same and we

[00:10:28.01] spk_0:
only changed the text on that donated button, then it’s a pretty safe bet that the donate button was the reason that, you know, the,

[00:10:35.49] spk_1:
that we got and you can

[00:10:38.54] spk_0:
also test it with. I’m trying to think of some of the other

[00:10:39.85] spk_1:
tools. Um, well even the tools

[00:10:42.64] spk_0:
that I mentioned, they can test conversion rates and things like that.

[00:10:45.52] spk_1:
But because

[00:10:46.50] spk_0:
I know one pieces, like we talked about testing, but then there’s like,

[00:10:48.91] spk_1:
how do you measure the testing? Um,

[00:10:50.85] spk_0:
and one is if you’re, you’re not using any

[00:10:53.25] spk_1:
tools, it’s just kind of how did we do last month

[00:10:57.44] spk_0:
versus how we do this month? Um, did we change anything

[00:10:58.99] spk_1:
else? No, Then we can probably attribute it to this and that’s kind of the

[00:11:02.54] spk_0:
roundabout. Like

[00:11:03.49] spk_1:
we can probably attribute it to this.

[00:11:05.50] spk_0:
Um, if

[00:11:06.52] spk_1:
smaller, medium

[00:11:07.67] spk_0:
sized nonprofits

[00:11:08.40] spk_1:
may not have the budget

[00:11:09.68] spk_0:
to actually put the analytics and technology behind

[00:11:12.16] spk_1:
knowing for sure

[00:11:13.50] spk_0:
what

[00:11:14.30] spk_1:
the difference maker was. But if you’re

[00:11:16.18] spk_0:
looking for some data points like that’s certainly something that can help is

[00:11:20.11] spk_1:
swapping it out and keeping

[00:11:21.35] spk_0:
everything else the same.

[00:12:07.14] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Content creation and content management, What projects do you have that they can take off your plate, lift these weights from your shoulders? Content creation Is there some writing project some series that you need to do or that you’ve been thinking about doing you’d like to do for internal audiences. External board donor’s community. What writing projects can they take off your plate and then the content management and also the distribution. Getting you the

[00:12:07.84] spk_0:
placements and

[00:12:49.14] spk_1:
as well as managing that content for you on your site, whether that’s blog, wherever you may, print or digital. Right, Alright. So how can they help you with content creation, content management and then also the distribution, getting the, getting your good word, you as an opinion leader, thought leader in your community. Getting that out. Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to many ways to test your digital fundraising.

[00:12:54.74] spk_0:
You made the point a

[00:12:56.05] spk_1:
couple of times, keeping everything

[00:12:57.26] spk_0:
else the same. I

[00:12:58.88] spk_1:
guess if you if you change a few things

[00:13:01.05] spk_0:
or a bunch of things

[00:13:02.54] spk_1:
and your outcomes improved,

[00:13:07.04] spk_0:
I guess

[00:13:07.82] spk_1:
by outcomes, you know,

[00:13:08.65] spk_0:
we’re keeping it simple. So we’re saying

[00:13:10.00] spk_1:
donations improved.

[00:13:11.67] spk_0:
Then

[00:13:12.47] spk_1:
then then

[00:13:13.21] spk_0:
then that’s terrific.

[00:13:14.25] spk_1:
But if donations declined

[00:13:16.35] spk_0:
and you don’t know what it is that you changed that caused them to

[00:13:19.14] spk_1:
decline. So then you have to go back to where you were in the beginning

[00:13:22.43] spk_0:
and then

[00:13:23.39] spk_1:
iterative lee changed

[00:13:26.44] spk_0:
one thing at a time and

[00:13:26.59] spk_1:
figure out what what what

[00:13:29.24] spk_0:
is, what is, what

[00:13:29.49] spk_1:
is it that’s depressing

[00:13:30.73] spk_0:
your,

[00:13:31.56] spk_1:
your outcomes and change that one little thing

[00:13:33.92] spk_0:
and then and then test and see

[00:13:35.54] spk_1:
if you, you get higher

[00:13:36.53] spk_0:
than your baseline.

[00:13:38.54] spk_1:
Yeah, exactly. Because the

[00:13:43.75] spk_0:
tests that I’m talking about in the test

[00:13:45.31] spk_1:
will go through. It’s like

[00:13:46.44] spk_0:
these are tests that you do one at a time. I’m not like

[00:13:48.64] spk_1:
here’s 50 things

[00:13:49.62] spk_0:
you can test and let’s do them all at once.

[00:13:51.65] spk_1:
Because if you think about if you

[00:13:53.03] spk_0:
change that button, if you

[00:13:54.08] spk_1:
change it to say give

[00:13:55.37] spk_0:
now instead of donate now and

[00:13:57.07] spk_1:
it goes to your landing page. But you’ve

[00:13:58.64] spk_0:
also changed an image

[00:14:00.23] spk_1:
or headline or something on the

[00:14:02.54] spk_0:
landing page, then we don’t know if

[00:14:03.10] spk_1:
you’ve got more donations

[00:14:04.08] spk_0:
because you change something on your landing page or if

[00:14:06.55] spk_1:
you change something on that button that got them to the landing page. So

[00:14:10.47] spk_0:
you know the, the need

[00:14:11.79] spk_1:
to put together kind of a testing

[00:14:13.17] spk_0:
roadmap um,

[00:14:14.35] spk_1:
would be something that you would want to do for your organization and be like here

[00:14:17.76] spk_0:
and it takes time

[00:14:18.74] spk_1:
because you can only test

[00:14:19.78] spk_0:
one thing at a time. So it’s like

[00:14:20.87] spk_1:
here’s what we’re going to test

[00:14:22.07] spk_0:
in this calendar year and then whether it’s

[00:14:24.97] spk_1:
bi weekly, weekly,

[00:14:26.41] spk_0:
monthly, whatever it is, you know, having that plan laid out the

[00:14:29.73] spk_1:
to learn

[00:14:30.52] spk_0:
because the whole point of testing is like we want to learn,

[00:14:32.75] spk_1:
we want to raise more

[00:14:33.59] spk_0:
money for

[00:14:34.88] spk_1:
less cost

[00:14:35.65] spk_0:
of, of a transaction to obtain that donation and we

[00:14:39.13] spk_1:
want to learn more creative

[00:14:40.54] spk_0:
works. How many hits do we need?

[00:14:42.93] spk_1:
What’s a, what’s a

[00:14:44.24] spk_0:
sample size that

[00:14:45.20] spk_1:
we can rely on

[00:14:47.04] spk_0:
uh,

[00:14:47.69] spk_1:
to draw conclusions from?

[00:14:49.84] spk_0:
Yeah, that’s actually a really good question.

[00:14:52.72] spk_1:
Um, and I

[00:14:53.53] spk_0:
don’t, I don’t have like an answer

[00:14:55.01] spk_1:
that other than the

[00:14:55.97] spk_0:
generic. It depends.

[00:14:57.49] spk_1:
You know, I think

[00:14:58.69] spk_0:
if you’re a smaller nonprofit

[00:15:00.45] spk_1:
that doesn’t

[00:15:01.89] spk_0:
get a lot of traffic to your homepage in this case, then I mean

[00:15:06.04] spk_1:
where it could take

[00:15:07.08] spk_0:
you months to get enough traffic, you know, which is

[00:15:09.83] spk_1:
kind of like the sad thing about

[00:15:11.44] spk_0:
a nonprofit that doesn’t get a

[00:15:12.55] spk_1:
lot of traffic is when will,

[00:15:14.09] spk_0:
you know, we’ve, we have enough data to learn something. You

[00:15:17.83] spk_1:
know, I think it’s quicker to

[00:15:19.08] spk_0:
learn like with like

[00:15:20.11] spk_1:
advertising where you can actually have a budget and it will

[00:15:22.88] spk_0:
kind of force impressions

[00:15:24.16] spk_1:
to your website.

[00:15:25.25] spk_0:
Um, in that case, like

[00:15:26.78] spk_1:
I usually like to have,

[00:15:28.54] spk_0:
I mean at least a few 1000 clicks. Uh, so

[00:15:31.45] spk_1:
we kind of have enough data to make

[00:15:33.33] spk_0:
a decision.

[00:15:34.27] spk_1:
Uh, with the

[00:15:35.33] spk_0:
website, I mean going by that, I mean there’s, there’s some small

[00:15:39.98] spk_1:
nonprofits that may not get a

[00:15:41.99] spk_0:
1000 visits to their website in

[00:15:44.71] spk_1:
half a year or a whole year.

