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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 February 21, 2020: Hiring Your Audit Firm & Equitable Compensation

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My Guests:

Yigit Uctum: Hiring Your Audit Firm
When it’s time to change your auditors, what do you look for? And how best to work together? I talk through the relationship with Yigit Uctum, a partner at Wegner CPAs.

 

 

Gene Takagi: Equitable Compensation
Gene TakagiIs your compensation schedule fair? What does that mean and why should you care? Gene Takagi returns for a full discussion. He’s our legal contributor and principal of NEO, the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group.

 

 

 

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[00:00:14.24] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95% on your aptly named host. We have a listener of the week. It’s Debra Elizabeth Finn in Boston, Massachusetts. She shared non profit

[00:00:28.99] spk_2:
radio with her group, Mission based Massachusetts. I’m always grateful to those of you who share the show. If you do, let me know. I will shout you out as

[00:00:38.00] spk_1:
well. Many thanks, Deborah. Thank you so much. Congratulations

[00:00:45.00] spk_2:
on being our listener of the week. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be hit with Roman. Is, um if you poison to me with the idea that you missed today’s

[00:00:49.97] spk_1:
show hiring your audit firm when it’s time to change your auditors, What do you look for? And how do

[00:00:55.96] spk_2:
you best work together? I talked through the relationship with you. Eat each tomb, a partner at wegner-C.P.As

[00:01:09.51] spk_1:
and equitable compensation. Is your compensation schedule fair? What does that mean? And why should you care? Jean Takagi returns for a full discussion.

[00:01:11.77] spk_2:
He’s our legal contributor and principle of neo the non profit and Exempt Organizations Law

[00:01:47.61] spk_1:
group. And he’s in the studio. Authorities take two planned giving relationship stories were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers wegner-C.P.As dot com But Cougar Mountain Software, Denali Fund is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. Martin for a free 60 day trial. And by turned to communications, PR and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to DOT CEO. I’m very pleased to welcome back to the show and to the studio you coach Doom. He’s a partner at wegner-C.P.As

[00:02:06.41] spk_2:
with over 13 years of experience. He works exclusively with tax exempt organizations. He oversees Wagner’s Form 9 90 nationwide preparation practice and leads their New York City operations. The firm is that wegner-C.P.As dot

[00:02:07.94] spk_1:
com. You know that And at wegner-C.P.As. Welcome back.

[00:02:12.68] spk_3:
Thank you for having your back.

[00:02:13.94] spk_1:
That’s a pleasure. Stand a little closer to the

[00:02:15.72] spk_2:
mike so we can hear you. Yes. There. Thank you.

[00:02:18.34] spk_1:
Um, getting from Madison, Wisconsin.

[00:02:21.16] spk_2:
Thank you. How cold is it? There now is pretty called people.

[00:02:26.03] spk_3:
When I left, it was like like 10 degrees. I don’t know. I don’t pay attention after I leave. Okay.

[00:02:32.36] spk_2:
When it gets below 20 does it matter? And it

[00:02:35.14] spk_3:
doesn’t matter. What

[00:02:35.93] spk_1:
Can you tell that between 10 and zero.

[00:02:38.90] spk_3:
I can You can’t. The marginal difference it is called. It’s

[00:02:42.71] spk_2:
just all called anything

[00:02:45.12] spk_3:
below one of the state f

[00:02:47.84] spk_1:
in cold. Okay, um, so we’re talking about the audit relationship. So first of

[00:02:50.63] spk_2:
all, what? What goes into What are we asking an order for him to do before we get into how to hire them. What is it we’re expecting from an audit?

[00:03:20.94] spk_3:
So, basically from an audit by the professional standards, you expect someone independent to go over your and simple terms like, I’m gonna get technical, go over your accounting records and internal controls, overcome over financial reporting and basic issue. Their opinion based on their all its procedures bedroom, not your financial statements are fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

[00:03:30.63] spk_1:
Yeah, I know. And

[00:03:31.50] spk_3:
I

[00:03:31.62] spk_2:
don’t have my college accounting class.

[00:03:58.16] spk_3:
Yeah, absolutely. And based on the audit, he also expect some recommendations like they don’t have to give one, but ah, that the relationship is auditors have the expertise working with similar organizations and know the best practices. And if they identify any weaknesses in your systems, they’re also required to report that. But in addition, they also make recommendations as evaluated service.

[00:04:01.79] spk_2:
So it’s much more than just a numerical analysis. Absolutely. You’re talking about going into processes, trains, accountability, etcetera,

[00:04:10.88] spk_3:
right? Absolutely. Yeah. We going to accounting systems, looking at the system’s looking, get who’s involved in certain procedures and what controls are in place and everything. So

[00:04:24.65] spk_2:
meaning board members, senior employees going into those depends

[00:04:27.80] spk_3:
on who were working it, like really small organizations that may be one person organization. Then he would want board the moment as part of the internal controls. If the non profit is large enough, they can have the internal control environment between the organization but typically organizations. Most nonprofits. They’re off a certain small size, and you you want some board government’s involvement in Internal Control says Okay,

[00:05:01.30] spk_2:
and then and then these recommendations. You’re saying that’s based on having done hundreds of audits of similar type organizations. You could make some recommendations, give advice about I could be doing some things better. Absolutely there. I guess they’re okay, but you could be doing things will smarter,

[00:05:14.40] spk_3:
like doing it more efficiently or doing it a little differently and again like that can be some best practice recommendations as well as some recommendations to address certain weaknesses in the internal control system. So that can be two different things.

[00:05:30.04] spk_2:
Okay, so it’s so It’s like including business practices is we’re

[00:06:16.49] spk_3:
losing business practices as well, so we’re not required to his auditors to look at certain things. But people expects us to look at things, even if it’s not part of thought. It se RV makeover some insurance invoices gonna required to make sure that they have enough coverage for certain things. But that’s something that, based on looking at it, such as like external fraud coverage, like looking at the today’s environment. Barry People’s a concert, getting hacked and everything. You may have an insurance policy for cyber security. Let’s say it may cover up to $10,000 with a $5000 deductible. Well, that’s not really very much money, exactly. So if someone, then the may look at that and maybe recommend that you know you may want topped us a little bit by paying just a little in premium. Say another 100,000 premium, you increase that coverage from 110,000 or something like that.

[00:06:29.20] spk_2:
Okay, Okay. So I mean there’s so there’s lots of different areas you can just

[00:06:32.48] spk_3:
a little bit.

[00:06:33.64] spk_1:
Okay. Um, so we have a couple

[00:06:39.89] spk_2:
of minutes before our before our first break? Uhm, why don’t we get into the, uh

[00:06:42.11] spk_1:
oh. I do want to ask

[00:06:43.00] spk_2:
you how long is an audit process that’s based on the size of the farm? Really?

[00:07:00.19] spk_3:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. On the duration depends on how responsive each part iss basically so and so it can very quickly

[00:07:02.05] spk_1:
doesn’t have to be done on site or

[00:07:48.06] spk_3:
it does not have this day and age like out of organizations keep records electronically and it can be them through video conferencing, teleconferences and looking everything online and just document sharing. Yeah, and and absolutely and out off times, man. Dorrit is done on site daughter. They’re sitting in a conference room. Email the client email E Glendale back. So it’s like, you know so. But it’s face to face is good summits depends on preference. A cz Well, so are some people prefer it that pay and there’s advantages and dissidents just off face to face, like onside auditing versus virtual Auditing one is flexibility, but the danger is the order can direct longer if it’s totally virtual. And if both parties will not commit to the timeline. So,

[00:07:53.24] spk_2:
yeah, the timeline and document sharing like responsiveness,

[00:07:57.83] spk_3:
but it does not have to be done on site.

[00:08:08.83] spk_2:
Okay. Okay. Cool. Um, all right. So we got another minute or so before before break. And so I So let’s start to get into what we’d be looking for in a firm, and then we’ll go more detail after our parents just want to be looking for

[00:08:16.64] spk_1:
I think

[00:08:48.37] spk_3:
the number one thing, that’s the most important thing. The expertise and experience. You want a firm that is capable off doing the audit. They have experience working with organizations that ah, have your the same needs. You may be operating under a separate federal grant. Let’s stay and on everything is different. Like just because an organization is a non profit, it doesn’t mean they’re doing the same things. They don’t have the same requirements. I think number one thing is to have the expertise toe do the audit. Okay,

[00:09:03.48] spk_2:
so that’s interesting. Like if your revenue stream is different than a similarly sized organization than the order is going to be very different. You’re saying if it’s your old federally funded versus revenue for service is

[00:09:05.10] spk_3:
or purely foundation

[00:09:10.11] spk_2:
foundation. Okay, so the different character of revenue not just don’t base it on they do audits of organizations that have 20 employees. And that’s about what we have, so that

[00:09:20.17] spk_3:
I know it’s all different. Okay,

[00:09:22.83] spk_1:
okay. All right. So let’s take this first break, which you’re a part of because it’s wegner-C.P.As, which I’m grateful for. So wegner-C.P.As, of course. Thank you. I’m saying all time

[00:09:43.53] spk_2:
forgot. Take their CPS way. No, we’re getting a dick. We’re getting detail about what the audit is, but basically, it’s kind of like a dentist. You get an idea of what? An order what wegner-C.P.As firm does for you. I’m typically saying, start your due diligence at wegner-C.P.As dot com and then pick up the phone because that’s how I like to communicate. But it is going to

[00:09:49.38] spk_1:
talk to you because you know, a partner in the firm, cause serious. So what’s that? If I’m picking up the phone

[00:10:08.10] spk_2:
and calling you and saying I looked at your was on the website, you might help us. We need some help with our, uh 9 90 Wait. I feel like we can’t. It’s beyond our capability doing in house anymore. What would that What would that look like? That call look like

[00:10:34.01] spk_3:
that Cole would look like. Basically, I would be asking some questions. Will identify your needs better on Do we have, like, Haman states? Are you registered then? And kind of try to understand what you have kind of try to understand your organization. And I would liketo look at your previous 9 90 kind of to someone else’s and such. And basically that you know what we can do for you. And if it works out, you will start working together. So

[00:10:41.70] spk_1:
Okay, Thank you. Start your

[00:10:42.09] spk_2:
due diligence at wegner-C.P.As dot com and then pick up the phone.

[00:10:45.04] spk_1:
Talk to you. It’s friendly, guy. I mean, he wouldn’t be on the show. I wouldn’t have it back

[00:10:51.13] spk_2:
if it wasn’t that way. So wegner-C.P.As dot com. Okay, let’s go back. Thio.

[00:10:56.35] spk_1:
So now this is a This is gonna

[00:11:01.03] spk_2:
be our audit. Hiring already firm is an

[00:11:01.34] spk_1:
r f p. Typical in this

[00:11:11.66] spk_3:
kind of peace. Typical. Like I would say 80% 90% off the time we receive an R F P and on. Then the process starts after that.

[00:11:15.16] spk_2:
Okay, how do we, as an organ, decide who to send the R. P too?

[00:11:55.88] spk_3:
Basically, um, ask for references, referrals from from somebody that you trust. So usually ah, it can be the board that may be deciding that. And they may be serving in other other organizations, which they may be familiar with. Their audit firms. Like that might be one thing. The other thing is a lot off firms are now using our source accounting firm that dough there today. Today, accounting. And they may. They work with a lot of water firms as well, and they may give you some recommendations based on your size and such. And or you can go Google firms. Yeah, Lam profits in the year, for example, and see who come up and then send our fees that day. So it’s got multiple ways off.

[00:12:13.56] spk_1:
It doesn’t have to

[00:12:16.45] spk_2:
be local, though. I mean, the point was you could do this. Could be done virtually. It

[00:12:19.26] spk_3:
doesn’t have to be a local. No,

[00:12:20.79] spk_1:
but use your networks

[00:12:21.94] spk_2:
absolutely aboard other CEOs, you know, rather CFO’s. You know, if that’s your situation, you know, use your networks. Okay. Um

[00:12:31.08] spk_1:
are there other sample R f p C

[00:12:41.24] spk_2:
o r. I mean, is this stuff on the web like, all crappy are thes. I mean, how do you develop this R p? Basically,

[00:12:52.84] spk_3:
you can start with a template and there’s a lot off them on stone line. You can point some, but I highly encourage people organizations toe really like first determine why you are looking for a change. Like, what is that you did not like with your current relationship and make sure that how you want that relationship change, make sure that you put those criterion the ft so that you’re looking like you kind of identify your needs and what you’re looking for. What’s important to you.

[00:13:13.84] spk_2:
OK, so, like, of turnover bothered you or fee or timetable?

[00:13:20.44] spk_3:
Absolutely. I think timetable is one of the many reasons by organizations Look for a new firm because the day prior firm are the firm that they use are not meeting their timelines.

[00:13:44.48] spk_2:
Okay? Meaning what? Like the organization should How does how does the timeline get get determined that that the firm may not be, er yeah, complying with

[00:14:26.74] spk_3:
to say, um and you’re an organization and you want to present your audit in June, tow the board of directors. Okay, The audit firm somehow cannot meet that deadline or a lot of times thes here. Some complaints from prospects, they say, Okay, our audit is done. Mother 9 90 doesn’t get done for another six months. So that maybe like a I was look at the tax and the audit as one engagement. Okay, it’s part of one relationship and that maybe time spared the audit is done on time, but then maybe the audit firm are the accounting firm has a separate department that does the tax work your 9 90 maybe that gets late. Guess it. Still, it is also, I think, is the point is like, I know what you want and have kind of like try to think about how you want that relationship to look like and put all those as your criteria in therapy. And as questions about have the firm would address those.

[00:14:50.09] spk_2:
What’s another reason besides the number one timing failures? What’s another reason you see people wanting toe change firms,

[00:15:25.64] spk_3:
increasing fees, and the other reason is if you’re a startup organization or some changes are happening, they say your small organizations. But you have growth plans, and the firm we are working with doesn’t have the expertise that you need as you grow so certain times like the small. When you’re small, you start with one firm. As you get bigger, your niece change and your current form is not able to meet them. And the other part might be responsiveness like you may not. You may be contacting your audit firm, and they don’t get back to you for weeks or, like the relationship kind off way,

[00:15:57.14] spk_2:
will feel that crappy customer service. Right? You are a vendor, you’re providing service. I don’t expect an email back in five minutes, but I think within 24 hours somebody should get back. Even if it’s this is a really busy day, you know? Can we talk later in the week or something? Give me something you’re inviting service something for

[00:16:07.53] spk_3:
the other reason is errors like sometimes errors are made and they don’t get found out until later. And once that’s why not. You know they may wanna change firms because then your expertise is being questioned.

[00:16:16.15] spk_2:
Yeah, How do? How do audit errors get found? I mean, it’s the audit. That’s just be finding errors. How do you find errors in your audit?

[00:16:32.34] spk_3:
Basically, maybe the audits firm missed procedure or Mr An Error that was present in the financial statements, Baby, they didn’t do enough. That’s thing. Maybe something may happen. I mean, that can’t be errors. How

[00:16:35.34] spk_2:
do you just how does the organization discovered the error

[00:16:38.18] spk_1:
It’s got me

[00:16:48.38] spk_3:
discovers in to waste. One is internally. Someone looks at it in a different from a different perspective, or something else comes up, they need to go back. And something doesn’t make sense. For example, today and then you go back and look at previous documents and find out that all this should have been treated differently, for example, and the audit firm did not catch it. Okay,

[00:17:05.89] spk_1:
okay. I’m guessing it’s probably

[00:17:07.13] spk_2:
not a board that often, you know, in in its review of the audit, I don’t see your average board member finding the mistakes in the audit.