[00:15:46.38] spk_0:
You know? Um,

[00:15:47.58] spk_1:
in which case maybe

[00:15:48.65] spk_0:
you want to test something else

[00:15:49.82] spk_1:
1st? Maybe when you’re

[00:15:50.78] spk_0:
prioritizing exactly exactly. It’s

[00:15:56.07] spk_1:
like, where? Which

[00:15:57.17] spk_0:
I think, And I

[00:15:57.93] spk_1:
didn’t really think about this

[00:15:58.96] spk_0:
when I put it together. But

[00:16:00.14] spk_1:
that’s actually a really good question. Because when you look at all the things

[00:16:03.04] spk_0:
that you can test with your

[00:16:04.08] spk_1:
nonprofit, it’s like, what makes the

[00:16:05.89] spk_0:
most sense to test? Like where do

[00:16:07.48] spk_1:
we have the most data? Where are we getting the most

[00:16:09.60] spk_0:
traction? Maybe it’s a social

[00:16:10.80] spk_1:
media post. Maybe we have a good

[00:16:12.25] spk_0:
audience on social media.

[00:16:13.75] spk_1:
So, let’s test

[00:16:14.95] spk_0:
some of our posts

[00:16:15.76] spk_1:
there because

[00:16:16.98] spk_0:
we know we have a bigger sample

[00:16:18.41] spk_1:
size that we can work

[00:16:20.84] spk_0:
with. Okay. All right.

[00:16:21.40] spk_1:
Well, so your host

[00:16:23.74] spk_0:
is uh, chosen to start

[00:16:24.62] spk_1:
with the homepage

[00:16:25.72] spk_0:
because it’s ubiquitous. Everybody has one.

[00:16:27.98] spk_1:
But with the

[00:16:29.06] spk_0:
caveat that it may not be the right place for you to start your testing.

[00:16:32.63] spk_1:
If you have if

[00:16:33.92] spk_0:
you don’t have a lot of traffic to your homepage. Alright,

[00:16:36.02] spk_1:
let’s stick with the homepage. You got another, you

[00:16:40.24] spk_0:
got another one or two ideas. The homepage, and then we’ll move on. Yeah. Some other

[00:16:41.27] spk_1:
Ideas for the homepage. one

[00:16:44.54] spk_0:
would be, um,

[00:16:45.28] spk_1:
the, like the light box.

[00:16:46.53] spk_0:
So when you come to a website and

[00:16:48.89] spk_1:
people call

[00:16:50.06] spk_0:
them light boxes, they call them pop ups,

[00:16:52.17] spk_1:
Interstitial,

[00:16:53.66] spk_0:
you know, there’s different names for them. Kind of the common name. Yeah. That’s

[00:16:57.06] spk_1:
the more technical. Yeah. Which I never used

[00:17:02.89] spk_0:
Exactly. 100%, 100%. Because you say that like the, you know.

[00:17:13.34] spk_1:
Exactly, Yeah. The bigger words

[00:17:16.14] spk_0:
aren’t always better.

[00:17:17.14] spk_1:
And when I

[00:17:17.97] spk_0:
talked to my, my tech and

[00:17:19.67] spk_1:
my developer friends and they’re

[00:17:22.54] spk_0:
telling me what it is, I’m like,

[00:17:22.94] spk_1:
okay, how can I take what they

[00:17:24.31] spk_0:
said and translate it

[00:17:25.39] spk_1:
just to everyday common

[00:17:26.58] spk_0:
terms. And sometimes I’m like, I

[00:17:27.98] spk_1:
have no idea what you’re talking

[00:17:29.24] spk_0:
about,

[00:17:30.62] spk_1:
but we have drug in

[00:17:31.55] spk_0:
jail on nonprofit radio

[00:17:33.93] spk_1:
I don’t know if I have no idea what you’re

[00:17:35.25] spk_0:
talking about. You know, I’ll stop

[00:17:37.31] spk_1:
you. So if you had

[00:17:38.28] spk_0:
introduced it with

[00:17:39.57] spk_1:
traditional

[00:17:40.10] spk_0:
transitional, you know,

[00:17:41.59] spk_1:
yeah, whatever.

[00:17:45.54] spk_0:
But like, yeah, you see,

[00:17:46.23] spk_1:
I didn’t introduce,

[00:17:47.54] spk_0:
Yeah. Because you

[00:17:48.25] spk_1:
got to know who the audience is, right?

[00:17:50.11] spk_0:
So if this was

[00:17:51.11] spk_1:
like for a tech blog or

[00:17:52.33] spk_0:
something, I’m like the interstitial.

[00:17:53.97] spk_1:
But no, we’re talking about just non profit let’s start with the base like, you know, um,

[00:17:58.57] spk_0:
let’s just

[00:17:59.56] spk_1:
the basics here. So yeah,

[00:18:00.58] spk_0:
pop up a

[00:18:01.67] spk_1:
lightbox testing

[00:18:03.24] spk_0:
that. And I say tested and, and

[00:18:04.53] spk_1:
a lot of these things I’m saying test,

[00:18:06.28] spk_0:
but in my

[00:18:07.98] spk_1:
own way I’m saying

[00:18:14.64] spk_0:
do this, I’m not saying tested because like light boxes are so effective. Like pretty much no matter how you’re using if using them for email acquisition,

[00:18:17.96] spk_1:
if you’re using them to

[00:18:19.08] spk_0:
promote a campaign

[00:18:20.07] spk_1:
to increase your donations.

[00:18:21.53] spk_0:
Um, what I find

[00:18:23.35] spk_1:
though is a lot of

[00:18:24.32] spk_0:
nonprofits

[00:18:25.23] spk_1:
and I say that a lot, a lot

[00:18:26.49] spk_0:
of non profits, but

[00:18:27.40] spk_1:
it is true,

[00:18:28.61] spk_0:
um, that they’re

[00:18:32.54] spk_1:
like, well I don’t like pop ups, so I don’t want to use them, you know, But it’s not really about what you like because your

[00:18:35.06] spk_0:
donors and your website visitors

[00:18:36.84] spk_1:
probably don’t

[00:18:37.64] spk_0:
like a lot of pop ups

[00:18:38.63] spk_1:
either. But the data

[00:18:40.42] spk_0:
doesn’t lie. Like

[00:18:41.60] spk_1:
these things do work.

[00:18:42.84] spk_0:
And the reason they work is

[00:18:44.17] spk_1:
there’s nothing else that you

[00:18:45.26] spk_0:
can do on the homepage when that

[00:18:47.44] spk_1:
pop up comes on the screen other

[00:18:49.05] spk_0:
than click it and turn

[00:18:50.20] spk_1:
it off or do the

[00:18:51.90] spk_0:
action that it says there’s

[00:18:53.06] spk_1:
two choices. If someone goes straight to your

[00:18:56.24] spk_0:
website, they’ve

[00:18:56.39] spk_1:
got probably 20 different choices, click on your,

[00:18:58.92] spk_0:
contact us, click

[00:19:00.10] spk_1:
on an image,

[00:19:01.16] spk_0:
submit an email, click on any of your menu items. Like there’s so many different choices

[00:19:06.21] spk_1:
that you can make. But that pop up is like A or B. Do I

[00:19:09.66] spk_0:
close this and look at the website or do I hit the donate button or do I put my email in and submit it and now I’m a subscriber. So

[00:19:17.04] spk_1:
they’re extremely

[00:19:17.69] spk_0:
effective. Yeah, 100%. So

[00:19:22.73] spk_1:
yeah, so they

[00:19:24.13] spk_0:
work. But I’m saying tested because the thing is like, I’ve never seen it not work. So maybe your nonprofit is different and maybe you can test it with running with the campaign and if you didn’t raise any more money, which if that happens, like

[00:19:37.14] spk_1:
I’d love for those people to reach out

[00:19:39.44] spk_0:
to me because I want to

[00:19:39.94] spk_1:
know who those organizations are

[00:19:41.40] spk_0:
because it’s like,

[00:19:42.34] spk_1:
well I’ve never heard of that but

[00:19:44.12] spk_0:
here’s maybe some other

[00:21:16.84] spk_1:
things that you can strike. It’s time for a break. Fourth dimension technologies. Their I. T. Solution is I. T. Infra. In a box. It’s budget friendly. It’s holistic. It’s the buffet of I. T. Solutions because you pick what you need and you leave the rest you needn’t hire them for all the services that they can do. They’ve got this I. T. Infra in a box for you to choose from like overall I. T. Assessment whether you want to implement multifactor authentication which a lot of people are saying is a very good idea. We’ve had guests saying exactly that um there might be other security for your site for your devices those mobile devices that are in people’s homes. Now cost analysis help desk. Do you need help that way with tech with like tech support and there’s more in the I. T. In for in a box you choose what’s right for your current I. T. Status. What’s right for your budget? Yeah leave the rest behind fourth dimension technologies tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Now back to many ways to test your digital fundraising with jeremy hazelwood. There are variables within the pop

[00:21:18.78] spk_0:
up that you can test how

[00:21:20.68] spk_1:
long a delay

[00:21:21.65] spk_0:
how long is someone on your homepage before it before

[00:21:23.93] spk_1:
it pops up?

[00:21:25.14] spk_0:
Of course what’s the text that’s in it again.

[00:21:28.40] spk_1:
What’s the button that’s

[00:21:29.43] spk_0:
in it. You have to have a button labeled that’s in it,

[00:21:32.14] spk_1:
Right.

[00:21:34.14] spk_0:
Yeah. What’s the offer?

[00:21:35.26] spk_1:
You know? So it could be

[00:21:36.35] spk_0:
$10 equals this or

[00:21:37.95] spk_1:
$50 equals that.

[00:21:39.17] spk_0:
So yeah, there’s

[00:21:40.14] spk_1:
probably a whole other

[00:21:41.73] spk_0:
15 different tests

[00:21:43.11] spk_1:
that you can run just within that. But let’s

[00:21:45.17] spk_0:
start at the basics. Okay. Give us one more for the homepage.

[00:21:49.74] spk_1:
Yeah. One more for the home page. And this is

[00:21:51.37] spk_0:
really simple. But um what

[00:21:53.54] spk_1:
about a donate button at the bottom of your

[00:21:55.59] spk_0:
page? Um And the reason that I say

[00:21:58.00] spk_1:
that is when people scroll

[00:21:59.98] spk_0:
pasture

[00:22:00.81] spk_1:
donate button, if your

[00:22:01.73] spk_0:
menu isn’t like what they call a

[00:22:03.09] spk_1:
sticky menu meaning when you scroll that top menu stays there

[00:22:06.11] spk_0:
and the donate button is

[00:22:07.05] spk_1:
always there or your

[00:22:07.94] spk_0:
menu is always there.

[00:22:09.29] spk_1:
Um If you don’t have that

[00:22:11.04] spk_0:
then you’re

[00:22:11.69] spk_1:
scrolling and that donate has come off

[00:22:13.45] spk_0:
of of the homepage off the

[00:22:15.66] spk_1:
top. So as you scroll down, you’re reading about who we are, what we do, why we do

[00:22:19.51] spk_0:
it. Um It’s just kind of a

[00:22:20.99] spk_1:
natural, here’s the next step,

[00:22:22.65] spk_0:
you know, donate.

[00:22:23.86] spk_1:
Um So it’s

[00:22:24.93] spk_0:
just right in the user flow. The user doesn’t

[00:22:26.55] spk_1:
have to scroll back up

[00:22:27.70] spk_0:
and find the donate or click the donate or

[00:22:30.68] spk_1:
even if they didn’t

[00:22:31.74] spk_0:
like if they kind of psychological or mentally

[00:22:34.20] spk_1:
blocked out that donate button when they came to your

[00:22:36.37] spk_0:
page? Is there

[00:22:37.43] spk_1:
scrolling through? Its in

[00:22:38.43] spk_0:
the natural progression

[00:22:39.60] spk_1:
of how they’re reading your

[00:22:40.44] spk_0:
page and that donate button is right there at the bottom. So

[00:22:43.67] spk_1:
um test that

[00:22:44.70] spk_0:
out, see if it’s something that you’re able to get more donations throughout the month. Um

[00:22:49.62] spk_1:
I don’t this is

[00:22:50.90] spk_0:
not something where you’re gonna earn like a ridiculous amount of conversions or donations

[00:22:55.94] spk_1:
From but even if you have like five

[00:23:08.34] spk_0:
more donations a month because you put a button at the bottom of your page, like wouldn’t that be worth the the 10 minutes it takes to put the button on your site And I think it would be, let’s go to the donation page. Okay cool. So donation and let’s say I’m looking at my my list over here. Okay, so donation

[00:23:17.47] spk_1:
page, one of the things that’s

[00:23:19.00] spk_0:
important to um

[00:23:20.42] spk_1:
a number of donors

[00:23:21.90] spk_0:
is is my donation secure and I don’t think it’s as much of a concern now as it

[00:23:27.06] spk_1:
was maybe even five

[00:23:31.14] spk_0:
years ago but there’s still people that are leery too uh do transactions online.

[00:23:33.12] spk_1:
Um We’re with

[00:23:33.97] spk_0:
the nonprofit. It’s like well I don’t know this nonprofit is going to take care of my data and hopefully your nonprofit is like your donation page should be the H. T. T. P. S. Meaning that it’s a secure page

[00:23:46.12] spk_1:
anyways

[00:23:46.87] spk_0:
but just putting some kind of

[00:23:48.83] spk_1:
Burbage

[00:23:50.34] spk_0:
or a visual indication that it is safe transaction

[00:23:55.19] spk_1:
on your website. So it could be

[00:23:56.44] spk_0:
something as simple as saying your transaction is secure like ssl security or putting like an image of a lock saying your transaction is secured. So doing that versus not having any language in there at all about a secure

[00:24:10.37] spk_1:
transaction.

[00:24:32.24] spk_0:
You can make a difference in someone going ahead and clicking that submit button on the donate because they could get as far as just putting all their information in. But they’re still kind of on the fence like, you know, if they’re nervous about giving online or giving because they don’t see any language that says their donation is secure because I’ve even experienced this to my house like myself personally, there’s some websites

[00:24:33.24] spk_1:
I’m not as

[00:24:36.94] spk_0:
familiar with and if I don’t see that language, then I

[00:24:37.58] spk_1:
may not actually

[00:24:38.55] spk_0:
include. I may not actually purchase whatever it is I’m purchasing and I’m not even talking about nonprofits. I’m talking about more like online retail. Um, so it gives the donor confidence in what they’re doing. So that’s something that you can test having that language on there versus just excluding it. Um, and seeing if

[00:24:55.04] spk_1:
that makes a difference in

[00:24:58.14] spk_0:
your conversion rates and you know, folks might say well, but people could look at the address bar and they can see if it’s https and, and lots of browsers have a lock when it is a secure site. I don’t know if all browsers, I use Safari

[00:25:12.79] spk_1:
predominantly. So

[00:25:13.69] spk_0:
I don’t know if all browsers do that, but, but

[00:25:15.73] spk_1:
even if they do,

[00:25:20.64] spk_0:
you know, think of older folks who are not so savvy they don’t know to look for https.

[00:25:22.05] spk_1:
So

[00:26:02.44] spk_0:
if you don’t, you know, what does it cost to put a sentence in with a little lock picture, it says, you know, it’s, it’s secured, encrypted on both ends, right? With 2 56 bit ssl technology or something, you know, something legitimate. I’m not saying make it up, but yeah, I remember you’re not doing it right. You know, I’m not, Yeah. Now this is the fraud how to test the fraud component of your donation. You don’t have to test for fraud. You don’t have to test fraud. Just don’t do that, don’t do it, you know? But if you’re, if yes, put put something in that’s reassuring to folks, especially older folks who may not know to look at the address bar. Right. Yeah. Alright. Alright. What else, what else for the donation pages? Um, one thing that I’ve seen more

[00:26:12.93] spk_1:
recently in the past

[00:26:39.54] spk_0:
Maybe 2-3 years and I want to say that there might even be specific, um, Tech companies that process donations for nonprofits and I can’t tell you who they are because I’m not sure which one’s doing and which ones don’t. Um, but highlighting like a certain gift that might say most popular gifts. So if you have like a $25 gift and $50 or 200 whatever that, you know procession of gift handles is There might be one

[00:26:40.24] spk_1:
that’s highlighted.

[00:26:41.34] spk_0:
Um, and it says most popular, but what it does and it’s

[00:26:44.91] spk_1:
usually not the lowest

[00:27:23.64] spk_0:
One because I might go to a site like I’m gonna give them $25, but then when I get there it has this $50 and it’s highlighted and it says most popular and so now there’s this social pressure to be like, well that’s the most popular. Like I don’t want to give less than what it is. So I guess I’m gonna give $50 instead of $25. Um So again, it’s, it’s, that’s kind of like a marketing trick if you will, but it does work. Um and you know, whether it’s the most popular or not, I mean again, that’s when you get into the ethics behind it, like, you know, um, you don’t necessarily have to say most popular, you could say, you know more

[00:27:24.31] spk_1:
impact or the

[00:27:25.12] spk_0:
most impact or something like that. There’s ways that you can word it, but

[00:27:28.99] spk_1:
the whole point is you’re

[00:27:29.88] spk_0:
drawing attention to a specific gift amount. Um that’s

[00:27:33.07] spk_1:
probably more reasonable. It’s not like you’re high

[00:27:35.46] spk_0:
like 500

[00:27:36.29] spk_1:
dollar gift, but it’s not

[00:27:37.37] spk_0:
Like you’re 10 20

[00:27:38.36] spk_1:
$5 gift either.