[00:17:15.28] spk_4:
Typically not. They

[00:17:17.80] spk_1:
may

[00:17:37.69] spk_3:
find errors in maybe some narrative descriptions and such, but sometimes they do like some some board members are financial is everyday, be sits on the boards. They look at all the financials and they may be finding errors. But those errors are found before the artist gets issued, but still an error. So that kind of like whenever there’s an area that auditor didn’t catch, kindof like damages the credibility.

[00:17:46.96] spk_2:
Right? You’ve submitted it to the board as final. Okay.

[00:17:51.11] spk_1:
All right. So yeah, I mean, some

[00:17:52.95] spk_2:
organizations even have an order committee. Those are bigger non profit maps. Probably the universities, hospitals or whatever. Just a bigger. So they have no other committees, or presumably, yes. Then there’s expertise in that committee to scrutinize

[00:18:11.52] spk_3:
supposedly, hopefully rebuttable presumption in the year. For example, if you are required to have an audit your also required in order to comedy.

[00:18:18.78] spk_1:
Is that right? New York, you have to have an order

[00:18:20.31] spk_3:
committee will have toe.

[00:18:21.25] spk_2:
Okay. And what’s the threshold for an audit in New York? Current

[00:18:28.73] spk_3:
$750,000 in total revenue, assuming you have more than $25,000 in donations from New York.

[00:18:34.88] spk_2:
Okay, 25,000 in donations from New York and and 750,000 in total revenue

[00:18:40.80] spk_3:
or more yet

[00:18:42.15] spk_2:
born What? Right then That’s the trigger for in order to New York State. Yes, And I’m sure it varies widely across the States.

[00:18:48.65] spk_3:
It does. It does not. Every not every state has an audit committee requirement. For example, California has it, but their trash Holt is two million depends. And it’s also all its committed Rules are different in every state. Ho can be on the committee what they have to do. Everything is different. So

[00:19:06.82] spk_2:
you’ll be gratified to know that that Gene Takagi is in background nodding when you said the $2 million.

[00:19:15.74] spk_3:
That’s good to hear. I was right. You’ve indicated? Yeah,

[00:19:19.33] spk_2:
because I certainly don’t have the expertise. Not this question. Um

[00:19:21.34] spk_1:
okay, s so anything else you want to say

[00:19:23.71] spk_2:
about the therapy process before we get to evaluating the proposals that come in?

[00:19:30.86] spk_1:
Um, I think

[00:19:32.96] spk_3:
I think that’s pretty much it again. Like that said yes, you’re a portrait. It toe make

[00:19:37.24] spk_1:
it

[00:19:37.38] spk_3:
like a visual ist like, what do you wish tohave in your audit relationship and kind of go with that?

[00:19:44.16] spk_2:
Okay. All right. So now you get these, Uh, I guess you get what’s a reasonable. Number 44 proposals back or

[00:19:51.03] spk_1:
usually I

[00:20:13.75] spk_3:
see an average off three threes. The most common sometimes Thio. Sometimes more than that. I’ve seen up as much as 10. Yeah. Yeah. So they kind of issue for will not respond And something like that sometimes. Like something like when you center FB you asked, like, Are you going to respond or not? You know, So that’s the wrong questions that gets asked something. So

[00:20:20.75] spk_2:
and then if the firm doesn’t even respond to that

[00:20:23.01] spk_3:
than their low life Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:37.52] spk_2:
Don’t never refer them again. Exact. They don’t respond to your Are you going to respond to our f B question? Okay. All right. So you got you got your 3 to 4 proposals back. What are we doing now? I was looking for I would

[00:21:32.03] spk_3:
actually look for the, um, the overall response process like, are they? How did they respond to your initial when you sent direct appeals? Say, usually, now they come in e mails like, how are they responding to their art? A timely. And when you make appointments, are they late? Are they not late? Like in this stage, like a proposal stage if they’re not giving you the attention. Yeah, on. Very That’s a very bad sign off the overall relationship. I think the first impression, maybe last impression tow the time. So it’s really important to see how they handle things and always look for writing. What’s important relationship is not never make errors. But once you make an error, how do you recover from that? And I think it’s really important as well. And during the process, I think initially they take the time toe, ask us questions and today, or are you just sending like a blanket proposal without even

[00:21:47.09] spk_1:
That’s like asking a couple questions

[00:22:00.68] spk_2:
about what the perp, the R F P, says. That’s a good That’s a good sign. I mean, the firm is actually scrutinizing it. Paying close attention wants to be responsive to exactly what you’re asking. But they’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for, but also, but

[00:22:39.03] spk_3:
also basically see if they’re trying to identify your knees. I mean, you can put so much in writing in the Riviera. Peas are usually standards, and there’s so much else goes on at the firm. Are they trying to like understand? You’re really needs and how they can add value. Are they asking questions? So usually photography. You sent your most recent order to report and your 9 90 and ah, nde sometimes, like, put some description off what organization looks like now. But I think, um, the audit firm should be interested in the organization enough to ask some more questions on Try to learn more, as opposed to just

[00:22:48.29] spk_2:
just giving back the RP. But yeah, by the deadline,

[00:22:50.92] spk_3:
you have just told me in the other budgets for to me in the other speech church this much this is your fetus is the proposal versus taking the time to talk to them and asking questions and see

[00:23:04.96] spk_1:
OK, some engagement, like applying standard a common sense. You

[00:23:33.10] spk_2:
know, if you’re trying to hire a contractor for your home on dhe here, she’s not getting back to you, you know, at the at getting the business stage. That’s a bad sign, you know, or if they don’t seem to be listening to you about what it is you want to do. You know, you’re asking for their ideas and they don’t come back with ideas. They just come back with a fee you know the same. Same as same as hiring a vendor for your your audits facility. No, I haven’t sense, for God’s sake.

[00:24:09.96] spk_3:
The other thing I would look at as have they addressed all your points in the F B. Have they read the appear? Are you getting like a blanket proposal? I think that’s really important to you. And the hurting I would look at would be like, How is the presentation off the proposal like Is that looking sloppy? Are their errors like the spacing looks, beard or just aesthetics off the off? The proposal and errors in it like spelling errors, grammar errors like this? It’s free off errors. I think it’s important. Yeah, spokes. That looks like it’s somebody reviewing them before you send it to you.

[00:24:19.00] spk_1:
Um, what about a presentation? Is that is that typical

[00:24:21.84] spk_2:
toe have? Ah, maybe you narrow it down from 4 to 2 and you want them both to make a presentation to the board. Is that is that an unreasonable? That’s not

[00:25:16.25] spk_3:
unreasonable, And but that does not happen too often than the smaller organizations. Probably your listener base probably doesn’t happen. The presentations doesn’t happen that way. what does happen, though They, uh, there’s like a conference call the Save it with the treasure or the audit committee chair at the accountant or someone just follows up. Let’s say they I don’t. You get three and you eliminate Bond. Now you have the two, and you just have a called them or a meeting with them, but it doesn’t typically become like a formal presentation. But that does happen, though that’s not unusual to ask. Or definitely, I would encourage. That depends on how much time you want to spend, too.

[00:25:21.49] spk_2:
Okay, and then whether you want to get your board involved,

[00:25:24.17] spk_3:
I mean, it’s really hard to get people together. And Monroe

[00:25:28.00] spk_2:
suffered rumors to that effect about how difficult that can be. Um,

[00:25:33.64] spk_1:
you refer to something

[00:25:34.59] spk_2:
called AA Peer Review report on non ordered firms. What is that?

[00:26:23.45] spk_3:
Basically ah, every C p. A firm that does attestation engagements like audits reveals they need to go through a peer review every three years. Peer review is another C p. A firm basically comes in, doesn’t audit off your order to brag or like attestation practice, so it’s not only artistic look at reviews, they look at complications. They look at audits and just to see your following to professional standards and look at the quality off the work. And if you’re not doing good for Earth than you get findings just like you give findings. Oh, non profit organization in your artists. Yeah, the peer review C p a. Firm does the same thing for you. There’s, like levels or findings and such. But typically, I would look for I would definitely request that period the report. Even if there’s findings, you need to know what they are and have the firm responded to them.

[00:26:37.17] spk_2:
Okay, so it’s not something that’s public, but you can ask for it from the firm’s you’re considering.

[00:26:41.85] spk_3:
I I believe it’s public, too. You can go to the I. C. P s website and look for it. I’m pretty sure the American Institute of Certified Public Contents Yep. And find

[00:26:52.87] spk_2:
all the peer review reports for all

[00:26:54.24] spk_3:
the servi. They should be all day. Okay, Okay. But I would just ask for it in the part off the f B and they should put in the proposal.

[00:27:05.99] spk_2:
Okay, We have just about a minute left. Okay, So how about getting started. What? You’re like a number one or two. Top advice for for getting this new relationship off the ground,

[00:27:49.51] spk_3:
I would say, Set the expectations specialty timelines and make sure everyone is on the same page. So I think the dissatisfactions happens when there’s an expectation gap this one person is thinking it’s gonna have on this bay and the other one just don’t assume, just confirm and just have a meeting with thought it firm and come up. It agreed upon timeline. I think it’s really important, and it will work sport they like. If the organization still not provide the information, the auditors cannot do the work. So what we do in every audit, the established time lines, we start with men, they need order to be done by. And then we sent them the list and they can tell us when they can be ready. And then we’ll find time between when they can hear them and they need it done. I kind of like established dead pay,

[00:28:04.93] spk_2:
working backwards from when they

[00:28:06.08] spk_3:
need exact Exactly. So it just always keep the end in mind. Okay,

[00:28:15.78] spk_2:
let’s wrap it up there. Thank you. Very much you do. Partner wegner-C.P.As. The firm is wegner-C.P.As dot

[00:28:17.12] spk_1:
com and at wegner-C.P.As Thanks for coming back to the show and studio. Pleasure.

[00:28:23.62] spk_2:
Having a big thank you You okay? Cracking like a 14 year old, uh,

[00:28:29.10] spk_1:
need to take a break. Wegner. No cook about software. So

[00:28:30.99] spk_2:
what’s all the kinds of Whitney wegner wegner on the head?

[00:28:33.47] spk_1:
Cook a Mountain software is this one quote. We’ve been very happy

[00:28:36.64] spk_2:
with Cougar Mountain. It’s rare to encounter a problem with the software, but they’re always there to help. Walk me through it and

[00:28:42.74] spk_1:
quote that Sally Hancock in Altuna, Pennsylvania. Cougar Mountain

[00:28:46.63] spk_2:
has a free 60 day trial, which you’ll find on the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant.

[00:29:17.39] spk_1:
Martin. Let’s do our live love. Ah, and it goes out. Thio Tip of Florida Washington D. C oh, cool Washington Not too often to Washington. Tucson, Arizona, Brooklyn, New York, New York, New York, Ontario, Calif. Ontario, Canada. Um, Seattle, Washington. Awesome. Upper West Norcross, Georgia South east of it Going abroad Moscow, Russia Thank you for being with us. Live love out to Moscow, Seoul, South Korea On your jasio consomme. Nita Live love out there. Tehran, Iran Also, Tehran’s been with us a couple times getting turning it, Theo loyal,

[00:29:41.74] spk_2:
live listeners. So the live love goes out and the pleasantries go out to the podcast audience. That’s our over 13,000 listeners on your

[00:29:45.55] spk_1:
own device, your own timetable, whatever fits into your life. I’m

[00:29:45.79] spk_2:
glad that it does. Thank you very much. Pleasantries to our podcast listeners.

[00:29:53.49] spk_1:
Time for tony Steak, too. Planned giving relationship stories

[00:29:55.60] spk_2:
is the current video that you will find a tony-martignetti dot com because when I did

[00:30:14.64] spk_1:
plan giving relationships, I left. The story’s out. Relationships are with people, and I left the people out of the first video. I talked about how the relationship gets started, the value of long term relationships to your organization and to you personally. And then I left out all the examples, so that’s that’s not I mean, it’s good as far as it goes, but it’s like half the story. If you can talk about relationships, how about some examples? So

[00:30:56.15] spk_2:
in plan giving relationships to the stories I give you some stories of, um, Eleanor and, uh, Evelyn and Barbara and James the before I tell stories about and, uh, you know I’m sure there have been hundreds. Well, there’s definitely 100. But, you know, some people are more memorable, memorable than others. And those are the four that came to mind first. So some touching stories in that video, which you’ll find at tony-martignetti dot com

[00:31:07.05] spk_1:
Now what a pleasure to welcome to the studio. Jean Takagi. He’s here in the studio in New York City. He’s the managing attorney of Neo, the non profit and Exempt Organizations Law group in San Francisco. He edits

[00:31:15.33] spk_2:
the wildly popular non profit law blogged dot

[00:31:24.34] spk_1:
com. He’s the American Bar Association’s 2016 outstanding non profit lawyer. He’s at G Tack. He’s Jean Jean, the law machine. Welcome to the studio, Gene. Too cocky. This is awesome. Done. It absolutely is. It’s 10 years since your first appearance on the show,

[00:31:35.23] spk_2:
and you’ve been a contributor for, like, nine and

[00:31:41.43] spk_1:
1/2 years or something. And here you are in the studio. I love it. Absolutely love it. Thanks so much. I’m so glad it worked out.

[00:31:43.37] spk_4:
I’m so happy to be here. It’s actually my first time in any studios, so it’s Ah, it’s a pleasure,

[00:31:49.80] spk_1:
Your life to your life up to this moment has brought you here. It’s all culminated here. This is the pinnacle. It’s all downhill from here.

[00:31:56.06] spk_4:
Mom can be proud.

[00:31:58.08] spk_1:
Sorry. Going down from here. Now, Um, this is

[00:32:00.83] spk_2:
wonderful. Really Is very, very good to see you. Um,

[00:32:04.67] spk_1:
So, um, this is a This is a little tough, touchy topic. We, uh you and I had a touchy topic

[00:32:10.01] spk_2:
when we talked about diversity equity and inclusion. Um,

[00:32:19.21] spk_1:
this one is, Ah, equitable compensation. Uh, you know, you you frame it for us. You please do. I think we

[00:32:39.13] spk_4:
could look at it in so many different dimensions. Tony mean one is is Do we pay? Everybody is Lois. Salary is absolutely possible, so we can try to serve as many people as possible. And that’s one level one level is we have this huge pay gap between men and women. What are we doing about that? There’s also gaps based on race on and other protected class issues as well. And sometimes it’s not just the legal problem.

[00:32:49.42] spk_2:
It’s not just the protected classes,

[00:32:57.34] spk_4:
right? It legally protected. Yeah, it’s just why are we paying this person differently from this person and is that institutionalized. Is that just personal discretion? Who are the decision makers there? Is there so many levels to this? But I agree can be a very controversial area,

[00:33:30.36] spk_2:
controversial and insightful. These are hard questions, you know? What should the gap be between the highest paid person in the organization and the lowest paid person organization? What should that ratio look like? And how do we justify it? Um and yeah, I I just I think I mentioned it, but I want to make drive home the point that we’re not just talking about classes that are legally protected.

[00:33:32.58] spk_4:
Yeah, I think we go go beyond that. And I think what you said about the highest paid to the lowest paid gap is really interesting. I think for CEOs it’s close to 285 to 1.

[00:33:44.60] spk_1:
Is that average non profits

[00:33:48.15] spk_4:
for for profit companies, non profit? It’s probably better. I don’t know if there’s been a study done on that, Um, but California is considering, Ah bill. Now that says, if your gap is more than 300 to 1, highest paid the lowest paid, typically the CEO versus sort of the average line worker We’re gonna increase your tax anywhere from like 2 to 6% on that. So it’s interesting to see now that the lock take over and say, We don’t like these pay imbalances and this is what we’re going to do about it,

[00:34:23.72] spk_1:
Yeah. How did Attorney practicing in California, How do you feel

[00:34:24.23] spk_2:
about the level of regulation in California? Do

[00:34:30.80] spk_1:
you feel it? You feel it’s burdensome? Or do you? I’m sure it’s. I’m sure you feel it’s right headed, but do you feel it’s excessive sometimes, or or not?

[00:34:37.30] spk_2:
Just like it’s the role of state government Thio make things fair and equitable for everybody.

[00:34:44.29] spk_4:
It’s a tricky question. I

[00:34:45.56] spk_1:
think some of

[00:35:30.68] spk_4:
the intent is is right. So the intent of the A G on the attorney general, typically the charity regulator in California, is to protect donors protect charitable dollars to ensure that they’re not being misused. But the problem can be is when some decisions are made about how regulations should be shaped or what type of bills the E A. G should sponsor or find a sponsor for, um, are they taking a few isolated, high profile problems in creating a solution for that and then that is, in effect creating a huge burden for everybody else who’s never done anything wrong. And what are the pros and cons when you look at its sector wide? And I think they don’t have the expertise or the people power to be able to make those decisions on their own Now, to their credit, they’ve been good about reaching out. We’ve actually sort of consulted with the A G from time to time in working discussion groups about how laws might impact the broader sector. But oftentimes, big corporations are in there here more often than the small Guy

[00:36:07.66] spk_2:
G is reaching out to you right now. They have lobbyists and professionals. Alright, alright, just I’ve wondered about that because it’s an activist state and a lot of states follow the California leader. At least look to see what California’s doing in lots of different lots of different areas. Environment, non profits of its wide

[00:36:10.71] spk_4:
Yeah, well should should add, though, that the non profit activists have actually been very good about this as well. In part, it partly why, when you eat was talking about the audit threshold in New York being 750,000. I think in California’s two million, because the non profit said That’s too low. It’s gonna be too expensive to have audits at that level. So we actually we’re more lenient on that front on the audit.

[00:36:36.18] spk_1:
Okay? All right. So, yeah, it’s not always stringent.

[00:36:46.03] spk_2:
CE stringency greater stringency. But it’s, you know, sort of recognized as, ah, highly legislated ST Ah, highly regulated state.

[00:36:49.07] spk_4:
I think that’s fair to say, and it makes it all the more important for nonprofits to actually speak up. Make sure that their legislators on dear regulatory bodies know what they want. Really important.

[00:37:03.12] spk_1:
So we’re talking about the

[00:37:29.82] spk_2:
compensation way, said it briefly, But again, it merits a little more attention. We’re talking about going beyond what the laws call for me. We have the Americans with disability act. We have the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We have other law bodies of law that govern compensation. But we’re looking as this more at is ah, as a just an equitable ethical moral issue.

[00:37:30.52] spk_1:
Yeah, and even if

[00:37:31.31] spk_4:
it doesn’t violate the law because I’m a lawyer, I always have to say

[00:37:34.44] spk_1:
Well, the law plays

[00:37:35.38] spk_4:
a part because even if you win a lawsuit when there’s an employee claim, just a have a lawsuit against you is incredibly demoralizing. It looks bad to your stakeholders, internal and external. So even if you’re lawfully doing everything right, if you’re ethically having some challenges or your stakeholders stopped believing in, you don’t believe that you’re you’re living into your values. You’ve got much, much bigger problems and just legal ones.

[00:38:03.01] spk_1:
Yeah, you’re trying to do social change,

[00:38:04.55] spk_2:
work social good. But your own organization is unfairly compensated that the salaries are out of whack in your own organization. But you’re trying to improve conditions for the porters or

[00:38:17.14] spk_1:
even if not, if it saves the environment. You’re trying

[00:38:19.23] spk_2:
to do social change, work and improve the state of the world. But your own organization is not a model for that.

[00:38:40.26] spk_4:
That and you can imagine. This gets really controversial when we talk about minimum wage and say, Well, we’re a social service organization that serves low income communities. We’ve got to pay minimum wage for workers. But in a city like New York City or San Francisco, that means they can’t even afford to live in the city right Now I’ve got to commute from the suburbs. And is that really equitable to your staff? Is that what you want to display to everybody else supporting you?

[00:38:50.72] spk_1:
You have this poverty myth, right? There are a lot of

[00:39:16.52] spk_2:
assumptions underlying what we get, where what we’re talking about the inequity on and one of them and then they get deeper. But one of them is this poverty myth that we’re doing social change, work and improving the world. And so, you know, that should be gratifying enough to you. So you get a 40% lower salary than someone doing comparable work. I don’t know another organization or because we feel we feel way can’t afford to pay you more or you get you get a discount from the for profit sector because you’re doing social good work. And that should be gratifying to you. And that has value. So we pay you less.

[00:39:31.73] spk_4:
And it’s really sad to say that actually, some employers, some non profit employers, see that as a legitimate screen that we are going to pay lower than we even can in order to find the most altruistic people possible. I don’t like that kind of idea, but you’ve heard

[00:39:47.22] spk_1:
that articulated.

[00:39:55.47] spk_2:
Yes. Okay, So to find the most altruistic people we’re gonna we’re gonna pay the least. So we’re gonna

[00:40:03.71] spk_1:
get what you pay for, you know? And And what kind of what kind of commitment or you’re getting out of workers who know that there being paid a bottom feeder salary?

[00:40:06.41] spk_4:
Yeah, again, something I strongly disagree with. But that thinking is still still out there.

[00:40:20.07] spk_2:
Okay, I wouldn’t have thought that it would be articulated, but you’ve heard it. A CZ. A theory of recruitment.

[00:40:21.88] spk_4:
Yeah, you’ll hear it in research studies done where they do surveys of organizations, and they explain their compensation systems and you’ll see what some of the rational czar and it pops up.

[00:40:35.01] spk_2:
Okay. All right. We got a couple minutes before break.

[00:40:36.25] spk_1:
Let’s talk about some

[00:40:36.82] spk_2:
of these other cultural assumptions that are underlying cause

[00:40:39.40] spk_1:
this is

[00:41:11.45] spk_2:
where it gets, you know, kind of ah gets unfair. Um, the professional degrees, um, immediately convey or no are automatically convey a value to the organization. So somebody who’s an MBA or an attorney or a c p a. No. Irrespective of whether the professional designation enhances the value. Literally, really. But just way value that over way immediately imply a value to that, even if the job doesn’t require that kind of skill or that kind of professional education.

[00:41:19.15] spk_4:
Yeah, and not to knock professional education.

[00:41:22.54] spk_1:
I got one. You’ve got one? Yeah,

[00:41:24.66] spk_4:
it’s great. But, um, life experience can sometimes be much more valuable or experienced in the job sort of characteristics and duties itself could be more more valuable than professional response are some sorry professional experience in an unrelated field. But so many organizations use education is kind of a factor of where they’re going to set their pay, and they set educational standards that they want when it doesn’t seem applicable to what the job requires. And we see organizations in the four profit world actually leave that thinking, especially in the tech industry, right? They don’t care if you have a graduate degree from Stanford, if you’ve got a bunch of coding experience that’s directly relevant to what they’re creating at the moment. So I think more non profit have got to get away from that thinking that somehow an educational degree in whatever is necessarily going to be something that makes the person more valuable to them,

[00:42:54.49] spk_2:
then the network life experience. Correct. Okay. Okay, um, the, uh the belief that, um, productivity or output is more important than, um the relationship building and how you’re making people feel in the organization and and outside the organization to know, producing paper reports and Versace the ah, the feelings toward the organization that you’re you’re engendering through your work.

[00:43:06.08] spk_4:
Yeah, I think that’s also another danger. Where there’s in the thinking of professionalizing the sector, we’re all about metrics, right? We need to get metrics that we have to get back to our funders to show that we’re creating value. So all of a sudden the employees are incentivized to create better metrics on that may be at the expense of developing longer term relationships. I will actually move the mission forward Maur in the long run than it will in the short run. So we get caught up in the whole same problem that Fortune five hundred’s get caught up in satisfying shareholder spirit. Immediate short term returns, not thinking aboutthe long game. So I think that that is an issue

[00:43:40.56] spk_2:
being too short term thinking for the next board meeting what what our numbers look like for this quarter versus long term value.

[00:43:46.95] spk_4:
Right? Long term value. Also, employee retention being part of that long term value and the value that that having employees stay with you and doing their work, feeling that that sense of pride in what they’re doing, an accomplishment could be so much more valuable than serving an extra 5% meals. In Week three,

[00:44:24.77] spk_2:
we just replayed Adrian, sergeant on relationship fundraising for just last week for a valve on the Valentine’s Day show February 14th and he talked a lot. Now this is just devote to fundraising and where you and I are talking broader. But as it relates to fund raising too many organizations ignoring the lifetime value of a donor, how do you make your donors feel over the long term versus did you get? Did you get a 20% increase in their annual gift this year?

[00:44:36.39] spk_4:
Yeah, and so what do you mean organizational level? And what are you telling your employees? If you say no, you should try to get as much as he can. Now, don’t worry about the long term value of the donor relationships that don’t spend extra time with them. You can hit more people. That’s the wrong message.

[00:44:50.56] spk_2:
Get the car last break. Ever wonder why some nonprofits are always mentioned in the news? It’s because they work to build

[00:45:02.52] spk_1:
relationship. We’re talking about relationships again. I mean, it’s it’s pervasive relationships, Just like last week again, they worked to build relationships with journalists who mattered

[00:45:21.29] spk_2:
to them so that when you pick up when you make a call or you send an email, the journalist replies, That’s because of a relationship. A preexisting relationship. Turn two can help you do that. Their former journalists, including at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. They will help you build meaningful media relationships that can lead to great coverage there. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. We’ve got

[00:45:29.38] spk_1:
butt loads more

[00:45:29.86] spk_2:
time for equitable compensation with Jean Takagi in the

[00:45:36.93] spk_1:
studio. Um, where do you want

[00:45:37.58] spk_2:
to go from here? Uh,

[00:45:44.76] spk_1:
any any other cultural assumptions that annoy the hell out of you? Well,

[00:47:18.32] spk_4:
I I think generally speaking, we think we may be as employers giving people benefits when we say, Hey, we’re gonna give you a plus, you know, added match matching contribution to your +401 K plan, for example. But we may not take into account. A lot of our employees have their own financial issues and may not be able to contribute to +41 K plans, so they don’t get that benefit of all of the match, right? So again, equitable considerations would say, Well, maybe we should open up this benefit so that everybody can access to it has access to it. So maybe it gets put into a flexible spending accounts so they can take care of their elder parents, and not just to their 401 K. Or maybe we give them the cash so they couldn’t pay off a student loan. So things like benefits have a place in this. The other cultural assumptions. To make it, we have to figure out more. And I think maybe the biggest issue for the pay gap on the gender basis, maybe letting people figure out where and when they can work and don’t live on to the assumptions that you have to provide face time. It has to be in the office always because so many people who are the primary child givers who are in the workforce that’s where the pay gap gets hit really, really hard. And that’s where women, who once they once they have child Children and decide that they’re going to be the primary caregiver, which is most of the time relative to the man. You know, that’s That’s where they never recover

[00:47:28.33] spk_2:
their career. Yeah, it’s a downward trajectory for their career. For what, 18 years or something? Conceivably. Okay,

[00:47:28.90] spk_1:
another thes. They’re all

[00:47:30.66] spk_2:
good issues for a conversation in the

[00:47:32.72] spk_1:
office conversation with board. Another one is

[00:47:37.57] spk_2:
the the how percentage increases in in salary perpetuate the gap because you’re giving everybody a percentage of the high or low that they’ve

[00:47:48.78] spk_1:
already got. You’re not. You’re not. You’re not, uh, quill a breaking that a word equalizing, not equalizing. You’re just continuing

[00:47:56.74] spk_2:
the the disparity through percentage, you know, annual percentage increases.

[00:48:30.73] spk_4:
Yeah, and I think a payout. It is probably something that every organization should do and actually just ask themselves. How did we determine what the pay rates are for each of these positions? Ah, and is it equitable? Not just top to bottom, but across, you know. Are we paying one person for the same position so much more than another position, another person, even though the other person might actually be doing better work just because they had more of an educational background. So all of those things need to be looked at? Questioned, I think, tracked. So you’re if you’re gonna make these decisions in the future that are more equitable, you have to be able to explain what factors you’re looking at in order to change somebody’s compensation. And why that and how that’s applied is it applied evenly and doesn’t explain why there’s a disparity now in pay between two different people or three different people who occupy the same position.

[00:48:56.37] spk_2:
Um, you can create in your organization a pay equity team.

[00:49:04.22] spk_4:
Yeah, that’s yeah, I’m on the board of an organization called Compass Point in San Francisco.

[00:49:07.61] spk_2:
In a point to that article shortly

[00:49:54.01] spk_4:
Terrific and, yeah, having an removing the decision making from just one executive director, but who might set the caps just to make sure that there’s no overcompensation involved in that the budget is being complied with. But having an equity panel within the organization made up of peers, um, looking at self evaluations and trying to determine what the compensation rates should be within again. A permitted range. Think that’s a really great form of distributed leadership where you’re giving more power to your team, um, and letting them decide what the compensation rates can be now. There were definitely some cons to that issue as well. With more responsibility, there’s gonna be more criticism. But we found out that that it can work really, really well. And people sometimes are actually more conservative about what they want to give than the executive director. And then just having a conversation about that, um, can can be very helpful. But it’s ah, it’s a really interesting a strategy to employ for some nonprofits who have reached that level of, ah, evolution, if you will, in inequity considerations.

[00:50:24.40] spk_2:
Compass point, um, walks through. I think it’s the interim executive director wrote The Post’s Walks through there. I guess it was a three year process. Was it a three year process there of evaluating and adjusting pay throughout the organization, I think, was a two or three year process. It’s

[00:51:15.93] spk_4:
actually been ongoing since 2016 which is really when it started, and it’s still it’s still an ongoing and sometimes a painful process of making things more equitable as you raised the issues and surface them there. You know there’s some pains. You find out some inequities of the past and you try to correct them. And some people are happy about that. Some people aren’t on and you know, the intersectionality of different ah issues if you well, it’s not just gender. It’s not just ages, not just race. There’s so many issues to think about in determining whether compensation is unfair or fair. Andi can be interpreted in different ways, so it is a challenge. But having a team there to help decide this instead of one person makes

[00:52:26.44] spk_2:
a huge difference, also empowering as well. And you know it defeats this myth that we can’t talk about pay at work because everybody’s pay is now known to the to the, uh, to the Pay Equity committee, the team that you’ve just created. So we are talking about it. I want to point people to the this article. It’s it’s actually two different block posts at Compass Point dot or GE on their blogged. It’s called reimagining compensation. It’s time to stop building inequities in the past from the past port. Wanting to Andre is very open about the difficulties that they went through and some people got very large increases. And she alludes to even there, being some decreases over time in salary like stage decreases, Thio make things fair and equitable. It’s quite a process we talked about. Yeah, and I

[00:52:49.76] spk_4:
think you know that’s a team decision. People have to look at this from a state law perspective as well. And so you have to be careful. Not Thio, through mandatory action, decreased one person’s salary to raise another. You have to be careful about that. So we had the luxury of having some change capital because the foundation was really supportive of what we did. And so here’s a big shout out to foundations for for unrestricted support, it really can do great things for for creating equity within an organization.