[00:27:39.60] spk_0:
Um, So

[00:27:42.24] spk_1:
what I found is that when you, when you do

[00:27:42.78] spk_0:
use some kind of language and highlight one particular giving level that it does result

[00:27:47.32] spk_1:
in higher conversions.

[00:27:48.53] spk_0:
Um, and again, this is my ash

[00:27:50.42] spk_1:
tricks with everything

[00:27:51.94] spk_0:
we’re calling it a test because this is what I’ve seen

[00:27:54.67] spk_1:
with nonprofits that I’ve worked

[00:27:55.86] spk_0:
with and research that I’ve done. But you have to test

[00:27:58.85] spk_1:
and see if this is the case

[00:27:59.82] spk_0:
for your non profit as well.

[00:28:01.44] spk_1:
That’s a good one. Like

[00:28:03.24] spk_0:
that average gift most

[00:28:04.85] spk_1:
popular gift. Most

[00:28:06.16] spk_0:
impactful.

[00:28:07.03] spk_1:
Alright. What else you got? Yeah.

[00:28:09.13] spk_0:
And the

[00:28:09.67] spk_1:
other one I have is kind of in the

[00:28:10.72] spk_0:
same vein as this and

[00:28:11.87] spk_1:
it’s really like your

[00:28:12.65] spk_0:
donation handles and your impact. Um

[00:28:15.59] spk_1:
So if you’re like an

[00:28:17.94] spk_0:
example of if

[00:28:18.09] spk_1:
you’re a nonprofit that does a few different things

[00:28:19.91] spk_0:
like for example, maybe like a rescue

[00:28:21.55] spk_1:
mission, like they do

[00:28:22.56] spk_0:
housing, they do food, they may do

[00:28:25.11] spk_1:
adult rehab

[00:28:26.98] spk_0:
kinds of programs. Um, so you can like test and

[00:28:30.76] spk_1:
there’s a lot to test in

[00:28:31.84] spk_0:
just these three different areas. You can test dollar amounts

[00:28:34.85] spk_1:
for these. So if you want to just look at housing,

[00:28:37.62] spk_0:
You can say, you know, $30 equals X. nights

[00:28:40.49] spk_1:
Of shelter, $60

[00:28:42.25] spk_0:
equals X nights. 100 equals

[00:28:43.71] spk_1:
X nights. You could

[00:28:44.83] spk_0:
test these against each other

[00:28:49.04] spk_1:
and have all of the gift channels at like $50, but $50 will help do

[00:28:50.12] spk_0:
X nights of shelter.

[00:28:51.43] spk_1:
$50 will help

[00:28:52.59] spk_0:
by X amount of

[00:28:53.40] spk_1:
Meals or $50 to

[00:28:55.04] spk_0:
send X amount

[00:28:56.02] spk_1:
of adults through rehab.

[00:28:57.55] spk_0:
And that way you learn about

[00:28:58.73] spk_1:
what your donors are more interested in. Um,

[00:29:01.69] spk_0:
so there’s ways that you can learn

[00:29:06.84] spk_1:
About that either way with, with that example, you’ll still get $50. But we, we test because we also want

[00:29:09.64] spk_0:
to learn more

[00:29:09.93] spk_1:
about our donors and more about what

[00:29:11.28] spk_0:
works. So if people

[00:29:12.24] spk_1:
respond better to a food offer versus the housing offer,

[00:29:15.62] spk_0:
then that might help us

[00:29:16.68] spk_1:
create a campaign,

[00:29:18.04] spk_0:
you know,

[00:29:18.98] spk_1:
in the calendar year at

[00:29:19.96] spk_0:
some point. That’s more around

[00:29:21.24] spk_1:
food. Um, and taking what

[00:29:23.00] spk_0:
we learned from this test.

[00:29:24.45] spk_1:
Um, so that’s one

[00:29:38.84] spk_0:
thing an NtC guest, uh, and he said they tested whether Children who are sick or Children who are hospitalized is has a greater impact. And

[00:29:41.68] spk_1:
intuitively you would think it would be the Children who

[00:29:43.54] spk_0:
are hospitalized

[00:29:44.63] spk_1:
because they’re the sickest of the among

[00:29:46.42] spk_0:
the sick. But

[00:29:47.56] spk_1:
turned out not to be

[00:29:48.19] spk_0:
true. They were getting more click throughs and more donations when

[00:29:51.52] spk_1:
they highlighted Children who

[00:29:52.66] spk_0:
were sick

[00:29:53.87] spk_1:
versus

[00:29:54.50] spk_0:
hospitalized.

[00:29:55.64] spk_1:
Intuition is

[00:29:57.83] spk_0:
not always correct. That’s why

[00:29:59.01] spk_1:
we test. Another

[00:30:00.05] spk_0:
reason, you know, like you said earlier, it doesn’t matter what

[00:30:03.25] spk_1:
you, the ceo

[00:30:04.88] spk_0:
or you, the chief fundraiser prefer. It matters what

[00:30:07.81] spk_1:
your donors

[00:30:09.08] spk_0:
and potential donors prefer.

[00:30:10.70] spk_1:
So you know, you

[00:30:12.54] spk_0:
have to ignore your intuition.

[00:30:13.90] spk_1:
You have to ignore your own

[00:30:15.94] spk_0:
preferences and do what Jeremy is saying and

[00:31:41.74] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m doubling down on the redox who can you share non profit radio with, please think about colleagues, friends, folks who work for nonprofits serve on boards of nonprofits. Maybe they’re even avid volunteers, it’s a possibility these folks will learn from nonprofit radio the same as you are, share the share the knowledge, share the good, non profit radio vibe, share the pleasure, share, what else is there? Um, double the enjoyment? No, well you could double, you can triple the enjoyment. So please think about who you can share. non profit radio with, connect them with me, you can connect them with one of my social posts. Uh, connect them to tony-martignetti dot com share this show this episode however you can do it. I’d be grateful. Who can you share? non profit radio with thank you. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for many ways to test your digital fundraising. I do like most of my work is with

[00:31:43.39] spk_0:
non province, but I do some, I have some clients that are in the commercial

[00:31:46.87] spk_1:
world and they were

[00:31:47.79] spk_0:
running a

[00:31:48.56] spk_1:
facebook ad recently and they provided me with copy and I was looking at it and I was like, oh, this is terrible, this is not. And

[00:31:55.12] spk_0:
usually if I see something that is

[00:31:57.28] spk_1:
like, I don’t think it’s going to work like I’ll say, hey, what if we say this instead of that? And even with

[00:32:03.14] spk_0:
that? I’m like, what if

[00:32:03.40] spk_1:
we change, it’s like, well we want to try to run this first and just see, I’m like, all right and I thought it was

[00:32:07.87] spk_0:
going to Bomb and it actually

[00:32:08.95] spk_1:
did really good

[00:32:09.83] spk_0:
despite what

[00:32:11.20] spk_1:
I thought was going to work. Um, so that’s why it’s like I’m saying

[00:32:15.12] spk_0:
these things and in

[00:32:16.10] spk_1:
general, like you’ll see in the majority of cases, what we’re talking about, there will be a positive impact. Um, but these are not guaranteed. I’m not saying like, here are all the things that you should do if you want

[00:32:25.16] spk_0:
your nonprofit to succeed,

[00:32:26.47] spk_1:
what you need to do to succeed is

[00:32:28.27] spk_0:
to test and then

[00:32:29.34] spk_1:
find out what works. But those things like, let’s give

[00:32:31.73] spk_0:
some ideas. Like

[00:32:32.67] spk_1:
we just don’t be stagnant. If we have the same website, the same emails,

[00:32:36.21] spk_0:
the same everything

[00:32:37.20] spk_1:
Over a 12-month period. We have learned nothing about what we need to do to better serve our

[00:32:41.12] spk_0:
donors and and

[00:32:42.38] spk_1:
really better

[00:32:46.74] spk_0:
enable the services that we have because if we’re not learning how we

[00:32:47.14] spk_1:
can better serve our donors and how we can

[00:32:49.14] spk_0:
generate more money for nonprofit

[00:32:51.01] spk_1:
and still take care of our

[00:32:51.97] spk_0:
donors, then we’re doing a disservice down

[00:32:53.89] spk_1:
the road for the people

[00:33:09.54] spk_0:
or animals or whatever environment, whatever our nonprofit is serving. We’re doing that in other realms. We’re making sure we have programs that are appealing to donors, making sure we have events that are appealing to donors. We make sure we have fundraisers who are appealing to donors, right. Your staff is turning your donors off. That’s bad. You’re gonna, you’re gonna remove the people from the fundraising role. So, you know, in

[00:33:20.67] spk_1:
your digital and your digital

[00:33:21.73] spk_0:
marketing and fundraising as well.

[00:33:23.17] spk_1:
You want to appeal

[00:33:24.48] spk_0:
to your donors and your potential donors, you’re doing it in other places.

[00:33:28.24] spk_1:
We’re here to. Alright, let’s continue with the

[00:33:32.34] spk_0:
donation page ideas. Okay.

[00:33:32.95] spk_1:
Um, other donation page ideas.

[00:33:34.93] spk_0:
And this is gonna

[00:33:36.45] spk_1:
be my bad recommendation of tests, but I’m gonna throw it out there anyway, because I think it’s probably not going to

[00:33:42.17] spk_0:
work, but I’m

[00:33:43.09] spk_1:
curious to see if it will still work. Um, and that is testing an image versus a video on your donation page. Um, and for the very savvy fundraisers

[00:33:53.24] spk_0:
that are

[00:33:53.53] spk_1:
watching or listening to

[00:33:54.50] spk_0:
this, they were probably

[00:33:55.61] spk_1:
going to discredit me all over the

[00:33:56.97] spk_0:
place and say that Jeremy doesn’t

[00:33:59.20] spk_1:
know what he’s talking about. Um,

[00:34:00.93] spk_0:
but several

[00:34:09.54] spk_1:
years ago when you had a video on your, your donation page and I think maybe it’s because maybe a more a newer medium, you could tell the story of, you know, why we need the gift and be this heartwarming story and you’d actually see the gifts go up. Um, what

[00:34:16.83] spk_0:
I’ve seen over time

[00:34:17.69] spk_1:
now is that

[00:34:18.83] spk_0:
the images

[00:34:19.78] spk_1:
seem to be more effective

[00:34:20.87] spk_0:
than a video. And the reason that we’re

[00:34:23.35] spk_1:
suspecting that happened

[00:34:24.44] spk_0:
just because

[00:34:27.54] spk_1:
when people hit your donation page, You’re now giving them a video to watch, which maybe 30 seconds to minutes. I don’t know however long it is. But you’re now asking them to watch this video and command the attention

[00:34:36.94] spk_0:
and then

[00:34:37.63] spk_1:
fill out a form after that. So you’re kind of asking the donors to do too

[00:34:41.99] spk_0:
many things when they get

[00:34:43.05] spk_1:
your donation page, it is a distraction because they can’t do a donation

[00:34:46.61] spk_0:
page. Most

[00:34:47.78] spk_1:
likely they’re ready to make a

[00:34:48.69] spk_0:
donation. Yes,

[00:34:50.11] spk_1:
exactly. Don’t distract them from that purpose.

[00:34:53.23] spk_0:
Right? Because now there’s another action

[00:34:54.94] spk_1:
you’re giving them watch the

[00:34:56.19] spk_0:
right watch the video,

[00:34:57.63] spk_1:
but you’re saying

[00:35:00.04] spk_0:
test it, Why?

[00:35:00.74] spk_1:
Why? Why do you believe

[00:35:02.16] spk_0:
that so that people don’t think this jeremy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yeah. Well the reason that I’m kind of

[00:35:07.24] spk_1:
slick throwing this in here is for the

[00:35:08.89] spk_0:
people who have the

[00:35:09.81] spk_1:
video still on their page.

[00:35:11.55] spk_0:
So if that’s

[00:35:12.79] spk_1:
you like test it

[00:35:14.13] spk_0:
with an image on there instead

[00:35:15.59] spk_1:
of the video

[00:35:16.41] spk_0:
and see if

[00:35:17.50] spk_1:
your donations will go

[00:35:18.58] spk_0:
up a little bit. But I’m bringing this in here to recommend it as

[00:35:22.06] spk_1:
a test really to draw

[00:35:23.12] spk_0:
attention to it because there are still some

[00:35:25.36] spk_1:
organizations that

[00:35:26.68] spk_0:
are testing

[00:35:27.64] spk_1:
or not testing, but that have a video on their donation page. And I think if I don’t

[00:35:32.51] spk_0:
address it, then I’m not really bringing attention to that,

[00:35:35.69] spk_1:
that this is an issue. And,

[00:35:37.81] spk_0:
but what,

[00:35:38.78] spk_1:
what I’d also be curious is the people do that do have the nonprofits

[00:35:42.03] spk_0:
that do have a video on their

[00:35:43.10] spk_1:
page. Um,

[00:35:44.64] spk_0:
is that

[00:35:45.18] spk_1:
still working for them and how will, you know if it’s still working if you don’t test that against an image

[00:35:49.48] spk_0:
and if they tested against an

[00:35:50.61] spk_1:
image and the video is still really generating a higher conversion rate

[00:35:55.59] spk_0:
then then I’m

[00:35:56.45] spk_1:
wrong and I’m okay with that. Um I can only go by the data that I see and the research that I’ve done to

[00:36:02.90] spk_0:
say that

[00:36:04.00] spk_1:
was the best practice.

[00:36:05.27] spk_0:
But now not so

[00:36:06.10] spk_1:
much. But if you’re still stuck in that best practice,

[00:36:08.77] spk_0:
it might be time

[00:36:09.71] spk_1:
to test out of that.

[00:36:13.23] spk_0:
If you have neither are you better? Starting

[00:36:14.46] spk_1:
with an image and testing that

[00:36:16.43] spk_0:
and then trying

[00:36:17.96] spk_1:
a video and testing that

[00:36:19.42] spk_0:
in place of the image. Mm hmm.

[00:36:21.39] spk_1:
No. Yeah.

[00:36:22.44] spk_0:
And that that’s

[00:36:23.31] spk_1:
actually an interesting question to if you have neither.

[00:36:25.72] spk_0:
I would test the

[00:36:27.08] spk_1:
neither versus an

[00:36:28.51] spk_0:
image. Well, you’ve got that you have your baseline.

[00:36:31.43] spk_1:
You know what neither

[00:36:32.88] spk_0:
has been doing for

[00:36:33.67] spk_1:
you over however months

[00:36:35.58] spk_0:
years. Okay.

[00:36:36.73] spk_1:
So

[00:36:37.27] spk_0:
now you want to do

[00:36:38.31] spk_1:
an adequate

[00:36:39.29] spk_0:
test with enough

[00:36:40.00] spk_1:
clicks

[00:36:41.17] spk_0:
to testing your advice. It

[00:36:44.04] spk_1:
sounds like your advice would be testing

[00:36:45.16] spk_0:
image first

[00:36:46.62] spk_1:
because typically

[00:36:49.23] spk_0:
images pulled better videos,

[00:36:50.62] spk_1:
correct, correct.

[00:36:51.87] spk_0:
Because I’m not asking

[00:36:52.95] spk_1:
you to look at an image. I’m asking you to watch a video, but the image is just there to,

[00:36:58.16] spk_0:
it should have the same

[00:36:59.36] spk_1:
look and feel and

[00:37:00.12] spk_0:
reinforce the sentiment

[00:37:01.72] spk_1:
of what

[00:37:02.24] spk_0:
that donation pages. So

[00:37:04.04] spk_1:
going back to like a rescue mission like it’s going to be an image of

[00:37:08.11] spk_0:
probably someone

[00:37:09.03] spk_1:
receiving services, whether they’re um receiving housing or food or something like that because it

[00:37:14.13] spk_0:
reinforces

[00:37:15.25] spk_1:
what you’re giving to help out

[00:37:17.47] spk_0:
or giving to

[00:37:19.43] spk_1:
eradicate. Mhm.