[00:53:03.75] spk_1:
Um, let’s talk some

[00:53:04.64] spk_2:
about, uh, well, the board. The board has a role here, too.

[00:53:22.97] spk_4:
Yeah, I think I’m still even when we talk about distributed leadership, which I mentioned before, the board still sets the tone at the top. Um, and I think it’s really incumbent upon the board to actually set the values of the organization. So it makes sense that not only are organizations acting to further the mission, but they’ve got to do it in a way that furthers their values as well.

[00:53:38.25] spk_2:
A cz part of their oversight on

[00:53:43.34] spk_1:
and really they’re there. Yeah, their responsibility to

[00:53:44.69] spk_2:
the organization. I’m taking it out of the fiduciary capacity and just making it, Ah, moral obligation that they have to the organization.

[00:54:09.96] spk_4:
Yeah. It’s not just about looking at the financials and saying, Can we survive another year? It’s It’s about creating the relationships, as you said, to make this the sustainable organization that lives its values and furthers its mission for a number of years so it can really actually drive through what they’re trying to do.

[00:54:11.29] spk_2:
Okay, we have about another minute or so before we gotta wrap. So, what would you like to whatever not talked about that? You want to say what?

[00:54:20.07] spk_4:
Um well, they’re a couple things, so I’m gonna leave the parking tax issue aside, then.

[00:54:26.26] spk_1:
Oh, I forgot. The host is so lackluster. This show it’s unbelievable. I don’t know why people listen. The hostess so crummy. Um, yeah, the all right next time we’ll get that next time. This is just about him. Report. God the hostess

[00:55:26.85] spk_4:
So crummy. Um, so I guess along the lines here some tips, maybe of creating more of an equity based compensation system within an organization. And I think, first audit, audit the organization. Try to figure out why you’re paying a tw what level? I have a board level awareness of what’s going on. I’m create a pay equity panel numb within your staff levels. Um, and take a look at where the disparities happen. Most often are the book benefits that I told you about, like the 401 K, but also in bonuses on dhe. We find that our studies have found that that bonus is often goto white men at the much different level than persons of color, especially women who are persons of color.

[00:55:34.29] spk_2:
All right, Thank you, Jean. Thank you very much. Opening up this topics. He’s managing attorney of neo, the non profit exempt organizations Law group. You’ll find him at G Tack and today you’ll find him in the studio in New York City. So glad to have your gene. What a pleasure.

[00:55:44.66] spk_4:
Thanks so much tony and great

[00:55:50.82] spk_1:
to see you, Sam. Yes. Next week. Get to the next

[00:55:52.47] spk_2:
level with Sherry Kwame Taylor. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com

[00:57:01.32] spk_1:
were sponsored by wegner-C.P.As guiding you beyond the numbers. Wegner-C.P.As dot com by Coca Math and Software Denali Fund Is there complete accounting solution made for nonprofits tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant Mountain for a free 60 day trial and by turn, to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen to dot CEO. Ah, creative producers Claire Meyerhoff Sam Liebowitz is the line producer. Shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein Do with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% Go out and be great talking alternative radio 24 hours a day.

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to suffer the pain of sal pin jim fractious if i had to listen to you say that you missed today’s show news from accounting. There are revised accounting rules you need to know and you huge tomb walks us through. Don’t worry, we will keep it lively and interesting. Heat is a partner at wagner, cps and linked in latest lincoln got a facelift plus operational changes, especially in search what do all the updates mean for your prospecting? Maria simple knows she’s, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder on tony’s take two end of the hair. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com my pleasure to welcome back, eat huge tomb. He is a partner at the wagner cpas. He works exclusively with tax exempt organizations and oversees the firm’s form nine ninety nationwide preparation practice and manages the new york city office eats niche is tax exempt, financial and compliance. Auditing the firm is that wagner, cpas, dot com and at wagner cps. Welcome back to studio. Thank you. Thank you for your pleasure. Now the firm is in madison, wisconsin. You’re managing the new york city office. So you spend a lot of time here in new york, are you? Ah. Are you trying to evade the law? No, you’re not. You’re not under surveillance or anything, or one step ahead of the law, you know? Yeah, i spent. I spent my time between new york and wisconsin. Okay, clear. But for all good reasons for all good, nothing to various are really okay. Like, okay, so okay, now you have after your name. Three designations, two of which i get sepa an mba. Cf is the third one. What is this? What is the c f d? Just assert fight fraud examiners. So be get into sometimes some fraud examinations. Ok, do some work around, like, litigation support? Are you involved in all withy the allegation of millions of fraudulent voters in our election of your involvement on those, you don’t have a quaint that okay, so c f e. I know cfcs chlorofluorocarbons, but that’s, not you. You know, you know, you’re not a guest. That’s not, you know, full gas. All right. Cf. So we have these changes that have come from faz be the financial accounting standards board. Right? All right. So before we get to changes, what is this fast? B what is this thing? The fast b is the governing body that basically sets the accounting standards. Ah, who are then can we name them where they exist? Who are they? Where are they? Well, there are real people. There are people. Okay? They have committees, and they have task forces, so they’re very involved and very, really so ok. Are they are they? Where do they sit? What we’re like? Is there a fast b office somewhere and washington d c or i think they have? Ah, i’m not exactly sure what main offices i apologized neo-sage years yet they have their members on around the country and sometimes, like their committees, meet off on their own experts. But they also have, like employees and other other okay, they’re not elected. This is not elected organization like the u s accountant and pepe, do you vote for the fast b do you vote for fast be members? People do i don’t you don’t vote, you don’t have a vote, you know, maybe they’re not voted. I don’t know. I’m sure. I figured it was just fast. B i was your fast b thing. It reminds me of his, uh, m p ay the motion picture association america. These people who rate movies like pg or an r seventeen and you are not in our butt pt seventeen. I don’t know who they are, but they have a lot of a lot of sway cause of a movie is our vs pg you know, that has a smaller audience in a big around. So, uh, all these all these organisms shadow like shadow government. Faz be mpa. I’m very suspicious. All right? Don’t be suspicious there. Really trust the people. You trust those people. They’re good people, and they do out off work for our industry. Okay, i know this stuff is important. Yes. What comes down from in terms of accounting standards is important. It affects us more than i think. Most people realize your accounting standards. All right. So we have some changes for non-profit round non-profits i would i gather is this is teo to make information more useful for, like, donors grant towards what do we what do i have there? General purpose behind these changes? Correct? Yeah, basically, the latest update from fast b is on this presentation of financial statements for not-for-profits that’s the one that i would liketo ah, space talk about in this show, financial statements are and, ah, basically they’re looking for ways to make the financial statement mohr user friendly, transparent grantspace and useful tow the reasons off the financial state organs and basically the project started tow, clarify certain misunderstandings and latto make the financial statements more useful in terms ofthe, like assessing tilly, could it be off organizations are you are really specific things about have to present of expenses by function and things like that? Ok, ok, so we’re trying to make these a cent more transparent because we know that people donors are becoming more sophisticated about where they’re going to give, looking for transparency, looking more for outcomes. Now i don’t know that i mean outcomes, they’re not part of the financial statement, but donors or more savvy, basically, i think a lot of this comes from guidestar, charity navigator, better business bureau wise giving alliance, you know, all encouraging donors to be smarter. All right, so so we know that donorsearch paying more attention to numbers on, and they’re also trying to make it more clear for the board members also. Okay, so this is supposed to help boardmember sze also right. Okay. Um, now you mentioned financial statements. What the one i’m going to start with those endowments. Okay, now everybody can understand that this is it’s complex, but we’re not gonna make it dull. And there’s mohr detail here. Me now asterisk, asterisk underlying bold there’s mohr detail to these changes than we can cover yet and i in twenty five minutes or even if he’d stayed for an hour, but i don’t want to do for accounting for an hour, so we’re going to acquaint you with the high level and not all the high level because there’s, just too many changes your c, p a and your auditor, they’re the ones who need to know about these changes. And so we’re going to talk a little about some of the changes the biggest changes, and then we’re going to get into when you need to put these changes into effect, whether you now or you wait until it required. We’re gonna get to that part, right? So we just have, like, a minute and a half or so before first break. All right, so just endowments. Now i’m going to give the non accountant definition of account endowment? Not that i don’t trust you, but i’m going to make it simple. It’s basically, your savings account. You only spend income or a portion of the income each year. And when you invade the principal of this quote savings account, um, you may need to get permission sometimes from a state. Or maybe from the donor. It’s a big deal to invade the principle of endowment. So this is long term, like perpetual funds, and you’re only spending the income or a portion of the income that you earn each year. Would you be willing to accept that peopling definition? That mostly? Yes. Okay. All right. So we have. All right. What? What refined my definition of endowment. Basically, the only thing i would add would be the ah, the use. Is not like legally, ah there’s, some recent changes in the law recently and day, a lot of you to spend fundez even though you go under the main principle so even invading the principal right, you can be the underwater endowment for its eggs, a colored exactly that’s, what we’re gonna get to underwater endowments will define it, and then we’ll talk about it right after this break you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation really all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura the chronicle website philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I feel like doing some live listener love we got so many, i’m going to spread out a bit, so i’m going to start with new york, new york, right where i’m sitting on west seventy second street multiple looked like a half a dozen or so in new york city love it live listen love to you! Tampa, florida, dallas, texas college station, texas woodbridge, new jersey live listener love oh, we got another one. Queens, woodhaven, new york, lovett lots of new yorkers checking in and new jersey to live listener love to you. Um go abroad germany. Guten tag seoul, south korea so so generous. Multiple multiple soul as always annual haserot comes a ham nida and we have a new country checking in mongolia. Looks like ulan bator, mongolia. Welcome live listed her love to you and the podcast pleasantries and the affiliate affections. They’re always coming. Stand by. Okay, eat. What is underwater? Endowment, basically and underwater endowment is a endowment that has lost value. So basically, just to give you an example, if there’s an endowment for a million dollars and it’s getting invested in the market and the market turns out and now the endowment is worth nine hundred, investment is worth nine hundred eighty thousand. Yeah, so the twenty thousand is considered to be underwater. Basically, in this case, usually it’s temporary. Because more market is supposed to go up in the long run, right, but depending on the timing, especially in the beginning, in like younger organization just starting an endowment. It’s it’s not very uncommon. And ah, basically, the new changes is is going to eliminate some off the confusion. Ok, in this, in this case. But before i talk about underwater endowments, i want to mention, like, the biggest change which i really like because it’s more clarified in the standard speeches, the net assets classifications you insist on to your being anarchist. You insist on talking about net assets first before endowment way. We have to go that way. Because it’s kind of like a subset off. This changes a subset in the net. Asset classifications. Ok, would be would be better if we do this. Okay. All right. So what about net assets? You gotta you gotta define this for us, right? The net assets. Are basically the organization’s net bird s o the balance sheet. The assets are about organization. I said equal liability is plus the owners equity. Exactly. Zoho neo-sage okay, so net assets are almost a kitty got in that example. So the net assets currently are classified into three three types. Unrestricted that asset, temporal restricted net assets and permanent restricted net asset. Okay, so the biggest change here is now you will have two types ofthe net assets. One it’s going to be called net assets. We dot dahna restrictions, which is be cool and off the current unrestricted net assets and net assets with dahna restrictions, which will yeah, include temporal restricted and permanently sticking that has its okay, so it’s so we’re now it z i see is more donor-centric it’s with donorsearch restrictions and without dahna restrictions that’s it that’s two classifications stead of three on its based on whether the donor has imposed restrictions on right now, the money’s gonna be spent, right? Basically, the good thing about this is this is pretty clear because it was confusing, like temporal, restricted by definition, it has to come from the donor but it’s confusing to some. People, because they were thinking the borg and restricted funds. Well, by definition, they can’t. But with this new of titles it’s going to be clear that it’s donor-centric shin’s. Okay, i see. And this would, of course, be, uh, usually are backed up. If it’s going to be a donor restrictions there’s typically a writing. I guess it depends on the size of the gift. I mean, i might give up just a fifty dollar gift and say it’s designated for a specific program. I wanted to go to the lunch soup kitchen that you run. Okay, that no writing for that, but that would be both. Restrictions were dahna restriction that acid don’t restrict right on. But if i do a half million dollar gift, they’re certainly going to be ah, writing or a contract, it is going to lay out the restrictions. Right? Okay. Oh, that’s. Easy, that’s. Easy. Why did i fail accounting? And when i was in carnegie mellon, all i learned is assets equals liabilities. Put sonar equity. I lasted like, three days, and i got i even i even got stuck with the textbook. I couldn’t return the book. Ah, all right, but i got that for all right. So that’s that’s easy now. So one off the things that this underwater endowments they counting for that is changing, too. In the past, the underwater portion was included with unrestricted net asset. And that was creating confusion because some organisations were thinking, although do we have to pay back? Or do we have to cover those losses and the law? Say’s, you don’t have to but now it is nufer change the loss will be included in the ah net assets with dahna restrictions peaches connect to be more ah, i think it’s a better street yeah, this is going to be in line with the law again. Donor-centric too, because site someone else creates an endowed fund that your non-profit that is that is wrist restrictions. Nobody gives an endowment for general purposes. So all right, that makes sense. But you’re saying in the past or i guess currently now it’s confusing where that underwater port should have been reported. But now that it has been reported as unrestricted, which was kind ofthe misleading, right there were restrictions. Okay, okay. All right. So anything more about underwater endowments? That is that’s that’s. That’s! That’s! That’s! Good. Cool. I’m not intimidated, but even i fail. You don’t want to get technical, so i don’t i don’t know, because then i will be intimidated. I mean, that was accounting for poets that i took. So you know where i’m standing, but happy to dio i want i want to talk about this because it’s important for non-profits um okay, what else do we have? Ah, what else? Give me another change throughout. Another change that significant, i think the one off the changes which another one that i like, which is going to be making the financial statements more clear. So you approve of the fast be this fast be changes most ofthe time. Yes, i like i like i like i collect them. I think i like most ofthe them. So one off the disclosures again toe avoid aa or eliminate or minimized the confusion. Ah, is ah, the organization’s liquidity. So currently there are no requirements to disclose liquidity, oft organization and ah, it’s kind of confusing because ben, the readers off the financials see unrestricted net assets. They may think that that money, i mean, then that number is ah, basic. The available free cash for cash little not because it can be if there’s a building like say, we’re tapped a million in the books yeah, it’s going to be ifit’s going to be rich effected in the unrestricted net assets, but that building is not readily convert. Okay, so there’s gonna be some something’s in the liquidity is something that people look at when they’re considering investing in stocks. They’ll look at free cash that the corporation has, um, so now we’re going to be able to make the same sort of analysis and analogous now analysis for non-profits yes, because it’s going to be required to non-profits will be required the basically disclose some qualitative information about how they manage its liquidity, and they could in this case will be defined to meet their cash need in the next twelve months, written within the next year. So there’s going to be qualitative information about that? In addition, there’s gonna be some qualitative, informing quantitative information? Ah, basically listing their financial assets, that’s going to be ready for general expenditures in the next year, so basically looking at those disclosures, the readers off the financial spill assess the organizations needs ah, liquidity, much better and liquor that they may be affected by restrictions from donors. You are south. Impose restrictions from the board. Okay. Let’s, let’s, unpack something here. The liquidity for twelve months now. So, i mean, suppose you only have six months of operational expenses that our liquid so you don’t have a year, but that it will still be disclosed. The old somebody can tell that you don’t have enough cash to get you through the year. Well, ah, basically a quiz is this is going to be disclosed as off the organization’s here. And so you gotta keep in mind that the organization hopefully bills keep getting income right here. Small eyes off today this’s once available for next year’s expenditures it’s going to be available as off that date available for for the next year, our shoretz or may or may not be thiss like equal to the one year’s worth of experience. Kayman up, right? I mean, it’s sort of a bad situation. If you don’t have enough liquidity to get you is like a year is that is that sort of a standard. That is a minimum that an organization should have. That’s going to be the standard for which these footnotes or disclosures bilich what do you think? I mean, is it necessary to have a year’s cash to be to be comfortable? Or is that really nice tohave about it? It’s really it’s very hard. So most off the non-profits they do not have that reserve and some off the lock yvonne’s about this wedding. Don’t you see more typically, like horrifically? If i didn’t have a cash reserve, what would i would like to be a minimum that you would advise me, tio tio, achieve basically most organizations, if they have ah, like three months off oken spence is in liquid essence. That’s, that’s, that’s. Pretty good. Okay, again, understanding more cash is going to coming in, but from day to day you’re recommending like a minimum wage at a minimum of all the income. All the case stops today. How long we can live for three months minimum you that that might be that’s what we see typically in, like really mid sized to smaller non-profit that’s our sweet spot, small and midsize. Exactly lots of colleges and hospitals, or mid sized, but some have more some have less. But if you have less than three months, it’s, not like you’re like in big trouble, but i would advise not-for-profits toe, build some reserves, okay, or for rate to get that three month party. Okay, rico, this is valuable. Um, all right, so so i like the fact that people will be able to make a comparison that i know a lot of investors make stocks in cos when they’re when they’re looking, whether a new investor not okay, what else? Throw, throw something else. That’s new everything that neil is. Ah, another disclosure requirement on functional expenses. So current the there’s two different standards, so for no voluntary health and benefit organizations that’s one type of a non-profit basically, they are required to disclose their record includes state, no functional expenses in their financial statements. Speech this basically this what you see on the nineties, the natural category and function so line item, natural expense category would be like wages, ok, in a functional category with bilich program or management general. Okay, so right now, those type of organization required to have that all other organizations, all they have to disclose is the total program expense his management general fund-raising i thought they’re not required toe put, like sailor expenses in their financial statements. So what this changes bringing is ah, basically all organizations either in a statement or a footnote disclosure, they’ll have to be disclosing like a nature and by function all their expenses. So it’s going to be ah more standard throughout when when you, when a reader off the financial looks at two different organisations, they’ll see this information either in the form of a statement or a food, not disclosure, but i’m going to be there. It sounds like a footnote you mentioned footnotes of budget and it sounds like footnotes are important, but most are very there. We should read the footnote. I had a law professor who used to advise you always read the footnotes and a fact on a law exam. One of our exam questions. You didn’t read the footnote. You were going to go astray in your analys sis. So the footnotes important. Take it. Take it from heat and a little for me because i know less about this thing. But not too many people read. No, i said i love the footnotes. Yeah, and i you know what bothers me when i see i read a text and i see a dagger or like a double dagger. I’m the one who’s looking on the and a lot of times i see this on food, food, packaging, where’s the foot i see a double dagger after after your word. Nutritious or something. Or minerals but where’s, the there’s. No explanation. You turn the package upside down and the double daggers aren’t to find anywhere. So i mean that’s different than financial statements. I realize that. But as a footnote meter, you know, that’s annoying. What? Take the double daggers. Off its’s erroneous double daggers. I don’t like that. So you’re doing doesn’t change with the ah, with this new standards ah, back to business now on me. Okay, the requirement will be the description off the methods have the organization allocates expenses, which is important, in my opinion because it’s going to require organizations to think more about how they locate expect they’re there. They’re gonna have to disclose how they do it. So how are we doing it now? What’s the current rule on expenses are important. I mean that’s everything right? Expenses are everything from rent two insurance, two wages to program expenses. These are all okay. What’s what’s the problem with the current method of expense reporting there’s really? I wouldn’t call it a problem. But there’s, some different from it has be disagrees with you. I get fat city or the fast burn don’t agree they’re they’re emphasizing switches, which is a good thing. But ah, i don’t see there’s a problem, but we see different matters used by different organizations and ah, this paid the reader off the financial statements bill know what method they use? Because these are mostly like estimates which we called significant estimates and ah, and they’ll be disclosing the basis is off these estimates, which is going to give more information to the rehearsals, were basically standardizing the method of of expense reporting. Is that basically what we’re doing? In-kind off. But if even if you’re not standardizing, we are basically making organizations disclose off treyz baron, more transparency give more information have have their doing this okay again, more donors friendly, more user friendly. Okay, okay. Um, let’s deviate a little bit in terms of implementation of thes rules. Now they’re they’re required by required to start using these by when basic the ah the requirement is that for counter your organization’s it’s going to be two thousand eighteen so they’ll be required in their december thirty first, two thousand eighteen financial statements and for fiscal years it’s going to be two thousand nineteen. So if the organization is a junior and it’s going to be for the year ending june thirty two thousand nineteen. Okay, that’s what’s required. Spend it’s quiet. But you can do it earlier. Yes way. Only about a minute left. Believe it or not. So in a minute or so what is there? Any advantage to doing it earlier than you then required? Well, the one advantage would be there more accounting standards updates coming, which is one of them is a revenant. Records face-to-face tio let’s not get into that, but it’s coming face to is coming later. But there are latto one like big ones. Fundez the leases on the other one is revenue recognition between pick some off the non-profits. So the advantage off that would be ah durney implementation would be that you don’t have toe implement everything, like very close, so you can government it’s now and implement other ones in two years. But i haven’t seen any organizations that have been building to implement early, yet not embracing the change about your client’s. Yeah, assuming that this scott issued in august off two thousand sixteen, they’re pretty naive standards. All right, we’re gonna leave it there. You thank you. I had, you know what i had ready for you is, uh the keys to jog in jail, but i didn’t need them see so outstanding. Excellent. Excellent. Put those keys away for another time. And another guest you