[00:37:20.63] spk_0:
You

[00:37:20.75] spk_1:
got one more for the donation page. Um Let’s see. I know I was looking at

[00:37:28.62] spk_0:
this is I mean it’s in the same vein

[00:37:30.89] spk_1:
because a lot of these are like really nit picky. But even like testing the hero image

[00:37:34.74] spk_0:
for example,

[00:37:35.73] spk_1:
because we talked about testing

[00:37:36.85] spk_0:
an image versus the

[00:37:37.69] spk_1:
video. If you’re already doing an image, I wouldn’t

[00:37:40.51] spk_0:
test that against video. If you’re

[00:37:42.06] spk_1:
doing a video, I’d test that against the image. But if you have an image, I would test that

[00:37:46.46] spk_0:
against another

[00:37:47.78] spk_1:
image. Um using this rescue mission scenario. If you

[00:37:52.00] spk_0:
test a feeding

[00:38:04.12] spk_1:
offer. So maybe it’s a a man that is homeless and he’s receiving food. Maybe the next image that you test is maybe uh this gentleman um in the

[00:38:04.42] spk_0:
housing he’s sitting on his bed

[00:38:06.00] spk_1:
and so you actually see that what you’re giving is

[00:38:09.17] spk_0:
subconsciously tied

[00:38:10.13] spk_1:
to providing the shelter

[00:38:11.26] spk_0:
versus providing the

[00:38:12.30] spk_1:
food like someone in a cafeteria

[00:38:14.80] spk_0:
that’s eating a meal.

[00:38:24.02] spk_1:
Um So testing different images. If you’re testing like um cancer research or something like that, maybe it’s your showing a cancer patient, which I believe would be more effective than showing the actual research facility. Um But I’m sure that there’s cancer research nonprofits that are showing the

[00:38:32.55] spk_0:
facility on the donation

[00:38:33.81] spk_1:
page and not the

[00:38:34.97] spk_0:
end recipient

[00:38:36.16] spk_1:
who’s the beneficiary

[00:38:37.59] spk_0:
of that research.

[00:38:38.97] spk_1:
Um, so

[00:38:40.11] spk_0:
bringing attention to that

[00:38:41.52] spk_1:
is like, let’s test these images

[00:38:43.20] spk_0:
and see which

[00:38:44.50] spk_1:
one would increase the conversion rates for our

[00:38:47.22] spk_0:
heart donation

[00:38:48.92] spk_1:
page. Okay.

[00:38:50.02] spk_0:
I mean, I

[00:38:50.28] spk_1:
want to flush out something that you

[00:38:51.36] spk_0:
just said sort of in passing. I want to make sure we’re giving people the right advice. You

[00:38:56.45] spk_1:
said, If you have an

[00:38:57.29] spk_0:
image, don’t

[00:38:58.76] spk_1:
test that against the

[00:38:59.53] spk_0:
video, but if you have a video test that

[00:39:04.42] spk_1:
against an image, I would,

[00:39:05.09] spk_0:
that’s what I would say. Yes.

[00:39:07.09] spk_1:
I

[00:39:09.52] spk_0:
say that. Um,

[00:39:10.61] spk_1:
I think also

[00:39:11.46] spk_0:
non province. If they

[00:39:12.57] spk_1:
got the idea to say, oh, we’ve never tested a video. Like

[00:39:16.01] spk_0:
I know he doesn’t recommend it, but let’s

[00:39:17.93] spk_1:
just see if it works then have at it. I wouldn’t recommend it. Um,

[00:39:23.42] spk_0:
so yeah, you

[00:39:24.27] spk_1:
are correct. If you

[00:39:25.28] spk_0:
have an image

[00:39:26.30] spk_1:
tested against the

[00:39:26.96] spk_0:
video, uh, sorry.

[00:39:28.48] spk_1:
If you have a video tested against an image

[00:39:30.64] spk_0:
image. Yeah.

[00:39:31.69] spk_1:
Let’s test it against another image.

[00:39:44.92] spk_0:
Okay. Okay. Let’s move on to email. That’s, that seems ubiquitous. Everybody uses email most likely. Right. Right. Reading my notes. You’re reading

[00:39:51.94] spk_1:
my

[00:39:52.05] spk_0:
notes. Everything you said

[00:40:02.28] spk_1:
is great. And there’s

[00:40:03.56] spk_0:
basics of these,

[00:40:04.52] spk_1:
you know, time of day, day of week. Um,

[00:40:06.64] spk_0:
taking a step back though. Taking a step

[00:40:09.08] spk_1:
back. Um,

[00:40:10.13] spk_0:
when you test email, it’s more important

[00:40:13.35] spk_1:
in my opinion,

[00:40:14.16] spk_0:
like to test, like

[00:40:15.23] spk_1:
what they call, like

[00:40:16.12] spk_0:
the envelope, what’s on

[00:40:17.19] spk_1:
the outside before you actually

[00:40:18.52] spk_0:
test anything within the email. Um, so people have to open it before they can see your email. So to me, the most

[00:40:26.07] spk_1:
important thing is like, what can

[00:40:30.11] spk_0:
we test before people click into that email to get them to open the email? And those would be things like time

[00:40:34.17] spk_1:
of day and day of week. You know, that, that’s,

[00:40:36.20] spk_0:
that’s a twofer

[00:40:37.10] spk_1:
right there. There’s a time of day,

[00:40:54.71] spk_0:
there’s a day of week. So testing different times of day with the exact same emails, same subject line, same pre header, same everything. We’re just testing the time of day. Is that the text you see like some people call it teaser text, text you see in your, in your inbox before you’ve opened the message, correct? Yes.

[00:41:00.36] spk_1:
So you have like your

[00:41:01.55] spk_0:
subject line

[00:41:02.68] spk_1:
and then below that, like if you’re looking on your

[00:41:04.56] spk_0:
phone or even on your desktop Yeah, you’ll see a little bit of text under it

[00:41:07.70] spk_1:
and and that’s called your pre

[00:41:12.01] spk_0:
header. Yes. Um, so you know, I

[00:41:12.53] spk_1:
would look at testing that the

[00:41:13.72] spk_0:
basics time of day to day a week.

[00:41:15.71] spk_1:
You mentioned

[00:41:16.67] spk_0:
one like the sender

[00:41:17.75] spk_1:
name.

[00:41:18.81] spk_0:
So if you’re sending it and it’s like your organization’s name is the center,

[00:41:23.19] spk_1:
which is probably how

[00:41:24.31] spk_0:
most nonprofits send it and there’s nothing

[00:41:26.25] spk_1:
wrong with that. Um,

[00:41:27.51] spk_0:
what if we tested it using a person’s name. Like maybe it’s

[00:41:30.74] spk_1:
the executive

[00:41:31.91] spk_0:
director or ceo of a

[00:41:33.48] spk_1:
nonprofit. Um,

[00:41:34.98] spk_0:
the only thing that I would kind of

[00:41:36.03] spk_1:
caution with that

[00:41:37.31] spk_0:
is

[00:41:38.02] spk_1:
if you tested that

[00:41:40.31] spk_0:
one time, you’ll likely

[00:41:41.25] spk_1:
see a bump because people

[00:41:42.50] spk_0:
aren’t used to seeing it

[00:41:43.52] spk_1:
from that person. And

[00:41:44.63] spk_0:
if they don’t know that person’s

[00:41:45.90] spk_1:
name or even if they do, they’re like, oh, who is this? And

[00:41:48.00] spk_0:
they’ll click on it just because they’re not sure who it’s from.

[00:41:50.57] spk_1:
So I think if

[00:41:51.81] spk_0:
you only tested once you’re probably going to say, oh, it came that we changed the sender name so we’re gonna

[00:41:57.89] spk_1:
always go with the sender

[00:41:59.51] spk_0:
name and that, that may prove

[00:42:00.40] spk_1:
effective for the short

[00:42:01.40] spk_0:
term. You can probably send a

[00:42:02.41] spk_1:
few of them that way and

[00:42:04.13] spk_0:
it’ll be effective, but kind of baselining it over time.

[00:42:07.16] spk_1:
Like I, I don’t know which one will be

[00:42:08.63] spk_0:
more effective for you. I mean,

[00:42:10.18] spk_1:
and I honestly don’t have seen mixed

[00:42:11.95] spk_0:
results on that. Um,

[00:42:13.35] spk_1:
so that is something

[00:42:14.22] spk_0:
that you run multiple tests on over time.

[00:42:16.94] spk_1:
Not just like a one time we’ve made our

[00:42:27.20] spk_0:
decision Ceo or executive director after the person’s name. Yeah. I’m like putting their, not just their name but their title on right. Comma Ceo or comma executive director. That might, you know, that that seems worth testing to me. Yeah, might open, it might get a higher open rate was writing. Okay. Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:42.68] spk_1:
And that would,

[00:42:44.80] spk_0:
um, like that’s almost like a second

[00:42:46.21] spk_1:
level senator name

[00:42:47.26] spk_0:
because just starting out sender

[00:42:48.46] spk_1:
name. Um,

[00:42:49.61] spk_0:
I mean if you’re even the nonprofit’s

[00:42:51.90] spk_1:
name, if you have

[00:42:52.58] spk_0:
the in front of your nonprofit,

[00:42:54.01] spk_1:
like the

[00:42:54.43] spk_0:
Salvation Army, you

[00:42:55.98] spk_1:
know, you can’t test it against the

[00:42:57.04] spk_0:
Salvation Army, you know,

[00:42:58.64] spk_1:
but that would be a further

[00:42:59.95] spk_0:
test. That’s deeper into the center

[00:43:01.27] spk_1:
name. But yeah, the actual

[00:43:02.79] spk_0:
name of the executive director could

[00:43:04.51] spk_1:
be one test versus the

[00:43:06.32] spk_0:
person’s name. Comma

[00:43:08.05] spk_1:
Ceo or

[00:43:08.66] spk_0:
executive director. That

[00:43:11.10] spk_1:
that could be interesting as well. Trying to participate in the

[00:43:12.73] spk_0:
activity here in the conversation.