duitz doom partner wagner cpas. You’ll find them at wagner, cps, dot com and at wagner cps. Thank you very much. Thank you for tony. My pleasure. We’ve got more coming up, and that is with maria simple and that is linked in latest first pursuant, do you want to start a sustainers e-giving program or fine tune your existing program monthly giving raises money and builds strong relationships? I think we all know that because they’re giving month after month and lots of opportunities to thank them or you. Although you’re not supposed to say thank you every month. That’s bad, but it builds relationships. Um, they have a stat that a ten percent increase in donorsearch retention can equal a two hundred percent increase in donor. So i think this is it’s worth looking at. And you want to do your sustainers program, right? So that you get the maximum value out of it. This is the free webinar coming up is sustained, e-giving decoded and it is on february fourteenth. Valentine’s day so you can get the love from your donors sustaining, giving, decoded ah, you’ll find it at pursuant dot com to register, click on resource is and then webinars. Oh, in a footnote i gotta put in i get a double dagger footnote for you that this may also be helpful to you if you need to convince your ceo or you’re bored to start or expand your recurring giving program double dagger, see, i defined my double deckers i don’t like i don’t like errant double daggers, we’ll be spelling. Have you seen the video from their spelling bee for help for children? One guy in the video says best spelling bee i’ve been to in a long time somebody else. Ah lot of great spellers, great band. We had a blast there’s a couple that says we would definitely come back to we’d be spelling this is not your seventh grade spelling bee. Check out the video, it’s that we be e spelling dot com now, tony steak too. The deed is done. My long hair has been cut video of the ceremonial cutting. You will find it at tony martignetti dot com it’s gotten a decent number of hits you’ll be pat, my stylist, the artist. And you watch my river of curls flow down by purple gown onto the floor. Tragic but it’s done what’s done is done. We can’t you can’t. You can never go back. But you do have the opportunity to bear witness to this history it’s at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony’s take two maria semple. Everybody knows who she is. She she she needs no introduction. She she deserves an introduction. Certainly, but it’s it’s not necessary. You know that she’s the prospect. Find her she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research that her website is the prospect finder dot com that her latest book is magnify your business tips, tools and strategies for growing your business or you’re not non-profit uh, you know, whereas our diet of dirt cheap and free and you’ll find her on twitter at maria simple, real simple. Welcome back. Thank you so much, tony. Great to be here. That’s. A pleasure, it’s. A pleasure. Thank you. Um, let’s see, linked in. Lincoln has some changes for us. What’s going on over there, you know, you know the one thing about social media that you can count on as if there’s always going to be something changing, right? So lincoln is no exception to that, and they have kind of rolled out a whole new look and feel, if you will, and with that, they’ve rolled out a bunch of changes, especially to an area i’ve always loved on linked in, which is the advanced search feature. So if you haven’t had the change yet, if you’ve not linked, log into your lincoln profile in awhile on you go in there today and it looks the same and feels the same as it always did. Then you have not been migrated over to the new platform yet. It’s weird, i mean, i’m still on the old platform, but i’ve had it experience with using it through some of my clients that i consult with on their linked in profile, so i kind of seen both side by side, all right? So everybody is not converted over that, right that’s reassuring to me, it’s, an immigration prophecy, the immigration problems there throughout the country. It’s an immigration migration problem because i went because i went to you know, i’m prepping, prepping for this, but believe it or not, i mean, i do prepare for the show and i don’t see any difference in mind. So i was thinking these are pretty subtle changes, but maria says she wants to talk about them. I don’t see any changes. Okay, so i am a non immigrant. I’m not immigrants that i don’t have a card or anything. I’m non for the new i’m non status, non citizen status for the new lincoln change, okay, right, right, that’s, right? But, you know, soon i think it’s going to happen for all of us. So you know, if you still have that i’m going to say old look and field here platform, i would say some of the tips that we’re going to talk about today in terms of prospecting. Anyway, you would really want to hop on board and take advantage of using the advanced search feature right away because it will soon disappear in terms of really the refinement that you’re going to be able to do with your your searching, they’re going to make that the base and i know you like me talking about free and dirt cheap, but i did. Think it was an important topic for at least to talk about, you know, what can you still do for free? And what will you need to pay for? What will it cost? Charlie ford? So this is an urgent urgent topic if you are on the old platform of you’ve been non immigrated over, forcibly, then do a lot of advanced searches now we’re going to talk about what changing but do them now while you still can for free. Yeah, yeah. Okay, hunker down this weekend. Yeah, right. Okay, so you know it, sze classic with with the social media platforms that they they give you something for nothing and it’s robust, and then they start charging for it once you’re accustomed to it. Same thing with facebook making the organic reach of pages so difficulty, tio have decent numbers on to encourage you, teo, to buy tow to boost your butcher post, which costs money. Yeah, well, you know, these companies do have shareholders to respond to what they have to make some money. Whatever. Okay, uh, i’m doing a lot of grassing today. I know. I know. A suspect of faz b and m piela i’m on edge, on edge. Okay, what’s changed. Go ahead, give us the bad news. What? What? What are we gonna have to pay for, or maybe you already have to pay for. Okay, so the searching that you used to be able to do one of the things i always loved twas being able to really refine a search. So let’s say, i’m looking for a state planning attorneys that are within a, you know, ten to one hundred mile radius of my zip code who are also interest buy-in volunteering or serving is a boardmember at a non-profit that search to that level of refinement in terms of the zip code and the radius around a zip code that is gone, you now need to pay to use length in if you want to use that level of refinement. So now, if i want to search for an estate planning attorney interested in volunteering or boardmember ship, i can limit it to the greater new york city area, for example, or the greater chicago area. You know, those larger you know how when we’re setting up arlington profiles, we get listselect you know that we’re in the greater new york city area for folks like you and i, so you will now only be able to refine it geographically to that degree, and now so many of your listeners really serve a very you know, specific geographic scope. I always thought that that search feature was going to be awesome, you know, now you can’t really refine it is much unless you want to pay to use lengthen. So are you saying wait, hold on. So you’re saying, are you saying greater new york is is you can’t get any narrower than that under the new service? Back-up correct, but you can get, but you can’t get more refined currently, you can get more refined if you’re still under the old form, right? So how much can you refine it by, like, zip code? Or you could go by zip code? I could have searched for a state planning attorney within ten miles of my coat and now greater new york city area. It requires a double dagger. What? How do you define greater new york city? I mean, that could include philadelphia, for god sake or or close to philadelphia. Yeah, man. Yeah. So, unfortunately, you’re going to have to pay to refine it if you want it, you know, and any more refined than that. So i was sorely disappointed that that particular functionality went away, however, they still for free left the functionality in of searching for people who have a non-profit interest of either skilled volunteering or burt board service. So, you know, if he ah all’s not lost is what i’m saying, okay, so i still think the fact that they left that capacity there for a non-profit executive to use linked into search for people who are within, say, the greater new york city area interested in volunteering for, for, you know, their organizations, you know, somebody has, um, i think, taking the step of putting on their own personal lincoln profiles and raise their hand and said, yeah, i’m interested in volunteering or i’m interested in board service, i still think it’s going to be valuable, to be able to proactively go in and identify who some of these people are, right? But you have to sift through so many more because you can no longer define it to within ten miles of my zip code, right? Right. So you know, you may come up with several hundred people in the search results, as opposed to maybe a more manageable list of, you know, say, i don’t know forty or fifty people that might have come up if you were really refining it to a ten mile radius, so, you know, a little bit more sifting, ah, little bit more digging that you’re going to have to do once you get that list, but it’s still could be valuable, you know, might be something that you can have on an intern do. Um, so i know it feels like, you know, summer is forever away, but, you know, you’ve got spring break coming up for college students, and so maybe this is something you can set up for as a nice small project for a college intern, okay? There’s a there’s, a there’s, a dirt cheap or free idea? Thank you always. See, i’m glad you’re on today because you’re you and eat your finding the bright spots when i’m feeling very grassy, i don’t know why. Um okay, uh, what i was gonna ask about the oh, so what? What about people’s industry? If you’re trying to find some a particular industry that someone is in. Is that that’s still that’s still free? Yes. You can still refine buy-in district? Yes. You can do that school. All right. What about ah, company current company. Past company? Yes, you can still refined by current and past company as well. So if you really want to refine it that way, you can do that. Do you know what school they went to? Also in terms of the universe. So if you want to try and find, you know ah, alum who? You know, you went toe to college with the same university or something. And you think that, you know, maybe you’d at least have an affinity, a reason to connect with that person because you went to the same school, you know that. That could be an opportunity there. What? Do you know what the cost is? If somebody wants to take on the pro version is, like fifty bucks a month or so? Yes. So there’s, uh, there’s a version that is called sales navigator and that’s. Probably the version that that the non-profits they’re going to want to use ad so you can either lock in for sixty for ninety. Nine a month if you lock in for a year, or you can go month to month at seventy nine ninety nine a month, um, and that, of course, you can just use it for the months that you want. Now, here’s here’s. The beauty of it, though you can use it for free for thirty days, so they will let you have a trial, if you will, for thirty days. So again, if you have been migrated over and you want to at least give the new platform a try, i highly recommend you at least try it for free for thirty days. Okay? And again, if you haven’t been migrated over yet, get get to it. Do your do your searches. Yeah, okay, what? What else can you tell us? You’re gonna have to start paying for that that’s free now. Well, um, let’s see what else? One of the things that they are giving access to, i will say, which could be pretty valuable for non-profits who want to make sure that their folks, you know, have access to some good training and so forth, but can’t really pay to send them to a lot of conferences and what not with the premium level services you have access to things, something called lincoln learning and lincoln salary, so i think lincoln learning where they boast that they have over nine thousand courses available, i think that could be a pretty interesting value proposition for a lot of non-profits who want to make sure that folks say, you know, trained on various, maybe technical things and so forth, those nine thousand are specifically for non-profits those air non-profit topics? No, no, they’re not i mean, they’re across the board. I mean, i would imagine if you need to learn how to use excel better or, you know, you want to learn more about, you know, how to use facebook marketing or things like that? Those are the types of, you know, online courses, if you will, that you’re going tohave available. Now, i’ve not tested any of them. You know, i i i don’t, you know, i can’t talk about, you know, they’re they’re quality and so forth. But i thought that was kind of interesting that they did, you know, have that as a perk, teo, to premium. Well, of course, they’re not going to be as valuable as the seminars that maria simple does throughout the country. Prospect research. All right, let’s, let’s, go out, take a break, and marie and i’m going to keep talking about these, the linked in latest, which i’m not liking, but we have to keep talking about it. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end, he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals too short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Are we gonna do more live? Lister eleven the first person i want to shit out out is something else from wagner, who i met with you eat it wasn’t in the studio today, but chris, chris rowe, you ask for a shoutout, sometimes i don’t give him just cause you asked, but i’ve given it to you live with her love to you, andi let’s, go let’s, continue to go abroad. Um, we got something else from mongolia, so originally we had ulan bator, mongolia, and now we’ve got sue betar, mongolia, so i don’t know if you two are connected by phone and the person in ulan bator contacted his or her friend in su betar, mongolia, and told him you gotta be listening. It’s tony monday non-profit radio, which which i think is a very worthwhile reason to make a phone call, but either way, whether you know each other or not live listen, i’d love to you. Germany is with us more multiple, more germany, guten tag uk is with us. Is it in england? We know is it? Uh we don’t know, we don’t even know which is which of the was therefore countries it. Could be whales or ireland or scotland, or it could be england. But the uk is with us, maybe it’s, someone welch. I don’t know now if it’s someone english and i just called them welch that’s, very bad, so i’m not getting into it live. Listen, love to the person or people listening in the united kingdom. Let’s, leave it there. And the podcast pleasantries have to come over twelve thousand. Now, over twelve thousand listeners on your own schedule. I love it. It’s it’s, twenty seventeen is all about. Listen at your leisure, benj, listen or do it in drops live. Listen to our podcast pleasantries to the over twelve thousand of you and the affiliate affections to r kayman fm listeners throughout the country. So glad that you are with us. Please let your station know that you listen to non-profit radio that will help us a lot and help them affiliate affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners. Very simple. Um, we were goingto yes. Okay, so let’s continue with what’s. Ah, what you got to pay for news now or soon? That that used to be free. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s, talk about what? Some of the good freebies air still there because sound like i think i might have depressed you in that first segment there. I want to make sure i looked into it. Might be my short hair. It might be this hair cut. I don’t know what it is. You know, it’s, i walked in this way. I don’t know why go. Ahead, yeah, we wouldn’t leave you in your listeners on a good note, let’s talk about some of the stuff you can still do for free that i think are pretty awesome, so they and i’m going to give you a website, and i’ll also put it on your facebook page. But it’s non-profit dot length in dot com forward slash development, right? So you know what they were? I want to focus a little bit more on how to elevate their their pages entitled how to elevate your fundraising efforts with lincoln, so they give you some some tips and ideas on that particular page, as you know how non-profits can use this for fund-raising for development, one of the things they provide is a free webinar that you can watch to learn how to use lincoln better for fund-raising so again, that is still free, and i think it would be well worth while at least checking that out and see what additional tips you might be able to get on. How to use lengthened for fund-raising okay, i’ll just put that in my takeaway is okay non-profit derelict in dot com slash development, okay? And i yeah. I did want to point out that that that domain is still available that non-profit doubt linked in dot com there’s still a lot of good stuff there. Yes, there is. Yes, absolutely so there’s, some good stuff there. So it’s a bad still there, that’s still free they what? When i was poking around that area, one of the things that i did find is that they give an email address, that they say that you can the email them to see if you qualify for discounts. Now i don’t know what that means to see if you qualify for discounts of the non-profit um and then on and the e mail address that they give is non-profit solutions at lincoln dot com and i i i don’t know what the qualifications are. I don’t know if it’s by size of budget, i don’t know, i don’t know, i have no idea, i don’t know anybody who approach them with this, but i figured since i was preparing for the show and i came across that e mail address that dear listeners might want to know about that, they also say that they have a lincoln fund-raising specialist who’s. Available and there’s a form that you fill out and hit send, i guess. And then somebody from lincoln reaches out to you. So that might be worth pursuing something. What? You know, maybe they’re going to give you some free ideas about how to use linked in better and so on. And so for non-profit fund-raising specialist. Yeah. That’s what they call it. I know where you found that on non-profit darlington dot com. Yeah, for its development is where you found that non-profit fund-raising specialist form that you submit? Yeah. Yeah, because they have. They have a link at the very bottom that says, talk with our non-profit specialists. And so when i click clicked on that, i noticed that they have ah, form that you can fill out. And then somebody gets back to you that we should try to get somebody on from lincoln. How about that? There you go. That was that the form and say, hey, i’m learning a radio show. Come on and talk to me. Well, that’s, one way to do it so that’s. A rather simple minded way. It certainly will get the job done. I prefer to be a lot. More sophisticated than that, but okay, i’ll take that one under advisement. Do that without specialist or specialists. Was it a plural specialists? They just say that they have a lincoln fund-raising specialist available for just one person serving a well, i don’t know one point. Two million of us. Ok, it’s hard, it’s. Hard to say. I mean, i don’t know how you know how much they still have in terms of staffing available that they have dedicated to the non profit sector. That would be really interesting question to ask now, did you say a non-profit fundez specialist or the non-profit reasonscall esha list? That article is very important a versus the did you catch that chance? Okay, let’s say that speaks to a link in a ok, so that religion fundrasing specialist who could help you find the right fund-raising solution for your non-profit okay is very important a versus d because okay, so the a of course it could mean they only have one and they just making it sound like they have multiple but that’s another conspiracy don’t okay spirit. Very grassy today, very graphic sexual it’s a short hair i don’t know i’m set off today. I don’t know why. Okay, let’s, get you back in here. Tony welchlin articles. A very important article arguing articles are very important. Geever city, i think. But there is one more thing i did want to focus on that you can still do for free on linkedin, even with the new search feature. So when you have that that search box that’s at the top of the page now they do allow you to run bully in searches. Now you’re going to put me in jargon, geo bully. And everybody knows boolean is good, kendo and or and not okay, so a little feedback. All right, so is that something new? Bully in search? Well, it’s it’s taught their you know, their they’ve given you some, you know, instructions on how you can actually run those searches in terms of how to use you know the word not or and you know how to use the parentheses, teo, filter down your searches. So again, you know, it could be a way for you, teo, to take advantage of what still available for free one. One of the things that i found was interesting, though, is that you? Can’t use like like we can you do on google when we’re running searches, you cannot use the plus sign or the minus sign. So you must use the word and instead of the plus sign and you must use the word not in place of the a minus sign. Okay, that’s it. We’re going very grandeur now, boy. Okay, i know that. Yeah, yeah, pretty pretty important. Is this going away in a new in the newer version is the is the is the boolean search going away? No, no. It’s there. It’s still there? Okay. That’s. Why? I want to make sure we covered it because it is there also those those operators not. And or they must be in upper case letters if you’re going to use that. So that that’s important? A cz? Well, ok, ok. And they’re not supporting any type of wild card searches. Sometimes if you only knew, say part of the word you used to be able to put an asterisk at the end. Well, you can normally and boolean searches, but apparently on their platform they are not doing a wild cards search. So let’s say you were looking for the word ah, fundraiser or fund-raising you normally would have been able to put in f u n d e r a f asterisk so that it would complete the word in any way. But now you can’t do that on this particular bullying search. But, you know, i did want to let people know that that is available. You could just do fund-raising capital o capital our fundraiser and that would cover. All right, we got to leave it there. Maria simple. Thank you so much. Thank you for keeping us on our toes and linked in excellent, you’ll find maria. You’ll find maria at the prospect finder dot com and also at maria simple next week don’t burn out in twenty seventeen and personalized video if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. I’m working on hiring a new am and fm outreach director and i mistakenly had gavin in the credits last week after i said goodbye on january first, but gavin, if you don’t, if you don’t leave, we can start missing, so please i’m a damn idiot intern alright, social so media is by susan chavez on our music is by scott stein he’s going to be singing shortly and i’m going to talk over him, so saying, bring him down if you start to happen your turn you with me next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great you can’t take my own advice what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine am or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles? Best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch. Kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah. You know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expected to grow. And savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