[00:43:14.33] spk_1:
Trying to hold

[00:43:15.99] spk_0:
up, hold, trying to hold up my side of the conversation. Oh yeah,

[00:43:18.71] spk_1:
no, you’re doing a great job. Yeah.

[00:43:23.25] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:43:25.70] spk_1:
one thing that I think is, um, a good feature of the test is like if you

[00:43:27.67] spk_0:
are, if your

[00:43:28.49] spk_1:
email includes a

[00:43:30.50] spk_0:
video in it

[00:43:31.60] spk_1:
or a blog

[00:43:32.47] spk_0:
post. I mean you

[00:43:33.47] spk_1:
can’t have a video in

[00:43:34.48] spk_0:
an email, but it’s about maybe a video on your website. Um, and there’s a thumbnail

[00:43:38.58] spk_1:
of the video on your email or a blog post.

[00:43:41.05] spk_0:
Then I would

[00:43:41.68] spk_1:
include, um, like the word video, like in all caps and then like a sub colon or not slowed colon,

[00:43:48.12] spk_0:
like semi colon. And then whatever

[00:43:51.10] spk_1:
the video is, colon.

[00:43:51.57] spk_0:
Yeah. I’m all over the place

[00:43:53.10] spk_1:
with my

[00:43:53.50] spk_0:
grandma, right? That’s what you want to call it. You

[00:43:56.09] spk_1:
know what I’m saying? Yeah.

[00:43:57.38] spk_0:
You’re smarter than me. So you

[00:43:58.58] spk_1:
don’t, you understand that? Yeah. It

[00:44:00.52] spk_0:
took me two tries for video

[00:44:04.22] spk_1:
in all caps, I

[00:44:04.92] spk_0:
see that a lot. Yeah, yeah

[00:44:08.27] spk_1:
or blog

[00:44:09.05] spk_0:
because if you don’t have

[00:44:10.27] spk_1:
video and you just have like a subject line that’s maybe about the video or watch this or something like that. Like

[00:44:16.17] spk_0:
that’s one thing and it may

[00:44:17.36] spk_1:
work for you.

[00:44:18.39] spk_0:
But I think when you have

[00:44:19.33] spk_1:
like whatever that piece of

[00:44:20.44] spk_0:
content is and

[00:44:21.52] spk_1:
call it out and call attention to it now, it’s like, oh, there’s a video in here. Um and I see that first and foremost, I’m not reading like a title, I’m not reading a subject line

[00:44:30.50] spk_0:
per se.

[00:44:31.39] spk_1:
Um I know that when I open this, I’m going to see a video. I know when

[00:44:35.03] spk_0:
I open this, it’s going

[00:44:39.49] spk_1:
to be their blog post and and with this nonprofit like I like their blogs, you know, or I’m interested to see

[00:44:41.92] spk_0:
what they’re talking

[00:44:42.77] spk_1:
about and and so I

[00:44:43.96] spk_0:
know it sets my

[00:44:45.11] spk_1:
expectation

[00:44:46.16] spk_0:
as an email

[00:44:46.91] spk_1:
subscriber of what that

[00:44:48.12] spk_0:
content is.

[00:44:49.10] spk_1:
Um So I go in

[00:44:50.17] spk_0:
there and I’ll open it

[00:44:51.91] spk_1:
up. So I think that’s one thing too that

[00:44:54.39] spk_0:
um could help to sit

[00:44:56.04] spk_1:
down and see if it works for you. Give

[00:44:57.53] spk_0:
Us one more email.

[00:44:59.09] spk_1:
one more would be that pre header that we we we defined

[00:45:02.59] spk_0:
a couple of minutes

[00:45:03.53] spk_1:
ago is testing the language with the pre

[00:45:05.90] spk_0:
header and with this

[00:45:07.10] spk_1:
uh the day and time would be the same. The subject line would be the same, but the pre

[00:45:11.72] spk_0:
header would be

[00:45:14.89] spk_1:
something different and it could be

[00:45:15.49] spk_0:
a call to action.

[00:45:16.54] spk_1:
Um I do recommend that whatever you have in your pre header um and I don’t know the exact

[00:45:21.38] spk_0:
character count

[00:45:22.33] spk_1:
off the top of my head but just make sure that

[00:45:24.60] spk_0:
people can read the

[00:45:25.55] spk_1:
whole pre header um

[00:45:26.93] spk_0:
from whatever

[00:45:28.63] spk_1:
device they’re looking at it on. Um Some, some people may say well

[00:45:34.19] spk_0:
if you don’t include

[00:45:35.09] spk_1:
all of it then it adds

[00:45:35.93] spk_0:
this Mystique and people

[00:45:37.13] spk_1:
will want to open it up to see what it says and

[00:45:39.70] spk_0:
I think there’s some

[00:45:40.72] spk_1:
value to that. Um And I think maybe you can test that as well, but I think in general um that pre editor people should be able to read all of that.

[00:45:48.25] spk_0:
But testing what

[00:45:49.22] spk_1:
that is, whether it’s a call to action or um

[00:45:52.09] spk_0:
if it’s a

[00:45:53.49] spk_1:
video for example, maybe you have the person’s name that’s

[00:45:56.96] spk_0:
in the video. You

[00:45:57.96] spk_1:
know, bob’s testimony about blah blah blah versus

[00:46:01.21] spk_0:
here’s an easter

[00:46:02.30] spk_1:
message from blah blah

[00:46:04.02] spk_0:
blah.

[00:46:08.18] spk_1:
Okay, how about the,

[00:46:10.58] spk_0:
well it’s either search engine marketing or facebook

[00:46:12.94] spk_1:
ads.

[00:46:14.38] spk_0:
I’m pretty down on facebook,

[00:46:15.73] spk_1:
but I guess people are still doing

[00:46:16.86] spk_0:
a lot of facebook ads so we’ll ignore the

[00:46:20.63] spk_1:
the the hosts. Uh

[00:46:22.49] spk_0:
Predilection against

[00:46:24.21] spk_1:
facebook and

[00:46:27.78] spk_0:
let’s talk about facebook ads. Yeah

[00:46:28.17] spk_1:
facebook ads let me pull up

[00:46:30.57] spk_0:
my list here

[00:46:31.51] spk_1:
because I had a lot to say about that

[00:46:33.91] spk_0:
and actually like

[00:46:34.64] spk_1:
facebook ads is like one of those things where there’s

[00:46:38.88] spk_0:
I mean I

[00:46:39.37] spk_1:
could probably do 50 tests with

[00:46:41.00] spk_0:
facebook ads. There’s so many different

[00:46:42.31] spk_1:
things that you can test. Um,

[00:46:44.18] spk_0:
but for the sake

[00:46:45.53] spk_1:
of like maybe time and and quality

[00:46:47.60] spk_0:
of continent, what we

[00:46:48.73] spk_1:
talked about here. One thing that I do want to

[00:46:51.06] spk_0:
put out their first and

[00:46:52.11] spk_1:
foremost is

[00:46:53.25] spk_0:
testing

[00:46:54.58] spk_1:
um, link short ners within the ad copy. Um, so let’s take a step back and talk about kind of the anatomy of a facebook ad. Um and what I’m gonna talk about is more like the news

[00:47:05.77] spk_0:
feed ads. So if

[00:47:06.99] spk_1:
you’re on a desktop or on your

[00:47:09.07] spk_0:
smartphone and

[00:47:10.58] spk_1:
you’re just scrolling

[00:47:11.17] spk_0:
and you’re seeing what your friends

[00:47:12.24] spk_1:
post and then there will be an ad, they’re just kind of in your newsfeed. So newsfeed

[00:47:15.98] spk_0:
add the

[00:47:16.78] spk_1:
anatomy of it is you have like um text, which will be like your description and then you have the image below that and then you have a headline below that with a button that you can make me a

[00:47:26.77] spk_0:
donate button.