Nonprofit Radio for July 6, 2012: Automated Accounting & From Online Engagement To Action

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

Listen live or archive:

Tony’s Guests:

Aaron Schmid
Aaron Schmid: Automated Accounting

Aaron Schmid is chief product officer at Bill Highway and he thinks a lot about accounting, so you don’t have to. He has ways to increase visibility; improve reporting; standardize if you have more than one office; automate; and integrate with your bank.

 

With Jay Frost on Fund Raising Day 2012
Jay Frost: From Online Engagement To Action

From Fund Raising Day 2012, Jay Frost, CEO of FundraisingInfo.com talks with me about moving people from engagement online to giving online. How to convert your social media friends into donors.

 
 
 
 


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Hello and welcome to the show, it’s tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. I very much hope that you were with me last week. It would cause me pain if i learned that you had missed your more effective board. Gail gifford is the author of how to make your board dramatically more effective. Starting today, she helped you make sure your charities mission is relevant. Your ceo is supported and your board is strong. Also, a conversation with paul clolery he’s, the editor in chief of non-profit times he and i talked about a trend that he sees happening in events that they’re ramping up and what he’s concerned about in the future for charities this week. Automated accounting. Aaron schmidt is chief product officer at billhighway and he thinks a lot about accounting, so you don’t have to we’ll talk about increasing visibility, improving, reporting, standardizing if you have more than one office automate and increasing sorry and integrating with your bank and automate that’s re automating the gerund form that should be automating. I need i need an intern, so i have somebody to blame. For these mistakes, automating will be part of our discussion. Also, online engagement toe action from fund-raising day two thousand twelve. Jake frost, ceo of fund-raising info dot com, talks with me about moving people from engagement online to giving online how to convert your social media friends into donors. On tony’s, take two between the guests non-profit radios. One hundredth show it’s next week. Use non-profit radio that’s, our hashtag on twitter, use that hashtag to join the conversation there. Right now, we take a break and when we return, it’s automated accounting with aaron schmid, stay with me duitz thing getting dink, dink, dink dink. You’re listening to the talking alternative network waiting to get in. Don’t. You could. Hi, i’m carol ward from the body mind wellness program. Listen to my show for ideas and information to help you live a healthier life in body, mind and spirit. You hear from terrific guests who are experts in the areas of health, wellness and creativity. So join me every thursday at eleven a, m eastern standard time on talking alternative dot com professionals serving community. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Buy-in dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent arika schmidt is with me now. He’s, the chief product officer for billhighway and he leads the product and technical development of that financial technology platform. He’s a c p a. Aaron was previously a management consultant for deloitte consulting. Where’s clients included american express, bear stearns and borgwarner and i’m very pleased to have his expertise on the show. Aaron schmid welcome. Good morning. Thanks, tony. What’s wrong in accounting in small and midsize charities, you know, there there’s quite a bit of a few come to mind, you know immediately. And you know, one is just the lack of standardization across organisations and it really doesn’t matter if if your organization consists of one entity o r one hundred fifty different ways of doing the same thing. It’s just really not a healthy way to run a business, and it caused several problems related to, you know, operational inefficiencies. It could be very hard to educate and enforce again when you have fifty different ways of doing things, and it becomes even harder to get any type of consistent or meaningful reporting. So, organizations, you really need to focus on creating consistency. You know, both with prophecies and tools. You need one financial system of record one process to find. Oh, and that’s going to increase the level of visibility and accountability across the organization. Okay, these processes were talking about this is all around your money, money coming in money coming out. Absolutely no money coming in and out specifically around reporting, you know, i see. Ah, latto inconsistency. You know, just recently, way had a simple example where volunteers were running. Ah, client organization of ours. And those volunteers were were using different versions of the organization chart of account. And when you looked at it, i’m sorry. Different versions of the organization’s what chart of accounts? Chart of accounts. Okay, but it’s really what? What? To find your financial statements. It was really obvious when you look across the reports that were produced in the organization that the counter being misused and they were being duplicated and again, it was just really, really made it difficult to accurately report from a budget standpoint and then tracking actually to that. And we really just went in and did a very simple review of that chart of accounts and ended up finding one version of the truth. I did a little education, you know, on the volunteers, you know how to use that and just that simple change. You really just changed the meaningfulness of the reported that the report there were being generated. Tony martignetti non-profit radio has drug in jail. You you’re really been talking for less than two minutes, you’re already skirting very close. Of course, i’m the warden of jargon jail, so the probation early probation is a possibility a chart of accounts is that something that every charity is supposed to have? What, first of all, what are these accounts? What is on this chart? Absolutely every organization non-profit for-profit goingto have a chart of accounts and it’s really a very simple concept, nothing more than a list of reporting buckets of how you’re going to track your information, you know, over the course of the year, and that information is going to allow you to make better, better business decisions and really, in the end, that’s all a financial statement is kind of a running total to find on that list of reporting bucket that you’ve defined is meaningful to your organization again to be able teo, accumulate that information at the end of the year and make again better business. What are some examples of these reporting buckets that we on this chart of reports that sort of accounts, revenues and expensive? So you would think of you your piano again? However, your cash is coming into your organization, you’re gonna break that down to whatever’s meaningful. So you know, one example would be to break down reports they don product lines. You know, if you know that one hundred thousand dollars came in over the course of the year that’s important, but if you know that that hundred thousand dollars was ninety thousand dollars came from product number one and ten thousand came from product number two, that lower level granularity again is good, it is meaningful and it’s going to allow you to make decisions based on it, as opposed to just having that one lump sum amount of one hundred thousand dollars. So defining those reporting buckets, that chart of accounts is critical to understanding the health of your organization, okay, those are examples of revenues that may be coming in. So one might be fund-raising and one might be fees for services, and maybe one is you have a little thrift shop or something like that or a little sale of product or something. What are some examples? Okay, what are some examples of money going out these reporting buckets? That would be in this chart of accounts, you need to think of your expense structure and how your money is flowing out of the organization. So, again, whatever it is meaningful to you could be a simple, as, you know, the rent in the space that that that you’re releasing it could be a symbol of the utilities or again, anything that makes sense to your organization, and we need to be accounting for these items all separately. This is the point, right? That’s the point exactly that that lower level of granularity is so critical and you got it achieve a balance because there’s effort into creating that, you know, amount of detail and you don’t want to get excessive where it’s taking too much time to, you know, separate all those things out, but you definitely want to spend enough time, tio, where you’re getting enough meaningful. Information tio r mu to be able to make make those good business decisions. All right? And now, in just a minute, we have left before a break. What is the the value of tracking these this’s this flow of money in and out in the same way each time for small and midsize charities that that probably don’t even have a cfo? Yeah, that that consistent is so critical because without it, you know, it’s really hard to enforce accountability across the organization, because if things are track inconsistently, you just you don’t know what’s going on and if you don’t know what’s going on again, it’s hard to hold people accountable throughout your organization latto finding that that one version of truth and then using it in a very assistant manner is going to be critical free to be able to execute you’re on your wayto financial health. I’m thinking of a small organization that may get one hundred, checks a year or so or something like that, and maybe different people are accounting for those checks each time they come in, not out and about a hundred different people, but maybe two or three different people are doing it two or three different ways. That’s, your point right, that’s, my point, that’s all it takes again that you don’t need to be a thousand entity organization like you mentioned one. Any organization with no more than two people can do things in consistently, and that can create all kinds of wasted time, time and energy where you can get that consistent, whether you’re two people or one hundred again, what’s coming out on the back end in the financial statements are gonna be so much more meaningful. If that khun assistance, he was fine from the beginning and then executed well throughout the process, we have to take a break. You’ll stay with me, of course, and we’ll continue talking about automated accounting. Everybody else stays with us, too. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. How’s your game. Want to improve your performance, focus and motivation? Then you need a spire athletic consulting stop second guessing yourself. Move your game to the next level. Bring back the fun of the sport, help your child build confidence and self esteem through sports. Contact dale it aspire athletic consulting for a free fifteen minute power session to get unstuck today, your greatest athletic performance is just a phone call away at eight a one six zero four zero two nine four or visit aspire consulting. Dot vp web motivational coaching for athletic excellence aspire to greatness. Are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality. In fact, its ideology over intellect no more it’s time for action. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for isaac tower radio burghdoff in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who want to go what’s really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very. Sharp your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s ivory tower radio dot com every tower is a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven it will make you smarter money time, happiness, success, where’s, your breakthrough. Join me, nora simpson, as i bring you real world tools for combining financial smarts with spiritual purpose. As a consultant to ceos, i’ve helped produce clear, measurable financial results while expanding integrity, passion and joy share my journey as we apply the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment to create breakthroughs for people across the world. The people of creation nation listened to norah simpson’s creation nation fridays at twelve noon eastern on talking alternative dot com. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com hello and welcome back. Aaron let’s, talk about the value of this reporting. What now? Our report is going to be more specific when we know that we’re having consistent processes each time check comes in or some money goes out. But what we’re going to do with these now maur clear reports. Well, now we can use them, right? And before, when things are not consistent. You spent so much time in the accident knows of finance that it’s very hard to work in any proactive manner, and now that you have this consistency, you can start using it to become better and use financial statements, you know, again for what they’re there for teo again, increase the financial health of your organization aboard would certainly be interested in clearer, more precise reporting, right? Your your board, your finance committee or the office or the school board and it’s a huge problem right now and a lot of organization. That’s one of the core purpose is generating these financial statements for the different types of groups, and you can lose sight of and why you exist is an organization and again that’s for your constituents and that’s for your mission and you don’t exist is an organization. Teo, keep up and keep your head above water from a finance back-up okay, so we can automate thes tasks. Is that right? That’s that’s a key part of this key part of it? I mean, key part of it really centers around, you know, trying to work smarter and not harder on dh a great way to to work smarter, not harder, harder is to use technology as in the neighbor enabler and, you know, you want to reduce manual task, you want to get rid of duplicates. Dafs and as i just mentioned, you want try to free up resources from those accident o’s of financial management every day and get back to focusing on your constituent, thinking about recruitment, thinking about retention and obviously, you know, ultimately your mission, yeah, i think the you call him the x’s and o’s mean thiss numerical accounting and and just everything around the numbers is pretty daunting to a lot of small and midsize shops. They’re not really sure how to do it. They’re passionate about their work, obviously, because they wouldn’t be there, but then the business side, the financial management side is kind of, you know, burdensome and scary. Absolutely. All right, organizations really get caught up a lot. Just how things have always been done. And regardless of how painful it is, you can get caught keeping your head down and not not thinking about taking a step back and thinking, you know, how can we do this better? How can we do this? Smarter on dh that’s where, you know, technology could come in to get rid of a lot of that waste of time and energy and get you back focused on what makes? All right, we’ve talked on this show a few times about software as a service which is synonymous with cloud computing. That’s where a lot of the help exists right in the cloud? Absolutely, absolutely. And they make a lot of sense, you know, in today’s, day and age, especially for smaller groups. The leverage of the cloud. You know, in my opinion, it’s just it’s very difficult today to be good at everything and technology. It’s just it’s changing at an ever increasing pace and, you know, to be great at it, you need to focus on it. And you need to focus really exclusively on it? Um, not not profit organizations, they’re not technology companies again. They exist for their missions for their purpose. Um, and again, in my opinion, you think you need to let the experts focused on technology. Um, security security of your constituent data, it’s just it’s, paramount, and you really need to make sure that you do your homework and select a provider that understands that on that protects that again so you can leverage the power of the club duitz you talk about the pace of change, of technology and how hard it is for for people to keep up, so if they’re using a cloud computing solution, then they don’t have to keep up right? The company that manages that software, they’re the ones who are upgrading their product all the time, exactly and that’s, the real benefit is you have companies that are focused exclusively on it, that they do it very well, you know, they’re they’re constantly thinking about, you know, back-up systems, disaster recovery plans, you know, they’re building their facilities and earthquake proof fireproof, you know, places they’re they’re constantly focussed on data encryption. These are skills that they’re not. Simple on and they’re only getting harder and, you know, there’s so many times where, you know, i’ll go into a client and you see the server that sitting in a closet on air conditioned, right cem cem closet where there may be water bottles over it or something like that? Absolutely, you know, and all it takes is a simple air conditioning malfunction and, you know, you could be out of business because there’s pipes and risers in there, a pipe bomb accident literally walked into, you know, a server rooms where there’s water dripping and, you know, they put the makeshift things up, directing water. We are men and that’s just the risk is just too high and there’s really help. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago, you didn’t have that choice. He kind of had to live with that risk, but in today’s, day and age, you don’t have to live with that risk again. You can leverage software, the service cloud computing for what? It’s good at on dh. Just vastly different than just a few years ago. Those those closets, server rooms, that’s when people get creative with plastic sheets and duct tape. Yeah, have seen it all year and you’re hyping, maybe like a hose or rubber number. A garden hose cut from somebody’s home and that’s it. You got it. You got it. And that’s the problem with one simple thing. And you can have ah, catastrophes. So you can sleep a lot easier at night, knowing that organizations are going to the level they are to protect what’s so important to your organization again, back to that constituent data and the related financial data. Right. Okay, so all this important data now you. You you mentioned security, but let’s spend a couple of minutes with it. How do we know that the off site storage of our precious data, the stuff you just mentioned is is safer than being on our computers that we can see that i can control and have physical, physical security over the great question. And that’s where i mentioned early really need toe do your homework when when you’re looking at organizations you want to look for under organizations that really, truly understand, you know what they’re doing, you know, some of the industry standards out there that you want to look at you? Have they done? Enough the sixteen hold on jargon jail twice in ten minutes, six homes for seventy and it’s just really about, you know, i mean, auditing. Obviously, most folks are familiar with financial audit on dh these audits were created for the purpose of systems and making sure that the day to day operation of those systems are in line with best practices. All right, so now, what is what is seventeen at the end of a sixteen again? Just that it’s a set of rules, basically that organizations need to follow and you have it have an independent auditor come in and look at the controls are are in place and actually test those controls to make sure that again, you’re back-up there are happening regularly that you have a disaster recovery plan that you’ve actually executed that disaster recovery plan. They’re going to spend a lot of time in your databases and make sure that your data’s encrypted and make sure there’s no sensitive credit card information or different things, you know that that are in there that regular folks within your organization should not have access to. All right, so these are a set of audit standards. You got it? I got it. Okay, look at that. If they’re dealing again with any payment related information, you want to make sure i’m gonna get in trouble with the jargon police here, but that their pc i compliant and again that’s the exact same concept. It’s just centers around credit card information. What argast that of standards that the different networks out there, like visa and mastercard have outlined to make sure that anybody that is processing credit card payments are following the standards and make sure that everyone’s data is protected. Okay, this is all critical. Mean credit card processing. So your executive director has a credit card for the for the organization. You may very well get credit card gift either online or by paper when people fill out replied devices. This is all part of that level of that needed security, right? And now what’s pc i what is pc? I stand for payments, compliance industry. And i forget the actually what the acronym it means, but again, it’s all about that that set of standards that you need to comply by ifyou’re goingto all be involved in credit card transactions. Okay, which are pretty common. I think absolutely all right, so if we’re going to move to ah cloud solution, how do we then make the transfer that from or the conversion from our manual system or whatever we’re using to something that’s off site in cloud based sure, you want to focus on that during implementation, and you want to talk about that plan that you know, with your new private provider front from the beginning? Um, most things today can be automated and, you know, just with the web itself just integration of systems there’s just so much easier than it is today. So in most instances, you’ll look to some sort of programmatic way to get your key data from your legacy systems into your new systems, you know, having toe rechy that information, you know it most times you don’t need teo, but again, if the data set a small enough, you know, sometimes that doesn’t make sense. And because it’s just a one time transfer of information, there are times where from a budget standpoint where that makes the most sense you mean manual manual king makes the most sense, exactly, exactly for the kids to think about it from the beginning of the process, you don’t want to get too far down the path and then start bringing up the topic and then realize that there is going to be some investment in terms of some programmatic interchange. So, you know, having those discussions upfront, understanding the implications and then being able to make the best decision based on what makes sense for your organization is aaron schmidt is chief product officer at billhighway, which you’ll find it billhighway dot com, how are these services typically paid for what? How are the fees work? That’s one of the great things about cloudy as well as, you know, in the past, he typically installing, you know, large systems on your different client server based systems ten again, twenty years ago with a significant capital investment upfront and then ongoing maintenance and licensing xero and the cloud, you know, move to a much more subscription based, you know, pricing model, and you really don’t have to make those significant capital investments up front and it’s more of ah, pay as you go model, which can be very attractive to smaller organizations that, you know, just historically haven’t had the funding the ability to make those up from capital investments for the large systems there? What do you really just kind of changes the playing field and allows any organization tio have the power of ah, very what do you paying for as you go? Is it per transaction or it’s a monthly retainer based female? How does pay as you go work it’s all different? You know, some organizations will charge you more of ah, per user fee. Some organizations, we’ll charge you more of a transactional based model, especially if they’re involved at all in the processing of online payments or donations. So it’s really gonna depend on on the provider and what the specific functionality is, you know, that they’re providing, but the beauty is that pay as you go model, getting rid of that that up front investment what’s interesting about cloudgood puting is it’s it’s, analogous to where we were thirty years ago twenty five, thirty years, roughly in computing, where it was mainframes and people had, you know, dumb terminals and you had to go to a terminal room, of course, because he asked, and it wasn’t just tom it’s exactly how to think of it. Is all you need is that dumb, you know, internet browser and another one of the beauties you could be anywhere in the world longs you have that intercut internet connection, you know, tying back to again that that mainframe like environment you got, everything you need is a great difference is being, of course, now it’s all desktop, you don’t go to terminal room, and your organization doesn’t maintain that mainframe. You’re just paying for access to it up in the cloud exactly. And in the sharing of that, that cost across all the organizations customers is what’s so critical where before an organization had to absorb that completely by themselves, you know, again in an industry that they’re not experts in and spreading that cost out across all of ah, cloud providers, clients, you know, just really benefits everybody way have just a couple of minutes before we have to wrap up. Erin, we’ve been talking about your internal processes accounting, but this can be these processes can be integrated with the external your bank. How does that work? Absolutely. And today again, we talk about the differences the back in the client server days, you know, into the true, you know, web based world and it isn’t general systems have been they’ve gotten better and better at integration, and you need to look for solutions that embrace integration, you know, as part of our culture, a lot of systems today that kind of claim to be good at everything and that’s just not the case, you know billhighway for example, a great financial management tool, but we’re not a great cms toole were not a great here, and you’ll see a memory with hold on hold on crn when i was customer relationship management, what cms concept management comes and think about your front end if a lot of your revenue comes in from from donations, you think about the the website that your donors are used to going teo make those donations, we have just like forty five seconds before i have to wrap up, so my charity has a relationship with td bank can you’re saying that i can integrate my accounting system using cloud computing and be integrated with my account or accounts at td bank after the limit? The counting systems are get embracing this integration and you see examples really across the board where payment processing and online banking are becoming more and more fully integrated with your accounting system and that’s really kind of were billhighway hang a hat is we’ve actually built in accounting system that sits on top of banking platforms from the beginning of tiny that your bank over here and you’re counting system over here. And and it was it was a batch process to put the two of them together every night or something batch process, and yet people involved reconcile ing those things, and really one of the reasons accounting systems in-kind departments exist is making sure that those two things they’re in synch and you’re expending a lot of time and money making sure that that’s happening and organizations like billhighway have asked the question you do, these things need to be separate, and we believe, you know, very strongly that they don’t, and we believe in, you know, five, ten years, you’re not gonna have ah system doing payment processing and in online bank to log into and then in accounting system, log into your have one user interface to log into that is allowing you to execute all three of those and then be able to leverage the operational efficiency that that that could create. All right, erin, we have to leave it there. Chief product officer at billhighway, which you’ll find a billhighway dot com arika schmidt, thank you very much for being on the show. Great. Thank you. Doing my pleasure. Right now, we take a break, and when we returned to tony’s, take two bonem talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Hi, this is nancy taito from speaks. Been radio speaks. Been. Radio is an exploration of the world of communication, how it happens in how to make it better, because the quality of your communication has a direct impact on the quality of your life. Tune in monday’s at two pm on talking alternative dot com, where i’ll be interviewing experts from business, academia, the arts and new thought. Join me mondays at two p m and get all your communications questions answered on speaks been radio. Hi, i’m carol ward from the body mind wellness program. Listen to my show for ideas and information to help you live a healthier life in body, mind and spirit. You hear from terrific guests who are experts in the areas of health, wellness and creativity. So join me every thursday at eleven a, m eastern standard time on talking alternative dot com professionals serving community. Money, time, happiness, success, where’s, your breakthrough. Join me, nora simpson, as i bring you real world tools for combining financial smarts with spiritual purpose. As a consultant to ceos, i’ve helped produce clear, measurable financial results while expanding integrity, passion and joy. Share my journey as we apply the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. To create breakthroughs for people across the world. The people of creation nation listened to norah simpson’s creation nation. Fridays, twelve noon eastern on talking alternative dot com buy-in. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com lively conversation. Top trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m samantha cohen from the american civil liberties union. Time now for tony’s, take two my one hundredth show is next week, friday, july thirteenth. Amy sample ward is going to be my guest she’s, a blogger for stanford social innovation review, and she’s, an officer at men and ten the non-profit technology network. I’m opening this one hundred show up to you because i’m so grateful that you listen and support the show, the question’s going to be yours she’s ready to take on your social media questions? You can send them to us to me. Use the linked in group comment on my blog’s use facebook used twitter. Send your questions in advance for amy sample ward anything around social media any of those platforms i just mentioned or any of the other social networks if you’re struggling or if you’re not struggling, but you just have ah, little question to try to get you to the next level, send it and amy sample ward will take it on next friday on the one hundred show, we also have some and ten books and swag teo giveaway for both live and archive listeners were not forgetting the archive listeners in the contests ah, plus all the regular contributors is going to be there, maria and scott and jean and emily all four talking about social media is social networking, and you’ll find all this my blogged at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, july sixth, twenty seventh show of the year and my ninety ninth show. Right now, i have for you a pre recorded interview with j frost from fund-raising day two thousand twelve, he and i talked about moving people from online engagement to online donor on here is that interview. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand twelve were hosted by the association of fund-raising professionals, the greater new york city chapter, and we’re in midtown manhattan at the marriott marquis. My guest right now is jay frost. He is ceo of fund-raising info dot com, and his seminar topic is a little provocative, not too provocative, curious, popping the question moving from engagement to action online. J frost welcome, thank you very much. Nice to be here, it’s a pleasure to have you on and to meet. Finally, we’ve we’ve been connected through social social networks through for quite some time, a long time a couple of years, i think, but now meeting face to face. And i’m really not too impressed. So you look better than i imagine. He’s gracious, and i’m obnoxious. Um, let’s. See? Okay, so we wanna engage. People are already engaged with our non-profit but with our charity. But we want to move them into giving online. Oh, yeah, we’re gonna have some time, but generally, what is our process for doing that? Asking, asking them to give go to the next level and okay, so when we talk about engagement, what level are they engaged? Hypothetical? Well, that does really range, right? Okay, organizations are our messaging all the time. They’re out there talking to people about the good that they do, and they do that in different ways. According to this scope and scale and their marketing plan, sometimes it’s is really a nice, rigorous plan. And sometimes it’s haphazard, but fundamentally were engaging with organizations because we we find something that they do appealing here’s, thie even stronger than appealing. I mean, they they move it, they move us. We love their work for some reason. Well, yes, i mean, hopefully radio and and we’re right, especially in social media. Be talking about that kind of passion all the time, so i’m all for passion. But at some point we’ve got to be like the session title implies at some point we got to be willing to say okay, well, i love you too. But now it’s time to get together and compare notes and work on something together. So it’s about asking people to make a commitment. Okay, how do we begin? Teo asked, how do we approach them? Well, i think it’s not dissimilar from all the other things we do in fund-raising it’s just that a lot of social has been about marketing rather than sales. And so it’s a matter of merging those two pieces instead of building a wall between them that i work with the number of organizations where they will build very large followings of people, and talk about a lot of really important things that work, that they do every day, or they share scriptural quotes. Or they will go in and look at a specific program in detail, share images from it all these things are great. They really engage people. Then they failed to just take that one additional step and say, come on over to thiss page here’s a link, and then you can support this next year, next month tomorrow, so what’s the reluctance why aren’t we doing it more? Well, i think part of it is because we’ve been given ah the wrong message for the last couple years about what social media’s should be and how far it can go, right? And in fact, there have been a lot of people that i like to call the gurus and ninjas because they often refer to themselves as good, wasn’t it? Who will say you really have to build that passion? First, we have to build the passion first, and i understand the emotion behind that here’s here’s, the fundamental challenge if we began every organization like that, none with survive every every organization needs to have today’s equivalent of the sustaining gift of the major grant of the the money given at the door of some kind of purchase. If we failed to do that, we lose the ability to sustain our mission, and social is really no different from anything else in that regard, except that the audience is far larger and the acquisition cost is far lower, right? Right. Okay, so we say thie advices asked, but we’re accustomed to doing very different work related but leading up to but were afraid to make the ask right to convert someone into a donor that’s who we’re talking about, right, even and even a modest donor, maybe a fifty dollars, a year donor. What’s what’s your advice? I mean, well, let me ask you this way, does your advice vary based on whether we’re asking through facebook or we’re asking our twitter followers? Well, i don’t know that would vary that much by the channel. Specifically, it might be by the kind of content we’re sharing or the event itself or the ask itself. I guess what i’m saying is that we need to be willing to marry the different parts of the program so instead of them operating in silos, we gotta find a way to, for example, have the e mail campaign fed by social. So a part of this is organizational structure. It’s absolutely, or you don’t want marketing communications not to not be talking to development and institutional advance, right? Absolutely. And in fact, i think a lot of times we we’ve given the social aspect to people in it because we saw two somehow alien and complicated, or we’ve given it to the marketing department because we saw it as a channel for broadcasting. And while those the people in those in those skill areas are terrific, they have terrific skillsets great contributions, they make two organizations, we need to have somebody who’s willing to actually say, okay, glad you love us now would you be willing to support this activity? They need to be involved in all the messaging, all those components, okay, so who should be saying it? Well, in that case, what we really need to do is have a social media department, which is made up of people were fund-raising including fund-raising all right, so we need to break down the organizational silos and also the conceptual silos about what social networks are for and how far we can go with them. And and i’ve seen this pretty consistently. I went to a conference last year where it was a room full of people going to a session on social media that i was conducting, and we did it kind of. A show of hands afterwards, how many people had a fundraiser in the team that was responsible for a social media messaging and it was less than ten percent? And i saw something happened just recently it another conference in very similar result. So i think that we we have to we have to find a way to marry these concepts very early in the program, and then we will use that technologies as the bridges between them so that if, for example, we won’t go to facebook and to say, will you give today? We would say there there’s here’s, the program that we’ve been talking about? It’s really important, we need your support for it where you click this link and come over here and do so so that’s it. Then we’re going to use another platform to collect the information, to collect the donation in the same way that we do now through email or our website. So it’s a process of moving from one place to another using the correct messaging within that context of that channel. Okay, so let’s talk a little more, even in more detail, so that people can start to activate themselves. Two break down their own pre conceptions. Misconceptions about this limitation around around social media. What? What is what is a preferred method of doing that let’s say on with your with twitter followers? How might we start to get them? We’re putting out bursts, they’re very engaged. We’ve got a good number, let’s say we’ve got a couple of thousand followers, but that’s as far as we’ve gone and we don’t really know much about them other than that they’re following us on twitter way don’t know, we don’t know who they are beyond that, right? How do we start to message while they’re there? There are a whole bunch of elements there there, really interesting. Okay, one is the task, interesting questions all the time i had to, but they’re running on you to get in there. Open ended. So interesting answers. Where do i start? Which apple do i pick first? Well, one part is about knowing who the donors are. Okay, let’s, focus on how do we get more information about who are two thousand? Twitter followers aren’t right exactly. Well, there were a couple ends to that one is, of course, when we go in, we when we have an existing following, we could start researching those people by simply looking their profiles and then connecting that to other kinds of profiles for example, their web pages there, they’re linked in pages and that we’re gonna learn quite a good deal about them. A bigger challenge right now is finding information on people already in our file who are on these social channels, but we don’t know that they are there, and there are some tools now to do that there. Is there a couple of companies unfortunate don’t think they’re in the hall here today, but they’re a couple of company named them it’s. Ok, well, i know one is small act, for example, small act small act, which what they do is they will take a file of email addresses, and they will then upend the social handles so instead of wonderful. So instead of just trying to figure out who might be on facebook and then say, well, you post something for us, you find out the people who had the greatest influence and then you reach out to them directly. Now can we give listeners another another company that does that just to give them a choice? Don’t i want? Or i would, but i’m forgetting. The name right now and there are only two. But if i’m happy to tell anybody if they contact me after, ok, if it occurs to you in the next fifteen minutes so shattered i mean, i shout out random phones right time i’ll do that. So you’re invited to do that as well. Listeners know that it’s mostly randomized. Okay. What? What other advice? I mean, you see now, it’s? Not really channel specific. But you said i might question opened up a whole bunch of interesting topics are now we know more about who the people are, right? What else? What else was interesting? Well, another piece of that is how our people actually raising money. I mean, are they raising money by direct if they are raising money at all? Are they doing it by direct, ask or by empowering people to ask on their behalf? Clearly, the answer is number two. Eso an example. That’s very easy now is charity water charity water has been very successful in having people donate their birthdays where a person will say i would like tio instead giving me birthday presents this year will you go to my form, make a gift for charity water to bring potable water to people who don’t have any. And that’s that’s been very successful, they’ve raised. I understand over forty five million dollars to date there are now embarking a one billion dollar campaign. So i think fundamentally, what they’re doing right, and it’s been done by other organizations, is by empowering their donors to use some tools off line and use the social environment to go out and spread that message with those links to their pages. Charity water also happens to be very good about showing impact. Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a big that’s. A big piece, obviously on the programmatic side, they’re showing that your dollars could make a direct impact. Its but even when it’s not quite as tangible, i think organizations have done very well in these ways. Another example that i used today is something like humane society, the humane society, united states. What are they doing? That’s right in this context, they again have causes page, you know, so people can make a donation that way. They have their own contribution pages, etcetera. So they’re driving traffic to these places so people could make a donation. But really, what they’re doing is they’re fostering that relationship and empowering the donor. And one really basic level is to go and react and respond and engage with every single person who posts something. So if you were to go right now and send a tweet to somebody, the commission society, you’re going to get a response, you know? And i don’t know of any other charity in america that does that. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics politically expressed. I am montgomery taylor, and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? 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And for small and midsize shops, that could be very challenging, but i just don’t have the do they. Well, let me push back on that we’ve had that conversation for a long time in fund-raising about the thank you call and ah lot of us know jerry panis, who talks about this stuff, and i’ve done some sessions with him at the institute for charitable giving this last year, a lot of fun because he has so much history and so much experience with different organizations, and he often tells the story listeners who don’t know his last name is spelled p a n a s yes, and you’ll see it either is jerry are usually jerrold with a j that’s, right? Yeah. Okay, please. Lots of books to his to his credit center, etcetera. But he talks about these organizations that that decide to thank their donors by phone. And this is a long before social media. So just one levels you pick up the phone and just say thank you. And so he was talking with a few organizations about this and the importance of making i think he said ah, thank you. Phone call to everybody who gives that leased a thousand dollars and one person said while we do it for everybody who gives one hundred, and he thought that was great, of course, s o he said, well, how how do you do it? And that’s that’s terrific. And and they said, well, actually, we do. And i think they said about fifty six thousand like this a year fifty six thousand phone calling organization it’s a big organization, but here’s the question, why are they big? I would argue that the reason why they’re large is because they built that level of engagement because they thank everyone because there because the most important thing is the person had told jerry and the rest of group, what is there that’s more important than saying thank you? And but and the reason i mention this in social media context is because in social media that’s, exactly the currency if you say something great, i retweet it, and that means that i think it has value and i care and you probably care that i that i’ve done that, but institutionally, we have failed at that we will often broadcast really good content that we think it’s in the interest of our of our constituents, but we haven’t been very good about saying, wow, thank you for sharing this content or that was a really great thing that you said we really appreciate your carrying our baton it’s very easy to dio i’ve been mystery shopping at non-profits on twitter, okay, couple years, yes, we’re all going all post content about them, oftentimes with their handle to see what they’ll say, and this is various things they have a job opening at a gift that’s been made to them there posted some terrific content, and then i’ll wait to see what they say. Now i’ve done this organizations i know nothing about. I don’t know anyone there, i’ve done it with organizations i know but haven’t given teo and i’ve done it with organizations where i give including a couple, whether in my will and they know it, and i would have to say that at least ninety nine percent that time there is xero response to anything that i posted about them and and really that’s just like the thank you. What? Why? Why not decide to make a mental shift and simply say that while we don’t have all day to subic, sit around, say thank you, we can take ten percent of our day on social to say we’re going to talk with people in a way that tells them that we care and that’s that’s actually an outstanding example, including especially, i think, the ones that you have in your will and they know it, but there isn’t a closer relationship, and they’re not monitoring their social networks. Two see that you’re you’re commenting on the relationship, and they should be commenting back. And part of that, of course, is is roger that the person who’s working on that social account is now pushing housing and pushing and and not looking and you know it’s not their fault. It’s their job to create content, but not to monitor what what’s coming back or to monitor the relationships with donors because their job is all about the content. It’s not about the dahna relationships, but no donors, you know, no bucks, no buck rogers, yeah, that’s my philosophy on fund-raising all right, ah, look, i’m just going to open up the sort of generally mean other advice the charity’s khun can execute. For me, that’s a that’s a pretty simple one monitor your channel, monitor your name across all the networks that you’re on that’s right and respond when the name is someone that’s should be recognizable to me, so cross check what other simple advice like that? Well, you can use the same philosophy to try and gather new donors knew or at least knew constituents, knew interested parties, so it goes beyond the kind of follow the followers or follow the followers followers thing to looking for people. We’re talking about the things that matter to you. So in the case of the kind things that way, there is our currency, maybe it’s philanthropy or if i’m in a cancer organization to look att at, people were mentioning cancer, and then to reach up into the to them directly and talk about what is of interest to them. Tio applaud the kinds of things they’re posting and that’s going to drive traffic back to you. I mean, i think it has a direct economic effect, but it also has a has a way of showing them that were really authentic and what we’re doing, we’re not just selling something, which i think should be appealing to the people right now who are monitoring our channels, that the folks who are largely managing our social media right now have their heart in the right place, which is to say they care that that we’re having an honest and authentic conversation. The problem is that there aren’t necessarily in a position to have it with the people who are the most invested with our causes, so if we can improve that, that and then e-giving some incentive direction, encouragement to go out and try to find more people who care about the same things, we could really broaden our audience. Another piece that’s of great interest to me is about global amglobal fund-raising organizations, the united states have been largely focused on domestic fund-raising forever and that’s been in for very practical reasons. If you live in new york, there’s a lot of opportunity in new york, so maybe you’d go outside to the tri state area. If you live in california, you have a national charity. Maybe you’ll reach out to new york and perhaps texas in chicago and d c in a couple places florida, but you’re going to stop. In the places that, you know, we have a critical mass of donors, and a lot of that is driven by where you can travel and who you have addresses for here’s. The thing about global social media is that if i post something now, not a person in beirut could read is easily a za person in boston or tokyo as well as texas. So if we start trying to send messages out in a way that says, we’re welcoming not just the people here who care about this stuff, but we’re really welcoming everyone. We have the opportunity to completely expand our audience for our work and because that we aren’t inhibited by those addresses because the mail weii there’s really nothing, nothing inhibiting us from continuing to stuart these donors once we activate them, empower them and that’s again. Why we need to have stewardship and solicitation is always a piece of this fabric because otherwise we’ll never have the opportunity to say great glad you liked us. Can you come over here and support us? And the same thing is true. Domestically, we for a long time been focused on donors who kind of looked like our boards, the past and that’s been a pretty homogeneous place. But today, because the nature of social media and its audience it’s so widely diverse, especially the audiences that are going to become more mohr, the biggest part of the american fabric in the next few years that we have an opportunity to talk to them right now in a way that we never could’ve with our list. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have had the access right right here, we have to leave it there. Great j frost, a pleasure. He is ceo of fund-raising info dot com pleasure to have you as a guest. It’s, great speaker. Thanks, tony. Martignetti oh, my pleasure. Thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the fund-raising day conference two thousand twelve in new york city. Our host is the association of fund-raising professionals create a new york city chapter that interview from fund-raising day just a few weeks ago. My thanks to aaron schmid and also, of course, to j frost and the organizer’s of fund-raising day twenty twelve. Next week, as i said, the one hundred show. Get your social media questions in for amy sample ward. Use any of the networks that that i’m on linked in the blogged facebook twitter plus scott koegler maria simple jean takagi and emily chan will also be with us all talking about social media all next week. We’re all over social media. You can’t make a click without smacking your head into tony martignetti non-profit radio you know all the places we are, you know you can listen live or archive on itunes itunes that non-profit radio dot net on twitter you can follow me, use the show’s hashtag which is non-profit radio i’m also on four square if you want, if you’re there let’s connect on foursquare, our creative producer is claire miree off sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by regina walton of organic social media, who doesn’t have standing job and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I very much hope that you will be with me next week for the one hundredth tony martignetti non-profit radio that’s. Next friday one to two p m eastern on talking alternative broadcasting, which is always at talking alternative dot com i didn’t think that shooting. Good ending. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get into anything. Hyre cubine hi, this is nancy taito from speaks been radio speaks been radio is an exploration of the world of communication, how it happens in how to make it better, because the quality of your communication has a direct impact on the quality of your life. Tune in monday’s at two pm on talking alternative dot com, where i’ll be interviewing experts from business, academia, the arts and new thought. Join me mondays at two p m and get all your communications questions answered on speaks been radio. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three the conscious consultant helping conscious people be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one two to eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? 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