[00:47:30.88] spk_1:
Um, so one of the things that I would have nonprofits

[00:47:31.94] spk_0:
tests first and

[00:47:32.71] spk_1:
foremost is with the net description, which is that first

[00:47:35.56] spk_0:
block of content

[00:47:36.66] spk_1:
above the image where you’re writing that includes your ad copy

[00:47:41.08] spk_0:
is

[00:47:41.48] spk_1:
that you include a call to action with a

[00:47:44.26] spk_0:
link shorter at the

[00:47:45.43] spk_1:
end of your copy. Um for example, um,

[00:47:49.61] spk_0:
March is such

[00:47:50.84] spk_1:
and such awareness month here at

[00:47:52.44] spk_0:
X. Nonprofit.

[00:47:53.53] spk_1:
You know, we really believe X.

[00:47:54.75] spk_0:
Y. And Z. You

[00:47:55.88] spk_1:
can make a difference today. Um uh

[00:47:58.88] spk_0:
by donating

[00:48:02.37] spk_1:
$50. I don’t know, it’s very general um text or what

[00:48:03.57] spk_0:
I’m saying. Uh

[00:48:04.62] spk_1:
and then under that you have like make your gift here and then you have like a link shortening which

[00:48:09.67] spk_0:
would be like Bentley, B. I.

[00:48:10.90] spk_1:
T. Dot L. Y. You know, you can take a U. R. L. From your donation page, go to Bentley and it

[00:48:17.14] spk_0:
will compress it

[00:48:18.61] spk_1:
into less characters for your U. R.

[00:48:21.21] spk_0:
L. But

[00:48:22.48] spk_1:
include that within your um the description copy of your facebook ad. Um and the reason that I recommend that is

[00:48:29.75] spk_0:
Number one I’ve seen at work,

[00:48:31.10] spk_1:
you get a higher conversion rate but just thinking about the flow of a facebook ad. Like you’re reading the

[00:48:36.50] spk_0:
copy and

[00:48:43.57] spk_1:
let’s talk about the flow. If you don’t include this piece, you’re reading the copy and then you see the image or video and then you see a call to action

[00:48:46.10] spk_0:
and then over to the right

[00:48:47.14] spk_1:
of that call to action is a

[00:48:48.09] spk_0:
button. So

[00:48:49.27] spk_1:
what we’re doing with this

[00:48:50.07] spk_0:
essentially is bringing

[00:48:51.13] spk_1:
that call to action

[00:48:52.77] spk_0:
up

[00:48:53.11] spk_1:
quicker. Um, and eliminating

[00:48:55.39] spk_0:
some distractions to

[00:48:56.35] spk_1:
a degree. So I’m reading

[00:48:57.52] spk_0:
this wonderful

[00:48:58.51] spk_1:
ad copy that was written by this nonprofit

[00:49:00.75] spk_0:
and then they’re telling me

[00:49:01.75] spk_1:
what that next step is right here and there

[00:49:03.94] spk_0:
as opposed to

[00:49:04.77] spk_1:
like okay I have to watch this video or taking this

[00:49:07.40] spk_0:
image and I have to read this headline

[00:49:09.28] spk_1:
and then I have to click on this button

[00:49:11.67] spk_0:
so you’re you’re

[00:49:11.93] spk_1:
making that decision making process happen quicker. Um because

[00:49:16.12] spk_0:
by the time I read your

[00:49:16.91] spk_1:
copy I made tune out your image and the call to action in the button and I’m scrolling to the

[00:49:20.97] spk_0:
next piece of content

[00:49:22.51] spk_1:
so it just

[00:49:23.15] spk_0:
inserts that call to

[00:49:24.07] spk_1:
action a little bit earlier.

[00:49:25.28] spk_0:
So I would say

[00:49:30.47] spk_1:
test that out, see if that works. How about um what else? Facebook.

[00:49:32.00] spk_0:
Okay yep. So what else um

[00:49:33.84] spk_1:
I would test image overlays. So what I mean by that is like a

[00:49:38.77] spk_0:
text overlay.

[00:49:39.68] spk_1:
Um It used to be where with facebook you can only have a certain

[00:49:42.72] spk_0:
percent of

[00:49:43.74] spk_1:
your image and a image

[00:49:45.97] spk_0:
at be covered

[00:49:46.65] spk_1:
with text, but now you can put text all

[00:49:48.98] spk_0:
over it if you want to.

[00:49:50.24] spk_1:
So what I would recommend is like

[00:49:52.03] spk_0:
testing the image by

[00:49:53.48] spk_1:
itself. So let’s

[00:49:54.59] spk_0:
say it’s uh animal

[00:49:56.40] spk_1:
shelter and it’s just this picture

[00:49:58.22] spk_0:
of any animal, it could

[00:50:00.10] spk_1:
be a happy animal sat

[00:50:01.31] spk_0:
animal or whatever,

[00:50:02.48] spk_1:
but then you have a b version of the add

[00:50:04.84] spk_0:
and everything else is the same except the

[00:50:06.63] spk_1:
image. But

[00:50:10.86] spk_0:
over the image you actually have some text overlay that’s saying you know

[00:50:11.46] spk_1:
$50

[00:50:12.58] spk_0:
Or $10 a month

[00:50:13.93] spk_1:
can help save X.

[00:50:15.31] spk_0:
Animals X. Amount of animals. Um But

[00:50:18.54] spk_1:
seeing if that makes a difference.

[00:50:19.81] spk_0:
And honestly I’ve seen where in some cases it has, in some cases it has, you know, so that this is certainly one of those

[00:50:26.79] spk_1:
things where I’m like, I’ve

[00:50:27.82] spk_0:
usually see this happen, but I’ve seen mixed results with this. So I think non probably have to see what works for them.

[00:50:33.86] spk_1:
Okay,

[00:50:42.16] spk_0:
leave us with one more facebook made. You make your top one of what’s left. Yeah. What’s left is testing your audiences. So

[00:50:46.11] spk_1:
not even what the people

[00:50:47.35] spk_0:
see, but behind the scenes and facebook, whenever you’re

[00:50:50.21] spk_1:
building the ads,

[00:51:09.16] spk_0:
your audiences are so important. And I would test against your audiences and even within that I would break them into a few different audiences and won, I would take my email file of my donors and I would upload them into facebook and target them with ads separately from everybody else. Um, and then I would also target by

[00:51:11.58] spk_1:
age, I would have everything

[00:51:16.96] spk_0:
be the same except I would target different age groups because some

[00:51:17.28] spk_1:
nonprofits say,

[00:51:18.37] spk_0:
hey, we want to

[00:51:19.29] spk_1:
target ages 18

[00:51:20.53] spk_0:
and up because everybody, if they have money we want them to give. But that’s not always being

[00:51:25.01] spk_1:
a good steward of your ad

[00:51:36.56] spk_0:
budgets. So tests like 50 year old plus and then test maybe 35 to 49 see which one of those ad groups has a higher conversion rate because a lot of times when I talk to non profits, they

[00:51:38.51] spk_1:
have no idea

[00:51:39.71] spk_0:
what the age group is of people that donate to them on facebook. So I’m like we can find this out if we test

[00:51:45.35] spk_1:
enough, we’ll know that this

[00:51:46.51] spk_0:
is the age group that has a higher propensity to donate. Um So those are ways that you

[00:51:50.33] spk_1:
can test the audiences on the back

[00:52:00.45] spk_0:
end of it, you mentioned earlier that you have 100 ways to test. Is that something you said? I think you said it was on your website. Um it is, it’s you have to be a member of fundraisers unite

[00:52:04.38] spk_1:
to have

[00:52:05.07] spk_0:
access to that. Yeah, but it is

[00:52:07.37] spk_1:
available but

[00:52:07.99] spk_0:
yeah, just throw it dot com after that. So fundraisers unite dot com. Um and this is an online community uh subscription program for digital fundraisers. So there’s a lot of templates and trainings

[00:52:20.57] spk_1:
and tip sheets and

[00:52:21.77] spk_0:
resources that they

[00:52:22.87] spk_1:
offer to my

[00:52:24.75] spk_0:
audience. Thank you very much, jeremy hazelwood

[00:52:59.75] spk_1:
digital fundraiser. Next week we’ll take a break from 22. NTC with Don Gatewood on mentoring. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored

[00:53:00.33] spk_0:
by turn to

[00:53:00.90] spk_1:
communications pr and content for

[00:53:03.30] spk_0:
nonprofits. Your story

[00:53:58.25] spk_1:
is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. And by 4th dimension Technologies IT Infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez marc Silverman is our Web guy and this music is by scott Steiner. Yes, thank you for that. Affirmation, scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great. Mm hmm.